Devil May Cry 5 (PS4): A B ranked combo

My mom knows practically nothing about video games. Usually when she buys me games she sticks to lists that I've made. But on occasion she'll take a shot in the dark and take a chance on something that looked interesting to her. This is how I discovered Blood Omen: Legacy of Kain. A game I initially thought was stupid but ended up being an incredibly solid Legend of Zelda style of adventure that I flippin' loved.

She hit on it again in the PS2 era, when the first of this franchise came out. At the time I had only vaguely heard of it, but it featured a commercial of a dude sleepwalking and pulling a sword off his wall before cutting his room to ribbons. The game was a smash success and after multiple iterations and almost 6 years of disappearance this series finally comes back in.....

DEVIL MAY CRY 5: (PS4)

Five years after the events of Devil May Cry 4, we start off in medias res with longtime Devil May Cry protagonist Dante squaring off against a new demon in a massive tower and he is accompanied by a 90's Trent Reznor looking dude who goes by the name of V. The fight is not going well and just as he's about to be finished, Nero from Devil May Cry 4 makes his appearance to try to stop this new evil as well.

The battle does not go as well as he hoped. We flash back to the events that started this: Nero has started his own branch of Devil May Cry demon hunting with girlfriend Kyrie, and his engineer friend Nico. He is ambushed by a man in ragged clothes who cuts off his devil arm and teleports away using the Yamato sword.

Days later we see V enter Dante's Devil May Cry office to hire his crew to slay a returning demon called Urizen. He has planted a demonic tree in Red Grave City called Quiphoth that is basically ripping the blood from the denizens to produce fruit that the demon is collecting. This brings us to where we started the game, and we pick up the action a month from then.

Bringing the Edgelord since 1998

Leave it to Devil May Cry to keep things simple *cough*. So it's interesting to see that this installment of the game goes back to the established canon of the story as opposed to the rebooted version of the game. I guess because the backlash against it? I dunno, I thought it was fine. And honestly it was so early in the DMC timeline that it really could have served as a prequel without disrupting the established canon of the previous games. In any case, were are now back to the front end of the current timeline.

So Capcom has realized lately that if they just modernize the wheel, instead of reinvent it, fans will fall back into step. So what we have in DMC5 is a basically a celebration of the previous iterations with some splashes of new thrown in. The controls of the game stay fundamentally the same to every iteration you have come to know with this series with your light attack, heavy attack, pistols, jump dodge, aim control scheme.  But they do sightly differ depending on the character that you use.

There is some challenge in this one, but this is not the hardest DMC I've ever played.

When playing as Nero, you will find that the control scheme hearkens back to how they did in DMC4 where you have your series of sword and gun moves, but you have a dedicated button to using your arm. You don't have the Devil Arm in this one so instead you will use an interchangeable set of robot arms with various abilities. In addition to that, Nero's Sword, the Red Queen, has the ability to be rev'd up for additional fire damage.

Dante is DMC classic mode, or more accurately Dante is DMC3 mode. While swords are guns are his mainstay, Dante is able to switch between the 4 fighting styles he was able to use before in Trickster, Gunslinger, Swordmaster, and Royalguard. In addition to having these and the multiple weapons he can use, Dante still has access to the Devil Trigger which is what allows him to go full demon mode for high intensity damage and combos for a limited time.

Dante is easily the most versatile of the cast, and using him is like slipping into a well broken in pair of shoes. 

V is the newbie of the group and because of story line context he is significantly weaker than the other two, so he fights with a more ranged summoning style. Sure, you can get in range and swing your staff, but you will pretty much get iced. Instead, V can summon various types of familiars depending on your button inputs that range from a lithe and nimble panther, to a large hulking golem. Once an enemy is weak enough V can dish out a finishing blow with his cane to shatter an enemy. This is the only way to finish them. V also has his own variant of the Devil Trigger as well.

Combat once again is graded depending on how well you combo your abilities together while avoiding damage and affects your total score per fight, which I believe does result in some payoff of red orbs to unlock more abilities as well. So depending on your favored play style you will find a character that you fit into a groove with and score well, and one that you will not. In my case I managed to rank very high with V and always had shit ranks with Nero.

To Nero's credit, a lot of the Arms do give him a number of different abilities to use,
It just would have been nice to switch on the fly to really get the full potential of them.

Stages are broken down in a a somewhat hybrid mechanic of how they used to be in DMC4 and the DmC: Reboot. Each stage generally you flip to what character is going to be the focus and then you basically play through a predetermined path. I would almost venture to say that it is arcadey of sorts because it doesn't feel like there is a whole lot of room for exploration. There is the occasional secret here an there but not a whole lot of freedom to explore your surroundings it felt like. It's infinitely better than the narrow path/open void skyboxes from the reboot, but ultimately its not difficult to find out where you are going.

There apparently is also some strange online mechanic to the game as well. When you play certain chapters of the game apparently there are other events that take place with the other characters at this same time. During these chapters and online player actually takes control of the other character and then at the end of the level you are asked to grade their helpfulness. I am going to be 100% honest I have no idea if I ever actually saw another player. I can think of one level where I was playing as V where I had a Nero running around, but I had no idea if it was an AI or a Player. So whenever I got a prompt I just gave them a good rating. They weren't impeding me, so that seems like enough.

Motorcycle that turns into twin maces? Sure, why not. 

Music in this one was solid, although if at this point a little samey for the series. It's opening theme of "Devil Trigger" was pretty good, but then the game immediately shifts to the that mix of Hard Rock/Industrial you have combat moments and droning demonic ambiance for the exploration moments. Its pretty standard DMC fanfare. So far none of the OSTs have really captures that stellar magic of the first game, but its still pretty good. I'd throw it on in the background while I'm working.

Nico, is a fucking bizarre character. She annoys the hell out of me, and I kind of love her? She basically functions as your portable store for upgrades, saving, and getting Nero new robot arms to use. She's a wild child, but she talks with this nasally stuffiness that I'm not quite sure is supposed to be an nerdy accent or an inflection. She's a goofball, she's foul mouthed, and fearless. I think what makes me love her is compared to her concept art, they actually toned her down to be less sexually designed. She still is, but her looks seem more natural and realistic compared to the picturesque Lady and Trish, which honestly makes her look more appealing.

She's a ridiculous goof, and annoying as all hell. But I'll be damned if their isn't something charming about her.

My biggest complaint with this installment is the same one I had with the DmC: Reboot: The level design sucks. Sorry, ok yeah big demon castle and sprawling gooey walls and scary looking caves are fine and all. But does nobody remember that the first DMC game was kinda like Resident Evil? After the start of the story you would be dropped into a giant castle that you had to explore, fight, and find keys to advance. What has since happened is Final Fantasy 13 syndrome, where the level design feels more or less like a series of straight lines taking you from encounter to encounter. The exploration was part of the game, and I don't know why its shifted away from it.

I hate the Red Queen. One of the most fun aspects of this series is that combat is supposed to be fast, fluid, and exciting. With Dante and V this more or less holds true because you can constantly keep up the pace. But not with Nero, no you have halt your combo to try to get the timing of revving his stupid sword properly to get the best damage out of your combo. I was never able to properly figure it out, and you cant cycle through his robot arms either which is exceptionally annoying. You just have to use them in the order in which you placed them, so you can't adjust them situationally as the fight requires. I do not know why they thought this was a good idea.

Once you get into to a rhythm with the controls, combat is fun regardless of who you are playing with.
Just don't try to rev your stupid sword.

I'm going to spoil a bit of a story bit here so skip this paragraph if you want, but what the fuck was the point of putting Trish and Lady in the game? I'll tell you: To make the pretty girls naked. That's it. You never get to play as either of them, they a pretty much immediately taken out of the equation at the start of the story, and they essentially serve no purpose to advance to the plot. It's frustrating because these two characters are supposed to be sawed off demon hunters themselves. But no, they are relegated to being damsels in distress.

This is the only time I'd be happy for a DLC update because a "Ladies Night mode" would have been awesome since they fight so inherently different than the boys do. But no, Capcom has said they have closed the book on this one so there will be no coming DLC packs for DMC5. They literally put in these two bad ass characters in there to be damsels and stripped naked. Good job, very 2019.

Complaints aside, if not a little ridiculous the story does ultimately come together with a reasonably satisfying ending sequence that feels bad ass to play, if not for leaving open some pretty big plot holes in the conclusion I won't get into for those who having played it. But after hearing it, and then looking it up to learn there is not really a canonical answer for half of it was certainly surprising that they went that way with the story. It's not bad, but it does leave me with some questions I now can't get answered.

I found it very easy to S rank with V, because his bags of tricks lets you stay away from the close combat. 

Bruce Green of FunHaus has a great joke saying that this game was "designed to be cool in 2000". And that probably is one of the most fair opinions I've heard of the game because it certainly does feel like it would be right more at home a generation ago. Despite all my complaints about the game its still an incredibly solid play. I ripped through it and had my fun with it, but ultimately once I finished the game I was done with it. When my only rewards are harder difficulty or arbitrary points, the replability falters. Just another one of the pile of one and done's.

Devil May Cry V came out in march of this year and is already being sold for 20 bucks off of the standard 60 dollar retail. It's a solid play but its not a world beater. It feels like its trying to chase its linage as so many franchised games do. When it comes to spectacle fighters my heart lies with games like Bayonetta, but Devil May Cry V  is more of a return to form than previous iterations, and you could buy worse games for 40 bucks. It gets a lukewarm recommendation.

Seriously, Trish is has a massive ass sword and Lady a bazooka.
But sure, don't let us play as them. 

Kingdom Hearts 3 (PS4): Too Little Too Late

Anticipation is a dangerous concept. In a small or short dose, it can lead to excitement. Say for example the new Avengers: EndGame coming out. I only started noticing trailers for it when it was about a month from release. It's not a long wait and it's leaving me excited for what is to come.  But when you anticipate something too long, you start to have expectations. Expectations can be difficult to meet. Sometimes it grows to the point where you expect too much, see for example the ill fated Duke Nukem Forever. Almost a decade went by without its release, and by the time we got it was so utterly pedestrian it was doomed to flop.

So that's kind of where we find ourselves here. Sure, this franchise has had a number of spin off installments with canon storyline throughout the years, but the second numbered installment of this game came out in 2005, which makes it OVER 10 years since we finally got our next numbered edition of this game. It's a long time to wait, and naturally people are expecting a lot. It's a whole lot of weight and pressure to deliver now. Is it even possible? I speak of course, of......

KINGDOM HEARTS III (PS4)

Look, I am not equipped with the necessary 4 doctorates to give you the full rundown the of the Kingdom Hearts lore because it's so impossibly convoluted. If you want a good rundown, watch Barry Kramer's 30 minute "Good Enough Summary of Kingdom Hearts." It's hilarious and pretty much covers what you need to know going into this one. 

We start off picking up from the events of Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance. A battle with Organization XIII is on the horizon and the forces of light need to gather their 7 warriors. Sora is depowered so he is on Olympus with Donald and Goofy to gain his strength back and visit more Disney worlds to regain "the power of waking" which is key to becoming a true keyblade master.

Riku and Micky are off searching the realm of darkness to try to find Aqua, the keyblade master trapped and lost there after the events of Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep. Kairi and Lea are off training to learn how to use their new keyblades so they can help in the coming battles. All of these stories look to converge in one final battle between light and darkness for the control of the χ-blade and Kingdom Hearts.

That is about as succinct as I can possibly make of the Kingdom Hearts storyline going into this game. Like I said, its story is incredibly convoluted and complex for no reason. Half of the reason is because literally all of the villains in this game talk in riddles instead of just providing answers. I am probably going to be pretty spoiler heavy in this review so I apologize in advance, but I am getting ahead of myself here. 

So Kingdom Hearts III is a curiously mixed hack-n-slash action adventure with RPG elements and flight sim rail shooting. There are a mutlitude of different game features that appear in the game, but I'm going to try to stick to the core ones. It uses the same action oriented menu system you might remember from the older titles, specifically Kingdom Hearts I & II (or maybe you don't remember, it's been a decade). You have a core set of abilities to use, mainly Attack, Magic, Item, and Link with the occasionally prompting for situational abilities. 

The menu requires a bit of practice to do fluidly, but they do provide the ability to quickly turn the face buttons into a hotkeys for specific abilities, so I couldn't add my heal to that X button fast enough. The rest selected were core elements that specific enemies would be weak to. The Link system is more or less your ability to summon various helpers to remove Donald and Goofy from the fray to bring in more merchandising opportunities (characters).

To the game's credit: when the combat starts to click for you it's a dream to fly around and lay waste to enemies

The core thing to remember about this combat system is three things: One, know where the attack and jump buttons are. Two, you are able to lock on to enemies. And three, Press triangle when it tells you to. There is a bit more nuance to the games system than this, but if you are able to do these three things then ultimately the game should be a breeze to play.

It's actually somewhat hard to really describe all the mechanics that take place in this game, because it uses a lot of elements from the various game engines that are used throughout this franchises history. Almost to a pretty clever design really, because it actually plays into the lore. These certain characters trained to fight a certain way, so they have their specific mechanics to use when you use those characters. I do appreciate that blending of mechanics and lore. That being said, to a new player? This will probably feel very overwhelming.

I will say that the various number of keyblades you get do offer a bit of freedom of combat style.

Now, up until about a half a year before its release I had only played Kingdom Hearts I & II and maybe a few hours of Kingdom Hearts: 358/2 days. I knew if I just tried to dive into 3 was going to feel left behind, so I powered through the entirety of both PS4 collections prior to the release. Honestly I think this impaired my review because by the time I was ready to play 3 I was pretty KH'd out. I had a play a few other games to wash the palette.

It sticks to the pretty core Kingdom Hearts formula: Soda, Dobald, and Goomby drop into a new Disney world where they meet the primary character of that franchise, the Heartless/ Unversed/Hollows show up and you fight them off, wander the world, listen to a bad guy speak in riddles to an idiot who barely understands what is happening, fight a boss, and unlock/restore that world, move to next world to repeat. This is pretty much exactly how every world in this game plays out.

I honestly didn't even know Ariel was in the game. You have so many attacks to use.

In the original Kingdom Hearts this was interesting because with each world you went to, you met various Disney and Final Fantasy characters, but they were dressing to the world Kingdom Hearts was creating. They were part of the story, and reacted accordingly to the events happening around them. This is how good crossover is done (See: Dragon Quest: Heroes). In Kingdom Hearts II however, despite having more lore to work with the borrowed characters became less integral to the story and basically recanted what famous scenes were popular in the movie they came from. This I didn't like so much because I've already seen these movies. I wanted them to be involved in Kingdom Hearts story, not watch the movie I already watched again with them occasionally mentioning something KH related.. 

Well, Kingdom Hearts III continues that tradition to an even worse degree. Now don't get me wrong, none of the actual Disney properties have any actual bearing on the core plot and haven't even in the first one, but at least they tried to make it feel like everyone was included. III is probably the worst example of literally just watching some scenes from the respective movies, and occasionally mention the heartless or kingdom hearts. However, I feel that this is noticeable to the degree you've seen the source material.

There was a chance for interesting story here. It was almost immediately forgotten.

I'll give you an example: I have never seen Tangled. I know loosely what it's based on, but know virtually nothing outside of that. These characters were new to me, and I really didn't know how the story shook out, so as I went through the respective scenes with no frame of reference I found it to be enjoyable, engaging and interesting. It might have been my favorite chapter in the game.

But then we have the Pirates of the Caribbean chapter. Literally the entirety of this story is just fragments of Pirates: At Worlds End. It basically jumps around major scenes of the film with them reacting that they met Sora before in the second game, and you recreate the big whirlpool scene for the last boss segment. It was fun as hell to play, but probably the 2nd weakest chapter of the game. 

The worst chapter of the game goes to Frozen which quite literally is scenes from the movie with the Kingdom Hearts cast literally standing off to the side not engaging with the cast. There is an exposition dump over one scene from the movie, and they go through the entirety of "Let it Go" with the occasional reaction shot from the cast. It was completely pointless. MatPat has a theory that the original idea for this chapter was severely cut down, which would explain a lot. 

In researching this, I found that yes, Tangled was essentially a recreation as well.
 But it felt like it had more freedom than Frozen did to play around with the story. 

That being said, when the game actually focuses on its own story and characters, that's when Kingdom Hearts III is at its most interesting. There were a lot of loose threads in this series that this game needed to tie up after a near decade of spinoffs, but I have to say that does an admirable job of doing so in a reasonably satisfying manner. This is probably something I wouldn't have been able to appreciate if I haven't powered through the whole series to have context for everything that is happening.

Credit to where it's due on this front, but its soundtrack is exceptional from its original tracks to arrangements to the assorted Disney sources. Yoko Shimomura has composed all of the major installments and contributed to many of the spin-offs and rightfully so. Her work and the vocal tracks from singer-songwriter Hikaru Utada are a major reason these games feel so magical as you play through them. I have always appreciated a solid classical score to my games, and Utada's vocal tracks always give me chills. "Sanctuary" is one of my favorites. The music of this game carries a lot of emotional weight in my opinion.

I appreciate that the character design has been slightly modernized for the current console generation and this works for the storytelling of the games as well. It's been almost a decade since we played Kingdom Hearts II so it seems only right that our cast has aged somewhat accordingly. But I will say that is sort of loses a little bit of its cartoonish charm in doing so. With everyone having a cartoony and anime appearance, having a realistic model included doesn't make people blend in together as well as previous games I thought.

While I can't say if the game has a lot of replay value, I will say that depending on your level of dedication to completion you will certainly get a significant amount of time out of this one. If you were just to power though the main story missions and keep your side questing to a minimal degree, that alone will still take up roughly 30 hours of time to get through. Not bad for a non-RPG. But if you throw in collectibles, hidden fights, the secret boss, and mini game completion this amount of time doubles at least. Take on trying to play it on a harder difficulty (which I should have) and you could invest a serious amount of time to this one.

I did find it incredibly frustrating that so many bosses could fly. It made for too much waiting during segments.

If the rest of this review wasn't an indication, I obviously have a handful of complaints on this one. First thing I really noticed is that this one felt too easy. I played it on normal but a coworker of mine recommended that I don't. He was correct. Thanks to the inclusion of all the mechanics of the previous games, combat is snap because the game is literally throwing special attacks at you, many of which you are complete invulnerable during.  With the exception of some early bosses that literally just fly out of range and make you wait for them come down, practically every fight in the game is trivial if you are using you specials.

Many of these moves are also one of the biggest detriments to the game's visual and sound design. Outside of the returning special moves, the team also has a series of abilities where you basically summon out famous Disney rides like the Teacups, Splash Mountain, the Carousel, etc. The attraction attacks are covered with blinking lights are constantly splashing particle effects and waves of light out. It has its own theme and each attack has their own sound effects and character reactions. It's almost a total sensory overload. By late game I wasn't even using it because I was having more fun comboing with my keyblade, and only used them when I wanted clear out groups quickly.

Sadly THIS is actually one of the spectacle-lite ones.

All of the Final Fantasy characters have been removed in this one. There was an incredibly strong focus on the Pixar sect of Disney represented in this game, the only animated film represented here was Hercules and that's a rehash from another game. So ONCE AGAIN, Robin Hood gets the snub and doesn't appear in Kingdom Hearts. Come on! He actually fights with a bow, and I don't think any of the the Jungle Book characters are represented in any of the series and they were in three different franchises. No TailSpin chapter? You know who I would have liked to team up with? Darkwing Duck. THAT should have been a chapter in this game. SHIT, WHAT ABOUT THE GARGOYLES??? Oh my god, I have to get off this train of thought.

Out of all my complaints about the story, I would have to say that my biggest one is probably that we have to control Sora. Having gone through the whole series now, practically every character to come out of this franchise (with maybe the exception of Kairi) has more depth and is more interesting to follow. Sora is just kind of a dummy who pretty much just relies on his feelings for motivation, but he rarely understands what is happening around him. Aqua is more interesting, Roxas is more interesting, Axel is more interesting. For making this seem like an ensemble piece, they did very little to let you use all the other characters which is a shame and a missed opportunity.

While I'm at it, there was literally no point to having Axel and Kairi in the game for as little as they contribute to it. You get two cutscenes of the two of them in between training sessions of them talking to each other, to kind of bridge a number of the loose ends. But spoiler, by game end they provide pretty much no assistance in the final battle and one of them gets captured immediately. If the presence of one of them wasn't required to tie up a loose end, they could have not been a part of the game and it probably wouldn't have been impacted in any meaningful way.

Oops. I've just spoiled about 90% of what these two characters do in this game. 

Now, you would think with the psychotic ranting I've gone on in this review that I'd be ready to slap a big old "do not recommend" on this one. But I can't say that's necessarily true. For all that I complained about at its core the game is solidly built and if I had played it on a more challenging difficulty I would have absolutely enjoyed it more. With the two left shoulder buttons providing hotkeys, combat was fast paced, fluid, and fun to do. Which is impressive for a technically menu based game.

Boss characters were large and interesting, once you get your appropriate skills up it's fun to fly around the battle field and take them down, and it does leave a satisfied feeling of completion when you do so. Considering this stigma boss fights have become in modern gaming, I applaud any game that chooses to include them.

I really do recommend upping the difficulty. You get so many super attacks the game gets insanely easy by the end.

I have to appreciate some of the self aware commentary that Kingdom Hearts III provided. They have some in-jokes poking fun of the ridiculous number of spin-offs and stupid naming convention this series uses. There is a stupidly over the top CG battle sequence that turns out to be a fake game trailer that basically pokes fun at SquareEnix's whole marketing strategy for game releases. Honestly it was pretty awesome to watch, really. Axel specifically indirectly breaks the 4th wall a few times about how fucking complicated this story is and that there are too many characters. Makes me wish he had a bigger role.

As I said above, the ending of this game was incredibly satisfying. That's always been Square Enix's bread and butter, making great cinematics that feel good to watch. I hated the majority of Final Fantasy 13 but I'll be damned if I didn't love that ending. Seeing that ending cinematic made it feel like the slog through all the entries of this series was worth it.

And while I was disappointed this isn't going to be the final installment of this series, I will say that the end game teasers absolutely have me excited for 2 reasons. One, it looks like it's going to include a property that was used in Dream Drop Distance and one of my favorite DS games ever, AND it looks like we might be having a hard disconnect from Disney as much of that story finally got closed out. I've always said that if this series could have been fine if didn't have any Disney and Final Fantasy crossover, and it looks like it might actually be going that route if we get a KH4.

It looks like a game I'd rather be playing now, honestly...

It's hard to say if I give this game a recommendation or not. Kingdom Hearts 3 is an offering to the patient fan base who have been waiting a decade for it. People who are fans of this series have already bought and played it long before this review came out. People new to the series are going to feel incredibly lost and put out because they are essentially 13 games behind the curve. It is a game that is not for them.

So I guess my bottom line is this: Is the game functional and playable? Yeah, very well done on that front. Did I enjoy my time with it? Sure, I might be a bit KH'd out at this point but I am glad to finally put a cap on this one. Was it worth the wait? Absolutely not. The prematurely announced the game, and then took an excessive number of years to actually get the product up. People built up too many expectations to the point of them being unable to be met. There was no way it could possibly deliver to peoples hopes at this point.

It's not a world beater, its not innovative, it just does just enough to be a palatable experience, but after 10 years of waiting that just doesn't feel like enough. Kingdom Hearts 3, in my eyes, is average at best. If they are going to follow this one up (and they are), then they gotta get it out within the next 4-5 years at most. Buy with caution.

Seriously, Robin Hood is the best.
I can't believe he's never been in these.

Nioh (PS4): Why do I do this to myself?

I find myself getting annoyed by term "Souls Clone". I get that Dark Souls is amazing. Hell I've been advocating that series since Demon's Souls before people even gave a shit about that series. But not every game that is hard and has old video game aesthetics with a new shine is a souls game. But that doesn't stop every reviewer and developer from dubbing every game that loseable XP and a murderous difficulty a "souls game".

Now I had heard that Team Ninja were dabbling with the concept of a "souls clone" set in mythological japan. OK, that's a cool setting and I do generally like these games. So I got into the alpha and played for a few hours. I didn't like it. Then I got into the beta, and I didn't care of it either. So I felt I wasn't going to get it since the early tests didn't sell me. Then I started seeing reviews from almost every source that this game is very good. Not only that but it completely sold out of its first printing of the game. I had to be missing something, so I decided to take one more try and try to force myself though....

NIOH(PS4)

The story of Nioh starts from the voice of a man named William. William was a commissioned pirate once under the service of queen Elizabeth I. She sought after a resource of power known as Amrita to help win her conflict with Spain, but after using their services the pirates were imprisoned in order to keep Amrita a secret. 

William is imprisoned in the Tower of London for his role in the raids, but with the help of a fish like guardian spirit that watches over him called Saoirse, William makes an attempt to jailbreak and fight his way to freedom. During his escape he is confronted by an occult looking man called Edward Kelley, who is using amrita to corrupt and turn people and things into monsters. After corrupting an executioner in an attempt to kill William, Kelley realizes that William's guardian spirit would be useful to find more amrita, and imprisons Saoirse in a crystal and makes his escape to Japan where amrita can be found in abundance.

Saoirse has protected William since he was a child and has been with him ever since, so William will not stand for her abduction and gives chase. Unfortunately he lands in Japan in 1600, a time where the entire country is embroiled in war and ravaged by the demonic Yokai and Oni that overrun it. With no option but to press forward, William studies the way of the samuari, picks up the first discarded weapon he can find, and heads in search of Kelley.

The story of Nioh is actually a great deal more complex than that since this actually does parody the story of the Sengoku/Edo period of Japan when the country was at war to unify the nation under a single banner. William is more or less an homage to William Adams, who is considered by history to be the first Englishman to step foot in Japan, and was the first Caucasian samurai (so this isn't a case of whitewashing).

In fact, a large majority of the characters are based and off of real life counterparts who had prominent roles during this period. Even the cartoonishly gothy Edward Kelley was actually an occultist and alchemist who claimed he could use a mirror to talk to spirits. So while this game does take many wild liberties in the name of dark fantasy, there was a significant amount of homework done in setting up the backdrop for this game. 

There is an abundance of cutscenes of William looking lost at political meetings.
It's actually pretty fitting, since you won't have a clue about the conversation either.

Now, as I have mentioned before this game is very often billed as a Japanese Dark Souls, (which is ridiculous since the Souls games are Japanese to begin with). But while there are certainly there are some main mechanics that generally defined what the Souls series is, I would say that Nioh has a much more arcadey feel to the action the slow paced slog that is a Souls game. If I had to give it better comparison, I would say that it mixes the Bloodborne with, unsurprisingly, Team Ninja's other claim to fame Ninja Gaiden.

Instead of using the shoulder button based combat one might be used to at this point, Nioh keeps the a more traditional face button system for light & heavy attacks, dodge, and interactions. The shoulders are used for blocking, drawing your ranged weapons and firing them. The last shoulder button changes your attack stance from low, medium, and high. Your stance determines what kind of combat style you wish to engage with be it light fast swinging but lower damaging attacks, a balanced set, or a slow clubbing high damage range of attacks.

But then you also have a number of tricks to use as well such as the living weapon. In your pursuit of your guardian spirit, you get the help of others, and when fully charged you can essentially use their power to go super saiyan and deal massive amounts of damage as well as a brief spell of invulnerability. Each spirit has different attributes as well as passive effects, so with the right tweaking of stats and gods, you can create a self feeding living weapon form so long as you are constantly putting enemies down to replenish it.

And THEN you also have three different sets of skill points to go over multiple skill trees such as one of each of the various weapons you get in the game, your ninjutsu abilities, and your onmyo magics. Some of these abilities have passive that affect your character regardless of what skills you choose to purchase. Some of them have very specific uses so you really want to comb through the skill trees to kind of get an idea of what it is you want to go after. Setting on a few weapons types, and what magics you want to shoot for. 

Everyone one of those options at the top are for a different skill tree.

The stamina system is slightly different because you have a pulse move you can do that if timed at te end of the combo, can cause your stamina to regenerate faster. Yokai also leave waves darkness on the ground that slow your stamina regeneration so you have to pulse in those spots to dissipate them. I never remembered to do this. It felt like it was adding a stem to an already complex battle system.

I actually akin the combat more to Bloodborne than I would Dark Souls because of the high speed nature of the game. While you can be severely bogged down with heavy armors and equipment, you can still run at a generally fast pace, and combat still moves incredibly quickly. Breakneck base would certainly be a fitting term because it was this nature that had me struggle so much when I played through alpha and beta.

Nioh does not use a single large open world since for the course of the story your are traveling over nearly the entirety of Japan, so instead you go to major territories of the country an it is broken up into unlocking stages. Most of the story missions will be a long sprawling map with shrines (bonfires) to level up and checkpoint at before working your way to a spectacular boss fight, some of them will have only the one and a relatively simple objective for you to complete be it find something specific, reach a certain point, or fight a series of enemies or boss.

After completing the level, you are taken back to your map screen which also functions as a shrine so you can spend your accumulated amrita (souls) to level up, buy equipment, upgrade, set your abilities and so forth. So on one hand you might find that the world loses a sense of massiveness because its not just one big interconnected map, but on the other you might find it to be less harrowing because eventually the map will come to an end and you will have a chance to catch a breather and recover. In addition to that, by switching to the stage system replaying old locations to grind, level up, and explore seems less tedious since things move faster and areas are shorter.

And you are going to need that break to sort out the amount of items the game is going to barf all over you like an all night saki bender at a hostess club. In games like these you typically find new interesting weapons or armor in areas of the game that relate to the area you are actually exploring it or sometimes get specific drops from enemies that mirror their own equipment. In Nioh there are five major weapon types (before dlc) and two variants of ranged weapons. As you play through the levels, loot corpses, and find treasures you will be washed with a wave of equipment constantly loading up your inventory.

But then the loot also has rarity levels between common to legendary. Marked in very MMO colors to signify how rare it is. The more rare the item the better familiarity you can get by using the weapon more frequently and thus increase it strength, (or you can just use a whetstone and just boost it to full strength). Once you do if you opt to use this for crafting you might be able to carry over some of the abilities to a new weapon. While armor generally gives your character a new look, you are going to find yourself mix-matching almost every 20 steps because loot is mad irrelevant almost immediately.

The defensive gear does this as well. Just getting constantly flooded with a nonstop wave of equipment. Almost every piece of equipment has a myriad of next to negligible statistic changes of minor point values and fractional percentages. Some abilities highlighted so they have increased ability if you wear the entirety of that armor set for a bonus. The numbers are excessive or confusing. I finished the game without ever knowing what number exactly determined how much defense I actually had and what modifiers were actually contributed to what it was doing. The inventory mechanic in this game is as big of a fucking mess as is was in the original Mass Effect.

I find using the blacksmith to also be equally confusing. There is nearly no purpose for using it from what I can tell. I never seemed to enough of or the right materials to make anything respectively new, you can only Soul Match and item if its of a lower lever to something you are trying to merge it with to bring it up to speed, sell values are pretty weak from what I can tell to begin with. It just doesn't make sense to waste your time using the blacksmith when you are literally going to find better weapons the moment you kill something new, and you can use your old equipment as free XP dumps if you offer them up to shrines, so unless you are strapped for cash for some reason there is little reason to be here.

Now admittedly, I am a sucker for Shinto lore and Japanese architecture and iconography so the setting of this game is right up my alley, even if its a little samey after a while.  Many of the game levels will take you through Japanese fishing villages with small shacks and homes, Shrines, large wooden ninja manors and palaces with hidden doors and trap floors, and caves. Lots of caves. There actually seems like there are a significant number of levels that take you inside of caves an mountains for some reason. Admittedly those levels aren't exactly works of art. You've seen one cave you've seen them all.

Similarly, this game features some very impressive and interesting monster design and that's really what allows the setting to shine. Typically the majority of the enemies you fight are various dudes in armor or ninjas, buy scattered throughout the levels you will fight various Oni and Yokai demons and ghosts that ends with a spectacular boss fight, usually connected to the level in some way. The visual design of all of them are impressive and amazing. I would often find myself marveling at their design. The ice maiden, Yuki-Onna, and her boss fight is an excellent example of this.

And I would be remiss if I didn't mention how good the cutscenes look, if not for their laughable content. While very clearly computer animated, all of the character models are well designed and attractive, every with their own distinct looks about them. So while the names can be confusing by following who is who, you won't confuse anyone by appearances in this one. The downfall is almost every one of them is William sitting with important political figures in Japan, clearly bewildered by the conversation before leaving to slash up more demons.

My biggest complaints about Nioh, however all stem from the overall difficulty of the game for various reasons. First and foremost, don't give me an recommended level for when I should try to do something, because it doesn't mean anything. As I said above the defensive item statistics are all confusing, and it seems regardless of what sets of numbers you have selected, even some of the easiest enemies in the game can still cut you to ribbons if you are careless or get ganged up on. This game has one setting, hard.

Two, Nioh doesn't seem to follow its own combat mechanics for enemies that you have to suffer, giving them a significant advantage. Chiefly its in regard to the stamina trait. When you swing your weapon, dodge, block, run, or take damage, it uses your stamina. Once it depletes you have to wait to recharge before you can attack. If you try to block with no stamina the gauge goes red and your guard is broken leaving you open to attack. Whatever, this is pretty standard in this kinda game.

The problem with it comes in on a series of these one on one character duels you do as sub missions throughout the course of the game. These missions can suck my fucking ass. First off, regardless of your level they are next to impossible to do. But what makes them more frustrating is that you can't build a strategy because things that drain your stamina don't affect enemies the same way. I've had duels where my opponent strings together this massive 6 attack combo that doesn't even so much as lower their gauge by 10%. I've unloaded even longer combos that get guarded that don't move their gauge by 10%. Yet if I'm on offense or defense, I can't keep my stamina up to save my life. One of these fights resulted with me losing my shit on stream and smashing my controller beyond repair.

Now, there is one specific saving grace in this whole game that saved my ass in the form of one of the Omnyo spells in the form of the Sloth talisman. I read this was the key to toning down the difficulty and it truly did help with a lot of the fights, because it slows the opponent down for a brief period which makes the combat a little less twitchy (but no less dangerous). The problem here is when I would research how to get it, I'd hear of a nerf. When I'd look to see if it did get nerfed I would be treated to pages upon pages of people screaming in forums about how it needs to be removed, and "fucking casuals" are ruining the game and should go back to go back to playing Animal Crossing if its too hard.

A very early starting boss fight is a real struggle, the moment you get sloth it becomes laughable.

Listen assholes. You don't nerf shit from single player games if you think it makes it to easy for you. You not use to increase you challenge. You fucking nerf something if it causes the game to be unbalanced. And shit can only be unbalanced if A.) It is a multiplayer game that causes an unfair advantage. B.) breaks the games intended experience. Sloth magic is not harming people who don't want to use it even by fighting the shadows of players that died because it just makes the challenge harder for you.

Gamers, please. I bitched about this shit when the Gamergate debacle was really at the forefront of the news but seriously get this shit through you head: We are not special. Everybody games now. Nobody gives a shit that we can play through the original Dark Souls one handed blind folded on a guitar hero controller. So this unnecessary divide of hardcore gamer or filthy casual is fucking retarded and needs to stop. All you are managing to do is create a divide of a culture where one doesn't need to exist. I play Smite, but is to turns out, I don't need to venomously hate people who like League of Legends or Dota 2. Fucking knock it off. People who like games are cool, so if someone needs help maybe offer tips or ideas instead of berating someone as a casual. Fuckin' morons.

Why does there always have to be effn spiders...

So ultimately, my big issue with Nioh is this: When I would play the game I would be asked by a friend if the game was fun. I would go on to say that how it looks great, it controls well, the characters are well designed, the combat is fluid and fast, and so on. To which he would respond by saying: "But is it fun???" and while I could come up with all the reasons in the world for how this is one of the more technically sound games of 2017 the bottom line of things is I wasn't getting that sense of satisfaction of getting past a difficult segment like when I would get past and area in Dark Souls.

So the question then becomes, does "fun factor" count as a tangible merit if the game is good or not? I certainly put in enough time to say it was a worthwhile purchase. I was able to see the game through to the end. There are few mechanical flaws that I can come up but nothing that was a deal breaker. It's setting and character design was well done and nice to look at. And all of these things are certainly marks in it favor. But if honestly sit and ask myself if I enjoyed my time with Nioh, gun to my head, yes or no answer, it's going to have to be no.

The bottom line is outside of that first push through the opening area of the game, I never had that sense of relief of accomplishment I would have when I proceed through Dark Souls.  Just a continued persistent annoyance knowing something harder was waiting. That I would die to some simple enemy because of a cheap death. Have to grind and sort out about 2 billion items to power up marginally to fumble through the next boss fight. It was tedious. I didn't even have that break through like with Darkest Dungeon where I suddenly understood how things work and was able to take it for what it is.

Nioh is a well designed, very beautiful looking game. It is certain going to have its niche audience, and looking at it objectively I can see why would think that this game is very good. But the fact of the matter is that I played through it out of annoyance and stubbornness, not enjoyment. And last I checked that was the whole fuckin' point of buying video games. It's getting a release on PC so its user base will grow. But I can't in good conscious give the game a proper recommendation, because when asked if its fun I could never just say yes. There was always some qualifier.  Purchase and play at own risk.

Maybe GamePro was onto something with their Fun-Factor score.

Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice (PS4) - A Dark Road

When I first got my Playstation 3, one of the games I was very much excited for was Ninja Theory's action epic Heavenly Sword. The game was pretty short for the most part and drew many well deserved comparisons to God of War but all in all it was a pretty enjoyable experience. Sadly, there was no option to pick up a sequel.

But Ninja Theory did keep working on games like Enslaved and DmC, and a few years ago came a rumbling a new title they were working on. A shorter game trying to get AAA class production with a much smaller team and budget. The trailer originally had me think it was a Heavenly Sword sequel, but they denied that saying this was its own property. The trailers had me curious so for 30 bucks I took a swing at...

HELLBLADE: SENUA'S SACRIFICE(PS4)

The beginning of Hellblade, we follow Senua as she paddles through a darkened river on a hollowed out log. A quiet narration tells us this is her tale, and if we follow along perhaps we can have a part to play in it. Senua appears aware of this conversation, as she looks back directly at the camera. The narrator hushes us and quietly lets us know that she heard us.

Senua is a deeply troubled girl with a very tortured upbringing. As we play through the game we learn about her relationship with her father, mother, the people of her village, and one beacon of strength that shined through to her, a boy named Dillion. Her beloved Dillion has been taken from her, and she is off to try to bring him back.

It is a treacherous journey though as she is plagued by a "darkness" that follows her. She is cursed with a rot that continues to rise up her arm, and is constantly haunted, encouraged, berated by voices that antagonize her with every step, as well as visions that hound her and constantly distort her reality. Her only option is to confront the goddess Hela and plead her case, so she stomachs her resolve and presses forward.

So I'm not going to lie to you, Hellblade is a pretty fucking intense experience. If I had to describe it for a genre classification, I would say that it is very much a walking simulator first, with puzzles intermixed for most of the major set pieces, and occasionally intermixed with tightly focused combat as you play through. It would hesitate to call it an action game even though you can probably see it that way. Although the game is called Hellblade, combat is not the game's primary focus.

I lean to walking simulator because as you travel from set piece to set piece, you get more and more of the narrative from these surreal fade sequences Senua experiences. Constantly shifting from visions of her past and visions of a twisted surreal reality. With each step the voices that follow you are constantly chattering and heckling, whispering that she is going to die, she cant do it, yes she can, who does she think she is, etc, etc, etc. It goes on and on. The nature of how the sound projects, this feels like a game that should be played with a good surround system or a quality set of headphones.

Generally the flow of Hellblade follows a pretty simple path: Walk to your destination while experiencing the near psychotic break that Senua is having, reaching your objective, solving a puzzle or finding the necessary runes to open a door, and fight a wave of baddies. It's generally always these 3 things, although not always in that order.

Typically you will approach a locked door covered in the runes, and you need to wander around your environment while looking for the necessary symbols within the environment. Sometimes these can just be found painted on walls, but sometimes you might see is as shadows or light projected somewhere. Or in the latter stages, you need to stand somewhere else in the location so your surrounding environment actually forms the said shape. Think how you might rotate the map in Echochrome, for example.

The puzzles aren't exactly mind bending. Most of them present the solution right out the gate, you just need the right combo to make it all fit. Again, many of these are visual in nature so they aren't exceptionally difficult. Some just require some fast movement, but since the maps aren't overly complex I would say that overall the puzzles in this game were not very difficult. I think there was only one puzzle I got really hung up on and it's because I wasn't paying close enough attention to the cutscene prior.

And I suppose you couldn't really justify calling your game Hellblade if you didn't have some kind of sword combat in it. This was the aspect of the game that I was most worried about because when I saw the combat in action, it looked very fast paced and arcadey, weightless, as if there was no response to my swings. Happily, this was a grossly incorrect assumption on my part and combat actually ended up being way better than I expected.

It follows a pretty standard system: Light, Heavy, and Melee attacks with a dodge and block. It's pretty basic at its core but they add a bunch of little tricks to change up the combos to make them feel more skillful. For example, if you use your light attacks Senua just swings quickly with slashes. But if you use a light attack after say using a parry she has this jumping twist move to start the combo, I'm not sure if it's a stronger move but it looks cool as hell. In addition, if you dash towards a foe and use the same light attack, Senua does that jumping high stab I can only compare to Brad Pitt's Achilles' in the movie Troy. (A couple of games used this move).

The camera in battle stays high and tight in the 3rd person perspective but somehow doesn't feel disorienting. When enemies swing you can dodge away and dive back in for quick combos, or if you time your block correctly you can parry the strike for a unguarded retort. Sometimes there are multiple enemies, so while there is no lock on reticle, the camera will stay focused on the target you are fighting. but since the camera is so tight, you constantly need to continue to back up to make sure can see all the danger.

Generally the enemies are all variants of marauding northmen, but they evolve to have different weapons and moves. Some might have shields that force you to melee to break the guard before you can attack, some have heavy weapons that your guard will not hold up against. Some enemies fade to ethereal form and makes them invulnerable to attack. When this happens Senua can use her focus to bring them back to reality and slow time briefly to deal a lot of damage in a short time. But you have a limited number of uses so it's wise to save them for panic moments.

The combat excels when it uses the auditory clues from her psychosis to actually give you hints during the fight. Like while I was engaged in a fight with some hammer lugging troglodyte, the whispers started saying "Watch out! Look out! Behind you!" and I panicked and hit my dodge to the side. Sure enough just as Senua made her dashing sidestep, the sword of an enemy I didn't see came swinging down right where I was standing.

In one of the early boss fights, an enemy shifted into shadow and no matter what I did I couldn't seem to deal damage. I was blocking but it wasn't helping. But as he would ready his attack, the voices would start yelling at me to focus, or focus now. I originally thought it was because I was taking damage and were scared, but what it was actually doing was letting me know to use my focus to bring him back to a physical form. It was a very cool eureka moment and made me realize perhaps I can't just ignore the voices.

The visuals in this game are fucking stunning. I almost can't believe that it was done with just 20 people. The environments are all picturesque and gorgeous, with weather actually changing within the environment as you spend time there. The shifts to surreal hallucination are magical yet harrowing. There is a long segment in the late game that very much reminded me of the early stages of Dante's Inferno but with way more movie-like production value. Some of the voices in her head get visualizations done with live action, but they are filtered and blurred to the point where I can't confirm if they were digitally done or not.

But Senua herself? Holy shit.  I have been a big proponent of the use of motion capture in video games, because they give us stellar examples like Grand Theft Auto 5, Infamous: Second Son, and The Last of Us. But Ninja Theory might have set the new standard for how it's done. Using a single lighted head harness and some effects makeup they developed a system that basically captures a 1 to 1 recording of facial reactions that are animated in the game real time. It's fucking impressive.

And it's this that really makes Melina Juergens performance as Senua come to life. Senua's story is gutwrenching, and the ever present hysteria and agony in her voice, the constant fighting she is doing with the voices that berate her for the whole journey, being forced to constantly relive the tragedies of her life. It's fucking brutal, and Juergens' performance was crucial to really setting the tone. I had never heard of this actress before, so I did a little digging to find out she's actually the video editor for Ninja Theory, and this is one of her first actual acting roles. Holy shit, Melina. Bravo.

There is also and option to turn on a photo mod which I dabbled with a bit. It's pretty simple and intuitive to use, although admittedly it's a little tricky to time when you are trying to get it to freeze in an action shot. It let me know that the camera is set a certain way in combat because that's the way it looks best. When I'd try to spin the camera for a cool action shot it would never look as good as the behind the back look. Still, you can pull together some very gorgeous screens with this. All of the screenshots in this review are ones I did myself. This game is just fucking beautiful.

A lot of facial acting went into this game, and it really sells Senua as a character.

An absolutely stellar performance by Juergens.

Hellblade features a score you would expect for a story in this setting. Classic instruments performing that epic fantasy score. I can't say any one song jumped out to me but everything had a place. Much of the game didn't have music as I traveled from place to place, low melodies as Senua experienced some flashback or remembrance of conversation from her past. The other voices are well acted, and the narrator really deserves credit for framing the whole story. Like a grandmother whispering a sad story, she has a haunting presence that is felt from the very first lines of the game.

It's not a terribly long game to play. I think by the time I finished it I it had taken me maybe close to 7 or 8 hours. While that is short, the game is only 30 dollars and I have payed 60 for games that don't last that long. Ninja Theory's Heavenly Sword only ran about that long and that was a full priced game, so this didn't bother me terribly.

A lot of people are complaining that the combat in this game wasn't necessary. I understand that the walking simulator is becoming more and more prevalent and accepted as a genre these days, but I do feel that if you took out the combat, there will be very little left to hold the rest of Hellblade up. At that point it would just make more sense to cut things down and make it a movie. But if you did that I don't know if I would have felt as invested as I was. There are also story mechanics interwoven in the combat that wouldn't work otherwise if it wasn't there.

But with that in mind, I will say that for as good as the combat felt, it does get a little bit samey feeling after a while. Yes the enemies evolve a little bit to require more tricks to actually put them down, but after a while they just start sending more and more waves of them at you. Some of these are for story effect but if this was say a 60 hour epic, it would probably grow tiresome to continue to do.

There were a handful of glitches that are probably already being patched out. Mainly with the subtitles. There are a number of grammatical inconsistency (something I would know nothing about because I am a flawless writer) and timing issues on the subtitles.  There was one glitch where I tried to climb up a ledge, and instead climbed down through the floor that left me falling in limbo forever till I restarted the game. There is also the "head turn" thing that happens when you spin the camera around Senua where she whips her head from side to side to look at what the camera is on instead of posing like I'm trying to get her to do. She always has this kind of open mouth gape of an expression too in resting moments that is not very photogenic either.

And while I praise the absolutely exceptional acting done in this game, a little more volume on the narration would have been appreciated. I know it's going for a specific tone and effect with the soft spoken whisper, but I had that sound effects and music dropped well under 70% and maxed out vocals, and there are still lines of dialogue I can't hear. This is even worse when compounded with the off timed subtitles.

This game could be an easy platinum trophy for you collectors out there. I got all of them but one in a single play through because apparently I missed one of the way-stones that explain the Norse lore throughout the game. It was the only achievement I missed and if I got it, it would have been platinum'd so it's certainly possible to do in one go. (I am pissed I missed it, honestly)

I certainly had more reservations and expectations when I first started seeing live gameplay footage of Hellblade but I was very happy to see that not only did it exceed my expectations, but I was left thoroughly impressed. It's certainly not a perfect video game experience, but Ninja Theory proved that they could can produce a high quality title for a lower price and smaller budget. I find myself wondering how fast they could have pumped this out if they had a slightly larger team to work on it.

I very much enjoyed my time with Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. Everything was done to properly fit its length. Any little annoyance I could really come up is effected rounded out by the fact the game isn't long enough for them to become a persistent problem. If they can reduce the development time, I would be ok with more of these shorter games at half cost. Hellblade isn't a game you will probably play over and over and over again, but it's certainly a game that's worth getting through once for the experience.

Problem is, thanks to this game now I question if I'm actually schizophrenic.
Shut up, No we're not.
You shut up.
Tsch, asshole.

Nier Automata (PS4): Learning 2B Human.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.