[Played on RPCS3 emulator]

Man, finished Ending A on the release date of this game's remake (finished Ending B on 4/26/21 and I am VERY sad). DAMN was this an emotional ride to go through. I'm gonna go a bit on a rant about the western gaming community and how JP companies have been dealing with their broken released products later, but I'll actually talk about the game first.

The gameplay was actually pretty ok/good if you're not mashing the same attack button. I mean, you got jump attacks that stun the enemy, weapon switching mid combat between two handed, one handed, and spears (although with a small bit of menuing), and some magic that can be broken like dark whirlwind which is similar to Vergil's spiral swords from Devil May Cry. With all this in the combat, it's a bit hard to see where people are coming from with the "boring and repetitive" " combat unless they're being mindless about it.
It's criminal that this game was given a low rating at the time it came out, and I hope other people are aware of how horrible the western gaming industry was towards JP developers back in the day.

That being said, JP developers need to get their shit together when releasing broken games. First we have Automata which released 4 years ago on Steam in a really broken and buggy state, to a point where most people have to rely on a community-made mod to fix it (For those who played on the PC version and supposedly never ran into any problems and kept telling other people, just because you didn't doesn't mean other people aren't suffering technical problems. If a TON of people are complaining then you should consider that maybe there actually IS a problem).
And then the day before Replicant remake's release we're already getting reviews talking about how the game on Steam is missing a V-sync option, animations going twice the speed at 60FPS, and stuttering problems due to controls. I'm not sure if this is developers being lazy with PC ports, or companies actually not caring about their PC audience because it's different in Japan, but this needs to stop, this shit is actually inexcusable now in this day and age. This isn't just a Nier or Square problem(though Square is VERY guilty of this) but seems to be common among JP devs. if a publisher is forcing a set date release, devs can just give out a version that is literally unfinished and call it a day. No publisher will want the PR backlash from a developer going public on a situation like that. Unfortunately neither do the developers make a stand and neither do the publishers make sure the product is actually polished properly.
Instead, a turd is released and no or very little post release support is given. And we customers don't even refund it, just rely on people like Kaldaien(Creator of the FAR mod) to try and band-aid the game as best as they can.
I'm glad that they announced an update patch for Automata recently, and at least the problems for Replicant isn't that bad compared to Automata, but c'mon man.

I still need to get the other endings, but I hope whoever is playing Gestalt/Replicant has a great experience.

EU copy played on a PlayStation 3 Super Slim.

This was honestly a rollercoaster of an experience. I'd finished Automata a couple years prior to tackling this and the upcoming release of Replicatn v1.22... gave me the push to jump in so I could experience the original localisation first.

First up, I'm glad I'd played Automata first as it both set and disappointed my expectations. Set because I knew there would be a number of playthroughs involved to truly "finish" the game, and disappointed because those subsequant playthroughs were nowhere near as varied as Automata's. Automata is an improvement of every facet of this game, but there is still some worth to be found here.

After my obtaining ending A I was pretty pumped and happy - it took roughly 37 hours and I'd put the time in to do as many side quests and optional activites as possible. Movement and platforming felt a little janky at times but it was still perfectly playable and the weapons and combat in general felt fairly satisfying. The music was as great as usual for Keiichi Okabe's standards and the story was enjoyable, if a little lacklustre by the end twist.

Ending B was a bit of a different experience. I was hyped to start it since completing Ending A informed me I would get to experience "Kaine's story", however this was not the B story I was expecting due to having played Automata so was greeted with a simple visual novel before plowing through the same second half of the main game as Ending A with a few extra voice clips and additional context for the bosses you fight. Overall, it was well done and in the context of the entire story everything was pretty well done, but it all kinda just fell into the "everything is miserable and no-one is happy" mood that everything during this latter period of the game has. It was just a real fucking downer to play so I'm glad I at least did it in one sitting, plus the post credits scene helped bring the mood up a little too.

Endings C and D was where I ended up grinding a lot to obtain all the additional trophies for growing flowers, catching all the fish and upgrading all the weapons. Typical grinding experience of doing it all on auto pilot while listening to podcasts or watching youtube videos in the background so no much to complain about too bad really. In the C playthrough I was skipping through everything, having watched all the cutscenes and heard the voice clips twice now and getting a little weary of it all.

After C I went for the speedrun followed by going straight for Ending D. My intention was to watch and experience all the cutscenes in one sitting so I could get the full impact of the game's narrative, but in the end the depressiveness of those latter story beats were just too much and I skipped them bar everything leading up to the final boss.

So all in all, going by what I've written I didn't enjoy the game that much, but surprisingly I still have a lot of fond thoughts toward it. It feels like a slightly upgraded PlayStation 2 game with it's design choices and art direction and lighting, sure, but it's weirdly ernest in its presentation. The gameplay (bar the fishing) is altogether damn solid and entertaining and Yoko Taro's narrative, while exhausting at times does hit the mark more often than not. I think my main problem was just binging the entire game in such a short period of time. I played this game for just under 100 hours over the span of a couple of months (which isn't that big a deal, but doing an hour every morning before the day started for material farming was draining), but at the same time I can't say I've done that for many other games. I truly did play the absolute ever loving shit out of this game and found enjoyment in the vast majority of it.

everybody loves cavia.

this game was sold to me as like "it's unplayable but it's interesting." i'm here to tell you that it IS weird and it is actually WILDLY playable. it's not smooth like PlatinumGames-developed NieR: Automata, but that's because Cavia is not PlatinumGames, and Cavia kind of LIKES to be a prick to the player. all of the sidequests in this game are pretty horrible, but you don't NEED to do them!

me and alex and then mostly just me played through an English-patched NieR: Replicant (which we're getting in the west on PC soon!) only because the download was available. I think I'd like the story better with daddy-nier.

although the story with bro-nier is not bad at all! this game is all about being a freak and finding a home with other freaks. our player is an important character but Kaine and Emil really really shine through as evocative characters in an unique action-RPG.

the action is also weird as hell! they are trying to go for a 3D bullet hell type thing, and it works mostly! when it doesn't work it's fun too. play NieR (2010). it's a breath of fresh air.

the lore's nuts too.