I've put ten-plus hours into the game now. Really enjoying it and the atmosphere and soundtrack are just amazing. The pacing is pretty good, so far, and the game doesn't really do any hand-holding, which is much-appreciated. I think I'm getting close to finishing the game now, or should I say, I'm getting close to finishing the first part of the game since it's more like three campaigns in one.
The story and atmosphere are the big things here. It becomes pretty obvious what is going on fairly quickly in, but the game is written well enough that it stays pretty engaging. The plot is that at some point centuries in the past, aliens came to earth. Rather than invade directly, they sent out robots to work for them. In turn, humans fled to the moon and had androids fight for them. So this is one big proxy war between machines. Initially things appear to be pretty straightforward, with your side, androids, going down to the earth and destroying mindless robot drones, but you quickly find that there are robots with full intelligence and consciousness.
Major story spoiler: spoiler (click to show/hide)
The android/robot war is completely pointless. Aliens and humans are long dead and the war is just continuing on to give the machines a sense of 'purpose'.
You play as Android 2B with 9S as your companion the first time around, then play as 9S the second time with some bits of new story (and different game play), and then you play as another character after this with a lot of new story and areas to explore.
Massive story spoiler: spoiler (click to show/hide)
I haven't even gotten this far but found out that what's really going on with 2B and 9S is that 2B pretty much knows all this already. Her job is to watch 9S, who during the course of the game finds out about the android/robot war, and then kill him/wipe his memory over and over again.
The action is good, although I kind of wish this was a pure level-based action game instead of an 'open-world' style action-RPG. There's a lot of unnecessary running back and forth for a good while until you finally get to a point where fast travel is possible. They should have had this available from the start-- The save points you use to travel between have to be found and liberated from robots guarding them anyway. You can equip various chips that enhance your abilities, but if you don't want to bother with this, you can also have the game auto-equip them for you and keep things more action-oriented. The game play is mainly fully-3D hack and slash/shooting, but there's also some SHMUP-style sections and 2.5D platforming/action areas as well.
I'm pretty engrossed in the game right now and it's making me want to go back and check out the original Nier and Drakengard 3 when I'm done with it, although next up is going to be Zelda. Speaking of those other two games, there are a few Nier characters who pop up and there's also a certain type of flower you can spot here and there that appears to be the same as the one Zero wears in Drakengard 3, in what I assume is a nod to that game.
I got Ending K, lol.
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ate a mackerel and died; thanks a lot, Jackass-san :'(
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2A
I just finished the Forest Castle, game is so freaking good. Platinum Gods. :lawd
Just an advice: you are close to the point of no return. Must sub quest are going to be locked for a while after this.
Too late. :lol
It's okay, I'm not really worried about 100%ing it right now. I'm just moving the main story along and knocking out the sub-quests that I come across and look fun. There are a few that I tried and ended up just giving up on, like Jackass's Challenge and Speed Star. So far I'm still super pleased with the way everything is going. I finished Route A this afternoon.
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2B is such a good oneechan to 9S. :uguu
Mild Spoilers
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In 9S's route, when 2B wakes up, the game plays back all the fiddling around in the option menus that you did as 2B at the first of the game. It's a cute scene, BUT...I got a text or something when I was playing that scene for the first and I left the game running and the system ended up going to sleep before I came back to it. Now that I'm replaying the scene as 9S, the menu is just going nuts, flipping through a single option repeatedly, endlessly. I've let it set for about 10 minutes so far and it's still stuck on this screen and it won't let me skip it. I feel like this says something about robots, AI, and folly of assigning meaning to our lives or something. :doge
n/m, it finally worked itself out
I just finished the Forest Castle, game is so freaking good. Platinum Gods. :lawd
Just an advice: you are close to the point of no return. Must sub quest are going to be locked for a while after this.
I think I'm at the point of no return
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just beat the factory with all the religious robots
Can you go back and do the quests you missed?
I just finished the Forest Castle, game is so freaking good. Platinum Gods. :lawd
Just an advice: you are close to the point of no return. Must sub quest are going to be locked for a while after this.
I think I'm at the point of no return
spoiler (click to show/hide)
just beat the factory with all the religious robots
Can you go back and do the quests you missed?
No until Route B, and only some missions. Is until spoiler (click to show/hide)
Unlocking chapter select in Route c-e
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I bought the Platinum trophy. :shh
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You're thinking about how much you want to **** 2B, aren't you?
Then the game crashes. :lol
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9S has to keep it a secret.
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Killing 10 non-hostile machines, that is.
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I finished the mission at the abandoned factory with the suicide cult. Then Eve freaked out. So I saved the Resistance camp and then Pascal. Now I have to fight Eve in the city ruins pit area. But I have no healing items and I'm underleveled.
When I die it loads me right back at the fight. Is there no way to back out of this and buy supplies? Because that really sucks. I didn't expect the game to throw me into a mission that I'm under-leveled for and not let me back out of it...I had to load back to my last save which is right after I finished the mission at the factory. I have to fight a bit to get back but:
Pascal's village is closed
The thing with the Resistance camp.
This game gets wayyyy better in the second playthrough.
Just a tip before you finish Route B, not spoiler but some new consumable items will become available before the final battle of Route B. You will need some of them but for Route C as will make some stuff less painful. Though you would only needed in two or three fights (if you are in normal difficult, I suppose)
So they show up before the final battle? I'm ok if you just spoil it for me.
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There are Cure items that remove status effects that you can buy and/or find before the end of Route B, but there are no status ailments until the beginning of Route C (and it only happens one time, at least on Normal, maybe more on higher levels, I dunno)[/spoiler{
This game gets wayyyy better in the second playthrough.
Just a tip before you finish Route B, not spoiler but some new consumable items will become available before the final battle of Route B. You will need some of them but for Route C as will make some stuff less painful. Though you would only needed in two or three fights (if you are in normal difficult, I suppose)
So they show up before the final battle? I'm ok if you just spoil it for me.
spoiler (click to show/hide)
There are Cure items that remove status effects that you can buy and/or find before the end of Route B, but there are no status ailments until the beginning of Route C (and it only happens one time, at least on Normal, maybe more on higher levels, I dunno)[/spoiler{
It also happens during spoiler (click to show/hide)
the final boss fight before choosing who to side with. The also appear in the real last fight depending of who you choose as your character.
I also was reading that random mooks have the ability but kind of only happens when they are about to die.
I don't like the original Nier.
You do not need to play it to understand this game. I'm not sure even what you get from it beyond reading some notes about a backstory that is far removed and rather irrelevant to the main story of this new game.
From what I gathered, the whole plot of NieR is spoiler (click to show/hide)
Disconnecting all of humanity from a matrix-like machine where they're happy and in peace. The shadows you fight are real people who are ghosts leftover on the planet or something.
I rented the original NieR and fucking hated it, if that means anything to you. The combat was janky and the world traversal was janky. Just read up on the story.
does it matter if I didn't see the last two ending in nier and didn't understand what the fuck was going on
The video I linked above explains everything.
Not really at detail, just the the basic plot twist in Nier, connection with Drakengard 1, the basic reason for multiple playthroughs and Automata conection with a Stage Play. Then again, that is the fundamentals to get the kick out it but stuff like Emil or Kaine are not that well explained. A lot of (optional, being fair) of stuff with Emil will be lost.
Then again, the backstory proper between Drakengard 1 ending and Nier is crazy bonkers in frankly unnecessary way. Stuff like spoiler (click to show/hide)
the lack of night in the world and how the virus worked like a magic pact
Well I guess I'm done with the game. It has glitched in a place that dosen't allow me to continue.
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The Resource Unit will not trigger a cutscene for me to continue.
I don't know, the game was ok. Combat was a little too simple, it felt like the story took a while to get going, and playing as 9s is'nt actually fun. A shame I won't be able to get to the ending, but I'm inot interested in redoing 30hrs.
How does a game have such a major bug?
Where Anemone tho?
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Where Jackass tho? :lawd
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got the Devola and Popola "text adventure" segement.
Damn good game. Curious how they'll finish it up.
Sounds pretty boring, but I guess it's hard to offer substantive DLC when the game encourages you to
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delete your save after beating it. :lol
I like the design of the world, it's pretty complex and has lots of metrodivania-style connecting of areas and hidden areas. This run I equipped the plugin that shows items on the mini-map and seeing where the treasure boxes are and trying to figure out how to get to them was fun. I did a few more sidequests and the sidequests in this game, at least the ones I've done, are generally pretty good. Much better than Nier 1 sidequests. They usually have some neat little story/lore attached to the quest.
Ending was mostly the same in route B. The Yorha manual thing was pretty much what I guessed was going on considering that in Nier 1:
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The MC fucks up the entire Gestalt/Replicant merging system and dooms humanity to extinction....whoops. Most bleak ending ever.
Kinda interested in where the plot is gonna go for the 2nd half with C/D/E since that seemed like it was the big reveal and it's out of the bag. Generally the mysteries seem wrapped up and you can kinda piece together everything from Nier 1 -> Nier Automata and what's going on by the end of Route B outside:
spoiler (click to show/hide)
The two holographic girls in the ending.
Might start Route C tonight. If not will play it this weekend.
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:
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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.
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The aliens took it and built the machine life forms off of it, which is why all the robot heads look sorta like Emil's head.
If you pull up Google threads from 2012 or so about that drama cd, everyone just laughs that track off as a joke and non-important...and it becomes one of the most important setups for Automata.
Between that and Nier taking place after the troll teleport to Tokyo ending of Drakengard, Taro's having a good laugh at all this. Now if there's a Nier 3, we gotta figure out the most goofy seemingly non-important part of Automata and that will end up the prequel to 3 :P
Route B spoilers I guess
Did anyone beat the secret boss spoiler (click to show/hide)
Emil
Being lvl 46 vs a 99 has me dodging the whole time while doing 2 damage
E ending completed. :tocry
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I even sacrificed my save files to help someone else, as I was helped in turn. :tocry :tocry
:heart :dizzy :drool :hyper :omg :o ??? 8) :(
(http://i.imgur.com/1Wk2IQT.jpg)
Whats so great about this shirt design is that the original engrish design made zero sense :-
but in the context of Nier Automata its absolutely perfect.
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YoRHa was born to die :( World is a FUCK