So I was in bed last night thinking about Nier Automata and Nier, listening to the OSTs for both, and I know exactly why I liked Nier more from a story-perspective (gameplay Automata kicks its butt, no question). When I listen to the Nier OST and think about the characters, Nier, Kaine, Emil, the Desert King, Devola, Popola, to put it in millennial-speak, I get the feels. Nier/Kaine/Emil/Desert People were all characters I grew really attached to and I cared about. Seeing them and their stories of struggling for life and survival in a world where everything is going greek tragedy pulls at the heartstrings and created an extremely impactful and memorable tale.
With Automata...I can't think of any time I had any feelings when stuff happened to B2/9S/A2. It was more just watching it all play out from a detached observer point of view. This was more similar to the Drakengard characters (although better) where they're more standard anime/videogame characters and the game is more about the plot than the characters. The only feels I got about the main trio was growing to hate 9S in the second half and I couldn't wait to kill his dumb ass (ending C was satisfying). Yes, Nier Automata was also about characters struggling to survive in a greek tragedy of the world, but to me, almost everything was detached like a more typical action videogame and non-impactful.
But I said, almost, and that's because there are characters in Nier Automata I cared about and that gave me the feels. Emil's story was the most moving/touching part of the game and the ending really makes me sad; though a lot of that is because his story has carried over and I already cared about Emil. I cared about Pascal as well, and felt bad about his end. But the main cast just never gave me a reason to care about them, and it was more just watching their story play out and thinking "hey, this is a neat sci-fi short story" from a detached point of view. It's still a good, neat sci-fi story. It's an interesting tale, more interesting than 90% of game stories, and it's definitely going to be one of my favorite games this year. But unlike Nier, I can't imagine myself in a year feeling anything about the story/characters and therefore probably just forgetting it over time. Whereas I still think about Nier and probably will the rest of my life. It's up there in the top 10 game stories of all time for me.
Now maybe it's unfair to compare characters to the level of Nier, since that's Taro's best work from a writing perspective, and the Drakengard games I've experienced (1 & 2, I started 3 last year but still early in it) haven't provided characters I care about either and those characters exist more for the laughs while watching the wacky crazy plot.
tldr; while I really liked Nier Automata, the reason the story generally falls flat for me on an emotional level and lacks the impact of the original Nier is that B2/9S/A2 are robotic. Well duh, they're androids. Hopefully the next Nier game is about humans.
For instance:
spoiler (click to show/hide)
When 2B dies, I didn't feel anything at all. Partly because the controls were so tedious in that section getting to that area when couldn't jump/dash for long periods I was pissed at the game already and just wanted that part over with to get back to normal controls, and partly because 2B/9S everyone died so many times in the game and kept coming back it sorta lost impact like is this actually a death scene for 2B? Or is this just a normal scene and she's going to come back again. After a bit I could tell she was actually gonna stay dead and then my thought is "that's pretty ballsy killing your main character" but by then I'd just moved on. The actual death itself didn't really have any impact when killing off your main character halfway really should've had some Aeris Dies kinda major moment impact.