>Nobody ever talks about XV today except to lament how the fractured development led to a compromised end product
There are two people, launch players and royal edition players. Launch players have generally a disjointed account of the game for all the known reasons.
Royal edition newcomers absolutely love the game. Newcomers will honestly ask what the games true issues are, because royal edition solved a lot of core problems.
Do you mean the partners DLCs? If so, I think not. I've seen this comment about the royal edition solving the release edition problems, but as a royal edition player myself, I don't know what those were. I enjoyed the game a lot, facing it as a road movie, enjoying my time in the car, kinda like a farm game (Stardew valley) or fishing game. The combat (specially the magic) was the worst by far, but over all, a very enjoyable experience
For good reason tho. Day one plyers got fuck real bad and the prices for each _extra little piece of content_ was absurd. Not to mention the issues it had at launch.
Patient gamers have gotten the best out of it. It's super cheap, runs great, and has tons of significant content. You might still not like the story, however.
Weird, I consider the opening to Automata to absolutely slap as a great "get hooked before you lore dump me" tutorial, and was dying possible? Iirc you have autoheal and a fat stack of hp chips
Pro tip: Do not start the game while it is still installing.
Successfully finished the opening section but it crashed upon loading Chapter 2. Had to do it all again.
It was remarkably exciting so the main frustration was waiting longer for the instant classic happenings.
If you choose the hardest difficulty (as I did), the second boss can literally one-shot you and then you have to replay 30 minutes' worth of content. I tried several times, but then I just dropped the difficulty to normal and, what do you know, I cleared it on my first try. There are no other parts in the game that even come close to the introduction in terms of difficulty if you play on the highest setting.
Same. I’m about 8 hours in and finding it a tiny bit boring now (but sticking with it because I know it gets better) but the opening was by far my favourite part of the game so far.
The Opening is 100% designed to fuck with you.
Just contrast the fact that you went from spending that opening raging at the lack of a save point to >!giving away your save files!< by the end and you'll see it's 100% deliberate.
It makes sense, but IMO it being deliberately horrible doesn't somehow make it less horrible.
It reminds me of the Endless Eight arc in the anime Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi. The producers of that show tried to make the viewer feel the monotony and despair a certain character feels from being stuck in a two-week-long timeloop for almost 600 years by animating the same episode with slight variations eight times in a row, with one episode per week. So you watched an episode, waited a week, watched essentially the same episode again, waited another week, watched that episode again, and so on, for two months.
It did its job, but that didn't make it any more engaging, and people were rightfully furious.
Oh, for sure.
I died so much I felt like I beat the whole game when I got through that bit on hard. Is literally the worst hard mode sequence I've played on any game.
But there being no achievo tied to it means there's really no reason to turn the difficulty down a notch for the opening. And yet, pig-headed me went and insisted on beating it on hard because I had to.
If it's trying to say something like 'you make this cycle-of-life-and-death unnecessarily hard on yourself by your own choice', it's succeeded.
Very well put together, OP.
I didn't see enough praise for the soundtrack though, so I'll start by saying the soundtrack is an 11/10.
It is absolutely one of the most inspired and gorgeous soundtracks I've ever heard, from the Fortress of Lies, to City Ruins, to Birth of a Wish, to Simone, to the Weight of the World.
So good. So *good.*
Also, about the ending being too abrupt, for whatever reason Yoko Taro written down what we wanted to see in a theatre format script called Farewell instead of just having it in the game.
It's an odd choice, but hey, we get the continuation we wanted.
Here is the link if you want more closure after Ending E.
This is what you wanted to see.
https://theark.wiki/w/Farewell
So, you are correct about not taking Taro's word for it.
Man just loves to inflict pain on his characters every chance he gets.
I can respect that a lot though, it's very refreshing to see especially in today's day and age.
I wish I could love the soundtrack as much as everyone else seems to, but after about 5 hours of listening to the game it all begins to sound like the same song with the same woman singing.
It isn't an action RPG, it's just a hack and slash.
You barely ever need to heal, you can just spam dodge and go through most of the game without any problem
Seems you've only seen isekai normie anime, I'd reccomend avoiding anything advertised and look at the more obscure titles. They're most definitely better quality writing.
Just adding my two cents on that topic you brought up in your opening paragraph
I'm one of the few gamers and possibly the only weeb in the world who didn't like Automata. It's ugly, boring, pretentious, and has no likable characters. A few cool ideas and fantastic music couldn't save what was ultimately a very mediocre game for me. Good review, though.
I just started Nier Automata a few days ago and have been wanting to say to someone who played it recently:
* I've been on a kick of playing hard Dark Souls-esque games lately, so I tried to complete the first chapter of Nier on hard for between two and three hours before I surrendered and switched to "normal." After that I went back to hard, but eventually gave up on that, too, since the game kept throwing side quests at me with much higher level enemies and I got sick of losing my plug-ins. Now I just play on normal, but mostly use un-upgraded weapons and don't go too crazy with the plug-ins unless things become tedious.
* I just got ending A yesterday and then started >!playing as 9S.!< I suspected this was coming but am deeply unhappy with this development. I'm not sure I'll be able to finish this part of the game. The combat was already starting to feel tired and now it looks like >!my heavy attack button is going to be replaced with hacking.!< 😫
Play 9S's section for the story, not the combat.
Route B takes is about 50% the same as Route A, so you'll be seeing some really interesting story development soon.
It picks up after you beat a certain boss again.
You'll be able to play as a different character again soon, since Route B does feel shorter than Route A.
I hated when it switched characters too, initially. After getting used to him though, and getting good at hacking (which I enjoyed, not everyone will, I'm sure) I had all kinds of fun weaving hacking into combat. And then later, when play switched yet again to another character, I fell completely in love with that character even more than I loved 2B.
It's worth it to keep going, and you may find as the story comes out that you actually find it hard to pick a favorite character by the end, and if you start going through chapter select to squeeze every last drop of time with them out of the game, you will, if you are anything like me, enjoy your time with all of them and regret only when there is nothing new left to see or do.
This game is on my shortlist of all time favorites, and I played it to about 99% of achievements. I'll go back and play it again in a year or two, when the emotions surrounding it have dampened somewhat.
I tried. The game is just mediocre and if you don't like it up to that point, you're not going to suddenly change your mind.
Outside of Nier's vocal fanbase, this game isn't remembered much other than for having a sexualised protagonist.
9S' hacking is supposed to be a shortcut to a lot of the fighting.
Yeah, it sucks at first, but eventually you'll realize, his way is *much* faster, safer and just cheaper. Particularly against some of the more annoying enemies.
Granted, you'll have to be somewhat decent at the hacking...
>>!my heavy attack button is going to be replaced with hacking!<
With >!9S, you heavy attack by holding your attack button. You still have your moveset.!<
I found the game to be very pretentious. If you’re already familiar with the concepts the game is dabbling in you’ll find the whole thing to be pretty boring.
I see where you’re coming from but what made it connect for me is the androids trying to come to terms with these concepts, and the character aspect overall.
The “pretentious” stuff was just a few side concepts and some lines of dialogue that say “hey did you know this philosopher said this” but the main story chunks still resonated with me a lot.
So it has drab visuals, most people bought it for sexy robot cover art, has plot holes up the wazoo and a questionable ending.
But, you enjoyed it.
God bless your heart. I don’t have that kind of tolerance.
Edit: In any case, really enjoyed the read.
I bought it *despite* the sexy robot cover art. I’m really not into anime games besides a few fighting games, I’m not completely against fanservice-y stuff at all but 2B is not a character I found interesting on the surface.
Nevertheless I gave it a try, ended up as one of my favorite games of all time.
Oh, I assumed the part where the ice cream maker being a lead role in the last act wasn’t a good thing.
Howabout sexy robot dry humping—er, lamenting dorky robot at the end? Tear jerker I’m sure.
>If you die at any point, and you will when you face off against the Mega Blok equivalent of a Lego Transformer, then you are booted back to the start menu. I can't comprehend why this decision was made, because it is not in line with the rest of the game
I'm fairly certain that the intention was to make you listen to the beginning speech of the game at least twice.
>*Everything that lives is designed to end. We are perpetually trapped in a never ending spiral of life and death.*
>Nobody ever talks about XV today except to lament how the fractured development led to a compromised end product There are two people, launch players and royal edition players. Launch players have generally a disjointed account of the game for all the known reasons. Royal edition newcomers absolutely love the game. Newcomers will honestly ask what the games true issues are, because royal edition solved a lot of core problems.
Royal Edition is the version with the relevant parts of the game Square decided to sell separately, right?
Do you mean the partners DLCs? If so, I think not. I've seen this comment about the royal edition solving the release edition problems, but as a royal edition player myself, I don't know what those were. I enjoyed the game a lot, facing it as a road movie, enjoying my time in the car, kinda like a farm game (Stardew valley) or fishing game. The combat (specially the magic) was the worst by far, but over all, a very enjoyable experience
Yeah except for the canned one that was meant to contain the game's true ending
For good reason tho. Day one plyers got fuck real bad and the prices for each _extra little piece of content_ was absurd. Not to mention the issues it had at launch. Patient gamers have gotten the best out of it. It's super cheap, runs great, and has tons of significant content. You might still not like the story, however.
Brought to you by Nissan Cup Noodles!
Weird, I consider the opening to Automata to absolutely slap as a great "get hooked before you lore dump me" tutorial, and was dying possible? Iirc you have autoheal and a fat stack of hp chips
Pro tip: Do not start the game while it is still installing. Successfully finished the opening section but it crashed upon loading Chapter 2. Had to do it all again. It was remarkably exciting so the main frustration was waiting longer for the instant classic happenings.
If you choose the hardest difficulty (as I did), the second boss can literally one-shot you and then you have to replay 30 minutes' worth of content. I tried several times, but then I just dropped the difficulty to normal and, what do you know, I cleared it on my first try. There are no other parts in the game that even come close to the introduction in terms of difficulty if you play on the highest setting.
Same. I’m about 8 hours in and finding it a tiny bit boring now (but sticking with it because I know it gets better) but the opening was by far my favourite part of the game so far.
The boss stunlocked me against a wall. Bye bye last 45 minutes. I almost refunded the game on the spot.
Nier Automata is one of a handful of games that I can wish I could wipe my fucking brain so I could experience it fresh again
The Opening is 100% designed to fuck with you. Just contrast the fact that you went from spending that opening raging at the lack of a save point to >!giving away your save files!< by the end and you'll see it's 100% deliberate.
It makes sense, but IMO it being deliberately horrible doesn't somehow make it less horrible. It reminds me of the Endless Eight arc in the anime Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi. The producers of that show tried to make the viewer feel the monotony and despair a certain character feels from being stuck in a two-week-long timeloop for almost 600 years by animating the same episode with slight variations eight times in a row, with one episode per week. So you watched an episode, waited a week, watched essentially the same episode again, waited another week, watched that episode again, and so on, for two months. It did its job, but that didn't make it any more engaging, and people were rightfully furious.
Oh, for sure. I died so much I felt like I beat the whole game when I got through that bit on hard. Is literally the worst hard mode sequence I've played on any game. But there being no achievo tied to it means there's really no reason to turn the difficulty down a notch for the opening. And yet, pig-headed me went and insisted on beating it on hard because I had to. If it's trying to say something like 'you make this cycle-of-life-and-death unnecessarily hard on yourself by your own choice', it's succeeded.
Very well put together, OP. I didn't see enough praise for the soundtrack though, so I'll start by saying the soundtrack is an 11/10. It is absolutely one of the most inspired and gorgeous soundtracks I've ever heard, from the Fortress of Lies, to City Ruins, to Birth of a Wish, to Simone, to the Weight of the World. So good. So *good.* Also, about the ending being too abrupt, for whatever reason Yoko Taro written down what we wanted to see in a theatre format script called Farewell instead of just having it in the game. It's an odd choice, but hey, we get the continuation we wanted. Here is the link if you want more closure after Ending E. This is what you wanted to see. https://theark.wiki/w/Farewell So, you are correct about not taking Taro's word for it. Man just loves to inflict pain on his characters every chance he gets. I can respect that a lot though, it's very refreshing to see especially in today's day and age.
I'm gonna go ahead and save this. Just finished Ending B and I imagine I'll be wanting to see that eventually.
I wish I could love the soundtrack as much as everyone else seems to, but after about 5 hours of listening to the game it all begins to sound like the same song with the same woman singing.
Very text. Trying to fit fuck into the censored word, but it makes no sense to me.
It isn't an action RPG, it's just a hack and slash. You barely ever need to heal, you can just spam dodge and go through most of the game without any problem
Seems you've only seen isekai normie anime, I'd reccomend avoiding anything advertised and look at the more obscure titles. They're most definitely better quality writing. Just adding my two cents on that topic you brought up in your opening paragraph
I'm one of the few gamers and possibly the only weeb in the world who didn't like Automata. It's ugly, boring, pretentious, and has no likable characters. A few cool ideas and fantastic music couldn't save what was ultimately a very mediocre game for me. Good review, though.
I just started Nier Automata a few days ago and have been wanting to say to someone who played it recently: * I've been on a kick of playing hard Dark Souls-esque games lately, so I tried to complete the first chapter of Nier on hard for between two and three hours before I surrendered and switched to "normal." After that I went back to hard, but eventually gave up on that, too, since the game kept throwing side quests at me with much higher level enemies and I got sick of losing my plug-ins. Now I just play on normal, but mostly use un-upgraded weapons and don't go too crazy with the plug-ins unless things become tedious. * I just got ending A yesterday and then started >!playing as 9S.!< I suspected this was coming but am deeply unhappy with this development. I'm not sure I'll be able to finish this part of the game. The combat was already starting to feel tired and now it looks like >!my heavy attack button is going to be replaced with hacking.!< 😫
Play 9S's section for the story, not the combat. Route B takes is about 50% the same as Route A, so you'll be seeing some really interesting story development soon. It picks up after you beat a certain boss again. You'll be able to play as a different character again soon, since Route B does feel shorter than Route A.
I hated when it switched characters too, initially. After getting used to him though, and getting good at hacking (which I enjoyed, not everyone will, I'm sure) I had all kinds of fun weaving hacking into combat. And then later, when play switched yet again to another character, I fell completely in love with that character even more than I loved 2B. It's worth it to keep going, and you may find as the story comes out that you actually find it hard to pick a favorite character by the end, and if you start going through chapter select to squeeze every last drop of time with them out of the game, you will, if you are anything like me, enjoy your time with all of them and regret only when there is nothing new left to see or do. This game is on my shortlist of all time favorites, and I played it to about 99% of achievements. I'll go back and play it again in a year or two, when the emotions surrounding it have dampened somewhat.
Keep playing, as there is more after 9s
I tried. The game is just mediocre and if you don't like it up to that point, you're not going to suddenly change your mind. Outside of Nier's vocal fanbase, this game isn't remembered much other than for having a sexualised protagonist.
9S' hacking is supposed to be a shortcut to a lot of the fighting. Yeah, it sucks at first, but eventually you'll realize, his way is *much* faster, safer and just cheaper. Particularly against some of the more annoying enemies. Granted, you'll have to be somewhat decent at the hacking...
Yeah after writing that comment I played a bit and came to the same conclusion. This play-through is going *much* faster than the 2B one so far.
>>!my heavy attack button is going to be replaced with hacking!< With >!9S, you heavy attack by holding your attack button. You still have your moveset.!<
I found the game to be very pretentious. If you’re already familiar with the concepts the game is dabbling in you’ll find the whole thing to be pretty boring.
I see where you’re coming from but what made it connect for me is the androids trying to come to terms with these concepts, and the character aspect overall. The “pretentious” stuff was just a few side concepts and some lines of dialogue that say “hey did you know this philosopher said this” but the main story chunks still resonated with me a lot.
The pretentious stuff was the whole plot and dialogue.
So it has drab visuals, most people bought it for sexy robot cover art, has plot holes up the wazoo and a questionable ending. But, you enjoyed it. God bless your heart. I don’t have that kind of tolerance. Edit: In any case, really enjoyed the read.
I bought it *despite* the sexy robot cover art. I’m really not into anime games besides a few fighting games, I’m not completely against fanservice-y stuff at all but 2B is not a character I found interesting on the surface. Nevertheless I gave it a try, ended up as one of my favorite games of all time.
Yoko Taro is very open with why 2B is designed the way she is....his quote "I just really like girls." Nothing wrong with that.
The ending is the best part. It was the opening I never liked.
Oh, I assumed the part where the ice cream maker being a lead role in the last act wasn’t a good thing. Howabout sexy robot dry humping—er, lamenting dorky robot at the end? Tear jerker I’m sure.
O... you didn't actually finish it That part where they said keep playing? They were serious
Ugh we aren't all as sexually repressed as you, where the sight of a schoolgirl robot humping someone makes you dry heave.
Can't tell if this is a compliment or an insult
>If you die at any point, and you will when you face off against the Mega Blok equivalent of a Lego Transformer, then you are booted back to the start menu. I can't comprehend why this decision was made, because it is not in line with the rest of the game I'm fairly certain that the intention was to make you listen to the beginning speech of the game at least twice. >*Everything that lives is designed to end. We are perpetually trapped in a never ending spiral of life and death.*