! SPOILERS !
I've beaten the game for about a week now, so I've had some time to digest my thoughts. I'll break my thoughts out into multiple sections for easier reading. Shoutouts to the Automata OT community always answering the smattering of questions I posted here. Disclaimer: I'd like to think I'm not a dumb man, but it's definitely possible that I've missed some subtleties along the way. Please correct me if I posit anything incorrect. Thanks for reading.
Gameplay
Going in, I knew what to expect and what not to expect. This was not a Bayonetta or Revengeance. This was an action game for Nier and S-E fans. From that angle, the core hack and slashing is very serviceable. I have issues with how they encourage dodge mashing with the way they fill the screen with hurtboxes, but that's a minor thing at best. I also enjoyed many of the boss fights. I thought the Opera Singer and the Whale were great setpieces and what I've come to expect from a Platinum game. The sidescrolling fights with Adam during the alien reveal and A2 in the forest were also fun. I wish there were more bosses that experiment with the camera quirks than the vanilla stuff like the last fight with Eve or the first two Orb bosses before you fight the twin orbs in the tower. On a slightly different note, I thought the hacking was a lot of fun! Bullet hells were my jam, so I never got tired of hacking. I actually think that having the ability to remotely bomb enemies was way more useful than 2B/A2's heavy attacks.
The real issue that has been discussed is the difficulty balancing. Normal is fine for newcomers, but for anyone with a decent amount of action game experience, Hard Mode is a bit too binary of a mode. For most of the first half of the game, you're either 1 shot projectiles and bosses or you're not. If I wanted to play ohko mode, I would've picked Very Hard. I understand why ohkos are necessary due to the instant and infinite healing you can acquire, but after playing so many Souls games, the whole balance of this system left me wanting.
My next biggest gripe is the open world. I get why they wanted to make it open. I actually quite enjoyed most of the areas like the desert (how do you make a desert so pretty?) and the forest. But I don't think I've seen so many invisible walls since the PS2 era. Why can I squeeze between the android-sized gap in the tree roots, but I can't jump into the obvious hole in the wall of the building? It seemed incredibly arbitrary what I could and could not traverse and even though I got a feel for it by the end, the first 10hrs of exploration were an exercise in frustration. Don't hide chests and weapons in your world when the very act of exploring it is a chore.
Lastly and maybe hand-in-hand with the open world are the side-quests. I don't think I've done so many fetch quests since my last MMO. I ended up completing all but 2 side quests in the game and I really didn't enjoy most of them. Getting to know the NPCs was probably the most interesting part, but there are better ways the devs could have implemented that. I suppose I could've skipped most of them, but they were pretty much the meat of the game. If I had blazed through Route A, I would've been very upset that I had to do it over for Route B. Since the side quests were different, my playthrough was padded with enough unique fluff to not feel as bad.
Overall, I thought the quest and world design to be quite lacking for a single player game released in 2017. The industry has moved on from such primitive efforts and I was a bit disappointed.
Story
First and foremost, I really enjoyed Route B. I thought 9S was a great character and I enjoyed watching/playing the extra tidbits from his PoV. The best example was in the opening. When you're playing as 2B in the factory, you end up having a very casual conversation with 9S during the dead time while climbing some stairs. Little did you know that during this whole talk, 9S was fighting tons of enemy fliers while barrelling down some pathway deeper into the factory. That tells us a lot more about 9S's character that was obscured from me during Route A. That said, I will agree that Route B is mostly superfluous. There could have been tons of ways to convey the extra bits of B without making the player replay the game. In C, they pretty much do just that with the switching perspectives! Based on the posts I've read, I'm sure Route B cost the game a non-neglible amount of players and it's just a shame.
Looking at the big picture, the story felt a bit rushed and sloppy. What I mean by that is that a lot of story threads are picked up and cut short before they were given the time to shine. You could have made an entire game about uncovering the dead aliens, YoRHa being a setup, androids being birthed from machines, and more. I get that they all contribute their piece to the bigger picture, but I felt that none of those plotlines got the nurturing they deserved and as a result, each of the reveals fall a bit flat. Did we ever find out why the machines around the world started going berserk after the tower appeared? What did the girls in red represent? The disembodied voice in the tower was the collective machine will... right? Why do the pods restart the experiment? Who is this is all for?
And as for the bigger concepts in the game: sentience, self-will, what it means to be android/machine/human, etc. I know this struck a chord with a lot of people and this may be an unpopular opinion, but I thought that the game really only scrapes the surface of these concepts and did not tread any new ground in this area.
Audio
Ok finally, some praise! In moba lingo, the audio in this game pretty much carries 1v9. That is, despite everything the game has going against it, the audio carries this game to the heavens and then some. The music is absolutely fantastic. The way the game dynamically shifts between different versions of each song is so smooth. The vocals and piano are mesmerizing. I don't think I could say anything more that hasn't already been said.
One aspect of the audio I don't see mentioned as often, however, is the English voice acting. Where the writing falls flat in trying to bring weight to the scene, the voice acting picks it up and flings it over the finish line. I really empathized with 9S's anguish because it felt real to me. Compare 2B's voice acting to FFXIII's Lightning. 2B sounds wooden and disaffected most of the time, but you can pick up the subtle intonations over the course of the game and by the 2E reveal, you finally understand why they're there. I don't think I've ever scrutinized or really noticed how good/bad voice acting is, but this game's voices really pulled me into their struggles.
The Ending
One of the best endings in gaming. And I don't mean the conclusion to the androids' story. Unlike the original Nier, this game doesn't hold Ending E ransom for your save file. Instead, you're met with insurmountable odds and you're forced to seek help from others to push through. (Can you actually beat it alone?) The way the music harmonized when you call for help is something I won't ever forget. When it came time for me to be recruited to join the fight, I hesitated in a way video games don't ever make me do. I became really emotional in giving up my story with 2B, 9S, and A2 for someone else. In my heart of hearts, I knew I had to. What helped in my decision was the tiniest of voices in the back of head, "Are you really going to grind weapons and side quests?" And the fact that that is something I thought about during such a critical moment is I think Nier: Automata's greatest crime.
In closing, this game was able to touch somewhere deep. But not because of the gameplay or even most of the story. I think the themes of self-sacrifice, togetherness, etc. would have been better served in a better game. I think as a game, Nier: Automata has completely failed on multiple levels. But at the same time, it has achieved more than most games dare to dream.
Thanks again for reading.
Mod edit : removed red text.
I've beaten the game for about a week now, so I've had some time to digest my thoughts. I'll break my thoughts out into multiple sections for easier reading. Shoutouts to the Automata OT community always answering the smattering of questions I posted here. Disclaimer: I'd like to think I'm not a dumb man, but it's definitely possible that I've missed some subtleties along the way. Please correct me if I posit anything incorrect. Thanks for reading.
Gameplay
Going in, I knew what to expect and what not to expect. This was not a Bayonetta or Revengeance. This was an action game for Nier and S-E fans. From that angle, the core hack and slashing is very serviceable. I have issues with how they encourage dodge mashing with the way they fill the screen with hurtboxes, but that's a minor thing at best. I also enjoyed many of the boss fights. I thought the Opera Singer and the Whale were great setpieces and what I've come to expect from a Platinum game. The sidescrolling fights with Adam during the alien reveal and A2 in the forest were also fun. I wish there were more bosses that experiment with the camera quirks than the vanilla stuff like the last fight with Eve or the first two Orb bosses before you fight the twin orbs in the tower. On a slightly different note, I thought the hacking was a lot of fun! Bullet hells were my jam, so I never got tired of hacking. I actually think that having the ability to remotely bomb enemies was way more useful than 2B/A2's heavy attacks.
The real issue that has been discussed is the difficulty balancing. Normal is fine for newcomers, but for anyone with a decent amount of action game experience, Hard Mode is a bit too binary of a mode. For most of the first half of the game, you're either 1 shot projectiles and bosses or you're not. If I wanted to play ohko mode, I would've picked Very Hard. I understand why ohkos are necessary due to the instant and infinite healing you can acquire, but after playing so many Souls games, the whole balance of this system left me wanting.
My next biggest gripe is the open world. I get why they wanted to make it open. I actually quite enjoyed most of the areas like the desert (how do you make a desert so pretty?) and the forest. But I don't think I've seen so many invisible walls since the PS2 era. Why can I squeeze between the android-sized gap in the tree roots, but I can't jump into the obvious hole in the wall of the building? It seemed incredibly arbitrary what I could and could not traverse and even though I got a feel for it by the end, the first 10hrs of exploration were an exercise in frustration. Don't hide chests and weapons in your world when the very act of exploring it is a chore.
Lastly and maybe hand-in-hand with the open world are the side-quests. I don't think I've done so many fetch quests since my last MMO. I ended up completing all but 2 side quests in the game and I really didn't enjoy most of them. Getting to know the NPCs was probably the most interesting part, but there are better ways the devs could have implemented that. I suppose I could've skipped most of them, but they were pretty much the meat of the game. If I had blazed through Route A, I would've been very upset that I had to do it over for Route B. Since the side quests were different, my playthrough was padded with enough unique fluff to not feel as bad.
Overall, I thought the quest and world design to be quite lacking for a single player game released in 2017. The industry has moved on from such primitive efforts and I was a bit disappointed.
Story
First and foremost, I really enjoyed Route B. I thought 9S was a great character and I enjoyed watching/playing the extra tidbits from his PoV. The best example was in the opening. When you're playing as 2B in the factory, you end up having a very casual conversation with 9S during the dead time while climbing some stairs. Little did you know that during this whole talk, 9S was fighting tons of enemy fliers while barrelling down some pathway deeper into the factory. That tells us a lot more about 9S's character that was obscured from me during Route A. That said, I will agree that Route B is mostly superfluous. There could have been tons of ways to convey the extra bits of B without making the player replay the game. In C, they pretty much do just that with the switching perspectives! Based on the posts I've read, I'm sure Route B cost the game a non-neglible amount of players and it's just a shame.
Looking at the big picture, the story felt a bit rushed and sloppy. What I mean by that is that a lot of story threads are picked up and cut short before they were given the time to shine. You could have made an entire game about uncovering the dead aliens, YoRHa being a setup, androids being birthed from machines, and more. I get that they all contribute their piece to the bigger picture, but I felt that none of those plotlines got the nurturing they deserved and as a result, each of the reveals fall a bit flat. Did we ever find out why the machines around the world started going berserk after the tower appeared? What did the girls in red represent? The disembodied voice in the tower was the collective machine will... right? Why do the pods restart the experiment? Who is this is all for?
And as for the bigger concepts in the game: sentience, self-will, what it means to be android/machine/human, etc. I know this struck a chord with a lot of people and this may be an unpopular opinion, but I thought that the game really only scrapes the surface of these concepts and did not tread any new ground in this area.
Audio
Ok finally, some praise! In moba lingo, the audio in this game pretty much carries 1v9. That is, despite everything the game has going against it, the audio carries this game to the heavens and then some. The music is absolutely fantastic. The way the game dynamically shifts between different versions of each song is so smooth. The vocals and piano are mesmerizing. I don't think I could say anything more that hasn't already been said.
One aspect of the audio I don't see mentioned as often, however, is the English voice acting. Where the writing falls flat in trying to bring weight to the scene, the voice acting picks it up and flings it over the finish line. I really empathized with 9S's anguish because it felt real to me. Compare 2B's voice acting to FFXIII's Lightning. 2B sounds wooden and disaffected most of the time, but you can pick up the subtle intonations over the course of the game and by the 2E reveal, you finally understand why they're there. I don't think I've ever scrutinized or really noticed how good/bad voice acting is, but this game's voices really pulled me into their struggles.
The Ending
One of the best endings in gaming. And I don't mean the conclusion to the androids' story. Unlike the original Nier, this game doesn't hold Ending E ransom for your save file. Instead, you're met with insurmountable odds and you're forced to seek help from others to push through. (Can you actually beat it alone?) The way the music harmonized when you call for help is something I won't ever forget. When it came time for me to be recruited to join the fight, I hesitated in a way video games don't ever make me do. I became really emotional in giving up my story with 2B, 9S, and A2 for someone else. In my heart of hearts, I knew I had to. What helped in my decision was the tiniest of voices in the back of head, "Are you really going to grind weapons and side quests?" And the fact that that is something I thought about during such a critical moment is I think Nier: Automata's greatest crime.
In closing, this game was able to touch somewhere deep. But not because of the gameplay or even most of the story. I think the themes of self-sacrifice, togetherness, etc. would have been better served in a better game. I think as a game, Nier: Automata has completely failed on multiple levels. But at the same time, it has achieved more than most games dare to dream.
Thanks again for reading.
Mod edit : removed red text.
Last edited by a moderator:
