Got back to this after beating Zelda and RE7, finished ending A tonight and was kinda weird. I thought location/story-wise it felt like about the halfway point and Adam/Eve were the half-way antagonists, but then it ended. Took me a little under 9 hours.
Started the 2nd playthrough and its ok, seems less interesting than Nier's second playthrough since most of the game (just finished the desert section and besides 1 new cutscene, it was exactly the same) is 100% identical and 9s isn't as fun to play as since he doesn't have the heavy sword attack. Since the game is so short I'll just speedrun through this 2nd playthrough regardless. Since the first run took me 9 hours and that was exploring and doing quests, I figure I can probably speedrun it in ~4-5 hours on subsequent runs.
But yeah, if there are multiple playthroughs that add more stuff, but generally that's it for locations/stages...I'm kinda disappointed. It reminds me of MGR which I also was disappointed in its 4 hour length. The world in the first playthrough is pretty tiny, with only like 5 stages (Intro, Desert, Carnival, Forest castle, smal flooded bit, and copy & pasta Factory) and a couple towns. Compared to Nier 1 which wasn't giant either, it feels a bit lacking in size/scope. Nier 1 felt like a proper rpg world. Can Platinum not make bigger games? Even my first run through Nier 1 going at speedrun style ignoring all the quests after boar riding, it still took 15+ hours and then another 5+ for new game+
The combat is good, but not great. Reminds me of most of Platinum's non-Kamiya games. It's fairly shallow and just revolves around hitting the dodge button when the enemy flashes and otherwise stringing out a few combos. The move lists are really tiny, and there aren't many abilities. Heavy swords seem just too slow in this game to be fun, so I mainly stuck with small swords/spears first playthrough. Fists are cool too and I'll use them if I get them upgraded to be strong enough to match the other weapons. It's no Bayonetta or any other character action game, but it's perfectly acceptable for arpg combat (compared to stuff like Ys) and fun.
Music was great, visuals were great. Story is short, but good so far. I'm hoping subsequent playthroughs make the story a bit more interesting, fleshed out and well connected to Nier 1. I really liked Nier 1's story and how it connected to Drakenguard, so hoping the timeline/lore is as fleshed out in this game.
Even if Ending A was it, I'd still like the game a lot. It's a good game. Leading up to the ending when I thought I was only halfway I thought it could be a GoTY type game, and everything I wanted in a Nier sequel. As of now it's not that, it's an ok Nier game at this point and a good 8/10 arpg. Hopefully the subsequent playthroughs improve the game.
So then, how many times do I need to replay the game outside ending-only changes? For example, in Nier 1, you only need to play the game twice for endings A/B, then you can just watch endings C/D on youtube since the actual playthrough is 100% identical to your 2nd playthrough from 3rd onwards and the only change is the couple minute ending. I'm guessing since Nier Automata has 3 characters, there's three unique playthroughs and then a bunch of ending variations?
Also, eventually does the game end up explaining everything that happened between Nier 1 -> Nier Automata? I have some theories, so I'm hoping I get to see if they're right or wrong.