I really wanted to like the "first" one of this series. A seemingly under the radar release from SquareEnix from what seems to be a completely new property? Sure, I'll give that a shot. And the initial impression of the game was actually pretty good. I was happily plugging along slashing at enemies until "the event" stopped me. A single soul-cleaving fishing game of pure unfiltered hate for the player that was required to proceed with the game. After 45 minutes of controller snapping frustration, I had not caught one single fish. Left with a broken spirit, that was the last time I picked up that game. It had its niche audience but ultimately faded away.
Then surprisingly at an E3, this title surfaced again. A new faster paced action, new female protagonist, and what looked to be a very cool combat trailer. But then I saw it was done by Platinum Games, makers of Bayonetta, which I love. THAT caught my attention, and they released a demo of the intro chapter of the game and signs were positive from there. So while I never was super ingrained into this series, I rather eagerly dove into this title in the hope that fishing would not thwart me yet again...
NIER: AUTOMATA(PS4)
I've come to learn that Nier: Automata actually has a longer and more convoluted story line spanning way far back into the Drakengard series on ps2. But you can play Automata without having known any of it and still enjoy the game. That's what I did, so forgive me if I get part of the story wrong. Here is the setting as I understand it.
Our story begins in the distant future, well past the year 11945. During what was know of the 14th Machine War, aliens descended upon earth wielding bio-machines and attacking the human populous. Being pushed to the brink of extinction, humanity actually had no choice but to abandon Earth and escape to the moon. There, they developed (very goth Lolita) combat androids known as YoRHa to try to fight and take back their home world from the machines that now overrun it.
Our story begins in the distant future, well past the year 11945. During what was know of the 14th Machine War, aliens descended upon earth wielding bio-machines and attacking the human populous. Being pushed to the brink of extinction, humanity actually had no choice but to abandon Earth and escape to the moon. There, they developed (very goth Lolita) combat androids known as YoRHa to try to fight and take back their home world from the machines that now overrun it.
As years continue to pass the game starts with us in control of 2B, a YoRHa series-2 combat model flying down to earth with a unit of YoRHa fighters to take down a Colossus class machine. Her unit is decimated but she survives and continues the mission. She is joined up with an scouting class series-9 unit called 9S tasked to provide her support. After a massive battle with the colossal machine, 3 more colossi enter the fray and force the two badly damaged units self destruct in order to wipe out the machines.
Their data luckily is backed up and they reloaded to new bodies on "the Bunker", the lunar base where YoRHa runs their operations. After a brief rebooting segment (which will become the hacking minigame), the two are tasked by the YoRHa commander to return planetside and assist fighting and scouting for the resistance movement on the surface, in the continuing conflict of the machines. Specifically with the odd behavior of the machines in the nearby desert, and it's from this point where the game world really opens up.
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| Oh good. Starting the game with a tragic sacrifice. That's a good sign. |
So I kind of had to give away the a majority of the introductory level of the game but it was kind of necessary to give the story context because much like Platinum Games likes to do, the game starts you off right in the action. Now the reason I was so into the idea of trying this edition of Nier is because Platinum developed it and as you might remember from my Bayonetta 2 review, I love the combat system that they put forth. So I was expecting more of the same: Fast paced hack and slashy action in post apocalyptic world.
But what I wasn't expecting is how the game switches its play styles on you, sometimes multiple times in a level. The game starts off with 2B descending with yer aerial unit and you begin to be attacked by machines, So it starts of as a vertical bullet hell shoot em up in the vein of an Ikaruga for example. Then as the level progresses you get a camera shift and now it turns into a multi-directional bullet hell shooter like Geometry Wars. I am a big fan of these kinds of games, so that was a welcome little surprise.
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| The bullet hell can actually be pretty forgiving. So long as you keep dodging, you are fine. |
Once you actually touchdown on land, it then shifts to more of what I was expecting. It seems to be your relatively standard spectacle fighter style of action game. If you played either of the Bayonetta titles or Devil May Cry it's going to feel right at home for you. Analogs for move and 360 degree camera, light attack and heavy attack, Jump and dodge buttons. You also have a little support robot to provide covering fire and various heavy shots depending on what weapon you have equipped on it. So you better have spider hands, because all of the buttons have uses and you can fully customize them.
Ironically, Devil May Cry and Bayonetta luminary (and Platinum Games founding father) Hideki Kamiya actually wasn't in charge of or developed for this project. He was given input on the combat mechanics but ultimately wasn't part of it, which is actually a surprise to me because the familiarity to his previous works is abundantly clear.
Even playing with this familiar combat style, there are camera shifts that can take place in battle which will drastically effect how you play. There are a lot of platforming segments that turns it into a 2d Castlevania style action game, and others where it turns into a top down hack and slasher. Thankfully through all of these shifts the game still functions well on its controls and never gets really too disorienting. It's incredibly clever how it makes use of a few camera shifts to make the game feel like a new experience. This is done exceptionally well in some of the boss fights.
You'll see how during the fight the camera shifts above for a top down segment mid-fight.
Automata is an open world game in a post apocalyptic setting but what I enjoyed about this more than others, is much like the setting in Horizon: Zero Dawn, nature and wildlife have taken the world back. Sure there are remnants of buildings, factories, sewers and an amusement park, but wild moose and boars (and seemingly nothing else) roam the lands in harmony with the number goofy toy looking robots. While certain areas don't open up until storyline contexts occur, the maps that you get are pretty expansive with lots of little side quests to find along the way.
I should make special note of the side quests here. Many of them are not required to actually progress in the game, but it should be made note of that blowing past them your first time through like I did would be doing yourself an injustice from a storyline context. Each of the side quests will usually result in a little bit of banter between 2B and 9S, and this these moments that really flesh out the characters, the world, and their relationship to each other. After completing the game you have the ability to jump around the story to complete the side-quests at your leisure, but this is the one time I would advise to do as many as you can as you play the story. Some of them have multiple parts, so be sure not to miss them.
Probably the best aspect of this is game, the use of the actual video game tropes as part of its story meta. Automata does this to such a degree I haven't seen since I played Undertale. As mentioned before, we are controlling androids. So naturally, the game features a series of menus and HUDs that are very mechanical and pixelated in nature in a very Original Game Boy monochromatic color scheme. But this isn't just a cute design aesthetic for the player, this is actually what the androids see. It is actually their internal workings and meta spills into multiple game aspects.
For example, The game features an upgrade system to where you can add, merge and remove microchips that allows you to customize your abilities: give you more attack power, make you run faster, allows you to heal over time, gain more experience, etc. But in this chipset also contains you HUD chipset and OS. They are listed right there in the chips. So you could feasibly remove your HP gauge chip or GPS chip, and when you get go back to the game sure enough your life bar will be gone, as well as the mini map you had.
And when I say your OS (operating system) that is no bullshit. The flavor text of the OS chip says right out that it is what allows you to function. To remove it literally means death. If you ignore that warning and pull out the OS chip anyways? The screen fades to black on you, you get a reminder to take greater care when adjusting your CPU, and then get a credit roll and need to start over from your last save.
Another such example comes in with saving. Automata very pointedly tells you at the onset that this game does NOT have an autosave and that it must be done manually. At first, I was sort of annoyed by this because honestly at this era of gaming we have all become pretty used to autosave at this point. But from a storyline perspective, it makes total sense. 2B and 9S are androids gallivanting across the world and fighting robots, meeting the many cyborgs and robots along the surface, and collecting valuable data about the human society that has been lost to time.
But that data means nothing unless it gets backed up to the servers. Hell their very own ability to survive catastrophic damage is reliant on their ability to literally back up themselves back to the YoRHa bunker, so as you play through the game you will need to find an defend multiple server locations all along the map. These allow you to save your game given you are in range of them to do so (bluetooth still sucks apparently). Finding this also will eventually unlock the fast travel system, as well as allow your map to become more clear and detailed.
It also affects your ability to play sometimes as well. Without venturing into spoiler territory too much there are certain instances in combat and gameplay that allows the game to make some screwy visual tricks that just sell the experience better. At one point I thought it was a cutscene until I realized I was still getting my ass kicked and needed to move. It's just and exceptional way of playing with the 4th wall of the game without overtly smashing through it like Deadpool. Taro Yoko may be an insane person and developer, but he certainly knows how to stick to the narrative he's built.
Nier: Automata features an absolutely exceptional soundtrack from the beautiful mind of Keiichi Okabe. I need to state that right off. It is very classical inspired featuring varied orchestral instruments accompanied by three very incredible vocalists all singing in English, Japanese, and French respectively. In the overworld, or in the resistance base the music is very melodic, chill, and soft as if to auditorily present that this area is safe, or the expanse is wild but calm. Walking the YoRHa bunker is devoid of music as the androids work in the silence of outer space.
But then you get into battles or boss fights, and the operatic intensity rises with increased tempos and more pronounced vocals. There is one such spectacular boss fight called only Beautiful Song, which just mirrors the boss' desire to be beautiful in appearance and tone as if performing for an opera (see above boss fight video). And the song "Weight of the World" that plays during the final credits sequence of the true ending, my god.... That song? It's perfection. It's the reason I really gave the soundtrack to closer listen in context to what I was playing. Compiled with the spectacular final true ending sequence, it's probably my favorite part of the game.
If I had to make one complaint about the music, is as beautiful as it is? It might be too chill, bordering on boring. I know that doesn't make sense considering how I gushed for two paragraphs, but what I mean by that is this: On more than one occasion, while I was playing the game slouched in my bowl chair like the disgusting slob that I am, the music was just so chill that I would nod off while I was playing it. For a medium that is meant to keep you engaged and alert, that's not actually a good thing. It's the primary reason it took me so long to get through it because I would keep falling asleep while I played. Given my history, that's not usually a selling point.
I do have a bunch of little annoyances with Automata though. The aforementioned chip idea for stats is cool and clever, but it doesn't do the best job of explaining how to best condense your chips to make the best of your limited space. By increasing the potency of your chips, it more often makes them require more space. Makes sense, but it also will sometimes basically scare you off from spending a chip you like for fear of not having to reorganize your whole chip set over again. It took me forever to realize the little diamond next to them is saying the chip is as small as it can be. So you really only want to merge those with other diamonds.
It also can make the game almost insultingly easy. Once I discovered chipsets like auto-heal, offensive heal, and deadly heal the game became a walk in the park. With a combination of those chips on I was restoring health for damaging enemies, killing enemies, and not taking damage. It still left me plenty of room to boost damage and speed, so I basically would be able to shred things with reckless abandon because if took too many hits, either I'd use a healing item automatically, or just back out of the fight a few seconds to heal up and dive right back in.
Which made the occasional cheap death that would come the fuck out of nowhere even more infuriating. I might have only died in the game like 2 or 3 times, and they happened in the exact same spot because I would just be ripping around the area at high speed forgetting about an environment insta-kill. This also clued me in that this game also does the Dark Souls thing where if you die, you lose everything you have equipped. Not everything, all your stored items and money are still available, but your chipset you were using are with your body, and if you don't go get it back, they are gone forever. Not expecting that after a cheap death is infuriating because then you are extra careful not to lose your carefully crafted character.
Your map is next to useless. The minimap might point you in a general direction, but the three dimensional monochromatic pixel map for a guy with partial red/green colorblindness makes finding your way to side quests or objectives kind of difficult to track down. There have been multiple points where I was right on top of the path I was allegedly supposed to take or on where a quest was supposed to be to find out I was several stories up or down where I was supposed to be. I was getting flashbacks to the new Doom and how little the map actually told me where to go.
That's another thing about the map. It is both simultaneously huge and small at the same time. You are going to spend a lot of time back and forthing across the world from place to place and it's always going to take a few minutes to do, but when I actually think about it there is only like 5 to 7 locations in the whole game. Now to compare, this is essentially what they did in Lightning Returns: FF13 and it does give the game a sense of bigness to explore. But if you play through the game long enough, you are going to notice that you in the same areas an awful lot.
There is a weapons and upgrade system, and you can also find additional gear of the body's of players littered across the map, and I'm going to tell you right now? It all means next to nothing. I played through 3 times and never found any of the items to upgrade my little pod support, so it apparently doesn't mean much. Weapons only have 4 levels of upgrades, but your chipsets will play the bigger factor on dealing damage. There are lots of little items you pick up, and I'll be honest I don't think I used any of them. If you are using auto-heal, almost 90% of the items are useless.
As I said before, the story is very convoluted. And while I very much enjoyed it, essentially playing only this game of its entire narrative spanning almost 5 games (There were 2 releases of the original in japan), I am left with a whole lot of unanswered questions. Why if they are androids are they programmed to experience emotion and personality, yet have directives to not experience or display them? Why if they are machines with databases, was human history so lost that they only loosely understand the concept of shopping? If the YoRHA are Androids, and the robots are Machines, Then what is the Resistance, Cyborgs? There are a bunch of other more spoilery questions I won't get into, as well.
But I suppose the biggest story thing to complain about it is even after playing through the major endings, I still don't really understand what the story point was. There is a lot of existential crisis and realization throughout the story of the game, and I truly did feel for almost all the characters I was presented with. But by the end of it I was left with a very "what exactly did I learn here?" feeling. That doesn't make it bad by any means, but apparently I don't have the super intelligent space brain required to see the deeper meaning here. Luckily, if you stick to focusing on the characters, it's still a very enjoyable experience.
The game also has a mind-numbing 26 endings. One for each letter of the alphabet. Granted a significant majority of them are very jokey endings, many of which you might get entirely by accident by making the wrong decision or walking the wrong direction. But to get the 5 major endings of the game to truly see everything, you are going to have play the game through a couple of times. The game pretty much tells you this after you finish once: "Congrats on beating the game! But you reeeeaaaaaallly should play it a few more times. wink wink."
There is also an trophy for trying to look up 2B's skirt too many times. Honestly this is coming from Platinum who has never had any problems with fanservice in there games so this doesn't surprise me. Especially after the whole controversy about someone taking a screenshot of 2B's surprisingly detailed robot butthole, (I stand by the theory that if she's an android operating at high speed, there needs to be an exhaust system right?). You can self destruct to blow off her clothes as well, but as I mentioned above the game can be easy. It never occurred to me to even try that until my sister told me I could do it. This is a game where the fanservice honestly wasn't necessary in any capacity.
But through all of these niggling little complaints, it is totally totally worth it. It took me a little bit to get the ball rolling on the story but once I was in I was completely in. From a technical standpoint the game is practically flawless. I can't think of any mechanic fault that wasn't intentionally put there for story context. Platinum Games once again just delivered a home run on a property that a lot of people didn't give a chance here in the west, and now it is being met with well deserved critical acclaim.
Again, the rage quitter has little rage about here. I came into Nier: Automata only expecting a few things and I got all of them, but some clever use of cameras, music, and playing around with the very mechanics of the game to make them in-story relevant really put this game over the top for me. It got me to spend hours watching videos of spoken word classical concerts of the series misty eyed as I watched the cutscenes behind the singers.
A lot of the reviews are saying "masterpiece" which I think is a little much. If the game has flaws it can't be a masterpiece (looking at you Breath of the Wild), but there are a whole lot of 8's, 9's, and 9.5s and I am very hard pressed to disagree with any of them. Nier: Automata was fucking fantastic and it completely turned me around on the franchise. Maybe enough to make me go back and re-try the first one. Absolutely worth your time and highly recommended.
You'll see how during the fight the camera shifts above for a top down segment mid-fight.
Automata is an open world game in a post apocalyptic setting but what I enjoyed about this more than others, is much like the setting in Horizon: Zero Dawn, nature and wildlife have taken the world back. Sure there are remnants of buildings, factories, sewers and an amusement park, but wild moose and boars (and seemingly nothing else) roam the lands in harmony with the number goofy toy looking robots. While certain areas don't open up until storyline contexts occur, the maps that you get are pretty expansive with lots of little side quests to find along the way.
I should make special note of the side quests here. Many of them are not required to actually progress in the game, but it should be made note of that blowing past them your first time through like I did would be doing yourself an injustice from a storyline context. Each of the side quests will usually result in a little bit of banter between 2B and 9S, and this these moments that really flesh out the characters, the world, and their relationship to each other. After completing the game you have the ability to jump around the story to complete the side-quests at your leisure, but this is the one time I would advise to do as many as you can as you play the story. Some of them have multiple parts, so be sure not to miss them.
Probably the best aspect of this is game, the use of the actual video game tropes as part of its story meta. Automata does this to such a degree I haven't seen since I played Undertale. As mentioned before, we are controlling androids. So naturally, the game features a series of menus and HUDs that are very mechanical and pixelated in nature in a very Original Game Boy monochromatic color scheme. But this isn't just a cute design aesthetic for the player, this is actually what the androids see. It is actually their internal workings and meta spills into multiple game aspects.
For example, The game features an upgrade system to where you can add, merge and remove microchips that allows you to customize your abilities: give you more attack power, make you run faster, allows you to heal over time, gain more experience, etc. But in this chipset also contains you HUD chipset and OS. They are listed right there in the chips. So you could feasibly remove your HP gauge chip or GPS chip, and when you get go back to the game sure enough your life bar will be gone, as well as the mini map you had.
And when I say your OS (operating system) that is no bullshit. The flavor text of the OS chip says right out that it is what allows you to function. To remove it literally means death. If you ignore that warning and pull out the OS chip anyways? The screen fades to black on you, you get a reminder to take greater care when adjusting your CPU, and then get a credit roll and need to start over from your last save.
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| You get 3 sets to customize your chips, so you have backups to use if you happen to die. |
Another such example comes in with saving. Automata very pointedly tells you at the onset that this game does NOT have an autosave and that it must be done manually. At first, I was sort of annoyed by this because honestly at this era of gaming we have all become pretty used to autosave at this point. But from a storyline perspective, it makes total sense. 2B and 9S are androids gallivanting across the world and fighting robots, meeting the many cyborgs and robots along the surface, and collecting valuable data about the human society that has been lost to time.
But that data means nothing unless it gets backed up to the servers. Hell their very own ability to survive catastrophic damage is reliant on their ability to literally back up themselves back to the YoRHa bunker, so as you play through the game you will need to find an defend multiple server locations all along the map. These allow you to save your game given you are in range of them to do so (bluetooth still sucks apparently). Finding this also will eventually unlock the fast travel system, as well as allow your map to become more clear and detailed.
 |
| Some of the endings involve you dying. These will usually not require you to reclaim your chips. |
It also affects your ability to play sometimes as well. Without venturing into spoiler territory too much there are certain instances in combat and gameplay that allows the game to make some screwy visual tricks that just sell the experience better. At one point I thought it was a cutscene until I realized I was still getting my ass kicked and needed to move. It's just and exceptional way of playing with the 4th wall of the game without overtly smashing through it like Deadpool. Taro Yoko may be an insane person and developer, but he certainly knows how to stick to the narrative he's built.
Nier: Automata features an absolutely exceptional soundtrack from the beautiful mind of Keiichi Okabe. I need to state that right off. It is very classical inspired featuring varied orchestral instruments accompanied by three very incredible vocalists all singing in English, Japanese, and French respectively. In the overworld, or in the resistance base the music is very melodic, chill, and soft as if to auditorily present that this area is safe, or the expanse is wild but calm. Walking the YoRHa bunker is devoid of music as the androids work in the silence of outer space.
But then you get into battles or boss fights, and the operatic intensity rises with increased tempos and more pronounced vocals. There is one such spectacular boss fight called only Beautiful Song, which just mirrors the boss' desire to be beautiful in appearance and tone as if performing for an opera (see above boss fight video). And the song "Weight of the World" that plays during the final credits sequence of the true ending, my god.... That song? It's perfection. It's the reason I really gave the soundtrack to closer listen in context to what I was playing. Compiled with the spectacular final true ending sequence, it's probably my favorite part of the game.
If I had to make one complaint about the music, is as beautiful as it is? It might be too chill, bordering on boring. I know that doesn't make sense considering how I gushed for two paragraphs, but what I mean by that is this: On more than one occasion, while I was playing the game slouched in my bowl chair like the disgusting slob that I am, the music was just so chill that I would nod off while I was playing it. For a medium that is meant to keep you engaged and alert, that's not actually a good thing. It's the primary reason it took me so long to get through it because I would keep falling asleep while I played. Given my history, that's not usually a selling point.
 |
| That said, this is a great soundtrack to catch a nap to. I do at work all the time too, 2B. |
I do have a bunch of little annoyances with Automata though. The aforementioned chip idea for stats is cool and clever, but it doesn't do the best job of explaining how to best condense your chips to make the best of your limited space. By increasing the potency of your chips, it more often makes them require more space. Makes sense, but it also will sometimes basically scare you off from spending a chip you like for fear of not having to reorganize your whole chip set over again. It took me forever to realize the little diamond next to them is saying the chip is as small as it can be. So you really only want to merge those with other diamonds.
It also can make the game almost insultingly easy. Once I discovered chipsets like auto-heal, offensive heal, and deadly heal the game became a walk in the park. With a combination of those chips on I was restoring health for damaging enemies, killing enemies, and not taking damage. It still left me plenty of room to boost damage and speed, so I basically would be able to shred things with reckless abandon because if took too many hits, either I'd use a healing item automatically, or just back out of the fight a few seconds to heal up and dive right back in.
Which made the occasional cheap death that would come the fuck out of nowhere even more infuriating. I might have only died in the game like 2 or 3 times, and they happened in the exact same spot because I would just be ripping around the area at high speed forgetting about an environment insta-kill. This also clued me in that this game also does the Dark Souls thing where if you die, you lose everything you have equipped. Not everything, all your stored items and money are still available, but your chipset you were using are with your body, and if you don't go get it back, they are gone forever. Not expecting that after a cheap death is infuriating because then you are extra careful not to lose your carefully crafted character.
Your map is next to useless. The minimap might point you in a general direction, but the three dimensional monochromatic pixel map for a guy with partial red/green colorblindness makes finding your way to side quests or objectives kind of difficult to track down. There have been multiple points where I was right on top of the path I was allegedly supposed to take or on where a quest was supposed to be to find out I was several stories up or down where I was supposed to be. I was getting flashbacks to the new Doom and how little the map actually told me where to go.
 |
| You really need to go back to the theater after the boss fight there. |
That's another thing about the map. It is both simultaneously huge and small at the same time. You are going to spend a lot of time back and forthing across the world from place to place and it's always going to take a few minutes to do, but when I actually think about it there is only like 5 to 7 locations in the whole game. Now to compare, this is essentially what they did in Lightning Returns: FF13 and it does give the game a sense of bigness to explore. But if you play through the game long enough, you are going to notice that you in the same areas an awful lot.
There is a weapons and upgrade system, and you can also find additional gear of the body's of players littered across the map, and I'm going to tell you right now? It all means next to nothing. I played through 3 times and never found any of the items to upgrade my little pod support, so it apparently doesn't mean much. Weapons only have 4 levels of upgrades, but your chipsets will play the bigger factor on dealing damage. There are lots of little items you pick up, and I'll be honest I don't think I used any of them. If you are using auto-heal, almost 90% of the items are useless.
 |
| The hacking mini-game work just like the flight units, and is surprisingly strong. |
As I said before, the story is very convoluted. And while I very much enjoyed it, essentially playing only this game of its entire narrative spanning almost 5 games (There were 2 releases of the original in japan), I am left with a whole lot of unanswered questions. Why if they are androids are they programmed to experience emotion and personality, yet have directives to not experience or display them? Why if they are machines with databases, was human history so lost that they only loosely understand the concept of shopping? If the YoRHA are Androids, and the robots are Machines, Then what is the Resistance, Cyborgs? There are a bunch of other more spoilery questions I won't get into, as well.
But I suppose the biggest story thing to complain about it is even after playing through the major endings, I still don't really understand what the story point was. There is a lot of existential crisis and realization throughout the story of the game, and I truly did feel for almost all the characters I was presented with. But by the end of it I was left with a very "what exactly did I learn here?" feeling. That doesn't make it bad by any means, but apparently I don't have the super intelligent space brain required to see the deeper meaning here. Luckily, if you stick to focusing on the characters, it's still a very enjoyable experience.
The game also has a mind-numbing 26 endings. One for each letter of the alphabet. Granted a significant majority of them are very jokey endings, many of which you might get entirely by accident by making the wrong decision or walking the wrong direction. But to get the 5 major endings of the game to truly see everything, you are going to have play the game through a couple of times. The game pretty much tells you this after you finish once: "Congrats on beating the game! But you reeeeaaaaaallly should play it a few more times. wink wink."
There is also an trophy for trying to look up 2B's skirt too many times. Honestly this is coming from Platinum who has never had any problems with fanservice in there games so this doesn't surprise me. Especially after the whole controversy about someone taking a screenshot of 2B's surprisingly detailed robot butthole, (I stand by the theory that if she's an android operating at high speed, there needs to be an exhaust system right?). You can self destruct to blow off her clothes as well, but as I mentioned above the game can be easy. It never occurred to me to even try that until my sister told me I could do it. This is a game where the fanservice honestly wasn't necessary in any capacity.
But through all of these niggling little complaints, it is totally totally worth it. It took me a little bit to get the ball rolling on the story but once I was in I was completely in. From a technical standpoint the game is practically flawless. I can't think of any mechanic fault that wasn't intentionally put there for story context. Platinum Games once again just delivered a home run on a property that a lot of people didn't give a chance here in the west, and now it is being met with well deserved critical acclaim.
Again, the rage quitter has little rage about here. I came into Nier: Automata only expecting a few things and I got all of them, but some clever use of cameras, music, and playing around with the very mechanics of the game to make them in-story relevant really put this game over the top for me. It got me to spend hours watching videos of spoken word classical concerts of the series misty eyed as I watched the cutscenes behind the singers.
A lot of the reviews are saying "masterpiece" which I think is a little much. If the game has flaws it can't be a masterpiece (looking at you Breath of the Wild), but there are a whole lot of 8's, 9's, and 9.5s and I am very hard pressed to disagree with any of them. Nier: Automata was fucking fantastic and it completely turned me around on the franchise. Maybe enough to make me go back and re-try the first one. Absolutely worth your time and highly recommended.
Oh yeah, the fishing isn't impossible in this one.
and more importantly, it's optional.
and more importantly, it's optional.
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