Nier: Automata Review

The First 15

I go to start up the game and find out there is a 2.6 GB update file. Time to do something else while that downloads.

Finally the download is finished. Here we go.

The game opens up with me and my team on an attack run. My teammates keep getting shot out of the sky. This is not going well.

I’m taking out more and more enemies. My fighter just transformed into a gundam. Now instead of just shooting forward I can turn and shoot all around me. And there goes the last of my teammates. Now it’s up to me.

I destroyed everything and I have arrived at the target location, but my suit/ship was destroyed so now I’m on foot. For some reason there’s a giant buzzsaw trying to kill me.

Story

The story takes place in the very far future. In this future, aliens have invaded earth with an army of machines. What remains of humanity now lives solely in a fortified bunker on the moon. Humanity then creates the NoRHa, an army of combat androids to use against the machines. Of course, things aren’t quite that simple. Players begin the game as a combat android named 2B whose team has been sent in to eliminate an enemy threat.

Nier: Automata definitely channels some elements of Ghost in the Shell in how it explores both the lives of the androids and the lives of the machines left behind by the aliens who for some reason haven’t been heard from for centuries. Some of it is almost human, while other aspects are completely alien.

Players get paired with another unit named 9S who tends to be the more thoughtful one. He does a lot of talking where he discusses his ideas about the past and thoughts on life itself. 9S makes himself likeable with his humor, and shows his depth when discussing more metaphysical subjects. He has a deep desire to explore which acts as a nice balance to 2B’s more militaristic approach to the world.

The player’s character, and the other NoRHa, can be recreated from backup copies and put back into the field. The story explores this idea of limited rebirth with some characters “forgetting” things that happened after their last backup when they are reassembled due to death.

While exploring out in the world the characters often come across pieces of the distant past from a time when humanity still lived on earth. This is probably intentional by the writers, but more often than not the resulting conversation becomes about how weird humanity was.

I also want to highlight the music in this game. A lot of it was somehow both creepy and yet appropriate. A few areas are designed to have players wonder “what the hell is going on?” and the music in those areas is absolutely perfect.

Interface and Controls

There is an option in the settings menu to self-destruct on death. It doesn’t really seem to do anything, but the game requires you to enable it as part of the opening sequence. I found it very telling that both characters seemed to find this completely normal.

By default the game automatically adjusts the camera while running. At first it was driving me nuts because it kept moving the camera down and I was having trouble seeing things in front of me over my character’s head. Thankfully the developers included an option to turn off vertical auto-adjust without also having to turn off horizontal auto-adjust. I wish more games, especially third person action adventure games, had this option.

I found the chip system to be particularly compelling. With this system players acquire chips that provide enhancements for a cost. Players can equip as many chips as they want so long as the total cost of the chips is less than the character’s maximum allowed cost. Players can even choose to unequip parts of the interface such as the health bar or the minimap to free up space for other chips if they wish. Interestingly, even chips that do the same thing can have differing costs. Players can upgrade chips by combining two of the same level. Of course, upgrading a chip increases the cost. The new cost for an upgraded chip is based on the cost of the two chips being fused together. The cheaper the base chips, the cheaper the resulting chip. This created a lot of interesting decisions about which chips to upgrade and which to wait and see if I could find another of the same time with a lower cost. My one complaint about this system is the chip that restores health upon killing an enemy. In a game where you are constantly defeating numerous enemies this provides the player with almost limitless health outside of boss battles. This is especially true during the shooting minigames where enemies are constantly streaming in from the sides of the screen. It led to me almost never having to use any healing items and thus having a plethora of them whenever it came time for a boss battle. I feel that the designers should make this chip only equipable on easy mode as they did with several other chips.

Something that’s created a bit of a controversy is players can buy trophies/achievements using the in-game currency. Once players complete the game three times, they unlock a merchant who will sell them trophy unlocks. So rather than have to do a given task, players can instead farm money and then buy the completion of that task. I personally don’t like this as it leaves no distinction between those who did it the “hard” way, and those who simply bought it. Also, there are guides online telling players how to add their save file to the cloud, buy a bunch of trophies, then restore that save and buy a bunch more. Since trophies are tied to the account and not the save data, players keep the trophies even though they overrode their save file with the one from the cloud. I feel like there are too many negatives with a system such as this one for it to have made it into the final game.

Gameplay

One of the first things to happen to me was I reached the first major boss of the game and died. Rather than start again from a checkpoint, the game actually ended. I got a screen telling me that my failure led to the machines wiping out the remainder of the NoRHa, and then the credits began to roll. When I went to start a new game, it told me I had unlocked ending W. I found it interesting that they “hid” an ending in the opening sequence of the game.

My second time through the beginning stage I noticed a number of hidden routes which then unlocked access points to different areas I’d been to previously. Strangely, this idea of creating shortcuts to areas players previously had to reach using the long way never really continued through the remainder of the game. There was the occasional opening of a blocker between zones, but nothing to the extent of what was available in the starting area. Most likely this idea was something the designers toyed around with early on but ultimately abandoned for the remainder of the game.

Having played the original Nier I was expecting a game which involved a series of constantly shifting game types and I was not disappointed. At any time the game can shift from a third person action adventure to a top down shooter to a side scroller and back all within minutes of one another. The original Nier even had an entire dungeon that was one big text adventure, though I have not found anything similar in this game as of yet. The developers have done an amazing job allowing the gameplay to transition from one game type to the next rather frequently without it feeling disorienting or frustrating. This more than any other system is where this game truly shines. During your second playthrough you can even initiate this transition when you hack enemies. This is done through a simple top down shooter minigame similar to Geometry Wars. Although, this version requires you to press a button to fire in addition to moving and aiming with both sticks.

During the first playthrough as 2B, players come across corpses. These corpses represent other players who have died during their own playthroughs. Other games have done similar things, but this game is unique in how it enables you to interact with these corpses. When players activate a corpse, they first choose to pray or not to pray. Praying for a corpse will create and send an item to the owner of that corpse. Then players can harvest the corpse for money and materials, or reactivate that corpse at which point the fallen player’s character becomes an ally for a short time. That ally will be as strong as the player whose corpse it is was when they died including their weapons and level. Players mostly tend to find corpses for players who are the same level since players tend to reach each part of the game at roughly the same level. But every once in a while one of those corpses turns out to be a real monster and for a time cutting through enemies is a breeze.

During my first playthrough I encountered a number of chained chests that I could not open. My one complaint about them is that the game doesn’t ever tell you that there is no way to open them until your second playthrough. I kept wondering if maybe there was a sidequest that would allow me to open them until eventually I looked it up online. Players run into them constantly, so it is particularly annoying to think that maybe they missed something that would allow players to open them. I wish the game had been a little more upfront about when players would gain access to these chests. All it would have taken was a message when players tried to open them stating something like, “This container cannot be opened until events have reached their ultimate conclusion.” This would have helped to alleviate a lot of frustration.

As I’ve mentioned several times already this game is designed to be played through more than once. The core story is excellent and feels mostly complete once you reach the end for the first time. That is…until you start the game again, this time as another character and you begin to see that there’s more going on than you initially thought. Then you beat the game a second time, and start it again. And that’s when things start really going downhill. The ways in which the developers leverage the New Game+ mechanic are impressive. I wish more games took the time to explore the possibilities of a New Game+ as this one does. It turns out there are actually 26 different endings, one for each letter of the alphabet.

As is becoming the norm these days, when players die they leave behind their corpse. They must then retrace their steps and collect their corpse to restore things such as their chips. Nier: Automata takes things one step further in that if the player dies again before recovering their corpse, then the corpse with all of their things is lost forever. I personally never had an issue recovering my corpse the few times I died. But I feel like potentially deleting items that might have taken entire playthroughs to collect/construct is a bit too harsh. I feel that corpses should last forever until you collect them since it is intended for the player to be able to collect their corpse.

Conclusion

You will like this game if you enjoy a game that is constantly shifting gameplay types. Nier: Automata is about having to constantly change how you play. Each area can include multiple gameplay types. The exploration of being a machine and the questions about life are also a strong draw for those who enjoy such things.

You will not like this game if you want to play a specific type of game. Nier: Automata is many different games all rolled into one. The transitions between them are very smooth, but if you dislike constant change than you find the gameplay frustrating.

I personally very much enjoyed my time with Nier: Automata. The story was compelling, there was enough “unexplained” events to keep me wondering, and the differing gameplay types kept things from ever feeling stale. This game represents a perfect example of how to take multiple, seemingly disjointed ideas, and roll them up into one coherent package.