A game with an emotional story, a cast of complex and hilarious characters, incredibly music, and intensely deep lore; Nier is my favorite game of last gen and something every gamer should play. The bulk of Nier’s gameplay is hack and slash but also has a plethora of diverse minigames including bullet hell and text adventure. While I’d rate the gameplay as decent the real star here are the characters and story. The main character is a straight forward gruff hero and acts as a foil to the other characters in your party whose dialogue wants you craving more. The story unveils different shades of melancholy as it deals with unconventional issues and different stories of tragedy, even sidequests unveil unexpected sorrow. The story also talks about how the world has been messed up and leads into a lore with a doleful outlook on the world, regardless of which the characters persevere against with or without knowledge of it. Nier has the best music arrangement I have heard in a game, ever. If you don’t get to play Nier you should at the very least listen to it.

I honestly cannot understand where the love for this game comes from. Sporadically cliche-but-effective writing is hamstrung by some of the worst looking and playing levels I have ever seen in a game, additionally weighed down by shitty sidequests and wildly varying production quality levels.

The game as a whole feels unfocused, and the addition of having to complete the game multiple times to get the full story feels like a cop-out meant to draw out your time with the game. To make matters worse, Nier ALREADY recycles areas twice, sometimes 3 times in the main game. This is absolutely inexcusable, especially when your reward for slogging through the Lost Shrine for the sixth time is a crowbarred-in cutscene that depicts how the giant shadow monster you're fighting is a single mother of 12 or whatever.

Also Kaine's outfit might be one of the worst designs I've seen in some time. It's not even hot; it just looks absurd.