NieR (2010)

pictures let the ones closest to you live forever
our souls are missing, but our tears still work
what have we done to deserve such fate?
for so long, all we could do was destroy
but now we have a chance to save

// going from experiencing lightning & hope's sibling dynamic to kainé & emil's couldn't have been a happier coincidence. the way these two found family dynamics are drawn is incredibly beautiful <3

Imagine yourself in the ps3 era grabbing an ugly game instead of a brand new God of war, forgetting how much of a moron you were you boot it up, soon you hear Kaine cursing to the top of her/his lungs to a book!!!

20 something hours later you're looking for a better ending and wishing the soundtrack never ended

This was the real definition of a hidden gem before youtubers use it to get hits and rack up game prices, play Nier then replicant and finally automata, then start again with drakengard but that's a review for another time

The story of Nier is quite a tragic one. However, it is one of those games that you have to play all the endings to get the whole picture. Thankfully, subsequent playthroughs are sort of like New Game pluses for the most part, making it easier to complete dungeons and bosses the second time around. Nevertheless, the game isn't too challenging and even offers a difficulty setting so you can always set it to easy or normal. In my play through, I played it on Normal and I only had a couple of times where I found myself struggling, particularly because I didn't have a lot of healing items with me for example.

The gameplay itself can get repetitive and hack and slash-y, but as mentioned, you can buy better weapons and also in subsequent playthroughs you start at the level you finished so it becomes far easier and quicker thankfully.

Just a couple of hours into Nier I realized I was addicted to it. 60 hours later I've done everything there is to do within the game and still want more. Luckily for me, an expanded remaster of a slightly different Japanese version of the game subtitled Replicant is coming to PC in April.

When stripping it down in an attempt to figure out which ingredient made my time spent with Nier so special, I realize it must be the music. The game has one of the best original soundtracks I've heard in video games (along with the Silent Hill series and the original Mirror's Edge). The more I played, the more I liked the music, and it never got old for me. Oh, and by the way 'The World of Recycled Vessel' DLC adds a few good remixes. Here's a small glimpse for you and probably my favorite tune in the game:

Obviously, a game can't hold solely on its soundtrack no matter how good it is. And here comes a tricky part - trying to explain why I enjoyed the rest of the game so much despite most reviews calling it ugly and mediocre. I dunno, I just liked the story, gameplay variety, replayability, cool artistic style with bleak visuals, perfect technical performance, simplicity of combat mechanics, the fetching nature of side quests, and many other components. Basically, I was having fun just doing whatever. Even fishing and farming materials needed for side quests and weapon upgrades (well, for this I definitely blame the game's epic and beautiful soundtrack).

An important thing to mention when speaking of Nier is its loose connection with the Drakengard series. Nier is a continuation of DG1's ending E, which itself is one of the most shocking and unexpected story twists I've ever seen (I don't want to spoil anything here). The original Drakengard's gameplay is pretty bad and monotonous, but the game has a fantastic story to tell. In fact, the way DG1 deals with the story by expanding it and changing perspectives and its meaning with its multiple endings is alone worth to play it. And then comes ending E. Holy shit. After playing it, I was so looking forward to see how Nier is going to develop it. And, for the most part, it didn't fail.

Despite Nier having an interesting world, I would love to see more of it. For one thing, to have a better explanation of its connection with the Drakengard ending (I had to read the internet to figure things out). Hopefully, Automata is going to shed some more light.

I loved Nier, but the thing I can't forgive it are a few hefty text sections. I've got to say, the first one has an awesome transition from basic gameplay, but writing is absolutely terrible and unbearable to read in all of them. Which is weird, because the rest of the story and dialogues are pretty good (both would benefit from being less anime cliched though, especially in the ending). Another weird and disappointing thing is a completely unnecessary making of half of the side quests unavailable after a certain moment in the story. You can play NG+ numerous times on the same save file, but those quests will still be unavailable, unless you make another save file and play the game from scratch. I can see no justification for that.

Playing Nier a whole decade after its release and loving it so much was unexpected for sure. Hopefully, there still are quite a few older games left that will excite me in the same way Nier did. As I said, now I'm really looking forward for an April PC release of Nier: Replicant (only 2 month left!), and I will check out Nier: Automata as well. I'm not the biggest fan of Platinum Games' complexion of combat style, so I'm a bit worried for that, but the scores are very promising.

Comparing this game to its sequel, Automata, it's clear from the outset that a lot of progress was made in terms of design and polish. What I didn't fully appreciate until now is that clearly, Yoko Taro had also learned quite a bit about storytelling between Nier and Automata.

I think Nier's story is beautiful, and its presentation is very innovative. Unfortunately, after the novelty of the second playthrough had worn off, getting those last couple of endings became a slog. It didn't take more than a few hours, thankfully, but it was a few hours for, frankly, not much additional lore each time. Again, I had my expectations set unfairly high from Automata, so I can't blame Nier itself entirely. Also, I knew some of the big twists going in (watched some recaps before playing Automata, since it was my first in the series), which probably lessened the impact some.

Anyway, I don't think it's a bad game, and I'm very glad I played it. I'm probably going to go on and play the Drakengard games at some point just to see more of Yoko Taro's brilliant writing and world-building. And of course, I'm looking forward to the Replicant remake!

Yoko Taro is somewhat of a narrative genius in terms of crafting concepts together and creating strong well done storytelling that actively reflects the themes here of humanity and perspective. It's something I think Automata does better, but what's here is actually still excellent. It's terribly paced, the entirety of Ending B/C routes is awful to do, even with its new perspectives. But it's genuinely good, scenes like the text adventure in the silent woods details how fantastic Yoko Taro is as a writer.

The gameplay on the flip end, is mostly awful, and that's mostly due to the limitations the game's thematic messaging entails (the enemy designs are forced to be simple and get more complex much later to reflect the rebuilding of the shadows' own humanity) and also due to Yoko Taro being considerably awful as a game designer to make something engaging. There IS actually depth to NieR's mechanics, but the kinesthetics of every single hit you do is so criminally awful that the only reason I don't say it's the worst kinesthetics of a game ever is because Drakengard exists and he made that too. Combine bad game feel with a series of repetitive encounters, a pacing that overstays its welcome, and having to do the game at least halfway through three times and you get a disgusting experience. The saving grace to its combat is genuinely well designed boss fights, which do a great job of creating challenging bullet hell waves you have to have key understanding of spacing to get through unscathed.

It's worth suffering through, though. There's so much good here tied to its thematics and narrative storytelling that I don't regret playing it. It's just the activity of PLAYING it in general is so decrepit. (6/10)