Coming off a high from P5R and wanting to consume as much P5 content as I could I jumped directly into this game after finishing Royal. The highlights of this game are the characters and their interactions, and more shenanigans with the old crew from P5. The story isn't as strong but does have some great moments, especially during the second half of the game. Sophia and Zenkichi are great character additions and I enjoyed them in the game. The combat, however, was my least favorite part of the game - exploiting weaknesses like you're supposed to in SMT games completely drains your SP and for some reason pulling off the combos with the proper element doesn't quite always work or is less effective. The bosses are also huge health sponges and get boring after a while. The dungeons are also mostly pretty boring and not as fun to explore as it's predecessor, and the sidequests feel like filler. Overall fun if you enjoyed the story elements of P5, but the combat is a very big drawback for people who enjoyed the combat in P5.

I feel like I've fallen for some sort of cruel prank with how many accolades the Nier series has, for me to play this game and absolutely hate it. The combat is pretty damn boring, slash, shoot, dodge, that's all been done before and there's nothing that this game adds that makes it stand out; but I can overlook that if the rest of the game is good. Okay, so what else is there? The mission structure is a mess; most of it is just walking from destination to destination and doing the same boring combat. Fast travel is there during the later parts of the game but its pretty inconvenient, and the loading screens take forever even on a PS5. Not looking so great. I guess the reason why people like this game is the story then, right? Alright.

So I play through ending A. There's some interesting moments in the story, a couple of characters have a lot of personality and stand out, but overall the story is kind of disjointed with strange pacing, and the resolution of ending A leaves a lot of unanswered questions. Alright, no problem, I've heard this game has multiple endings so I'm sure the story will be developed more in the other endings. What does ending B have in store for us? Maybe we play as a different characters, or maybe the story is abridged to the important moments so that we can see things from a different perspective?

Nope. It's the same second half of the game, as the same character from ending A, except this time there's more cutscenes and exposition relating to another character. At this point I was pissed, since the core gameplay, as discussed before, is not fun. But I stuck though it, and I was rewarded with the same repetitive slog of gameplay and a few more cutscenes and dialog (which would have not been out of place on the original playthrough!).

Once again disappointed, I go online and I find out that you have to do the second half of the game, along with the boring combat and the repetitive walking and backtracking, a THIRD time to get the subsequent endings. Which is when I stopped, because so far this game has not earned my attention enough for me to replay a third time. I'm honestly dying to know, is it really worth it? Even if the other ending have a life-changing conclusion, would that have been worth the 40+ hours of my time to reach them? Please explain this to me. I simply can't justify it.

0.5 stars cause that's the lowest rating I can give, + 1 star cause admittedly the music is pretty good. Overall extremely disappointing for all the hype this series receives. I plan to play Automata next, and if that game does even a little better than this game, then MAYBE I might return to see the full endings, but we'll see.

Edit after finishing Automata 5/14/21: I'll add one more star cause I have a better appreciation of what Taro was trying to do here, but unfortunately I will never see the other endings cause no fucking way am I slogging any more of this game to collect all the weapons lmao.

Alright, this one's good.

Went into this game after feeling extremely disappointed with Nier Replicant 1.22, and still trying to find what exactly made this series special. Certainly, this game is much more solid and succeeds in delivering the director's vision to the player much more effectively than Replicant. The combat is much improved, and feels way more responsive and dynamic. The storytelling is much more engaging and cohesive (impressive, as this story isn't what I would call character-driven like Replicant's). The approach to add multiple playthroughs and endings is much better executed, and this is coming from someone who generally has a hard time replaying games; you only truly "replay" part of the game once, and each ending and playthrough has you switching between different characters and lets you explore different arcs and perspectives for each of them. The world is, to use an overused descriptor, truly "hauntingly beautiful" and accompanied with another amazing score, makes you think about what events transpired in the thousands and thousands of years since the humans left earth. There's a lot to say about the themes and philosophies this game tackles, which definitely adds to the experience, even if they are things you realize after the fact; the video essayists on YouTube who are smarter than me do a much better job at explaining though.

My only regret with this game is rushing towards the finish line to see the endings, and while they were worth it, I think this is a game that you can just take in and appreciate the world, characters, music, story, and atmosphere that were created for this experience. Thanks Yoko Taro.