When I first touched down on the Sector 7 Slums, after getting off the train, I cried. It's difficult to really boil down those euphoric feelings floating in my brain, the complete wonder and majesty I was experiencing, or seeing something that I cherish captured in painstakingly incredible detail. This tipping point for me defines the whole game, and surprises me at every turn with how much it genuinely understands and soulfully carries the legacy it now seeks to work atop of and, in some cases, defy.

Simultaneously, it's difficult for me to know where to begin talking about the game from here. There's so much to talk about that is just going to come off as fangirling gushing. And while I'm not ashamed of that, I still don't want to say more than I really need to.

I think I'd like to describe another scene, a bit of small spoilers ahead. There's a point of falling action where the cast has to decide what the next option should be. In the middle of the night you walk out to see Barret in the garden, thinking about what keeps him going. He talks to you about his reverence for the people he's known, implying that he's lost them. He tells a history of the wonderful happiness each of them brought, that he continues marching forward with. It's such a powerful characterizing moment for Barret. It as well is a heartfelt honest telling of how these characters act, and respond to what's in front of them.

There's a moment where the game goes full on against its legacy, cutting the threads metacontextually to forge a path of its own. That path is laid in with a next-level orchestration that blissfully captures the energy, and a combat system that is absolutely excellent and is tested to its complete limits here. The final bosses, like ones before, offer incredible tactics and balancing acts between the ATB management and correct positioning. And I fucking loved every single minute of it.

There are a few niggles of course. The pacing is off-center and leads to a lot of parts that outstay their welcome. The combat system while I can heap praise and honestly analyze in a lot more detail than I'm putting here, has issues in terms of feedback both in learning the systems as well as enemy telegraphs. There's also full-on meme additions that really should've been left to the cutting board.

Either way, FF7R surpasses all my memories and feelings of the original. Despite barely taking up like 15-20% of the original game's plotline, it exceeds the entire game. I really can't wait for the unknown adventure ahead.

Flawed in so many ways and filled with irritating AAA bloat, but I have literally been physically unable to get it out of my head for nearly a year.

One day I'll write something more substantive about this strange, stupid, smart, weird game. For now, I'll just say that I was 110% convinced I would hate this and it ended up being a game that sometimes, a year on, I'll just sit and think about for an hour. It's magical when that happens.

I truly miss that steel sky.

I didn’t think i would be giving out the worst game i ever played contender out so soon, let alone a .5 stars but i cannot stress enough about how i disliked everything about this video game. I played this game hoping at the very least would be better than nier automata (low expectations because i didn’t like automata) but even then it failed.

First, would be of course the gameplay of the game, now automata isnt known for its quality in combat, enemy variation, bosses, exploration just about everything but the story(which still is pretty underwhelming) and that doesn’t change with replicant but its much worse, the combat had potential to be better than automata but all of it went out the door with replicants poor enemy variation and boss battle design etc. You go from like 8 abilities with Weiss book to forced to having one of them in ur arsenal since all the bosses are in the air and dark lance is the only ability that takes out air enemies and all the other abilities are pretty much useless or take too much time when u can simply dodge or block, so i was stuck with dark lance and dark hand for the entire game.

Referring back to the point of enemy variation, replicant falls incredibly short on creating a grindy engaging rpg, all the enemies use the same attacks and pretty much are sponges which eliminates all potential difficulty of the game. The bosses aren’t much different, they are all usually in the air so majority of the fight ur spamming dark lance and waiting for the blue bar to slowly refill up to repeat the same actions. The boss fights are just straight up awful, theres no uniqueness or identity that makes any of the bosses stick out and they are basically just a bigger version of common enemies.

Exploration is downright awful, and the fact that majority of the game is a fetch and report just makes the world feel so dead and repetitive. the world building is hardly apparent and the only area with potential (the desert kingdom) felt rushed and poorly executed. Dungeons in this game are probably the most boring areas to explore and the puzzles don’t make it any better, it’s disrespectful to even call them puzzles cuz its just stupid shit that makes the game more tedious (PRIME EXAMPLE;FOREST OF THE MYTH)

The soundtrack of this game is actually terrible, i know people like to praise this game for its music but it literally sounds the same, high pitch choir with the same set of orchestra or it sounds like they took automata soundtrack and reused it, theres no originality in its soundtrack and the game plays the same 5 soundtrack the entire game which just becomes boring.

One last thing about the gameplay is its graphics and voice acting, the graphics look very awkward especially during cutscenes, characters barely show expressions on their face or it doesn’t even match the situation and the voice acting (Japanese va btw) doesn’t make it better, the quality sounds like it was recorded under a thick blanket.

Unfortunately the gameplay isn’t the only thing bad about this game, debatably not even the worst about this game, what i hate most about nier replicant is its story.
I honestly dont know where to begin, the story feels like if you gave the fans who wrote ANR (Aot no requiem which is a shitty fan-made ending for those who don’t know) the opportunity to make a story inspired from the concepts of aot. both protagonists start off with losing smth they care for and declare to kill every last of these creatures, difference is aot does it in a unique compelling way which makes the story amazing while replicant does the exact opposite.

Replicant suffers majorly from its poor execution and nier protag suffers the most from it as to me he was the only character who i thought was interesting but didn’t get the depth he deserved due to yoko taros tendency to put more detail on the ass of the main female lead and his unoriginal fetch quests that does not progress the plot. The one thing that bothers me the most is kaine, i feel like kaine wearing her undergarments cuz of her being unisex so she has the need to reveal herself to represent a “feminine” characteristics is an excuse for yoko taro to sexualize another female character and appeal it to players, cuz her concept was just awfully executed and jus poor writing all around. every other character is just there and don’t rlly add much

As I said before the plot of replicant hardly progresses because of its fetch and report for majority of the game so it literally feels like the plot gets split in two parts which is: Yonah is sick, protag ask popola about medicine for yonah, she will say no then send us off to a fetch mission for that whole first half then the time skip happens which turns to yonah gets captured by shadowlord, nier protag ask popola about shadow lord and yonahs wherabouts, she will say nothing important and then she will send you to a fetch mission, its horribly structured and hard to play through.

Its honestly hard to take this game seriously alot of the cutscenes have the most bullshit convenience or some dumbshit happening, like how many times did kaine nearly fucking died due to her having the reaction time of a sloth and how she forgets she has the ability to jump really fucking high, or the junk heap incident where jakob clearly dies trying to save Gideon after his clumsy ass almost got himself killed and then Gideon develops hatred to the robot who happens to jus be standing there, Gideon never shown any type of self hatred to himself for his brothers death and its jus stupid, another stupid cutscene is when emil blows up an entire town after he randomly goes on a rampage, just out of nowhere with no lead up or anything, and
had zero impact on the story, like it was forgotten right after that shit and his rampage never happened again, thats how random it is. I could go on and on about these stupid cutscenes but i would be typing the longest review ever.

The fact you have replay the game 4 times to fully grasp the lore of the game is absolutely terrible and it doesn’t make the game have replay value, it makes the game worse in fact especially since replicant barely adds any new content in each of its route. You shouldn’t have to play the game more than twice to grasp all the content of the game anything more than that is absurd.

In conclusion, nothing about nier replicant does anything i like in a video game and a complete waste of time, unless you like to look at an woman’s ass crack for hours and hours then i do not recommend this game.