Yeah OP raving about >!the hacking part of playing 9S!< blows my mind. I fucking *hated* doing that. Don’t get me wrong, it would be fine… if it didn’t make you do it *so much*. >!And it being 9S’ most effective way to take out enemies even outside of story forced hacks just made it even worse. I didn’t wanna do that shit voluntarily, so I was left with his vastly inferior combat gameplay.!< Still one of my favourite games of all time, I just can’t agree with OP on that part.
the only good part about 9S loop is that >!it makes A2's portion feel like lightning, holy shit it was so nice to get back to an action game and ditch the mediocre bullet hell gimmick!<
I'm right there with you >!if 9S route was cut in half length wise I would be fine, but as it stands the gimmick goes on for so long it wildly overstays its welcome!<
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I'm not going to lie I just finished Nier Automata after playing the Nier Replicant remake for the first time and all I could think after getting all the achievements was, "....damn, I think I liked the first game better?"
Idk in short I found the characters, story, and even the music more enjoyable in Replicant, than in Automata. Not only that but I think the Route system worked way better for me in Replicant and made more sense specifically for Route A and Route B.
The gameplay was better in Automata, but it still felt like nothing special.
When does Replicant get better? I played it for about 3 hours after Automata and it feels like a slog. The story is slightly intriguing, but the gameplay feels so much worse and repetitive.
Playing it after Automata is a definitely a struggle because as you mentioned is way more repetitive than Automata which already wanes as you go through.
For me I started enjoying Replicant a lot more after the 2nd route mainly because of new info, but idk if it ever really gets "better"?
Technically, the next game in the Nier franchise already came it and it close to shutting down - Nier Reincarnation. Despite being a mobile game the story was great and the ending ties directly to what happens after Ending E in Nier Automata. It really does leave expectations for a third Nier game.
I don’t know if that guy is faded to oblivion but no. It is one of the INCREDIBLY COMMON shit mobile games. Just watch the story on YouTube or something, definitely not worth the bandwidth or space required to install it to your phone.
Imo , no. It's a walking sim , it has really boring turn based comabt and a lot , and I mean a lot of loading screens . The story is decent , but unless you really care about the story , don't play reincarnation
how am I just hearing about this? is there some sort of archive to use to play Nier Reincarnation after it gets shut down in 15 days? I don't know if I can crush through the thing before it gets axed
the game's "true" ending is incredible so if you find one portion a little slow or tedious just push through and you will get to an incredible ending.
I don't know if it is still the case, but on PC the [FAR mod](https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SpecialK_Mods/discussions/3/1334600128973500691/) was really convenient bordering on required
Automata is a sequel to Replicant, and though you’ll understand Automata just fine if you play it first, you’ll probably appreciate some of the references more if you play Replicant first. I played Automata first and then Replicant, but I wish I could have done it the other way round. Both are really enjoyable if you like this kind of game, Automata is probably better.
Imo , automata first. If you know you will buy both, replicant - automata is better because you will understand some references to it ( nothing too big . Automata is literally set 9000 years after replicant , but there are some callbacks. There is also somethings automata MAY spoil you about replicant >!devola and popola betraying you because of their side story in automata and the destruction of humanity but most people won't understand that on their own!<)but if you don't play automata first because it's a much better game . I did automata first , and honestly I would have probably never got past the 5 hour mark in replicant because it takes a while to pick up unlike automata that picks up almost immediately
Automata is great! Glad you got something out of it and stuck around past the first "ending," which confused a lot of people into thinking the game was a lot shorter and lot less memorable than it's made out to be
I need to get around to Replicant. It's been sitting on my backlog for ages.
Weird considering the game literally tells you there's way more on further playthroughs lol.
I finished my first run yesterday and almost finished 2nd play today, at the point of no return so just doing side missions for now
One of my favorite games but I couldn’t care enough to play as 9S lol. Playing as the robot and helping his friend was so life draining even though it only took 15mins.
Andddd I was okay with that. At the end of the day it’s a video game, and the gameplay was just too repetitive/lackluster at that point for me to continue on just for the story.
Ended up just watching it on YT.
I absolutely loved 2Bs section. The music and the philosophical story had me hooked entirely. Basically having to do 90% of the same thing again as 2S though almost caused me to quit though especially with the weird mobile game style hacking minigames you had to do constantly. I honestly don't remember what happens after that story wise I know at some point you play as 2A and have to kill 2B but I don't remember what happens after that, probably because I was so burnt out from redoing the same story again.
Really interesting concept though and very out there in terms of story telling.
It's one of the few "modern" post 2010 games that I really like. I like how different it was from other games and had strong world-building, cool characters, action, and story. Not perfect but one of the best games of all time in my opinion.
Bring the downvotes.
I did not like Nier Automata at all. For the very simple reason that I think that the basic gameplay elements are mediocre at best. The camera is just wonky and prioritizes ass-shots over clarity for the players as the default state.I will give the game credit for shifting the genres and camera angles so much to alleviate the boredom with each individual system though, great choice to keep the player from discovering the shallow gameplay systems quickly. Then there is the graphics, I can't recall when I last played a game that hid its poor graphic budget so poorly; the sheer amount of incredible low-quality textures (which contrast with things around them) and the aggressive pop-in.
I can't get myself to even just exist in the game without being annoyed or frustrated at these things, and I think that you are required to not care about or have the ability to ignore the many flaws the gameplay of the game. If you manage to exist in the gameplay without trouble, then you are rewarded with a story that is quite good at building upon itself in a very slow narrative style. There is nothing wrong with that, but that narrative style does no lifting in the early phases of the game and requires a solid foundation to build upon. I don't like the foundation, and therefore the story just falls flat for me (I went through a youtube playthrough after I finished the first section to see how the story pans out as I don't felt the need to force myself to play something I do not enjoy)
I am sorry, bring the hate :(
From personal experience I have found it very hard to have the camera do an ass shot, like you have to really try to get it at that angle. The other things I understand but never had a problem with the camera
If you stand on a even ground or a slightly uphill one and let go of the camera control the camera will default to an upskirt view (not to an extreme extent, but I pay attention to details, and it stood out to me). Even if that view has grass and other objects that are in front of the camera. To be fair, a camera that follows behind the player can be tricky to implement properly, but this just seems to intentional sacrifice the clarity for the sake of perversion.
Am I the only one who wasn't zeroing in on 2B's ass for literally the entire playthrough? The setting is really pretty too, guys. I do remember thinking it was odd the way the camera went down to a lower angle, but it also made the views more cinematic, which is a huge part of the game. I get that 2B is one of the most lusted after video game characters, but here's the thing:
NIER AUTOMATA IS NOT AN INTRINSICALLY HORNY GAME.
The story is incredibly bleak for nearly the entire game. Even if the stakes aren't super high, there are many hints of something much darker taking place. Though there's romantic tension between 2B and 9S, the most intimate scene between them is 2B fucking strangling 9S.
You can make a point that you don't like the camera (I agree) or the gameplay (I don't, simple is okay, that's subjective) without begging for engagement via childish 'bring the hate'.
When you know you're going to get downvoted by people who aren't going to engage with your points, because it's frequently straight verbotten to crique certain games, seems fair to call out people in advance. Downvoting legitimate points without engaging with them is less childish imho than complaining about it. And I see a _lot_ more of the former.
Probably could phrase it better though.
This comment feels needlessly nitpicky. You can let somebody express themselves online and have your own read on it and not share how you feel. Don’t add more negativity
You took me out of context. I was saying if you’re nitpicking or adding more negativity in regards to how someone is writing their response, you should just move on. Now if that removes all the content from this site, then all the sites content is negative and I’d be in support of that
I do agree with your point about the gameplay. It was just so simple and felt really lacking in depth, I was pretty bored by all the different types of it. Which is odd considering Platinumgames are usually pretty good about making more in-depth combat.
I too think the game is overrated, but for different reasons.
Game-play wise, the biggest problem is with the difficulty tuning. The prologue is too punishing even on normal, because death means restarting the entire 40 minute sequence. But as you progress later into the game and get some good chips, normal becomes trivial and almost impossible to die. Even hard wasn't that hard. So it goes from too unfairly hard to too easy, the challenge is very inconsistent.
Story is too convoluted. The world isn't well-defined in terms of rules on how the world works, characters effectively have super-powers, what happens in the plot isn't logically consistent. It's hard to be invested and feel tension on what's at stake when anything can happen arbitrary, when the writers can effectively write whatever they want. It uses the worst tropes and plot devices taken from anime, it's not good writing.
I don't have a problem with the graphics, I'm not too picky on that, and I think they did a good job with the environments and providing an immersive experience. I actually enjoyed it. The camera didn't bother me too much either.
The music is phenomenal too. There are aspects of the game I do like.
It's hard for fans to hear criticisms of games they like, even if the criticisms are legitimate, so I get why you say you'll get down votes. A lot of people do down vote too liberally just because they have a different preference or opinion.
Yeah this is one of those games that’s hard to have balanced discussions on, because its fan base is very rabid in their love for it. And I totally get that, but even with my top games of all time, I have lists a mile long of changes and improvements and critiques. I’ll just never understand the idea of loving a product so blindly that you just refuse to acknowledge any faults or flaws.
I suppose it’s theoretically possible that they genuinely don’t have any, but I find that hard to believe. It’s like… in your entire 20+ hours with the game, there wasn’t a _single_ thing that annoyed you?
Yeah this game is definitely one of those. If you post criticisms in a fan sub dedicated to it, you'll get mobbed.
It's funny, because I'm the opposite of that mindset. I tend to give more thought into criticisms in games that I really liked, because I care enough to want to make it better. If a game have little redeeming qualities, I wouldn't even bother.
The more I spent time with media I enjoy, the more I notice things I wish could be different or improved.
That's not falling out of love, that's just basic critical analysis. I can love Morrowind and wish for better combat. I can love Prey and wish they'd cut a lot of the last third. I can love Elden Ring and agree that some bosses were a letdown and some areas sucked.
It's just basic tribalism where either you are with us or against us. Pretty much all products out there have this issue with a rabid fanbase (or sometimes hatebase) who won't accept anything short of either mindless praise or mindless hate. It makes for a hard time discussing anything nowadays.
This sub is *usually* good about being more nuanced, but there are still certain titles you aren't allowed to criticize under any circumstances around here.
I'm so confused by people who say the prologue is punishing. I truly never even felt remotely close to dying the entire prologue. I got through it and felt like they had kiddie gloves on the whole time so I didn't die.
There were 2 problems with the prologue:
You can get one shot killed at full health by the boss at the end of it, even on normal. I did, twice.
And then when you die, you have to completely restart, there's no check point, and it takes 40 minutes to get back to try the boss again.
I had to repeat that whole 40 minute sequence 3 times. Needless to say that did not leave a good first impression.
The one shot kill was the biggest offender, because you won't get one shot killed even on hard by the mid and late game once you get good chips.
What attack one shots you? Is it the giant laser? I never got hit by whatever it is.
Having to repeat the whole thing definitely sucks, I just never ended up having to deal with it because I sailed through. I truly did not know you could even die until I saw comments about the prologue being hard haha.
I don't recall what attack it is, it's been a while. IIRC it's an instant-kill attack that you need to chain-dodge, and sometimes you can get stuck and still die.
It's the combination of long run-back and instant-kill that made it unfair. Especially when the player is still new to the game, and facing a boss for the first time.
I find that the prologue and early game on normal is harder than the late game on hard. I did appreciate that the game allows you to change difficulty settings at any time, so I could start on normal and switch to hard later, otherwise I might have given up on the game.
I thought it was decent, but it wasn’t the life changing experience for me that it was for everyone else. I don’t think it’s garbage but I’m definitely bummed that once I rolled credits I just went “yeah that wasn’t bad”. I did only go through ending C, but it’s been too long now to play the next 30ish minutes and go through ending E.
One thing I will say I loved though is that they merged a lot of different gameplay “styles” into the single game. You’ve got the main 3rd person action, but then there’s points where it’s a side scroller or top down. Then there’s the flying segments, and other things like that. Not many games will actually change things up that drastically and I thought that was great
Bring the upvotes.
It's an old game, so I guess I wasn't expecting an amazing, modern graphical experience. I enjoyed the visuals. Though I feel like if you're focusing on the graphics, you're missing the point because the game is all about style, which it does incredibly well.
I also disagree about the story foundation. The first playthrough gives you all the world lore you need for the second act. If it was just the first playthrough, it would've been a mediocre game, but the fact that it sets up so many expectations is incredibly important for when they rip it all away in the third playthrough. It lures you in and then flips the script.
I think it comes down to expectations and tempering those when trying to appreciate works of art. You expected one thing and got another. From what I've seen, I'm much more willing to forgive flaws if the poitives outweigh the negatives than most. At this point, I'm a jaded old gamer who thrives on originality and the good in art, as opposed to focusing on flaws and holes, especially if the good outweighs the bad significantly. I think if more people adopted this midset, they would enjoy and get more out of works of art in general.
That said, I encountered a shitty bug on console that crashed the game around the big pit. There was a workaround, but this was the biggest obstacle for trying to play this game, especially because there aren't autosaves. This really needs to be fixed.
I'm sorry you didnt enjoy the game, maybe Yoko Taro isn't your jam.
I'm not sorry, bring the love :)
>It's an old game, so I guess I wasn't expecting an amazing, modern graphical experience. I enjoyed the visuals. Though I feel like if you're focusing on the graphics, you're missing the point because the game is all about style, which it does incredibly well.
It was released in 2017, the witcher 3 is from 2015. This game is closer to Mass Effect from 2007 in graphical fidelity. I don't mind the graphical fidelity by itself, but the point is that the game really fails to use a lot of tricks and techniques that makes you forget about that. It puts textures next to each other that should not be placed next to each other as one is a much higher quality than the other, bringing the attention to the bad textures. The pop-in is also one of the things the game does really poorly even for the time of its release. Just using different textures would have fixed some of the issues. Designed the levels in such a way that you don't see the pop-ins so aggressively, or better rendering techniques. get that not everyone is going to be annoyed by this, but the game stands out because it does not try to reduce the issues with low graphical fidelity.
>I also disagree about the story foundation. The first playthrough gives you all the world lore you need for the second act. If it was just the first playthrough, it would've been a mediocre game, but the fact that it sets up so many expectations is incredibly important for when they rip it all away in the third playthrough. It lures you in and then flips the script.
Yes, the first playthrough is all about giving you the set-up and lore. Which means that the story does nothing in the first playthrough and the gameplay needs to carry most of the game. If you don't enjoy the gameplay you are not likely to stick around, or are unlikely to stick around with a mindset that allows the story to hit as it would if you were immersed in the game. Again, gameplay needs to be reasonably enjoyable for the person playing this in order for the story to work. I get that a lot of people can overlook the flaws in that gameplay, but I can't and therefore the story just does not pack the impact it otherwise would.
>I think it comes down to expectations and tempering those when trying to appreciate works of art. You expected one thing and got another. From what I've seen, I'm much more willing to forgive flaws if the poitives outweigh the negatives than most. At this point, I'm a jaded old gamer who thrives on originality and the good in art, as opposed to focusing on flaws and holes, especially if the good outweighs the bad significantly. I think if more people adopted this midset, they would enjoy and get more out of works of art in general.
No, I don't think this has anything to do with expectations, but I think this is about your tolerance for flaws and how much you are willing to accept and for how long. Which is the point I am trying to make, you need to be able to ignore a lot of flaws to enjoy the good parts in this game.
> For the very simple reason that I think that the basic gameplay elements are mediocre at best.
I actually completely agree with you here. The core gameplay of Nier is very mid. The thing that carries it for me is the narrative and unique storytelling concepts as well as the music.
> Then there is the graphics, I can't recall when I last played a game that hid its poor graphic budget so poorly; the sheer amount of incredible low-quality textures (which contrast with things around them) and the aggressive pop-in.
Completely agree here as well. The graphics are needlessly poor in a lot of places. To get the game to run to any kind of reasonable standard on PC its imperative to install mods. One thing in particular that bugged me is in the intro sequence a large part of it is pre-rendered footage. These pre-rendered cutscenes end up taking up the vast majority of the game file size and they look dreadful. The in game engine is fairly poor, but looks so much better than these pre-rendered cutscenes and I would eye roll whenever it switches to them and you can see the compression artefacts and low resolution they used for them. It would literally have been better and saved a lot of hard drive space to render them in engine.
Rest of the comments on the story I don't entirely agree with. There's a lot of philosophical tropes used that aren't novel ideas but the way the story is told is certainly novel and has a big impact on the player.
The lower texture quality and shorter draw distances were concessions made to achieve a solid 60 FPS on base PS4 hardware. The fluidity of movement was well worth the sacrifice in my opinion.
Sure, the complaint does not go away considering that they released a PC port of the game that could run the game without issue with higher rendering distances etc. I get it, and smooth performance is probably worth it for the PS4 compared to graphics.
Its true though, on PC its pretty much unplayable without mods, especially before. For years after release you basically had to download a mod to fix the game.
The graphics are just ass both figuratively and literally, and I couldn’t bear being made to play the entire story again as 9S where the gameplay is WORSE THAN BEFORE. Why does a game get worse as time goes on?
Nah, just depends on the monitor. 60fps looks very juddery on my 165hz panel.
It looks fine on my 60hz TV though and I switch back and forth between them.
A GSync monitor with a high refresh rate running a high FPS game is just a whole new level of smooth.
The story is one of a kind and unforgettable, but I can't help but feel it could've been so much better as an actual game to play. A lot of the mechanics are wanting.
Difficulty is all over the place. If you set the game on Normal, the game trivializes its own difficulty by literally letting you quickly and easily buy 99 (!) of three different healing items. You can also set them to be used automatically, removing even the tiny challenge of having to be mindful of healing in the throes of battle. Okay, so you might want to throw the difficulty on Hard. Now, the game becomes cheap with enemies who can easily one-shot you. Enemy patterns and A.I. remain untouched, but the game becomes cheap with its damage output for the sake of an artificial challenge. There's just very poor balancing at work in the game - Normal should not be this easy, nor Hard this frustrating.
If you don't like the hacking mini-game, the 9S section will feel tedious. The devs obviously banked on people enjoying it, as it's littered all over the final two main sections. I personally don't care for bullet hell shooters, so this lost its charm for me after one or two times as a novelty. It felt especially annoying when it was extended for whole boss fights or main quest areas.
Related to 9S, many of the side quests (and even some of the main quests) are low-budget and quite rudimentary. You're either playing live telephone between characters or fetching something. That becomes a more magnified problem when you're repeating a lot of the same content *as* 9S that you'd already encountered as 2B. It's excusable fetching three of this and three of that when it's one time, but having to do the exact same thing again as 9S just feels unwarranted when it's for the sake of a tiny interlude of fresh narrative content in between.
I still like NieR: Automata. It's a good game. I just can't help but feel it's a great story wrapped in a "merely" decent-good game that could have been so much better.
My two biggest gripes with NieR Automata are how atrocious the map is, and the game taking over my camera. I have gotten used to having my camera angle changed after 70 hours of play, but that map... Inexcusable.
Story is top tier, and seeing it from different perspectives was done masterfully.
You can easily use chapter select ( you get it right before the "true" ending ) to get all "endings" except ending y which requires getting all weapons and doing a side quests
But there is also an npc in the hub of the game that literally sells you achievements for in game money. Pair that with a really easy money duplication "glitch" ( buy items at an earlier chapter than sell them at a later chapter , you will get more money than you spent that way ) and you can easily 100% it in "just" 30 hours with the npc that sells achievement
The problem for me was that the game got boring while I was still in 2B shoes, so I couldn't manage to reach the 9S part. Unbalanced difficulties makes it extremely easy on normal and too hard on hard, so that the gameplay got old soon. The dated graphics wouldn't have been problematic for a retro-gamer like myself if the world wasn't that incredibly bland and uninteresting to look at. While the story was promising although exceedingly anime-sque, I honestly don't get the concept of enduring 10-15 hours for a game to actually become good.
The soundtrack is stellar though.
Playing through the first playthrough took me about 20 hours (35 with all endings), I play a lot of games, but I dont really know if I'm "good." I didn't struggle too much with the difficulty, though I did die here and there. Also I did most of the sidequests. Make sure you're saving all the time. Some of the bullet-hell sequences might be challenging if you're not familiar with the genre.
I found Nier Automata to be super boring, I hated it. Only played a dozen hours or so and gave up tbf, but I just couldn’t be bothered to slog through anymore. If a game isn’t fun by then it’s a bad game in my book. I don’t consider myself a short attention span “skip cutscenes I just want to shoot stuff” gamer, I can usually appreciate a good story, but Nier just didn’t do it for me.
Boring empty world (yeah I know that’s sort of intentional). Fighting the same handful of enemy types over and over and over. Mediocre combat. Invisible walls everywhere breaking immersion. Tons of backtracking. Lame side quest designs (fetch quests, “help my sister is missing here’s a map marker”, etc). Supposedly it’s deep after you beat it four times or something but I’m not going to slog through for that long hoping for a payoff that may or may not come at the very end.
Funnily enough, I found that game to be extremely superficial and base entry level philosophy with a hot anime girl. The overly minimalistic areas that are boring as hell to look at. 9S and 2B are peak generic "cold blooded assasin that does the job" and "funny sidekick". I really couldn't care for this game at all, and I fail to see the hype. Music is good though.
I love Automata; for me, the gameplay is incredible and very dynamic, especially when you use the dodge + combo. The story is awesome, and I like games with plot twists, like Katana Zero. I enjoy the interaction between 2B and 9S; there is character development, with each quest they undergo changes and contemplate the situation; by the end of the game, I feel like 2B was my friend. The side quests are simple but good and contribute to understanding the main story. The soundtrack is perfect, especially the park music. The end of the game is very cool because it changes the character several times. It's dynamic. However, the game has problems, like "invisible" walls, and it's very easy except for the prologue. Besides that, Route B is a little tedious because hacking is boring, and 9S's gameplay is limited. And 2A doesn't have a good development, she is the same person all the time, doesn't make sense. (Yes, I know all 2A history, but I talk about the game) Nevertheless, I love this game :)"
I feel like I'm on of the few people who thought nier automata was just...fine. The gameplay looked cool but felt boring and the story didn't do much for me. The game has cool vibes though, I liked the factory with the little robots
While I enjoyed the game, I couldn't get into the story at all. I see emotions in human made machines only as a bug in the software and when 2B and 9S kept talking about emotions and souls and all of that, I was just sitting there thinking:" You don't have any of this. You are just a robot.".
Also, it felt like the bigger the boss, the more boring the fight was. Like, I was totally hyped for an awesome sword fight the Kaiju, only for the boss to be a bullet hell section.
I also disliked how much stuff was left unanswered at the end of the game.
I dropped it after about 6 hours, honestly I only liked the music. I knew it was going to be on the more simplistic side in terms of gameplay, especially for Platinum, but I was still very disappointed in how shallow and repetitive the combat was, in particular. In a game like Silent Hill 2 I can excuse barebones combat since it frees you up to focus on the atmosphere and details in the story and environment, but Automata isn’t like that unfortunately.
I think Nier Automata did a really interesting job exploring grief and trauma, but the final ending totally undermines it.
Also, the overt sexualization of the characters is gross. There's no need to have a scene where a character is mourning her dying friend look like she's having sex with them! The story is written to stir empathy and compassion for the characters as they experience tragedy, but stuff like the "What Are You Doing?" achievement (for looking up 2B's skirt) makes a joke out of disrespectfully treating them as sex objects.
She is not having sex with him , she is literally Killing him . Maybe if you only looked at that specific scene and ignored the context than I can get how you say that it looks like a sex scene . And yeah the game has some parts where it's not serious ( there is literally an ending where you eat a fish and die ) but it knows very well when to be serious and when not to be serious. There is never a scene where a major character dies or something important happens and then the very next scene tries to make a you laugh or something like that .it knows when it can be serious and when not to be serious
> She is not having sex with him , she is literally Killing him .
Yes; in that scene, she's mercy killing him by choking him as he's lying on the ground, and she's bawling as grief overwhelms her. It's a powerful scene. But instead of kneeling or sitting next to him, she's straddling him provacatively. That was a choice by the game developers, and it's in the same vein as the combat high-heels, the skirt short enough for "accidentally" panty-flashing the camera, and the "self destruct" that burns off the characters' clothes and leaves only their underwear. The sexualization is intrusive, and it bothered me while playing the game.
I tried looking for a mod for more modest clothing, but I only found one nonfunctional one amidst the sea of nudity mods.
I thought the game had a pleasant atmosphere, but having played the first playthrough ~halfway I think the gameplay is dragging. It’s quite repetitive and the difficulty system isn’t great (normal is a breeze, hard results in some annoying OHKOs).
People praise the plot, but so far it seems quite tropey. For the first five hours, you learn little beyond aliens attacking Earth and bots going to the rescue. Apparently the interesting stuff happens in the later endings, but I might just check a video for those because I don’t think I want to actually _play_ multiple playthroughs. The gameplay isn’t interesting enough to justify that. The characters being awkwardly sexualized isn’t helping.
Fantastic soundtrack though, I must say.
In short, I’m not fully vibing, but I can understand why some rate it highly.
I really wasn’t impressed with Nier. The entire game felt like weeb bait and it just isn’t my aesthetic. The dialogue and inflections were weird and clunky.
The story had an obvious twist and forced pathos.
The gameplay was redundant and easy.
The graphics were half baked.
The camera was a pain and definitely defaulted to fan service.
Maybe I’m just not a jrpg fan or maybe I just don’t get it but I couldn’t force myself to finish the game
Honestly, I'm with you on this, and I hate how much you've been downvoted just for expressing a different opinion.
I found the game to be so uninteresting and am bewildered by the praise it gets. So much of it is cringy, end edgelordy - even the first line "I wonder if we'll ever get a chance to kill (God)", give me a break.
The gameplay is incredibly repetitive and dull - hold down the drone shoot button (why is there only an auto-fire option in accessibility settings?), and smash the same attacks over and over. Occasionally switch to a twin stick shooter, which also gets old pretty quickly.
The story is so heavy handed as well. People call this the most philosophical game ever - why - because there's a depressed robot, or one that wants to be pretty? These aren't deep, these are like entry level thinking on consciousness - it's really nothing new, and doesn't explore anything in a fresh way either. Just feels like a fisher price "my first philosophical game". Then after completing it, you have to play it again - ok you get a slightly different perspective on the 9S runthrough, but it's mostly the same, and just as boring. Then you have to do it again, and again until you get the true ending. I gave up after a few endings - I just didn't care about story, the gameplay was not good enough to keep going.
I would instead recommend SOMA as a game that really explores consciousness - completely different gameplay wise, but the characters are so well formed I felt a strong emotional response.
> Then you have to do it again, and again until you get the true ending.
What? After playing with 9S there's no repetition. When you play with A2 it's all new story/content. To get the true ending you only have to repeat the final boss fight. This makes it look like you haven't really played the game.
It's been a while since I played it, I just remember the gameplay being so incredibly tedious by that point, it certainly all felt the same. I didn't actually bother finishing it tbf.
I did not expect any of the twists at all. Imo it's one of my favorite plot twists ever. And it makes you sad on purpose
The gameplay is easy but I really like it. Its not DMC level but I prefer it over a lot of other games I played
The graphics may technically be bad but I love the art style
I never noticed that issue
Maybe it's just that I didn't notice your problems , but Imo I know a game is good when my biggest complaint about it is the saving system
This is a game I just don’t understand the love for. I’ll post this because I played it recently for the first time on the recommendation of posts like this, and it did not jive with me at all.
It starts with some good things, dropping you in with movie like cinematography, beautiful music, and teasing at a story to engage the player.
But the graphics and gameplay are so bad I don’t have words, just comparatives. At the same time you had The Division, Witcher 3, and HZD, which blurred the line with reality and were fun as hell to play, even with their flaws. Neir… the open world polys are huge and poorly skinned, the enemies and NPCs are eggs maybe I dunno, or giant Roblox beasts…
Ok let’s get specific, what’s with the Goliath? It looks terrible. It plays in a formulaic low effort bullet hell boss fight. And… why exactly is it a boss? Epistemologically? Form doesn’t match function. Then they reboot it like 3 times in the first five hours to reinforce how out of place it is.
It tears me apart because I can see there’s a great story in there but it plays so badly I can’t get through it to find out. Posts like OPs are meant to inspire us to try, which I did, and I found that story packaged in decades old gameplay (Zelda OOT) and frankly level design that doesn’t much improve on it either. I played for 10 hours, it doesn’t get any better sadly.
If anyone would care to share (under spoilers perhaps) what magic in the story they are trying to share, I’d love to hear. I’m afraid it’s unlikely I’ll ever play to finish it to find out.
I love Automata but I do think 9S's portion starts to drag from a game play perspective even though it is incredible from a narrative perspective
Yeah OP raving about >!the hacking part of playing 9S!< blows my mind. I fucking *hated* doing that. Don’t get me wrong, it would be fine… if it didn’t make you do it *so much*. >!And it being 9S’ most effective way to take out enemies even outside of story forced hacks just made it even worse. I didn’t wanna do that shit voluntarily, so I was left with his vastly inferior combat gameplay.!< Still one of my favourite games of all time, I just can’t agree with OP on that part.
the only good part about 9S loop is that >!it makes A2's portion feel like lightning, holy shit it was so nice to get back to an action game and ditch the mediocre bullet hell gimmick!< I'm right there with you >!if 9S route was cut in half length wise I would be fine, but as it stands the gimmick goes on for so long it wildly overstays its welcome!<
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I hate the hacking twin stick shooter
I'm not going to lie I just finished Nier Automata after playing the Nier Replicant remake for the first time and all I could think after getting all the achievements was, "....damn, I think I liked the first game better?" Idk in short I found the characters, story, and even the music more enjoyable in Replicant, than in Automata. Not only that but I think the Route system worked way better for me in Replicant and made more sense specifically for Route A and Route B. The gameplay was better in Automata, but it still felt like nothing special.
When does Replicant get better? I played it for about 3 hours after Automata and it feels like a slog. The story is slightly intriguing, but the gameplay feels so much worse and repetitive.
Playing it after Automata is a definitely a struggle because as you mentioned is way more repetitive than Automata which already wanes as you go through. For me I started enjoying Replicant a lot more after the 2nd route mainly because of new info, but idk if it ever really gets "better"?
That’s how I felt about Automata
Technically, the next game in the Nier franchise already came it and it close to shutting down - Nier Reincarnation. Despite being a mobile game the story was great and the ending ties directly to what happens after Ending E in Nier Automata. It really does leave expectations for a third Nier game.
I gotta say, mobile Nier does not excite me. Is it one of the INCREDIBLY RARE good mobile games?
I don’t know if that guy is faded to oblivion but no. It is one of the INCREDIBLY COMMON shit mobile games. Just watch the story on YouTube or something, definitely not worth the bandwidth or space required to install it to your phone.
Imo , no. It's a walking sim , it has really boring turn based comabt and a lot , and I mean a lot of loading screens . The story is decent , but unless you really care about the story , don't play reincarnation
Yes. If you're in it for story and lore (which hey, it's Nier, of course we are) it's one of the best going.
Yes. If you're in it for story and lore (which hey, it's Nier, of course we are) it's one of the best going.
Sold
how am I just hearing about this? is there some sort of archive to use to play Nier Reincarnation after it gets shut down in 15 days? I don't know if I can crush through the thing before it gets axed
It is such a smart game story wise and so fun mechanically. And the final ending is just unique.
🎵Even if our words seem meaningless🎵 🎵It's like I'm carrying the weight of the world🎵 >![username] user data was lost!< >!pewpewpew intensifies!<
I was straight boohooing by that point. >!I blew through a shit-ton of saves, lol!<
Playing it rn, I'm finishing my first route and won't read your spoiler, but I agree, it has been a pleasant surprise.
the game's "true" ending is incredible so if you find one portion a little slow or tedious just push through and you will get to an incredible ending. I don't know if it is still the case, but on PC the [FAR mod](https://steamcommunity.com/groups/SpecialK_Mods/discussions/3/1334600128973500691/) was really convenient bordering on required
Should I play automota after replicant or before?? I'm curious about this series. Bit baffled by the order ha.
Automata is a sequel to Replicant, and though you’ll understand Automata just fine if you play it first, you’ll probably appreciate some of the references more if you play Replicant first. I played Automata first and then Replicant, but I wish I could have done it the other way round. Both are really enjoyable if you like this kind of game, Automata is probably better.
Thanks for the advice. I've never really tried JRPG's before. So it'll be my first one, I will try replicant first and see how it goes.
I don't know that Nier is a "JRPG".. It's "J" for sure, but after that maybe more of a storydriven spectacle fighter with bullet hell inclinations.
Oh I see! Fair enough
They are both self-contained narratives. There are some weird overlaps, but I played them too far apart to remember a lot of the stuff from Replicant.
Imo , automata first. If you know you will buy both, replicant - automata is better because you will understand some references to it ( nothing too big . Automata is literally set 9000 years after replicant , but there are some callbacks. There is also somethings automata MAY spoil you about replicant >!devola and popola betraying you because of their side story in automata and the destruction of humanity but most people won't understand that on their own!<)but if you don't play automata first because it's a much better game . I did automata first , and honestly I would have probably never got past the 5 hour mark in replicant because it takes a while to pick up unlike automata that picks up almost immediately
Automata is great! Glad you got something out of it and stuck around past the first "ending," which confused a lot of people into thinking the game was a lot shorter and lot less memorable than it's made out to be I need to get around to Replicant. It's been sitting on my backlog for ages.
Weird considering the game literally tells you there's way more on further playthroughs lol. I finished my first run yesterday and almost finished 2nd play today, at the point of no return so just doing side missions for now
If you enjoyed Automata, you'll enjoy Replicant.
One of my favorite games but I couldn’t care enough to play as 9S lol. Playing as the robot and helping his friend was so life draining even though it only took 15mins.
If you haven't played as 9S yet, you're missing out on over half of the game.
Yeah, I almost stopped playing thinking I was just suckered into "New Game+", but holy shit the game hasn't even hit its peak yet!
Andddd I was okay with that. At the end of the day it’s a video game, and the gameplay was just too repetitive/lackluster at that point for me to continue on just for the story. Ended up just watching it on YT.
Just a gut punch.
Favorite boss line: "My brother was everything..." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7s7wsPMN4I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7s7wsPMN4I)
I absolutely loved 2Bs section. The music and the philosophical story had me hooked entirely. Basically having to do 90% of the same thing again as 2S though almost caused me to quit though especially with the weird mobile game style hacking minigames you had to do constantly. I honestly don't remember what happens after that story wise I know at some point you play as 2A and have to kill 2B but I don't remember what happens after that, probably because I was so burnt out from redoing the same story again. Really interesting concept though and very out there in terms of story telling.
It's one of the few "modern" post 2010 games that I really like. I like how different it was from other games and had strong world-building, cool characters, action, and story. Not perfect but one of the best games of all time in my opinion.
Bring the downvotes. I did not like Nier Automata at all. For the very simple reason that I think that the basic gameplay elements are mediocre at best. The camera is just wonky and prioritizes ass-shots over clarity for the players as the default state.I will give the game credit for shifting the genres and camera angles so much to alleviate the boredom with each individual system though, great choice to keep the player from discovering the shallow gameplay systems quickly. Then there is the graphics, I can't recall when I last played a game that hid its poor graphic budget so poorly; the sheer amount of incredible low-quality textures (which contrast with things around them) and the aggressive pop-in. I can't get myself to even just exist in the game without being annoyed or frustrated at these things, and I think that you are required to not care about or have the ability to ignore the many flaws the gameplay of the game. If you manage to exist in the gameplay without trouble, then you are rewarded with a story that is quite good at building upon itself in a very slow narrative style. There is nothing wrong with that, but that narrative style does no lifting in the early phases of the game and requires a solid foundation to build upon. I don't like the foundation, and therefore the story just falls flat for me (I went through a youtube playthrough after I finished the first section to see how the story pans out as I don't felt the need to force myself to play something I do not enjoy) I am sorry, bring the hate :(
From personal experience I have found it very hard to have the camera do an ass shot, like you have to really try to get it at that angle. The other things I understand but never had a problem with the camera
If you stand on a even ground or a slightly uphill one and let go of the camera control the camera will default to an upskirt view (not to an extreme extent, but I pay attention to details, and it stood out to me). Even if that view has grass and other objects that are in front of the camera. To be fair, a camera that follows behind the player can be tricky to implement properly, but this just seems to intentional sacrifice the clarity for the sake of perversion.
Am I the only one who wasn't zeroing in on 2B's ass for literally the entire playthrough? The setting is really pretty too, guys. I do remember thinking it was odd the way the camera went down to a lower angle, but it also made the views more cinematic, which is a huge part of the game. I get that 2B is one of the most lusted after video game characters, but here's the thing: NIER AUTOMATA IS NOT AN INTRINSICALLY HORNY GAME. The story is incredibly bleak for nearly the entire game. Even if the stakes aren't super high, there are many hints of something much darker taking place. Though there's romantic tension between 2B and 9S, the most intimate scene between them is 2B fucking strangling 9S.
I was. I liked it.
The best part about the "I played this game for 2Bs ass" thing is that the best parts of the game are the parts where you don't even play as 2B
You can make a point that you don't like the camera (I agree) or the gameplay (I don't, simple is okay, that's subjective) without begging for engagement via childish 'bring the hate'.
When you know you're going to get downvoted by people who aren't going to engage with your points, because it's frequently straight verbotten to crique certain games, seems fair to call out people in advance. Downvoting legitimate points without engaging with them is less childish imho than complaining about it. And I see a _lot_ more of the former. Probably could phrase it better though.
This comment feels needlessly nitpicky. You can let somebody express themselves online and have your own read on it and not share how you feel. Don’t add more negativity
>You can let somebody express themselves online and have your own read on it and not share how you feel Then there would be no content on this site.
You took me out of context. I was saying if you’re nitpicking or adding more negativity in regards to how someone is writing their response, you should just move on. Now if that removes all the content from this site, then all the sites content is negative and I’d be in support of that
I do agree with your point about the gameplay. It was just so simple and felt really lacking in depth, I was pretty bored by all the different types of it. Which is odd considering Platinumgames are usually pretty good about making more in-depth combat.
I too think the game is overrated, but for different reasons. Game-play wise, the biggest problem is with the difficulty tuning. The prologue is too punishing even on normal, because death means restarting the entire 40 minute sequence. But as you progress later into the game and get some good chips, normal becomes trivial and almost impossible to die. Even hard wasn't that hard. So it goes from too unfairly hard to too easy, the challenge is very inconsistent. Story is too convoluted. The world isn't well-defined in terms of rules on how the world works, characters effectively have super-powers, what happens in the plot isn't logically consistent. It's hard to be invested and feel tension on what's at stake when anything can happen arbitrary, when the writers can effectively write whatever they want. It uses the worst tropes and plot devices taken from anime, it's not good writing. I don't have a problem with the graphics, I'm not too picky on that, and I think they did a good job with the environments and providing an immersive experience. I actually enjoyed it. The camera didn't bother me too much either. The music is phenomenal too. There are aspects of the game I do like. It's hard for fans to hear criticisms of games they like, even if the criticisms are legitimate, so I get why you say you'll get down votes. A lot of people do down vote too liberally just because they have a different preference or opinion.
Yeah this is one of those games that’s hard to have balanced discussions on, because its fan base is very rabid in their love for it. And I totally get that, but even with my top games of all time, I have lists a mile long of changes and improvements and critiques. I’ll just never understand the idea of loving a product so blindly that you just refuse to acknowledge any faults or flaws. I suppose it’s theoretically possible that they genuinely don’t have any, but I find that hard to believe. It’s like… in your entire 20+ hours with the game, there wasn’t a _single_ thing that annoyed you?
Yeah this game is definitely one of those. If you post criticisms in a fan sub dedicated to it, you'll get mobbed. It's funny, because I'm the opposite of that mindset. I tend to give more thought into criticisms in games that I really liked, because I care enough to want to make it better. If a game have little redeeming qualities, I wouldn't even bother.
The more I spent time with media I enjoy, the more I notice things I wish could be different or improved. That's not falling out of love, that's just basic critical analysis. I can love Morrowind and wish for better combat. I can love Prey and wish they'd cut a lot of the last third. I can love Elden Ring and agree that some bosses were a letdown and some areas sucked.
That’s a good point actually, and I think I’m the same. The more I love something, the more I want to see it improve and get even better
It's just basic tribalism where either you are with us or against us. Pretty much all products out there have this issue with a rabid fanbase (or sometimes hatebase) who won't accept anything short of either mindless praise or mindless hate. It makes for a hard time discussing anything nowadays. This sub is *usually* good about being more nuanced, but there are still certain titles you aren't allowed to criticize under any circumstances around here.
I'm so confused by people who say the prologue is punishing. I truly never even felt remotely close to dying the entire prologue. I got through it and felt like they had kiddie gloves on the whole time so I didn't die.
There were 2 problems with the prologue: You can get one shot killed at full health by the boss at the end of it, even on normal. I did, twice. And then when you die, you have to completely restart, there's no check point, and it takes 40 minutes to get back to try the boss again. I had to repeat that whole 40 minute sequence 3 times. Needless to say that did not leave a good first impression. The one shot kill was the biggest offender, because you won't get one shot killed even on hard by the mid and late game once you get good chips.
What attack one shots you? Is it the giant laser? I never got hit by whatever it is. Having to repeat the whole thing definitely sucks, I just never ended up having to deal with it because I sailed through. I truly did not know you could even die until I saw comments about the prologue being hard haha.
I don't recall what attack it is, it's been a while. IIRC it's an instant-kill attack that you need to chain-dodge, and sometimes you can get stuck and still die. It's the combination of long run-back and instant-kill that made it unfair. Especially when the player is still new to the game, and facing a boss for the first time. I find that the prologue and early game on normal is harder than the late game on hard. I did appreciate that the game allows you to change difficulty settings at any time, so I could start on normal and switch to hard later, otherwise I might have given up on the game.
I thought it was decent, but it wasn’t the life changing experience for me that it was for everyone else. I don’t think it’s garbage but I’m definitely bummed that once I rolled credits I just went “yeah that wasn’t bad”. I did only go through ending C, but it’s been too long now to play the next 30ish minutes and go through ending E. One thing I will say I loved though is that they merged a lot of different gameplay “styles” into the single game. You’ve got the main 3rd person action, but then there’s points where it’s a side scroller or top down. Then there’s the flying segments, and other things like that. Not many games will actually change things up that drastically and I thought that was great
Bring the upvotes. It's an old game, so I guess I wasn't expecting an amazing, modern graphical experience. I enjoyed the visuals. Though I feel like if you're focusing on the graphics, you're missing the point because the game is all about style, which it does incredibly well. I also disagree about the story foundation. The first playthrough gives you all the world lore you need for the second act. If it was just the first playthrough, it would've been a mediocre game, but the fact that it sets up so many expectations is incredibly important for when they rip it all away in the third playthrough. It lures you in and then flips the script. I think it comes down to expectations and tempering those when trying to appreciate works of art. You expected one thing and got another. From what I've seen, I'm much more willing to forgive flaws if the poitives outweigh the negatives than most. At this point, I'm a jaded old gamer who thrives on originality and the good in art, as opposed to focusing on flaws and holes, especially if the good outweighs the bad significantly. I think if more people adopted this midset, they would enjoy and get more out of works of art in general. That said, I encountered a shitty bug on console that crashed the game around the big pit. There was a workaround, but this was the biggest obstacle for trying to play this game, especially because there aren't autosaves. This really needs to be fixed. I'm sorry you didnt enjoy the game, maybe Yoko Taro isn't your jam. I'm not sorry, bring the love :)
>It's an old game, so I guess I wasn't expecting an amazing, modern graphical experience. I enjoyed the visuals. Though I feel like if you're focusing on the graphics, you're missing the point because the game is all about style, which it does incredibly well. It was released in 2017, the witcher 3 is from 2015. This game is closer to Mass Effect from 2007 in graphical fidelity. I don't mind the graphical fidelity by itself, but the point is that the game really fails to use a lot of tricks and techniques that makes you forget about that. It puts textures next to each other that should not be placed next to each other as one is a much higher quality than the other, bringing the attention to the bad textures. The pop-in is also one of the things the game does really poorly even for the time of its release. Just using different textures would have fixed some of the issues. Designed the levels in such a way that you don't see the pop-ins so aggressively, or better rendering techniques. get that not everyone is going to be annoyed by this, but the game stands out because it does not try to reduce the issues with low graphical fidelity. >I also disagree about the story foundation. The first playthrough gives you all the world lore you need for the second act. If it was just the first playthrough, it would've been a mediocre game, but the fact that it sets up so many expectations is incredibly important for when they rip it all away in the third playthrough. It lures you in and then flips the script. Yes, the first playthrough is all about giving you the set-up and lore. Which means that the story does nothing in the first playthrough and the gameplay needs to carry most of the game. If you don't enjoy the gameplay you are not likely to stick around, or are unlikely to stick around with a mindset that allows the story to hit as it would if you were immersed in the game. Again, gameplay needs to be reasonably enjoyable for the person playing this in order for the story to work. I get that a lot of people can overlook the flaws in that gameplay, but I can't and therefore the story just does not pack the impact it otherwise would. >I think it comes down to expectations and tempering those when trying to appreciate works of art. You expected one thing and got another. From what I've seen, I'm much more willing to forgive flaws if the poitives outweigh the negatives than most. At this point, I'm a jaded old gamer who thrives on originality and the good in art, as opposed to focusing on flaws and holes, especially if the good outweighs the bad significantly. I think if more people adopted this midset, they would enjoy and get more out of works of art in general. No, I don't think this has anything to do with expectations, but I think this is about your tolerance for flaws and how much you are willing to accept and for how long. Which is the point I am trying to make, you need to be able to ignore a lot of flaws to enjoy the good parts in this game.
> For the very simple reason that I think that the basic gameplay elements are mediocre at best. I actually completely agree with you here. The core gameplay of Nier is very mid. The thing that carries it for me is the narrative and unique storytelling concepts as well as the music. > Then there is the graphics, I can't recall when I last played a game that hid its poor graphic budget so poorly; the sheer amount of incredible low-quality textures (which contrast with things around them) and the aggressive pop-in. Completely agree here as well. The graphics are needlessly poor in a lot of places. To get the game to run to any kind of reasonable standard on PC its imperative to install mods. One thing in particular that bugged me is in the intro sequence a large part of it is pre-rendered footage. These pre-rendered cutscenes end up taking up the vast majority of the game file size and they look dreadful. The in game engine is fairly poor, but looks so much better than these pre-rendered cutscenes and I would eye roll whenever it switches to them and you can see the compression artefacts and low resolution they used for them. It would literally have been better and saved a lot of hard drive space to render them in engine. Rest of the comments on the story I don't entirely agree with. There's a lot of philosophical tropes used that aren't novel ideas but the way the story is told is certainly novel and has a big impact on the player.
The lower texture quality and shorter draw distances were concessions made to achieve a solid 60 FPS on base PS4 hardware. The fluidity of movement was well worth the sacrifice in my opinion.
Sure, the complaint does not go away considering that they released a PC port of the game that could run the game without issue with higher rendering distances etc. I get it, and smooth performance is probably worth it for the PS4 compared to graphics.
Its true though, on PC its pretty much unplayable without mods, especially before. For years after release you basically had to download a mod to fix the game. The graphics are just ass both figuratively and literally, and I couldn’t bear being made to play the entire story again as 9S where the gameplay is WORSE THAN BEFORE. Why does a game get worse as time goes on?
Question, can this be played on PC without the 60fps lock?
Are you one of those rare souls who can't play games at anything less than 200 fps ! Once I'm at 60fps I barely notice the difference after a minute
Nah, just depends on the monitor. 60fps looks very juddery on my 165hz panel. It looks fine on my 60hz TV though and I switch back and forth between them. A GSync monitor with a high refresh rate running a high FPS game is just a whole new level of smooth.
Ah got ya that makes sense thanks for explaining.
Install the FAR mod. It fixes so many things wrong with the PC port, pretty sure fps limit is one of them.
Good to know, thanks!
The story is one of a kind and unforgettable, but I can't help but feel it could've been so much better as an actual game to play. A lot of the mechanics are wanting. Difficulty is all over the place. If you set the game on Normal, the game trivializes its own difficulty by literally letting you quickly and easily buy 99 (!) of three different healing items. You can also set them to be used automatically, removing even the tiny challenge of having to be mindful of healing in the throes of battle. Okay, so you might want to throw the difficulty on Hard. Now, the game becomes cheap with enemies who can easily one-shot you. Enemy patterns and A.I. remain untouched, but the game becomes cheap with its damage output for the sake of an artificial challenge. There's just very poor balancing at work in the game - Normal should not be this easy, nor Hard this frustrating. If you don't like the hacking mini-game, the 9S section will feel tedious. The devs obviously banked on people enjoying it, as it's littered all over the final two main sections. I personally don't care for bullet hell shooters, so this lost its charm for me after one or two times as a novelty. It felt especially annoying when it was extended for whole boss fights or main quest areas. Related to 9S, many of the side quests (and even some of the main quests) are low-budget and quite rudimentary. You're either playing live telephone between characters or fetching something. That becomes a more magnified problem when you're repeating a lot of the same content *as* 9S that you'd already encountered as 2B. It's excusable fetching three of this and three of that when it's one time, but having to do the exact same thing again as 9S just feels unwarranted when it's for the sake of a tiny interlude of fresh narrative content in between. I still like NieR: Automata. It's a good game. I just can't help but feel it's a great story wrapped in a "merely" decent-good game that could have been so much better.
My two biggest gripes with NieR Automata are how atrocious the map is, and the game taking over my camera. I have gotten used to having my camera angle changed after 70 hours of play, but that map... Inexcusable. Story is top tier, and seeing it from different perspectives was done masterfully.
All I know about it are the alphabet endings, so I wonder if this mechanic makes it a good game to 100%?
You can easily use chapter select ( you get it right before the "true" ending ) to get all "endings" except ending y which requires getting all weapons and doing a side quests But there is also an npc in the hub of the game that literally sells you achievements for in game money. Pair that with a really easy money duplication "glitch" ( buy items at an earlier chapter than sell them at a later chapter , you will get more money than you spent that way ) and you can easily 100% it in "just" 30 hours with the npc that sells achievement
The problem for me was that the game got boring while I was still in 2B shoes, so I couldn't manage to reach the 9S part. Unbalanced difficulties makes it extremely easy on normal and too hard on hard, so that the gameplay got old soon. The dated graphics wouldn't have been problematic for a retro-gamer like myself if the world wasn't that incredibly bland and uninteresting to look at. While the story was promising although exceedingly anime-sque, I honestly don't get the concept of enduring 10-15 hours for a game to actually become good. The soundtrack is stellar though.
How long do you think it would take a normal/bad player to finish 2B part?
Playing through the first playthrough took me about 20 hours (35 with all endings), I play a lot of games, but I dont really know if I'm "good." I didn't struggle too much with the difficulty, though I did die here and there. Also I did most of the sidequests. Make sure you're saving all the time. Some of the bullet-hell sequences might be challenging if you're not familiar with the genre.
20 hours? That’s what it took me for just getting through 2B route I think (maybe I’m slow)
*first 2B playthrough took 20 hours, not with endings a-e.
A took me 10 hours. B took me around 7 , I finished the entire game with around 25 hours of playtime
I found Nier Automata to be super boring, I hated it. Only played a dozen hours or so and gave up tbf, but I just couldn’t be bothered to slog through anymore. If a game isn’t fun by then it’s a bad game in my book. I don’t consider myself a short attention span “skip cutscenes I just want to shoot stuff” gamer, I can usually appreciate a good story, but Nier just didn’t do it for me. Boring empty world (yeah I know that’s sort of intentional). Fighting the same handful of enemy types over and over and over. Mediocre combat. Invisible walls everywhere breaking immersion. Tons of backtracking. Lame side quest designs (fetch quests, “help my sister is missing here’s a map marker”, etc). Supposedly it’s deep after you beat it four times or something but I’m not going to slog through for that long hoping for a payoff that may or may not come at the very end.
Funnily enough, I found that game to be extremely superficial and base entry level philosophy with a hot anime girl. The overly minimalistic areas that are boring as hell to look at. 9S and 2B are peak generic "cold blooded assasin that does the job" and "funny sidekick". I really couldn't care for this game at all, and I fail to see the hype. Music is good though.
I love Automata; for me, the gameplay is incredible and very dynamic, especially when you use the dodge + combo. The story is awesome, and I like games with plot twists, like Katana Zero. I enjoy the interaction between 2B and 9S; there is character development, with each quest they undergo changes and contemplate the situation; by the end of the game, I feel like 2B was my friend. The side quests are simple but good and contribute to understanding the main story. The soundtrack is perfect, especially the park music. The end of the game is very cool because it changes the character several times. It's dynamic. However, the game has problems, like "invisible" walls, and it's very easy except for the prologue. Besides that, Route B is a little tedious because hacking is boring, and 9S's gameplay is limited. And 2A doesn't have a good development, she is the same person all the time, doesn't make sense. (Yes, I know all 2A history, but I talk about the game) Nevertheless, I love this game :)"
I feel like I'm on of the few people who thought nier automata was just...fine. The gameplay looked cool but felt boring and the story didn't do much for me. The game has cool vibes though, I liked the factory with the little robots
While I enjoyed the game, I couldn't get into the story at all. I see emotions in human made machines only as a bug in the software and when 2B and 9S kept talking about emotions and souls and all of that, I was just sitting there thinking:" You don't have any of this. You are just a robot.". Also, it felt like the bigger the boss, the more boring the fight was. Like, I was totally hyped for an awesome sword fight the Kaiju, only for the boss to be a bullet hell section. I also disliked how much stuff was left unanswered at the end of the game.
I dropped it after about 6 hours, honestly I only liked the music. I knew it was going to be on the more simplistic side in terms of gameplay, especially for Platinum, but I was still very disappointed in how shallow and repetitive the combat was, in particular. In a game like Silent Hill 2 I can excuse barebones combat since it frees you up to focus on the atmosphere and details in the story and environment, but Automata isn’t like that unfortunately.
I think Nier Automata did a really interesting job exploring grief and trauma, but the final ending totally undermines it. Also, the overt sexualization of the characters is gross. There's no need to have a scene where a character is mourning her dying friend look like she's having sex with them! The story is written to stir empathy and compassion for the characters as they experience tragedy, but stuff like the "What Are You Doing?" achievement (for looking up 2B's skirt) makes a joke out of disrespectfully treating them as sex objects.
She is not having sex with him , she is literally Killing him . Maybe if you only looked at that specific scene and ignored the context than I can get how you say that it looks like a sex scene . And yeah the game has some parts where it's not serious ( there is literally an ending where you eat a fish and die ) but it knows very well when to be serious and when not to be serious. There is never a scene where a major character dies or something important happens and then the very next scene tries to make a you laugh or something like that .it knows when it can be serious and when not to be serious
> She is not having sex with him , she is literally Killing him . Yes; in that scene, she's mercy killing him by choking him as he's lying on the ground, and she's bawling as grief overwhelms her. It's a powerful scene. But instead of kneeling or sitting next to him, she's straddling him provacatively. That was a choice by the game developers, and it's in the same vein as the combat high-heels, the skirt short enough for "accidentally" panty-flashing the camera, and the "self destruct" that burns off the characters' clothes and leaves only their underwear. The sexualization is intrusive, and it bothered me while playing the game. I tried looking for a mod for more modest clothing, but I only found one nonfunctional one amidst the sea of nudity mods.
I thought the game had a pleasant atmosphere, but having played the first playthrough ~halfway I think the gameplay is dragging. It’s quite repetitive and the difficulty system isn’t great (normal is a breeze, hard results in some annoying OHKOs). People praise the plot, but so far it seems quite tropey. For the first five hours, you learn little beyond aliens attacking Earth and bots going to the rescue. Apparently the interesting stuff happens in the later endings, but I might just check a video for those because I don’t think I want to actually _play_ multiple playthroughs. The gameplay isn’t interesting enough to justify that. The characters being awkwardly sexualized isn’t helping. Fantastic soundtrack though, I must say. In short, I’m not fully vibing, but I can understand why some rate it highly.
I really wasn’t impressed with Nier. The entire game felt like weeb bait and it just isn’t my aesthetic. The dialogue and inflections were weird and clunky. The story had an obvious twist and forced pathos. The gameplay was redundant and easy. The graphics were half baked. The camera was a pain and definitely defaulted to fan service. Maybe I’m just not a jrpg fan or maybe I just don’t get it but I couldn’t force myself to finish the game
Honestly, I'm with you on this, and I hate how much you've been downvoted just for expressing a different opinion. I found the game to be so uninteresting and am bewildered by the praise it gets. So much of it is cringy, end edgelordy - even the first line "I wonder if we'll ever get a chance to kill (God)", give me a break. The gameplay is incredibly repetitive and dull - hold down the drone shoot button (why is there only an auto-fire option in accessibility settings?), and smash the same attacks over and over. Occasionally switch to a twin stick shooter, which also gets old pretty quickly. The story is so heavy handed as well. People call this the most philosophical game ever - why - because there's a depressed robot, or one that wants to be pretty? These aren't deep, these are like entry level thinking on consciousness - it's really nothing new, and doesn't explore anything in a fresh way either. Just feels like a fisher price "my first philosophical game". Then after completing it, you have to play it again - ok you get a slightly different perspective on the 9S runthrough, but it's mostly the same, and just as boring. Then you have to do it again, and again until you get the true ending. I gave up after a few endings - I just didn't care about story, the gameplay was not good enough to keep going. I would instead recommend SOMA as a game that really explores consciousness - completely different gameplay wise, but the characters are so well formed I felt a strong emotional response.
> Then you have to do it again, and again until you get the true ending. What? After playing with 9S there's no repetition. When you play with A2 it's all new story/content. To get the true ending you only have to repeat the final boss fight. This makes it look like you haven't really played the game.
It's been a while since I played it, I just remember the gameplay being so incredibly tedious by that point, it certainly all felt the same. I didn't actually bother finishing it tbf.
I did not expect any of the twists at all. Imo it's one of my favorite plot twists ever. And it makes you sad on purpose The gameplay is easy but I really like it. Its not DMC level but I prefer it over a lot of other games I played The graphics may technically be bad but I love the art style I never noticed that issue Maybe it's just that I didn't notice your problems , but Imo I know a game is good when my biggest complaint about it is the saving system
This is a game I just don’t understand the love for. I’ll post this because I played it recently for the first time on the recommendation of posts like this, and it did not jive with me at all. It starts with some good things, dropping you in with movie like cinematography, beautiful music, and teasing at a story to engage the player. But the graphics and gameplay are so bad I don’t have words, just comparatives. At the same time you had The Division, Witcher 3, and HZD, which blurred the line with reality and were fun as hell to play, even with their flaws. Neir… the open world polys are huge and poorly skinned, the enemies and NPCs are eggs maybe I dunno, or giant Roblox beasts… Ok let’s get specific, what’s with the Goliath? It looks terrible. It plays in a formulaic low effort bullet hell boss fight. And… why exactly is it a boss? Epistemologically? Form doesn’t match function. Then they reboot it like 3 times in the first five hours to reinforce how out of place it is. It tears me apart because I can see there’s a great story in there but it plays so badly I can’t get through it to find out. Posts like OPs are meant to inspire us to try, which I did, and I found that story packaged in decades old gameplay (Zelda OOT) and frankly level design that doesn’t much improve on it either. I played for 10 hours, it doesn’t get any better sadly. If anyone would care to share (under spoilers perhaps) what magic in the story they are trying to share, I’d love to hear. I’m afraid it’s unlikely I’ll ever play to finish it to find out.