The amount of time I've spent thinking about this game is honestly ludicrous. A game that is truly more than the sum of its parts. The combat is overly mashy. The character models are downright ugly. The quest design is overly repetitive (hope you enjoy clearing out the Junk Heap) and the drop rates for items are abysmal (hope you enjoy killing the same three goats over and over because they only spawn in one spot in Act 2) and the by the second half of the game you can really tell how much the team was stretching out as much use they could out of the existing areas they had designed. (I don't want to think about how many times I've run through the block pushing puzzle rooms of the Lost Shrine.)

But Nier is probably my favourite game ever. I've 100%d it multiple times. I adore almost everything about this game. The fantastic voice work with Jamieson Price, Liam O'Brien, Laura Bailey, Julie Ann Taylor, Heather Hogan and Eden Riegel all giving what I would argue are the best performances of their careers. The feeling of casting magic spells punctuated with fantastic sound design that make it seems truly otherworldly and alien. Keiichi Okabe and Emi Evans's fabulous soundtrack that has been a mainstay of every MP3 player I've owned since playing this game. My absolute favourite party in any JRPG, with every single character being so well defined by the end of the game it was hard to say goodbye to any of them.

Nier is a game about love. A self destructive love. A love that is paradoxically neglectful. Love so strong that you're willing to destroy the world for it.

I love Nier, and it destroyed me. I destroyed Nier, and it loves me.