This review contains spoilers
I remember scrolling through the Metacritic page for Nier Automata and finding a 5/10 review that says exactly this:
"Loads of interesting ideas and plenty of good intentions, but nothing sticks. It’s like it was made by a team of people with super short attention spans. They’d come up with a good idea, carry it half way, then get distracted by another thought, and do it all over again until ending up with an unfocused, unsatisfying, incomplete product."
After finally getting to play this game and finishing all the routes for myself, I can say that I totally see where this guy is coming from, the story is an amalgamation of very intriguing themes that don't get explored beyond surface-level, populated by bland one-note main characters whose substance seems to be mostly found in external media instead of the actual game. I honestly laughed at most of the attempts at sad scenes, like where characters like Eve and 9S become cartoonishly angry after experiencing loss in separate moments of the story, which I thought was meant to be a parallel at first with Eve going insane while 9S learns to deal with his grief and finds a new purpose in life, but nah, that's not how it went at all, instead we got two characters going through essentially the same story. Credit where it's due, there are some great scenes/moments, like the start of route C which was a strong set-up for what was ultimately an underwhelming story, the last main quest at Pascal's Village was also one of my favorite moments in the game. Now that I think about it, Pascal might be the only character I actually gave a shit about, his endgame genuinely broke my heart a bit.
Anyway, the lore and the setting are by far the best parts of this whole narrative, a lot of sidequests unironically offer better stories than the main one and add more to the overall worldbuilding, this was mainly what kept me playing, especially the sidequests that involved characters from the original Nier. The twists regarding the setting and the whole story behind the battle between Yorha and the machines are genuinely fantastic, I just wish it was tied to a story and characters that actually complemented those elements well.
Oh, and the gameplay, which is mostly pretty fun, Platinum Games combat is satisfying even if it's toned down a notch to suit an Action RPG, though the combat becomes button-mashy as hell once you get some really good battle chips and pod abilities that favor this approach. The genre shifts to 2D platforming and bullet hell sections keep the game from becoming too repetitive without overstaying their welcome either, so it's generally well done in that regard. It also has some god tier music, but that's expected from MONACA, who always does a fantastic job at whatever thing they compose for.
But yeah, I didn't outright hate Nier Automata, in fact I think a 5/10 score like that reviewer gave it is a bit harsh, a 6 feels more appropriate. It might be more polished than the original Nier, but honestly I'd much rather have a less polished game that actually makes me feel something than a more polished game I'll be having a decent time with, but then probably forget about it after a couple of weeks. Sure, if you love this game and found it to be this incredibly deep and philosophical masterpiece, good to you, but I personally felt a bit let down by the time I was destroying the credits.
"Loads of interesting ideas and plenty of good intentions, but nothing sticks. It’s like it was made by a team of people with super short attention spans. They’d come up with a good idea, carry it half way, then get distracted by another thought, and do it all over again until ending up with an unfocused, unsatisfying, incomplete product."
After finally getting to play this game and finishing all the routes for myself, I can say that I totally see where this guy is coming from, the story is an amalgamation of very intriguing themes that don't get explored beyond surface-level, populated by bland one-note main characters whose substance seems to be mostly found in external media instead of the actual game. I honestly laughed at most of the attempts at sad scenes, like where characters like Eve and 9S become cartoonishly angry after experiencing loss in separate moments of the story, which I thought was meant to be a parallel at first with Eve going insane while 9S learns to deal with his grief and finds a new purpose in life, but nah, that's not how it went at all, instead we got two characters going through essentially the same story. Credit where it's due, there are some great scenes/moments, like the start of route C which was a strong set-up for what was ultimately an underwhelming story, the last main quest at Pascal's Village was also one of my favorite moments in the game. Now that I think about it, Pascal might be the only character I actually gave a shit about, his endgame genuinely broke my heart a bit.
Anyway, the lore and the setting are by far the best parts of this whole narrative, a lot of sidequests unironically offer better stories than the main one and add more to the overall worldbuilding, this was mainly what kept me playing, especially the sidequests that involved characters from the original Nier. The twists regarding the setting and the whole story behind the battle between Yorha and the machines are genuinely fantastic, I just wish it was tied to a story and characters that actually complemented those elements well.
Oh, and the gameplay, which is mostly pretty fun, Platinum Games combat is satisfying even if it's toned down a notch to suit an Action RPG, though the combat becomes button-mashy as hell once you get some really good battle chips and pod abilities that favor this approach. The genre shifts to 2D platforming and bullet hell sections keep the game from becoming too repetitive without overstaying their welcome either, so it's generally well done in that regard. It also has some god tier music, but that's expected from MONACA, who always does a fantastic job at whatever thing they compose for.
But yeah, I didn't outright hate Nier Automata, in fact I think a 5/10 score like that reviewer gave it is a bit harsh, a 6 feels more appropriate. It might be more polished than the original Nier, but honestly I'd much rather have a less polished game that actually makes me feel something than a more polished game I'll be having a decent time with, but then probably forget about it after a couple of weeks. Sure, if you love this game and found it to be this incredibly deep and philosophical masterpiece, good to you, but I personally felt a bit let down by the time I was destroying the credits.