I'm aware this review isn't a popular opinion, but Nier: Automata is an ok game at best somewhat held together by superb animations and a wonderful soundtrack.

I'm aware it's got quite a cult following but I just could not get invested in it though it starts off pretty good. You play the role of 2B a combat android sent on a mission to earth. The opening section is pretty action packed and though linear sets a great atmosphere and a big boss and I got what I was expecting from a Platinum games title. Past the opening though the cracks start to appear.

Nier: Automata is an empty experience trying to give the appearance of something greater. It has a semi open world but it's bland, barren and empty to explore. It has a lot of side quests but they are mostly forgettable busy work. It has a lot of combat and upgrade options but the battles soon become stale due to the level design etc. Just nothing quite clicks.

I kept pushing through as I had heard the story was the highlight. The way the plot weaves though feels very disjointed, I never felt the flow of the story was very well done. To get the full ending is a chore playing through several paths and the final payoff was just meaningless nonsense. The game tries hard to dip into philosophy and existentialism which are themes I appreciate, but I feel it never truly grabbed my attention perhaps because I was so uninterested in the characters even if the world premise was interesting.

It all just results in missed potential as far as I'm concerned. That said there were some positives. As mentioned in the header, the animations are super smooth. The way 2B moves and switches from move to move is like she's gliding on silk, it's beautiful. The OST is also an absolute knock out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTOuspYpbNc

I also really like the art design of a lot of the characters even if the environments are dull and washed out. They really stand out and have already become pretty iconic. Just a shame the designs do not go with the context of who the characters are even remotely.

That all said, I don't regret playing it, it just wasn't the experience I was looking for.

+ Animations are fantastic.
+ Soundtrack is exquisite.
+ Character art design....

- .....completely out of place and inappropriate.
- Empty world and environments.
- Poor plot and story. Getting the full ending is a chore and not worth the payoff.
- 9S is insufferable.
- Side quests are boring.

(For a much better critique, for I am no wordsmith, I agree with try youtuber Pixel a Day (there are story spoilers): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DWpjyTw8-Pc )

Humanity's best efforts

I've never tried so hard to like a game as much as this one. Despite the fact I completed this game nearly a year ago to this day, I wanted to give this game yet another chance because I felt like I missed something. The Nier Replicant remake was something that I surprisingly enjoyed despite sharing a few things in common with this game including the way the soundtrack is. After putting myself through yet another 18 hours to get the final ending again, my impression of the game only raised a little bit. Nier: Automata is just okay in almost every sense of the word other than the soundtrack.

I'll start with what I think is good in this game: The soundtrack. Despite hearing Emi Evans in almost every game associated with Yoko Taro at this point, her performance here is amazing. Some of the areas actually look good and that's specifically the Amusement Park level, there was decent segments as well including probably one of the only bosses I even cared about here. Despite not caring for most of the characters which I'll get on later, there are actually some I liked and specifically Pascal. Pascal is actually likable and his development is pretty depressing as the game goes on and one of the few times I think the themes and writing manages to hit here. Playing this after playing the remake, I've learned to appreciate the references this game made which sort of improved my experience with it a second time around.

I'm going to talk about what is probably the main appeal of this game: the story. The story and world is actually interesting at first and then takes a nosedive after the first ending. The protagonists despite their development just felt completely boring, the one protagonist I was genuinely interested in started to be comically irrational at a point where I just didn't care anymore. I tried to care about them but nothing really latched onto me which also leans into the themes of this game which is considered the highest point for some people. The game tries to ask questions about what it means to be human, emotion and AI but these questions are very basic and simple questions. I keep expecting this game to make me think and it's throwing me philosophy quotes from a school poster. Now we move on to the game itself, it's really boring. The combat was easy and hits have no impact or weight to them for 2B. 9S has a different mechanic that you can hack into enemies and do a shooting minigame which I thought was cool until the novelty wore off an hour or two into his route. A2 has a berserker mode that reduces your health gradually for way more damage, I used this a lot actually to speed up battles since I was tired of the game at this point. The visual level design also leaves something to be desired as well considering this game is like 60% abandoned city ruins, 20% Forest, 10% Desert and 10% final area which is literally just white. Now I wouldn't mind this as much if the world itself was fun to traverse but it isn't and there isn't anything worth getting other then save and quick points and side quests that are also bland. This game also performs one of the cardinal sins of what I hate in gaming: replaying long sequences in order to progress through the story. Nothing kills momentum in a game than having to replay the first half of a game again just to get to the second with only a few different cutscenes during that whole segment and having to run all around the world again to do the same things again to see most of the same cutscenes again since you don't know when you'll get a new cutscene that will hopefully flesh out the story and made the game way more tedious than it should be. I don't want to speak much on the ending due to spoilers but despite the concept of the ending being sorta cool, it didn't really justify the entire journey to get to that point.

I think my overall opinion on this game has improved very slightly but my main concerns are still the same. I can forgive a game with a bad story if it had the gameplay and other facets to pick up the pace but this game doesn't. I can forgive a game with bad gameplay if it had a good story and characters and it didn't. There are better ways to ask the questions Nier: Automata tries to ask you and better ways to really make you think of humanism. But even then, what's left is an average action game with an amazing soundtrack. I really tried to like this one, beat it twice at this point and I think I'm done with this one despite it just being okay.

Yoko Taro's NieR: Automata is a game that I've been aware of ever since it came out due to me watching Dunkey's video on it once or twice, but I didn't get the urge to actually go out of my way to play it until years later. Since I've mostly been focusing my attention on games from the 7th console generation and everything that came out before it, I put my search for a copy of NieR: Automata on hold for the time being, but when a friend of mine lent me her copy of the game back in December (shoutout to Catherine, by the way), I knew that it was the first thing I wanted to do when I got back to York in January. After spending a week beating the game's three main paths across a total of just under 23 hours, I can safely say that NieR: Automata blew me away on every level, and even with all of the praise that has been built up for it over the years, I really didn't expect to love it as much as I did.

Since God Hand is currently my fifth favorite game of all time, I was really interested to see what a studio originally comprised of people who worked on that game would be able to come up with on their own, and while I didn't actually realize that NieR: Automata was made by PlatinumGames until I actually booted it up for the first time, I don't think I could've asked for a better introduction to their body of work. In terms of its core gameplay, NieR: Automata works wonders as a hack-&-slash character action game that's equal parts hectic and buttery-smooth, as the amount of mechanics to manage and aggressive machines to keep track of made each enemy encounter feel just as exciting and tense as the last, and I found myself constantly countering moves and unleashing combos that were incredibly satisfying to pull off successfully. The game's implementation of RPG elements worked really well alongside this, with the unique plug-in chip upgrades feeling varied in their uses while also making my own approach to combat feel personalized. NieR: Automata was also very admirable in how willing it was to branch out and go beyond its respective genre, as its massive sense of scale was achieved brilliantly through its implementation of shoot 'em up and even text adventure sections throughout its more conventional character action missions. On top of just feeling great on their own, the slick, responsive controls made me appreciate the game's gorgeous artstyle and world design, and travelling around the game's open world made me feel just as excited to see all of the new, dilapidated vistas as it made me anticipate whatever new loot or sidequests came my way. Keiichi Okabe's phenomenal score is very easily one of the very best video game scores I've heard in a long time, as his music perfectly captures the melancholic, yet grandiose and profoundly emotional tone of the game itself.

NieR: Automata was one of those games where every element on display was terrific in its execution, but one element that especially impressed me would be its writing. Across its multiple pathways and shifts in perspective, NieR: Automata explores densely philosophical themes such as what it means to be human, the motivations that fuel violence and war, and the value of our own individual lives, and its navigation of these topics through the increasingly fractured psychology of its main cast was riveting. The story itself was already compelling in its twists, turns, and overwhelming sense of loss and tragedy, but the layers of existentialism that grew more prevalent as the game went on made for some outright heartbreaking moments, and it all made the game's stakes feel heavy and palpable. The game's structure involving multiple playthroughs worked really well for me, with the slight shifts and additions in gameplay being welcome changes that were a perfect fit for the recontextualization of certain events, motivations, and reveals. There's no doubt in my mind that NieR: Automata was one of the very best games I have ever played, and not only do I want to play what directly preceded it, NieR, but I also want to eventually play the game that NieR was a spinoff of, Drakengard.

i’ve always been scared of big empty areas. they’re always a little unnerving, and i find my mind often filling up the empty unknown with all sorts of awful things.

nier automata builds this atmosphere of sheer peace and tranquility. throughout the game you’re met with tragedy and drama through every new area you visit, but while you run around the soft, empty fields and buildings and absorb the beautiful music you can’t help but look around and think that maybe things would be okay. maybe if the world were to halt for the rest of time.. it’d be okay. the grass feels almost angelic to look at, and the buildings feel soft and serene. the roots of overgrown trees line the buildings to the point where you can scale up and down to your heart’s content.
idk i have more to say but i forgot

Greatest of all time. Everything down to the last minute details is simply perfection. I don't even know how to begin talking about something like Nier. So tremendous in scope, so impactful on a personal level, the way it interweaves gameplay and narrative, the dialogues, the music, the worldbuilding, everything is just incredible. It broke new ground when it first came out and it stood the test of time and will continue to do so. A sobering tale of humanistic longing that quickly turns into a deeply introspective journey. An unforgettable experience honestly. What a beautiful game from beginning to end.

One thing I’ve really grown sick of in recent years are what I’m going to start referring to as “oscar-bait” games. Games that market themselves on their super cinematic stories, then the game part is treated as an afterthought, some map marker driven open world game or third person shooter, playable sure, but so entirely risk adverse. Even worse, in most cases the story itself isn’t even that good. Few of them actually have anything to say, they’re just excuses to show off their realistic facial capture technology while these sterilized, stodgy, dialogue exchanges insist that what’s happening is important. What’s most annoying is that they act like you can only have one or the other, a deep story or deep gameplay. Especially when there exist games like Nier which show you can have this thought provoking, thematically deep, emotionally resonant narrative on top of a mechanically in-depth, challenging, unique and highly playable video game where not only do they not detract from one another, but actively feed into and elevate eachother as one supremely cohesive vision.

My one single complaint with this game is that it doesn’t explain some of its mechanics very well (it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out I needed to equip my pod with a scanner at that one part where you’re looking for 9S). Aside from that hiccup, Nier: Automata is a masterpiece. It’s visionary like nothing else I’ve played since the Metal Gear Solid games. The core combat is as weighty and satisfying as in any of Platinum’s best games, but it’s unique in how hording and positioning are more important than flashy combos. The bullet hell and side scrolling parts are great too, and I think it’s really clever how each of the different gameplay types condition you to one another, with certain rules remaining consistent across everything. The chip build system allows for a ton of customization and build variety, going so far as to let you sell parts of your hud for more room to customize. And the narrative, it’s thematically deep, it’s moving, it’s original, it’s unpredictable, I can’t remember the last time I was on the edge of my seat NEEDING to know what happens next like I was during the final third of this game. It’s all accentuated by what’s easily one of my top 5 favourite musical scores in a game, whatever you’re supposed to be feeling at any given moment, the score will multiply that feeling. It’s a game where every twist, every set piece, every boss battle, every great moment one-ups the last and it keeps you guessing until the credits roll…for a fourth time…except even they come with an utterly mind boggling twist that acts as the perfect cherry to cap off this stellar video game.

Nier Automata is one of the most unique and well rounded gaming experiences that exists, one of those things every gamer needs to experience at least once.

—WARNING—
SNESSER

Videogames are for media perverts.

Really, is it not enough just watching a character perform an action from the comfort of the living room sofa? We’ve got the written word, the stage, the projector, illustration and sound, but for the weirdos among us, that doesn’t cut it. No, we just have to crawl into the screen and take up residence in their skin. We need to feel their digital knuckles scraping against the robo-flesh of their adversaries. We need to breathe the air of that post-apocalyptic wasteland and go fishing in the little streams that have formed between the cracks in the asphalt. In "A Play of Bodies," games researcher Brendan Keogh (the man responsible for my treatment of "videogame" as a single word) writes that video-gameplay creates a circuit between the player and the software. We enter the machine, and there is a “meshing of materially different bodies into an amalgam cyborg body through which the player both produces and perceives the play experience” (41).

It’s a little twisted, isn’t it? Just the slightest bit deranged?

I think about that whenever I consider recommending NieR: Automata to another person, because even if it didn't mean asking someone to take control of an android soldier inexplicably dressed as a blindfolded french maid in a billowy skirt and heels (“Taro just likes girls, man”), it still demands a degree of investment which isn’t remotely common in media. For games, it’s a high bar. I have to remind myself that even in 2023, the year when my Mom called in to rave about HBO’s The Last of Us, picking up a controller to actively involve oneself in a play experience of this kind is still a lot to ask. That show managed to reach an audience of people who had never considered conversion into one of Keogh’s cyborgs. If even one of them asked me which videogames to start with, Automata wouldn’t make the shortlist. You’ve already gotta be quite a ways down the rabbit hole. You have to love giving yourself over to and becoming entwined with these things for hours at a time. You have to be aware of their conventions. It’s one for the video-perverts.

Luckily, there are plenty of us to go around if you know where to look. Media literacy is an odd thing. I’m enough of a ridiculous videogame/media cyborg person that I might’ve written off Automata — of all things — as passé. A little too indulgent in some unfortunate tropes and well-trodden themes.

If you’re just joining us, the premise is this — In the future, aliens have sent a mechanical army to conquer the Earth, forcing humanity to take refuge on the moon. We’ve constructed a squadron of android soldiers to take back the planet, resulting in an ongoing proxy war between the two robotic factions on the surface. You, the player, follow androids 2B and 9S in their righteous quest to drive back the alien menace and reclaim the world.

Incidentally, this is pretty much the plot of DoDonPachi DaiOuJou. You have the right to remain suspicious.

I’d played my share of JRPGs, done some hacking and slashing, wasn’t terribly impressed with 13 Sentinels, seen Evangelion, Lain and Ghost in the Shell. I’ve had Space Runaway Ideon: Be Invoked in my queue since that one Hazel video, alright. I wasn’t…pressed. I didn’t discount what I’d heard about its excellence and experimentation, but I was pretty sure I knew what I’d find. No matter how you slice it, the broad questions of existential philosophy can only have so many possible conclusions. Either everything is futile, or it’s not. To paraphrase Albert Camus, you either live for some reason, or you don’t. Viktor Frankl narrowed it down to three: one might live for a goal, for someone else, or to overcome suffering. Paring it further down, you either accept the beauty that you can find in whatever corner of this world you inhabit, or else rage against it and build a better one.

Really, I hoped it was hiding a perspective or a problem that would change my mind. I want to be wrong and I want to learn. My diagnosis of existentialism is so broad as to be useless. But Automata didn’t show me “The Gospel of the New Age,” it didn’t pretend it could arrive at unique conclusions about life and its meaning. Rather, it’s frustrated with the answers that have been given. It just doesn’t know how to escape from them.

SYSTEM MESSAGE
(It's gonna be a long one)

The opening says as much, states in no uncertain terms that we’re “perpetually trapped” in The Wheel of Samsara, and then drops us into a top-down arcade shoot ‘em up. I watched the rest of my squad get picked off one by one, and knew I was in the hands of a director. So let’s talk Taro. Yoko Taro, the all-but undisputed creative force behind NieR, has spoken loudly about his love for 2D shooters, and that inspiration isn’t limited to gameplay. It comes through in Automata’s premise, themes, and looping narrative. Shoot ‘em ups are about dying again and again, setting one’s own goals, finding meaning in their madness. They’re about lone pilots in their last stands to save already doomed worlds. Their characters never escape the five to seven manic stages that contain their stories. Yoko Taro may have wanted to make ZeroRanger (and if he had, it’d had said all he’d wanted to say), but given Square Enix’s requirement that it be an Action RPG, I think the team came to a solid compromise.

Automata’s control scheme is cleverly designed to seamlessly shift between 2D shooting and 3D action without twisting the fundamentals. Melee attacks, specials and evasion are all mapped to the same buttons no matter the perspective, and that’s a powerful gesture. NieR: Replicant was bent on shocking the player out of their comfort zone with shifts into text adventuring and fixed camera Resident Evil…ing, its parts as cobbled together as any of Automata’s machines (and make no mistake, I love it for that). Automata, meanwhile, is sleek. Its mechanical consistency more readily invites the player to slip into a state of cyborg-dom, even as the shape of the game morphs around them. Nowhere is this better felt than the final stretch of The Tower, and those who’ve played the game will know what I’m talking about. Whatever form it takes, whoever you are, your index finger is for shooting. Customizable chips inform your abilities and interface, and it does plenty to contextualize game elements as features of the android protagonists. Whether or not it measurably contains “zero unintended ludo-narrative dissonance,” Automata goes the distance.

But few players I know would accuse Automata of “consistency,” and for good reason. Its narrative structure is easily one of its strangest features. I wouldn’t call it subtle so much as…selectively cryptic? Curious. I wouldn’t say there’s anything presented in the critical path that doesn’t serve at least a thematic purpose, but events rarely build directly on top of each other throughout the A/B playthroughs, and only the barest threads actively cause the events of Routes C/D. Much of this is by design, seeing as the player is taking direct orders from their commanding officers as soldiers of YoRHa, simply doing as you’re told without the agency to decide your path, but I wouldn’t argue if someone found Automata “half-baked.”

I’m getting ahead of myself — I’ve seen it discussed that the mystery of the machines’ sentience is badly handled, that it’s too obvious and heavy-handed right from the get-go, but I think it’s clear that’s not the question being raised by the story. It’s not “do the machines really have emotions,” it’s “why are the androids so bent on deluding themselves into believing that the machines lack emotion?” What’s so qualitatively different about the two robot factions? What drives people to ignore the pleas of others and deny their personhood? We find them in distress in the desert, quite literally birthing two beings called Adam and Eve. It takes just three hours to encounter a village of machine pacifists, and, when he’s no longer able to deny their sentience, 9S just pulls out some lame excuse to maintain his worldview. This might be frustrating as a player, to be required to carry out actions you don’t believe in for the sake of progress through a story. You could call it stupid, maybe cruel, or you might appreciate that your doubts echo those of the characters.

But some cracks begin to show as you await each revelation.

_________________________________

After a climactic battle with a gargantuan mech results in the loss of your sidekick, you follow a trail of breadcrumbs to a rusted elevator in the depths of a dimly-lit cavern. You’re warned it may be a trap. Both you and your character shrug off the suggestion.

At the bottom of a long descent, you emerge beneath a subterranean sky, a void of white. Before you, an eerie facsimile of civilization. The architecture is reminiscent of a metropolis that once stood, but colorless and incomplete. One of the top three songs in the game starts up.

Pressing forward, you find the bodies of androids strewn about the scenery. Further and further, until you come face to face with the perpetrator. You have a dramatic rematch with Adam. Philosophy is spouted, combat ensues, and you kill him. You retrieve 9S.

You then…report back to the Resistance Camp and receive your next assignment.

The Copied City never becomes relevant again.

_________________________________

(Tangentially, Adam and Eve confront our heroes a total of three times, which doesn’t give them much room to interact beyond being born and dying. This is interesting on the face of it, but none of these interactions shake up the status quo. Killing Eve supposedly alters the machine network, but not in a way that interferes with its normal functioning. 9S then enters the machine network during the first ending, and little seems to come of it beyond perhaps the intermittent vignettes you receive before and after boss fights during Route B. Tragically, none of these vignettes seem to influence 9S’ thoughts or actions later on)

I’m not here to slap a “bad writing” stamp on NieR: Automata, despite what I'm about to say. Honest. All of this is kind of fascinating to me. The fact that Adam and Eve’s story doesn’t affect the characters as much as it should might speak to how little regard the androids afford machines in general. The fact that the status quo is not affected by any of these wild moments sort of makes sense when you consider the cyclical state of the setting. Maybe. But a certain thought cloud began to hang over me as I continued playing, and then it grew as the story revealed itself.

Any suspicions I had were confirmed by Taro’s 2014 GDC Talk where he lays bare his process. Before arriving at any character or premise, he whips up an emotional climax. He decides where he wants his audience to cry, and then works backward to create context for that moment. I’d like to be charitable, everyone expresses themselves differently, but it’s hard not to look at this and find some Hack Behavior. Taro does explore themes and questions and characters, but it’s obvious when a moment is crafted in isolation for the sake of shock value, and it doesn’t help that many of them lack long-standing consequences. Of course there are great, hard-hitting scenes (the intro to the game’s second half comes to mind), but I know when I’m being punked. And as it pulls this sort of thing again and again, it becomes easier to see the mirrors behind the smoke. Final Fantasy VI’s opera setpiece might be very obviously tossed in there, but the development that happens in and around it, before and after, makes it worthwhile.

And so is Automata, just not for the same reasons. I was convinced at one point that it had actually been about the conflict between A2 and 9S all along. Whatever inconsistencies there’d been or questions that had gone unanswered, everything had been built to explore how they’d end up as ideological opposites. But for that to be true, A2 herself would’ve needed more time. I’ve got just enough of a speedrunner’s brain that I enjoyed replaying the first third as 9S, especially for recontextualizing his role in the duo and containing late-game reveals only he was privy to. Likewise, we’d have needed to see what made A2 who she was at the beginning of the story. After ages of aimless rage and rebellion, it should have taken more than just one late-game subplot to alter her worldview (2B-pilled or not). It’s a testament to the music, pacing and performances that I was able to buy her character, but it would be a stretch to say that the story is squarely about her.

Maybe it’s become clearer as Taro has progressively dominated this write-up, but I don’t feel this is a game about its characters, but a mind at odds with itself. It won’t be obvious if you’re only reading this review without having played the game, but NieR is the story of a man grappling with existentialists, admitting that none of their perspectives have managed to convince him or offer a satisfactory route to purpose. Maybe he’s frustrated that none of them click. Whether you’re driven by fear or beauty or selfishness, spirituality or revenge, we’re all made of the same stuff, and we’re all going to the same place.

I don’t think it’s unfair to criticize Automata for failing to thoroughly explore those avenues of meaning. Fair or not, I’ll posit this dismissal comes from the honest place of a person who’s become lost and resentful toward structures built to fabricate meaning at the expense of others. Religion and love and community are all represented in unflattering extremes, and having one’s purpose stripped away is immediately met with violence against oneself and others. Even when I disagreed or wanted more in the way of nuance, I had to admit that I could sympathize with the author. I realize I’ve come to take God’s absence for granted, that meaning is self-made. Around the time I played Automata, a close someone told me that life would not be worth living without God. Happiness would be impossible. Only the involvement of an Eternal Being can give our existence weight.

Well, It’s a good thing He’s up there, then.



…

So we play as this torn mind, inhabiting both characters and driving them toward opposite objectives. These androids are only granted agency by the player, after all. Whichever of the two you gravitate toward, each must be defeated by the other. You must kill both of your selves.

It’s a bleak lens, and it’s not shy about that. Maybe it shouldn't be any sort of surprise that Automata’s ending invites its players to rebel against its worldview, unite and collectively destroy it. It wants us to demonstrate that we can find purpose in each other. As far as I can tell, Taro wants to be proven wrong. He wants to learn something. Of course, it could be that I only found what I wanted to see.

But that’s not what I saw in the moment. Ending E didn’t hit as hard as I’d wanted. I nodded in acknowledgment of the gesture, knew that it was a modern Shigesato Itoi finale. Automata contains some real sparks of bottled magic, but it rarely managed to pull me out of my own head, maybe because the mind behind it was made so painfully visible. It never brought me to tears (TieRs?). Despite the gorgeousness of its soundtrack, I felt more distant than I’d have liked to be. I became uncomfortably aware of myself in that desk chair, holding a plastic videogame controller, watching my screen flash with the light of real people who’d given up their save data to help me, someone they’d never meet.

It felt like getting caught in the act.

The day after Christmas 2016, I got my PS4. A couple months prior, I finally got back into Playstation gaming after strictly being a Nintendo Fanboy for years. With my PS4, I got the Uncharted Collection, Uncharted 4, Skyrim, Little Big Planet 3 and Final Fantasy XV. I couldn't wait to dive into all these games I wouldn't have even given a chance years before. Fast forward to early April, I decided on a whim to pick up Persona 5 only a day after it came out. I knew almost nothing about Persona besides my one friend always recommending the series so I took a chance, and ended up loving it. Fast forward to May 2017, I pick up NieR Automata. That one friend who recommended the Persona series, would also show me gameplay of the original NieR. At this time I was still in the middle of playing Persona 5, but knowing I took a chance on that and was loving it, I took a chance on Automata as well. I didn't start it until June and didn't beat it until August of that year, but from my memories of 6 years ago I remember absolutely loving it. Fast forward to today and I decided I wanted to replay this game finally. I was wondering all this time if I'd love this game as much as I did back then, because 2017 was my absolute favorite year ever...at least that timespan of like April-August and it could have clouded my judgement. Well my thoughts are complicated but as you can see by my score, I do indeed still love this game overall.

When I first started this, I decided to replay it on hard. It had been 6 years since I played it but I figured I could do it. After dying 10 times in the super long intro, I decided to bump it down to normal. It might be a skill issue but I didn't find it fun to die in 2 or sometimes even 1 hit. I played the entire game on normal and I don't feel bad, I just wanted to have fun. Though tbh, on my first playthrough through Route A...halfway into it I kinda wasn't having much fun. My main issue was, I kept comparing every little thing to Gestalt which is the consequence of playing this immediately after that. I kept missing the main cast of that game and just wasn't digging Automata's cast much. By the end of route A, I was disappointed in the game...and disappointed in myself for feeling this way. I absolutely adored this back in 2017...did I change? Was I too cynical now or something?

My main reason for being disappointed was because my favorite aspect of Gestalt, the cast, was not even comparable in this game I felt. My favorite character was 9S and his best scenes don't even happen until the later routes. The cast of this game is solid I'd say but doesn't come close at all to Gestalt's main cast, at least for me. That was my main hangup during route A, and is still even now the biggest downgrade this game has compared to Gestalt.

During route A, even though I was disappointed by the end of it, there were still plenty of things I liked about the game and several improvements compared to Gestalt. The combat for one is definitely improved overall. Yes the combat is not on par with something like Bayonetta or DMC, but it's still flashy enough so that it feels good. You have two weapons at once and it feels good to switch between both. You also have these Pods that act as the Weiss of this game. You can switch abilities with them, and some of the abilities are straight up ones from Gestalt which was cool. Same with the weapons, some of them were ones from Gestalt so you know I had to use my beloved Beastbain. I also really loved the movement in this game compared to Gestalt, dashing around this post-apocalyptic world...especially in mid-air on top of buildings, god it feels good.

Speaking of the post-apocalyptic world..this a bit of a running gag in my discord server that I have a major hard on for it. And that's correct, I still absolutely adore the world in Automata. The world is not as fleshed out as actual open worlds, but that's partly why I love it. I think the world is the absolutely perfect size for a gaming world. It's small enough where I don't find getting around to be a chore, even if you can fast travel...and big enough where it's fun to actually explore and take in the amazing locales. Goddamn I love the aesthetic this world provides. The starting area is a ruined city overgrown with plant life and that aesthetic is like my #1 aesthetic now thanks to this game. You also have a massive desert with a whole city half buried in the sand at the end of it. You have an abandoned amusement park full of celebrating machines. There's more ruined buildings on the coastline. There's a forest area that leads to a grassy castle. Right before that area, you go through a little shopping center that's full of overgrowth. There is no area I dislike going to because every single one has such a cool aesthetic which really does it for me. The world/setting of the game was my absolute favorite aspect when I first played (besides the OST) and even now it's still probably my favorite aspect. If there's any single one thing that this game destroys Gestalt on, it's definitely its world.

Speaking of the OST, it is still fantastic 6 years later. While personally, I do prefer Gestalt's OST by a fair margin...Automata's is still awesome. Back then my favorite themes were all the area themes and while they're still great, I really like a lot of the battle themes now. Grandma Destruction and Emil Despair, obviously because they're remixes of Gestalt songs but A Beautiful Song may be my favorite totally originally Automata song now, it's fantastic. The OST is indeed objectively amazing but I think the reason why I don't like it as much as Gestalt's now is because the songs have way more going on in them while Gestalt's are more simple. Automata's songs are also generally more epic and fast paced vs Gestalt's more elegant sounding songs. I still do love Automata's OST tho and it's definitely one of my favorites ever. Honestly tho I think Gestalt might have my favorite OST ever in any game, at least as of now so ofc that would be hard to top but Automata certainly isn't that far off.

Something I definitely loved this time around was the Gestalt connections I wouldn't have ever gotten when I first played. Like certain lines reminiscent of Gestalt, or really obvious things nowadays like how the desert machines all wear Facade-like clothing. There's a quest in the desert that even has you finding hidden items that were all connected to Facade which was amazing to discover. Speaking of quests, I honestly think they were a lot better in this game compared to Gestalt. Sure, you don't have the amazing banter between NieR and Weiss. However as a whole, I found there to be less fetch quests and more memorable quests that felt somewhat impactful towards the worldbuilding. Obviously, the single best quests are the Emil ones for me just cuz they connect to Gestalt so heavily but that was gonna be a given. Oh yeah, Emil is back...his side quests were awesome as stated before but besides that he's only really here as a shopkeeper which is okay I guess. If he didn't have either of the side quests, he would have been a big disappointment but those salvage his appearance I'd say. Also up to the end of Route A, I'd say the bosses were solid overall but none of them really wowed me besides Simone who was amazing. That's partly because A Beautiful Song plays during it but still. Also Also, I forgot to mention I did do every side quest and of course upgraded all weapons to max. For what you get from doing that, which is some of the best content in the game imo, I think it's worth it.

Anyways, a lot of things have been improved from Gestalt but the big downgrade being the cast hampered my enjoyment of the 2nd half of Route A cuz I kept comparing the two games the entire time. I established this before, so you'd think Route B would be even worse because it's pretty much a retread of Route A except with small changes here and there, kinda like Route B in Gestalt except not nearly as good. Well here's the weird thing, I honestly enjoyed myself more with Route B than A. That's weird because usually people hate Route B from what I've seen but idk I digged it. Maybe it's because I was playing as 9S who I enjoyed a lot more than 2B. Or maybe it was the addition of hacking which I honestly quite enjoy even tho I know many others don't. Idk but once I beat route B, I was definitely enjoying myself more than I did at the end of route A. So I don't get when people say Route B is bad, it's different enough that it's fun to play through again. Then Route C is next and that's where the story has it's peaks...and where the game definitely won me over again.

Route C is totally different from A and B and that's a huge change from route C in Gestalt. There it was the exact same as Route B except with two new endings so Route C in Automata is definitely a big improvement. There's tons of twists, reveals and heartbreak and it's 100% the best route no question. I still don't think the story elements or character interactions come close to gestalt in its ending, but they're definitely very good. I think story-wise, I like it less overall then Gestalt's just because of the inferior cast but it has some really emotional singular moments and so I like to think I love the moments in this game more than the entirety of its story which is opposite of Gestalt. Going into those moments though, and they both happened in Route C, they were the final super boss that you access by getting every weapon to max...and ending E.

The final super boss I knew would get me because of its connection to Gestalt, and they are huge connections, but I didn't think the waterworks would flow as hard as they did. Even more surprising was ending E. I still remembered what happened but idk man it really got me. When that certain part happens and you hear the choir, I broke down. This is THE moment I'm giving this game a 10 for now. I was contemplating whether to actually drop it to a 9, and I still might eventually who knows, but the fact I cried to something that had no connection to Gestalt really...that made me realize I do still love this game even without the Gestalt shit.

I may not be in love with the game's story or cast, and I think the OST is somewhat of a downgrade..however. The combat being improved, the still wonderful OST, my favorite world in any game and the worldbuilding and connections to Gestalt I do love. And so as of now I'm going to keep this at a 10, again I might drop it down eventually but Ending E won me over for now. I do definitely love Gestalt more now as you already know, which is so weird because I once had this at a 10 and Gestalt at an 8 lol. Funny how things change.

A great display of video games as an artform.

NieR: Automata is a game that goes above and beyond with its unique way of storytelling, taking full advantage of making the experience one that can't be substituted through a book or a movie - not just in terms of visual design, but also through the use of dynamic music and having its story told from the point of view of multiple protagonists.

Note that I have played NieR Replicant (the first game) right before this entry, so comparing the two games was inevitable for me. On one hand I still feel like I was doing Automata a disservice by doing so, but at the same time it was nice hearing remixes of familiar songs when they were still fresh in my memory. Either way, in my opinion something very important to anyone interested in this game, is to play Replicant first if you want the full experience. Not only because you would miss many cool references, but also because Automata doesn't hold back with spoiling the first game through the documents you can find in it and personally I'd be pretty upset if I read those before playing Replicant. Those documents are cool for returning players because you get more context for the events of the previous entry, but also spoil some of the biggest twists. Play this first at your own risk.

In contrast to Replicant, Automata's story has a lot more spectacle to it than Replicant's more grounded and personal narrative. This time you're not taking control of the teenage boy who wants to cure his sister, but instead slip into the role of android warrior 2B, who is fighting in an all-out war against machines to reclaim the planet. Considering the scale of the story, you're just one of many androids - Automata is less about the characters' personal struggles and more about the main conflict at hand. And while the overarching narrative is solid, the real highlight is how the story is told and the messages behind it. This game has multiple routes and endings and they're used particularly well here, compared to Replicant, where the routes were the same in terms of gameplay, but with new scenes. Even if Automata's Route A and B are the same string of events told through a different perspective (which turned a surprising amount of people off from doing multiple routes), the unique gameplay of 9S and some scenes from his perspective alone are worth warranting the second playthrough. Route C however is where the story really picks up in pace, while also being a fresh experience at the same time. New enemies, new plot, new soundtrack. (The enemy variety in Automata in general is way better than Replicant, there are so many machines and bosses with cool ideas!) Also, the finale of Route C completely blew me away with the "art direction" of it and the final battle at the end was the cherry on top. For those concerned about missables, after beating this route, you'll unlock Chapter Select and can freely return to any point in the story before, so there's no reason for FOMO, feel free to tackle the game at your own pace. In regards to achievements, what I found particularly interesting was the integration of a trophy shop. It's just like the name would suggest, a hidden in-game shop where you can buy the remaining achievements in exchange for virtual currency. Pretty cool if you locked yourself out of a trophy, but also really made me think about the actual point of trophies in general...

Combat and movement in Automata are definitely an upgrade to Replicant's combat... for the most part. Coming right from the first game, I was a bit surprised how slippery the controls felt, like they didn't have much weight to them. The most glaring difference was the missing vibration on hit though, it really gave the attacks more impact for me. Turns out the controls are actually quite good and responsive after spending a while with them, it just took me a bit to adjust. Now, the combat in Automata literally consists of hack-and-slash. As 2B, your main approach to offense will be slashing through the enemies (while looking really stylish) by dual-wielding a set of two weapons of choice, reaching from her signature katanas to the Beastbane from Replicant, you're free to mix and match towards whatever matches your own personal playstyle. Meanwhile the other protagonist, 9S, puts the emphasis on the "hack" in hack-and-slash. He does not have the luxury of using two weapons at once, as his model is not designed for combat, but rather for gathering intel - in gameplay terms this means you can hack into your enemies to deal large amounts of damage, destroying most normal enemies instantly. Hacking consists of a Space Invaders-like bullet hell minigame, where you need to shoot down hostile ships or towers which are shooting projectiles at you. If you get hit three times, you're getting kicked and need to hack the enemy again to get another shot at the minigame. In order to successfully complete a hack, normally all enemies need to be destroyed before being able to shoot the otherwise guarded core, but there are some exceptions, like bosses and special hacks have unique screens with other conditions attached to them. Hacking and slashing aside, there's actually a third type of combat (even if it's rarely used), the aerial combat. There are a few parts where you're mounting a flying mech and need to shoot down enemies in a rail shooter-like fashion. These segments are either 2D or top-down, your possible movements are defined by the camera angle.

Following up to the "possible movements", I'd like to talk about the possible movements in the overworld and the level design in general, because I'm really sold on both of those aspects. Moving around feels great, has a very parkour-ish feel to it and hopping or gliding onto certain structures is awesome. This also comes from the level design being a lot of fun to traverse and explore, a big step up from Replicant. All areas have an unique theme they're designed after and they're like semi-open worlds. No loading screens (aside from the ones disguised as elevators) are a huge plus and make for a really seamless experience. Not to mention those individual levels are gorgeous and still filled with so many small details, my favorites are the Forest Kingdom and Amusement Park. Shoutout to the Flooded City, although I wish that area was a bit larger. After reflecting on those areas, I'm not really sure if I prefer the medieval design of Replicant's world or the post-apocalyptic world of Automata. But one thing is for certain: traversing Automata's world didn't break my controller's right trigger spring. (Yeah, that happened in Replicant. Not even because I threw the controller or anything, it was just because I dashed a lot...)

The soundtrack is excellent. As I already stated in my opener, NieR Automata greatly makes use of the dynamic soundtracks - this means the songs shift between multiple variants, based on what is currently happening. Like when you hack an enemy as 9S, the current song slowly transitions into an 8-Bit version, depending on how much the hacking meter is filled, eventually the the hacking sequence starts and the full 8-Bit rendition plays until the minigame is completed, where it fades back to the normal version. But not only does the combat have changing music, the songs in individual areas also change based on location or story progress. An example fairly early on is the desert theme, Memories of Dust. As you walk into the desert for the first time, you will hear an instrumental version of this song, but as you get closer to the apartment ruins, the vocals fade in. It also works in reverse, because if you walk away from that location, the lyrics will fade out again. The most impactful use of the dynamic soundtrack for me was at the very end, and I won't specify this further, since you'll know what I mean when you get there.

Something very important for the PC players: Please do yourself a favor and set the anti-aliasing to SMAA, because MSAA looks really horrible in this port and also chugs performance for some reason; you won't even get consistent 60 frames, because there's some built-in limiter. Meanwhile the FidelityFX CAS option makes the colors look off, so I'd recommend turning that off too. These two things unironically took me three hours to figure out and I don't want you to go through the same pain.

In the end, I absolutely adored NieR Automata as an experience. While it didn't emotionally impact me nearly as much as Replicant, I prefer the direction and creative approach in this one, like using the route system for something a lot more meaningful than playing through the exact same events three times (and the final area four times!). It's definitely a game I will be thinking about for quite some time, as it really opened my eyes on games as an artform. Thanks for reading and glory to mankind!

My sincerest apologies fellow Taro heads, but this is my favorite one. Nier Automata is the inevitable conclusion that the series has been working towards to, with the actors of the stage play set by its predecessors finally rebelling against the 4th wall and breaking past this ever beautiful aging artform we love. Videogame characters being aware that they are inside a videogame is nothing new, but Nier Automata masterfully utilizes ever interactive system, device, mechanic and language at its disposal to bring new life to this concept and create an incredible purposeful metanarrative that could only work within the limitations of the medium and nowhere else.

Utilizing videogame conventions and expectations to frame its story as one of existential crisis and nihilistic despair experienced by what could be the protagonists of any kind of shmup, a genre defined by its disregard for narrative context and its primordial struggle where the player throws themselves to death over and over again oblivious to such purpose, Automata pits its characters against the bleek reality devised for and enforced on them and instills a level of self awareness that brilliantly paints a baroque moving picture that paralels our own communial absurdity on this tiny rock floating in space. That same interactive narrative continues on outside of the 2D ships, where Drakengard 3's intertwining of violence with sexual drive is further expanded and improved upon in Automata through its combat design.

Just as the characters are built to derive pleasure from the killing, so too do we from the now immediate and highly satisfying stylish Platinum combat, and just as purpose and meaning starts to inevitably crumble in front of them, so too does the fighting quickly decline into Drakengard territory, as the non threatening and non hostile enemies fail to ilicit any desire for engagement. No better is this exemplified then by the shift from 2B's two weapon combo fare to 9S's stop and start combat that perfectly reflects his state of mind and increasing frustration that explodes at the tail end of the game. And at the peril of shooting myself in the foot and being sent to the internet gulags, even the much (deservedly so) maligned peek at 2B's undergarments ends up reinforcing through gameplay the protagonist's self awareness and rejection of player control.

Carrying on the post 9/11 sentiment of Nier, Automata from the outset presents "the Other" as the consequence and victim of an eternity of perpetual warfare born from a conflict that none of the current perpetrators remember or fight for, and through an engrossing narrative that constantly delivers devastating revelation after another that repeatedly shatter the character's sense of purpose and resolve, it takes the ethos of a greek tragedy and creates a fascinating dialogue between the player and the screen. Route B and C provide the best use of sequential playthroughs in the series that cleverly switch between numerous point of views and further hammers home the theatricality of the game's construct, with 9S especially being a standout case with his pechant for breaking the boundaries of the game with his 4th wall breaking quips and hacking mechanics that ultimately make him the most vulnerable to the reality of the fiction he lives in. A world screaming out of the edges of the monitor, trapped in a nightmare of their own making and restricted by our very own code.

And that finale. That fuckin finale. What a glorious and exuberant display of love and admiration for the power of videogames and its capability to unite the world with empathy and optimism through a beautiful message of perserverance and struggle that only this artform knows how to deliver. Constantly do I see Automata criticized for being filled with philosophy name drops and references, implying an "emperor has no clothes" sort of deal that aspires to a pretense at depth, an odd critique that I fail to understand when the game consistently mocks said name drops and references and doesn't treat that lack of subtlety in the same manner as something like MGSV did with Moby Dick or 1984. If after witnessing that ending, you still believe that the philosophy musings aren't just the coat of paint through which the world of Automata communicates its message and are instead the focal point of the game, you my friend, have missed the forest for the trees. And I love how Automata's callback to Nier's final sacrifice gains a new whole meaning by its more open optionality.

Could go on about the perfect use of dynamic soundtracking, the cohesive selection of side quests that explore the game's ideas from numerous angles and humorous vignettes, or the clever use of achievements, but I guess I just did so time to wrap it up. I'm sorry the normiecore took this franchise from you, I truly am. But you wanted a new MGS2, right? Well, you got it. This is it.

I've quickly developed an intense love for and fascination with this game. Probably the most remarkable thing about it for me is how the world and story can both feel really fleshed out, immersive and engaging, and then some new detail will emerge that shakes up the very foundation of all of this in some big way and yet this space you're engaging with becomes more convincing as a result, not less. It's amazing to me how the game manages to keep redefining your relationship to it in this manner, and yet the effect was always such as to draw me in further rather than push me away.

Somehow for me this process continued even after the game had concluded, with the side materials (https://theark.wiki/w/I_just_got_Ending_E) redefining my relationship with aspects of the game too. The word 'journey' is thrown around a lot, but my experience with this game was quite literally an emotional journey, one that even brought me to tears at points, a journey that continues even after the game has reached its end.

As well as being incredibly well designed from a narrative perspective, the philosophical ideas the game tackles are fascinating, and the way in which the game's structure is built with these in mind is something that is honestly kind of remarkable. My first time completing the game (by which I mean, getting to ending E) was, in this sense too, a journey, but there's also this feeling that there is so much to be unpacked here, and so much that only grows in impact once given full context, that I can see myself continuing to think, feel and explore new emotions, thoughts and ideas on repeat playthroughs. Despite tackling heavy, challenging ideas though, the game is good at managing to not be too heavy except when it needs to be; it has a delightful sense of humour, and is very willing to be silly at the right moments. I can't even begin to imagine the balancing act involved in making all of this work at once.

I have a dear love for these characters, with all their human imperfections and struggles, their hopes and dreams and fears and losses, and the world you explore with them is wonderfully realised. This is both in terms of the detail with which it evokes this dystopia, and also on a technical level of how beautiful these environments are and how well the music compliments them, helping evoke the emotions caught within these locations.

I don't think the game is wholly perfect by any means, though the imperfections rarely annoyed me for any great length of time. The side quests lean a bit too heavily into fairly simple fetch quests, and a handful of the side quests are just frustrating; that said the process of completing side quests feels rewarding with many of them meaningfully contributing either to world-building or the game's philosophical concerns. The base combat can get a bit repetitive after the 20 hour mark or so, and you can easily find yourself over-levelled for the fights you're engaging in; that said there's a gracefulness to the movement in the game that makes the combat generally satisfying, and the game is keen to dip into different genres and styles to try and mix things up and present different experiences.

I could probably list a few more minor complaints like this but it always feels like there's some twist that makes it actually fine, and like ultimately it just doesn't matter because everything else the game is doing in evoking this world, telling this story, and calling forth these emotions, is just so good. I can't remember the last time a game made me care this much, and feel this much.

Nier Automata is a work whose narrative pacing reflects the player's experiences with it.

It is an action game whose combat is flashy; stylistically incorporating design and framing schemes from shmups, belt scrollers, and twin sticks - but at its core, lacks mature enemy design or engaging systems.

It is a story that spends 80% of its runtime middling around, compacting the majority of its truly dramatic character moments into the last 5 hours of a 25-hour runtime.

Most of my playtime with Nier Automata was flaccid. I felt many positive, fleeting feelings towards surface-level elements, but never carried those reactions with me into my everyday. I felt few overtly-negative emotions, but always felt... emptiness, like there was something better I could be doing with my time.

It took me 5 months to finish.

Am I doing it wrong?

Nier Automata's feelings are expressed through the hollow: Its RPG growth systems tedious to engage with and providing little felt reward, its story signaling plot twists extremely early through shamelessly on-the-nose beats, and its core loop being built on world navigation and battles that never inconvenience but always instigate hypertension.

Its ludonarrative framing devices constantly tease and twist the player's perception of itself. Will something bad happen later if I kill these enemies now? Will this dialogue choice be unfavorable? Am I flirting with combat, items, loadouts and my general playstyle wrong? Is the experience I am having right now - in this present moment, - optimal or objective?

But

What appears to be a choose-your-own-adventure wonderhorse turns out to be an extremely linear and objective throughline. You will start and end at the same points, no matter how much you kick and scream.

It's a pretty transparent echo of meaningless war, conformity, and faceless capitalism - buzzwords buzzwords buzzwords, but their cold hollowness is undeniable, nor their presence in the game's ludonarrative and overt text.

It's unmoving. It's concrete. It's inhuman.

What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point?

I need an answer. A sign. A hand to hold. A mother. A God.

My God is... "humans fight for themselves", or is it "humans fight for love"? What piece of the "humanity" puzzle is it that makes us what we are, when any one piece of the puzzle is disposable or - heaven forbid, replaceable? Is it the collective sum of these pieces that makes us, even if the humanity we perceive in others can be entirely faked?

What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point?What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the answer? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point? What's the point?

My answer is,

to refuse to answer.

For now.

Maybe tomorrow's me will have a better one.

Exciting, isn't it?

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Nier Automata is not a subversive piece of media. It is not "a mecha that focuses on the characters". Not one drop of spirit poured into it appeared out of thin air, and its ultimate takeaway is not even unique or a medium first. It is a synthesis of the experimental, messy ideas that have fallen into the gaming ether - from the talented and ameteurish, to the beloved and unseen. Judging from its impact over the last half-decade, it's impossible to deny it struck a chord in a way, time and place that others haven't yet.

The pieces of its puzzle are the sum of 4 decades of designers using inherently-inhuman tools to create life. To make people we perceive as real; to simulate action and re-action; to incite joy, anger, community, division, love, intolerance, laughter, despair.

"DO YOU THlNK GAMES ARE SILLY LITTLE THINGS?"

I guess it has an answer for itself. Huh. Good for them.

I've been meaning to write a proper review for this for years (and I'm still planning to), but I think Hattori's review is pretty much spot-on, especially as a rebuttal to some of the more low-hanging criticisms I've seen floating around. It is pretty clear that Automata is the kind of game where you either vibe with the (categorically uncool, decidedly no-good) idiosyncrasies of its director Yoko Taro—world-renowned scoundrel and self-professed creator of "weird games for weird people"—or you don't. As for me, I'm not ashamed to admit that the tonal, thematic, and emotional registers explored in both of the mainline NieR games have pretty much conquered my soul. All-encompassing sadness interlaced with the grotesque and the absurd, but also full of heart and empathy where it counts—that's my shit right there. Incidentally, ⁠I was originally drawn to the world of NieR after spontaneously giving the Automata soundtrack a spin and just instantly clicking with it on a fundamental level—in fact, I'd say the music is such an integral and representative part of the experience that you can likely skip this game if listening to a track like "City Ruins" doesn't immediately make you want to fuck off to some forlorn corner of the world and weep for the soul of humanity. And trust me, weep I shall, seeing to what extent lewd fanart of the ostensible protagonist is stealing the public spotlight away from the actual, real star of the game: the Small Stubby Machine.

At the risk of being sickeningly earnest On Line, I sincerely believe that Automata's Ending E is the emotional climax not just of Nier or Yoko Taro's oeuvre, but of all action-based video games to date. I know this sounds hyperbolic and many of you will understandably roll your eyes at such a ridiculous assertion, but out of the potentially thousands of games I've played since childhood, no other moment has come close to accomplishing what Platinum did in the last 10 minutes of this title. It's so powerful that I've thought about it almost every day since I first experienced it four years ago. I love this medium so much y'all

There was a time in my life when I touted this as one of my top 5 favorite games of all time. My reasoning was this: yeah, the combat kinda sucks, all the characters are totally flat, the character designs are shameless in a way that isn't cool, but the music is incredible and it made me think about some really fascinating stuff. It never really develops on those ideas in the game itself but I like what it makes me think about removed from the playing experience.

Nearly three years later, the effect of this game is wearing off, I've played more games and lived through more experiences, and I'm realizing: oh, that's actually, uh, not that great!