i think nier automata is a game someone should go into with as little knowledge about the story as you can manage. but it is also a game that won’t be ruined by you knowing even big plot twists. i bought this game after learning about route C and really wanted to see how we got from point A to C. still blew my socks clean off and consumed around 60 hours of my time.
i played the switch edition (the end of yorha). this has its own entry on backloggd but i'm posting my review on this page anyway. will keep spoilers to a minimum but it's hard to talk about the best parts of the game so just Take My Word For It Okay
The Fun:
- combat! you will be doing this a lot. while it looks simple on the surface different weapons have different combos that you can upgrade and switch between which gives more variety than you'd expect, and your support pod has its own set of abilities you can mess with.
but the real game-changer are the chips you can equip to suit whatever build you want. long-range? short-range? tank? glass cannon? whatever you want. the chips are the best part and you will be in no shortage. you have three characters you will play as significantly and 2B is your first; she has the least gimmicks so personally had more fun with the other two.
- hacking! this is 9S's special ability, as a replacement for his heavy attack. it is incredibly broken. it takes you into a shoot-em-up section with a variety of minigames you can get depending on the complexity of the enemy. this can break the flow of your usual hack-and-slash but i personally LOVE hacking because of how broken it is.
particularly, if you hack an enemy that hasn't gotten murder red eyes, you can also subjugate it to attack for you or even remote-control it to fight as it until it dies. you also use hacking to open chests that you can't open with the other PCs
- exploration! the world is super pretty. your characters run surprisingly fast but if you wanna go faster you can ride animals. fast travel is unlocked pretty early on in your first playthrough (and needs to be re-unlocked in the second but is available in the third from the start) and it is incredibly convenient. your fast-travel points are also your save spots. You need to save.
- side quests! fetch quests aren't as much of a pain as they could be since your map is marked to show you where you get the supplies you need. not all side quests are created equal but i think even if some of them are a pain to play the story behind them can be anything from hilarious to heartwarming to really depressing. because of this two of my favorites are escort quests! ESCORT QUESTS! side quests also give you a fuckton of EXP so go do them!!!
- soundtrack! this game uses a dynamic soundtrack and uses it SO well - versions flow through each other seamlessly. every track is a banger and the vocal tracks have such amazing singers that even when they're singing in chaos language (which is what most songs are in) they still make you feel things. there are a couple of tracks ported or remixed from the original nier and they are also used masterfully.
- story! i had some trouble getting into the story on a first playthrough but subsequent playthroughs further expand on it and make you realize just how 20:20 hindsight is. because this is a Yoko Taro game the story is distributed across 3 playthroughs; the first is a series of events from 2B's perspective (route A), the second is the same events from 9S's perspective (route B), and the third is... 🥴 (route C/D - the split between the C and D endings only happens at the very end of this route so i call it C or CD). and even if the story isn't the best in terms of events when yoko taro wants you to feel things by god he will do it.
also, this is a very distant sequel to nier (gestalt? replicant? i think both are canon but only replicant got remade?) and while i never played that game or any of the drakengards i still enjoyed it. if you did play nier you can point at automata and be like "Hey!!! I know the thing!!!"
- voice acting! i can't speak for the voice acting in other languages but holy mama the english cast is amazing. unfortunately 2B’s dub voice seems to be a point of contention. while she’s definitely more sassy (japanese 2B is just monotone but sounds more gentle than stern), i think her deeper character is still clear enough. more than that i have to swear my allegiance to english 9S because i think Kyle McCarley is a godly voice actor and his performance in route CD was what drew me to the game. unfortunately both english and japanese voice casts do have sex pests in them but there's not much you can do about that
- chapter select! this is a function you unlock once you get either ending C or D (whichever one you pick first) towards the end of the game. this allows you to go back on your existing or new save file to any story quest. i cannot begin to explain how good this is to get to anything you may have missed previously. thus the amount of things you can permanently miss are very few and the most important of this is ending Y
- DLC! there's some dlc automatically added to the switch port that i think you can also get on other versions. some cosmetics some battle colosseums. it's what you get after you finish the main 6 stages of each that i really recommend. Go Get The Amazarashi Ending.
The Maybe and Meh
- a lot of story content is relegated to side novels, stage plays, even fucking concerts. at the very least some of this material is available in the game (the pearl harbor incident has a dedicated stage play, but there are three in-game novels you can get through anemone in route CD that tell the tale as well). but the game does a good job of standing on its own merits in my humble opinion.
- lots of people find route B to be a slog, due to how you basically play the game again with most differences coming with the expanded enemy backstories and moments in which 9S is separate from 2B. personally i thought it wasn’t that bad because i wrapped it up in a fraction of the time i spent on A (i skipped most cutscenes and also skipped most combat via hacking. super OP i tell you.)
i could see a case for it being combined with route A but i do like how they make you play the same story twice to lull you into a false sense of security before BAM. route CD enters the fray and metaphorically smashes your balls in with a meat tenderizer. though i’m a little mad i would have missed all the N2 cameos in the cutscenes had i also skipped the final scene in route B. and that i had to wait until they gave me fast travel back. mostly i think i just liked 9S so much that i was happy to play as him :)
- there are these dudes named adam and eve. i think their inclusion in route A was pretty clunky but route B gives them more time to shine so i'm not as mad about this but i just want to note it.
- i feel like because of the nature of how most sidequests are doable in route A and B this game spent a lot of time waffling about the question of “do machines actually have feelings? or are they just imitating humans without understanding?” where a side quest would clearly have them start to consider the truth of the matter and then you go back to the main story and they take turns holding the “machines don’t feel” ball. this is better in route CD at least.
The Bad
- glitches - mostly audio but there were times where quest elements just straight up did not spawn unless i restarted the game? weird. otherwise 80% of the time the glitches just amount to “sound effects don’t work when hacking”
- frame dips happened to me whenever i was in the shopping mall or there were too many enemies at thee start of route C. switch ran this game well aside from these hiccups but i just wanna mention them.
- exclusive to end of yorha, nintendo online sucks piss with this game in particular. many players’ tutorial data are stuck at 98% bc of how hard it is to find other people’s corpses (protip: soul box. pile of bodies when you hack into the yellow thing at the top). the game disconnects you from network functions like nobody's business even if you have nintendy online.
i'm also not sure if it's... possible to get the most out of ending E without nintendo switch online? i personally used my free trial for this (having seen it coming) but wow.
- the competionist 100% grind in endgame if you subscribe to it is also a pain in the ass. mostly with the rare enemy and fish spawns. i did it (minus the special challenges in the colosseums because i didn't need them to finish the quest) but christ almighty
- fuck hegel. fuck that boss in particular. i think it was a terrible time to introduce berserker mode considering there's an optional boss that is just hegel 2 and i wiped my ass with that boss using 9S.
nonetheless. this is a game that made me cry twice (chapter 14, ending E) and both times were over things i was already spoiled for no less. Ending E is one of the best things i've ever experienced in anything and i'd call automata GOTY every year for that alone. go play nier automata. maybe not on the switch. but play nier automata. Peak fiction.
i played the switch edition (the end of yorha). this has its own entry on backloggd but i'm posting my review on this page anyway. will keep spoilers to a minimum but it's hard to talk about the best parts of the game so just Take My Word For It Okay
The Fun:
- combat! you will be doing this a lot. while it looks simple on the surface different weapons have different combos that you can upgrade and switch between which gives more variety than you'd expect, and your support pod has its own set of abilities you can mess with.
but the real game-changer are the chips you can equip to suit whatever build you want. long-range? short-range? tank? glass cannon? whatever you want. the chips are the best part and you will be in no shortage. you have three characters you will play as significantly and 2B is your first; she has the least gimmicks so personally had more fun with the other two.
- hacking! this is 9S's special ability, as a replacement for his heavy attack. it is incredibly broken. it takes you into a shoot-em-up section with a variety of minigames you can get depending on the complexity of the enemy. this can break the flow of your usual hack-and-slash but i personally LOVE hacking because of how broken it is.
particularly, if you hack an enemy that hasn't gotten murder red eyes, you can also subjugate it to attack for you or even remote-control it to fight as it until it dies. you also use hacking to open chests that you can't open with the other PCs
- exploration! the world is super pretty. your characters run surprisingly fast but if you wanna go faster you can ride animals. fast travel is unlocked pretty early on in your first playthrough (and needs to be re-unlocked in the second but is available in the third from the start) and it is incredibly convenient. your fast-travel points are also your save spots. You need to save.
- side quests! fetch quests aren't as much of a pain as they could be since your map is marked to show you where you get the supplies you need. not all side quests are created equal but i think even if some of them are a pain to play the story behind them can be anything from hilarious to heartwarming to really depressing. because of this two of my favorites are escort quests! ESCORT QUESTS! side quests also give you a fuckton of EXP so go do them!!!
- soundtrack! this game uses a dynamic soundtrack and uses it SO well - versions flow through each other seamlessly. every track is a banger and the vocal tracks have such amazing singers that even when they're singing in chaos language (which is what most songs are in) they still make you feel things. there are a couple of tracks ported or remixed from the original nier and they are also used masterfully.
- story! i had some trouble getting into the story on a first playthrough but subsequent playthroughs further expand on it and make you realize just how 20:20 hindsight is. because this is a Yoko Taro game the story is distributed across 3 playthroughs; the first is a series of events from 2B's perspective (route A), the second is the same events from 9S's perspective (route B), and the third is... 🥴 (route C/D - the split between the C and D endings only happens at the very end of this route so i call it C or CD). and even if the story isn't the best in terms of events when yoko taro wants you to feel things by god he will do it.
also, this is a very distant sequel to nier (gestalt? replicant? i think both are canon but only replicant got remade?) and while i never played that game or any of the drakengards i still enjoyed it. if you did play nier you can point at automata and be like "Hey!!! I know the thing!!!"
- voice acting! i can't speak for the voice acting in other languages but holy mama the english cast is amazing. unfortunately 2B’s dub voice seems to be a point of contention. while she’s definitely more sassy (japanese 2B is just monotone but sounds more gentle than stern), i think her deeper character is still clear enough. more than that i have to swear my allegiance to english 9S because i think Kyle McCarley is a godly voice actor and his performance in route CD was what drew me to the game. unfortunately both english and japanese voice casts do have sex pests in them but there's not much you can do about that
- chapter select! this is a function you unlock once you get either ending C or D (whichever one you pick first) towards the end of the game. this allows you to go back on your existing or new save file to any story quest. i cannot begin to explain how good this is to get to anything you may have missed previously. thus the amount of things you can permanently miss are very few and the most important of this is ending Y
- DLC! there's some dlc automatically added to the switch port that i think you can also get on other versions. some cosmetics some battle colosseums. it's what you get after you finish the main 6 stages of each that i really recommend. Go Get The Amazarashi Ending.
The Maybe and Meh
- a lot of story content is relegated to side novels, stage plays, even fucking concerts. at the very least some of this material is available in the game (the pearl harbor incident has a dedicated stage play, but there are three in-game novels you can get through anemone in route CD that tell the tale as well). but the game does a good job of standing on its own merits in my humble opinion.
- lots of people find route B to be a slog, due to how you basically play the game again with most differences coming with the expanded enemy backstories and moments in which 9S is separate from 2B. personally i thought it wasn’t that bad because i wrapped it up in a fraction of the time i spent on A (i skipped most cutscenes and also skipped most combat via hacking. super OP i tell you.)
i could see a case for it being combined with route A but i do like how they make you play the same story twice to lull you into a false sense of security before BAM. route CD enters the fray and metaphorically smashes your balls in with a meat tenderizer. though i’m a little mad i would have missed all the N2 cameos in the cutscenes had i also skipped the final scene in route B. and that i had to wait until they gave me fast travel back. mostly i think i just liked 9S so much that i was happy to play as him :)
- there are these dudes named adam and eve. i think their inclusion in route A was pretty clunky but route B gives them more time to shine so i'm not as mad about this but i just want to note it.
- i feel like because of the nature of how most sidequests are doable in route A and B this game spent a lot of time waffling about the question of “do machines actually have feelings? or are they just imitating humans without understanding?” where a side quest would clearly have them start to consider the truth of the matter and then you go back to the main story and they take turns holding the “machines don’t feel” ball. this is better in route CD at least.
The Bad
- glitches - mostly audio but there were times where quest elements just straight up did not spawn unless i restarted the game? weird. otherwise 80% of the time the glitches just amount to “sound effects don’t work when hacking”
- frame dips happened to me whenever i was in the shopping mall or there were too many enemies at thee start of route C. switch ran this game well aside from these hiccups but i just wanna mention them.
- exclusive to end of yorha, nintendo online sucks piss with this game in particular. many players’ tutorial data are stuck at 98% bc of how hard it is to find other people’s corpses (protip: soul box. pile of bodies when you hack into the yellow thing at the top). the game disconnects you from network functions like nobody's business even if you have nintendy online.
i'm also not sure if it's... possible to get the most out of ending E without nintendo switch online? i personally used my free trial for this (having seen it coming) but wow.
- the competionist 100% grind in endgame if you subscribe to it is also a pain in the ass. mostly with the rare enemy and fish spawns. i did it (minus the special challenges in the colosseums because i didn't need them to finish the quest) but christ almighty
- fuck hegel. fuck that boss in particular. i think it was a terrible time to introduce berserker mode considering there's an optional boss that is just hegel 2 and i wiped my ass with that boss using 9S.
nonetheless. this is a game that made me cry twice (chapter 14, ending E) and both times were over things i was already spoiled for no less. Ending E is one of the best things i've ever experienced in anything and i'd call automata GOTY every year for that alone. go play nier automata. maybe not on the switch. but play nier automata. Peak fiction.
NOWITSREYNTIME17
6 months ago