JRPG: Nier Automata
Entry posted by Clephas
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The Nier/Drakengard series is one of the single weirdest series out there. It's games range from DW-style man vs armies with dragon flight simulation elements to heavy action-rpgs like the Nier games. The Nier series originates with one of Drakengard's endings, where the protagonist and his dragon get thrown into another dimension and end up getting impaled on the Tokyo Tower after having it out with the JSDF. This leads to the events of Nier, a thousand years later.
The original Nier's story is incredibly grim, in keeping with the almost Lovecraftian nature of the universe built up since Drakengard (if you want more details, I'd suggest playing Drakengard 3, reading the novellas, then reading a summary of the events in Drakengard, since that game has aged so horribly as to be almost unplayable). Hope turns to despair, the player's actions lead to mass extinctions, and simple motivations create terrible consequences.
Automata doesn't differ significantly from the original Nier in that sense. Don't expect a happy ending to the saga told across three separate paths in Nier Automata (first the perspective of 2B, then 9S, then a unified plotline that has you switching back and forth between two characters until the true end). This game is based yet another thousand years in the future from the original Nier, and, if you go looking for them, it is quite possible to find remnants of the past, though fragmentary.
The story starts with 2B, a battle android from an organization called YoRHa, coming to the surface from a space station in order to begin operations against the machine lifeforms that infest the ground and sea. No humans remain on the surface, and android resistance fighters desperately try to keep the machines' numbers down, though these efforts are of questionable effect considering the speed with which the machines multiply.
2B is a quiet female type, who is very focused on her mission and inevitably terse with the more cheerful 9S. As a fighter, she is a close-up physical combat specialist, and the pod floating around her head provides her only means of fighting at range until you get shockwave chips. She lacks the inquisitiveness of 9S, as she is a battle-oriented model, and for those hoping for a lively relationship between the two, only disappointment awaits.
9S is a scanner model, designed for recon behind enemy lines and hacking rather than raw combat power. It is a great deal harder to fight using him, in my experience, as you end up relying on hacking to defeat most enemies on normal and above. If you suck at evading attacks, you'll die quick in this game, either way.
Automata has an open world, with all areas being accessible without loading screens, though certain ones can only be accessed after the story progresses. Battles are frenetic and fast-paced, inevitably requiring that you master the timing of evasion and attacks with various enemies, lest you die with unseemly quickness (with some bosses, I say with guilt that I chose to go to easy difficulty, lol).
Typical of a game by this team, the music is superb... no game in this series has lacked for a good soundtrack, and this game is no exception. That said, it does fall slightly short of the original Nier's godly soundtrack, despite making a good effort.
Visually, this game takes decent advantage of the capabilities of a modern console, and I didn't see any of the bugs I'm accustomed to running into in western rpgs (clipping, sudden freezes, falling through the ground, etc).
This game has a nice jumping mechanic, allowing you to jump twice, use the pod to throw yourself forward, use the evade button to thrust yourself forward, and attack with your weapons to inch yourself forward... making it possible to get across some surprisingly big gaps without too much trouble, though the timing of these jump techniques can be tricky for the action-game incompetent (of which I count myself a member). I did, at times, long for a character who could jump tall buildings in a single bound, but I found more than enough amusement in hacking giant robots and using them to lay to waste their own allies before using their self-destruct buttons, lol.
If there is one thing this game needed that it didn't provide, it was a more varied series of enemies. For robots that supposedly self-evolve, there are relatively few differing shapes of enemy in the general sense.
Story-wise... like most of the series, there is a deliberate sense of 'fill it out yourself by interacting with the world'. If you ignore the side-quests, it is difficult to get emotionally involved in the conflict, and the revelations on the way will inevitably lack impact. I cried at several points of the game, almost despite myself... and that was with the initial protagonist being the opposite of talkative most of the time. The game isn't terribly long... I managed to finish it in about eighteen hours (endings A, B, and C) if you ignore the time I spent sitting there, thinking about what I wanted to do next.
The chip system, which is essentially your non-weapon equipment system, is fairly deep... but I'll be honest when I say I ignored most of the complex crap. I stuck with self-heal, attack buffs, shockwaves, movement speed enhancers, and a few other basic chips throughout the entire game. The only real customization I did was chip fusion to make higher level chips with lower slot costs. At hard and above, I suppose using everything the system offers is absolutely necessary, but I didn't find it so on normal.
In the end, this game is awesome for fans of the series, but I can honestly say I wouldn't have picked it up if I hadn't been following the series since the original Drakengard. A lot of the attraction for me was the sense of continuity and the knowledge that easter eggs from the original Nier were lying around to be found in-game. Don't expect a happy ending to this story... or even a satisfying one. Too many people have died, too much has been destroyed for there to be any sense of personal salvation brought out from the darkness enveloping the world in this game. That said, that is typical of the series, since most of the endings for the games have been psychotic, bad, evil, terrible, etc. I mean, the giant flying carnivorous babies in one of the endings of Drakengard are one of my most memorable moments in my gaming life.
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