JRPG Journal Entry 7 - Nier: Automata - The End of Yorha Edition
This is certainly a game of lofty ambitions. It requires at least three playthroughs and a not so small amount of patience. I'll go playthrough by playthrough and discuss strengths and weaknesses. I feel like just spouting my feelings any other way would do this game a disservice.
Playthrough 1/A
Starting with playthrough 1 and this game's opening level. It might be this game's biggest strength. It's opening level is certainly one of the best openings to any video game I've ever played. Going from Mobile Suit gundam, to DMC lite combat, to sidecroller camera, to bullet hell shooter, to fighting a building sized boss and then using its arm as a sword to kill it is INSANE. It immediately sold me on this game. While the game will hit some bumps in pacing and story, I will always remember how batshit insane this opening was. It was like playing an E3 demo that actually lived up to the hype. The story and the characters might be a little much at times but I would be lying if I said I didn't love 2B and 9S's relationship Especially with the added context of the other endings. It makes their relationship so tragic. But seeing 2B lower her guard and let herself get more and more attached to 9S is really sweet and really well developed. The way the game makes you learn and understand the robots is really well done as well. It draws parallels to humanity. The robots have an amusement park and they're pacifists. They just want to make people smile and have a good time. Same with Pascal's Village. They present you with the idea that robots are evil and the game opens showing you the threat of these creatures only to slowly peel back the tape on the idea that there is more to these machines than meets the eye. The side quest where you have to escort a scared machine back to her sister in the desert was really sweet. 9S is trying to comfort this machine even if he doesn't even believe that they can have feelings or thoughts of their own. Yet he still does the right thing and so does 2B. It makes the player question if Yorha is really the right side of things and without discussing spoilers it brings up the right questions in the right ways that makes this game memorable and well thought out.
A weakness of this playthrough would be some off pacing and weak sidequests. Some of them are just typical go here kill that type of quests. There are certainly diamonds in the rough and some awesome sidequests that push this game's themes and ideas but they are too far and few between. The ending of the first playthrough is very sudden and you have to playthrough the same story but as 9S and depending on how thorough you are it can take just as long to reach the second ending to get any resolution.
Playthrough 2/B
The opening sucks. To be fair I ran out of healing items at the end of my first playthrough and I really liked how tense that made the last battle but since I opened up the second playthrough without a way to heal myself I threw myself against a wall for about an hour before I just decided to play on easy until this segment was done. But I don't think it was fun either way. This is easily the lowpoint of the whole game. You get to playthrough the same story but you get to talk to 9S's pod and operator. His operator is boring and his pod is just a female robot voice. So nothing much is different except instead of having a secondary weapon that can use heavy attacks you have a hacking ability. This is kind of a strength and a weakness because having the option to just halve the healthbar of any enemy, other than bosses, whenever you wanted is a big buff but the minigame gets very boring very fast. I felt like half my 9S playthrough was spent playing the bullet-hell hacking minigame. So 9S's gameplay is just an instant win hack button, and mashing the attack button and mashing the easiest dodge mechanic in any action game. I didn't rush this playthrough because I wanted to be fair but I didn't find any of the 9S exclusive quests or sideactivities very interesting or memorable. And it's the same ending mostly. The only real change is getting these lore scenes intersperced throughout the playthrough at significant moments in the story that give context to the wider world. It is fine but it grinds the playthrough to a halt and it's already slow since everything you're doing you've already done before. I didn't give the first playthrough a grade but I'd give it like an 8 or 8.5/10 but this one would get like a 5.5 or 6/10.
Playthrough 3/C
This is the meat and potatoes right here. All the same gameplay gripes are here. By the time I was done with this playthrough my hand was hurting because of the amount of holding down the autotarget button, holding down the shoot button, and mashing the attack and dodge button. The combat got really lame by the end of the game and a lot of this playthrough has you go through several waves of enemies in-between story beats. So While playthrough C has to best story beats and a really strong opening and ending sequences, it over-relies on a gameplay loop that got really stale after 30 hours. Playing as A2 was really fun. Cherami Liegh is just the queen of voice acting because I knew it was her the second she spoke. I think giving her devil trigger (lol) was enough of a gameplay difference between her and 2B that I wasn't bothered. I will say I think 2A's story is much more engaging than 9S's. 2A goes through a similar arc that 2B and 9S went through learning how not all machines are evil and the Pascal bits in 2A's story are deeply moving and emotional. I would say that climbing the towers as 9S were snoozefests but only the first one was both boring and easy. The latter 2 were infuriating and unengaging. The second one was just a hackathon that got progressively more and more annoying. And the last one is just another wave of enemies per floor that gets bullshit when you meet the kamikazi drones for the first time. I forgot to mention that this game doesn't have an auto save and the last playthrough doesn't give you a lot of options to save between missions. So I died in a bullshit way and was thrown back like 20 minutes due to some poor saving opportunities. The end was really good. This was my last playthrough but I did do the cursory look over the other route D and E endings to give me the full context. The choice at the end of route c is really nice story wise but I will say that it feels too black and white. The game makes this decision feel too binary. You're with 9S the entire game and only spend the final third with A2 yet one is clearly the good ending and one is clearly the bad one. Like I didn't feel as conflicted as I should. I will say the game probably wasn't trying to make you feel conflicted but if a choice's consequences are THAT clear they should be.
I have no real transition to talk about this but the game has some MAJOR glitches on the nintendo switch. I would heavily recomment playing this on any other system. It has nothing to do with the way the game runs. I was shocked at how well the game ran and how stable the frame rate was. This game runs better than Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom does and they're designed by Nintendo! The big problem with this game is that it will often get stuck in loading screens. If the Yorha boot menu does not show up during a loading screen then you're game is just frozen. This happened upwards of ten times in my playthrough. In a game where there are no autosaves, this glitch is game breaking. I got into the habit of saving every chance I had and would save every time I fast traveled because I was afraid the game would just stop working. So when the game works it works beautifully, but every time you enter a loading screen you're playing a roulette game that has like a 1/10 chance of screwing you over. I also encountered a funny glitch where I broke the camera free of the side-scroller effect and saw the other half of the world I wasn't supposed to but that's my bad and not the game's. The game also froze the first time it went into the hacking minigame mid combat. So I'd recommend staying in handheld mode for some of the more technically demanding parts of this game.
So other than some weak gameplay that struggles to carry the game to the end and some bumpy pacing the game is pretty excellent. I don't think its some masterpiece. The theme is battered over the player's head too much for it to carry itself as far as people think it goes. It certainly was a great time and one worth playing but I certainly don't have the love for this game that most of the internet does. The technical state of the game is really crappy because it works 99.9% of the time but the one time it freezes you could lose god knows how many hours depending on how often you save. Still, it's a damn good time and one I'd recommend anyone's way who loves high concept sci-fi and action games
This is certainly a game of lofty ambitions. It requires at least three playthroughs and a not so small amount of patience. I'll go playthrough by playthrough and discuss strengths and weaknesses. I feel like just spouting my feelings any other way would do this game a disservice.
Playthrough 1/A
Starting with playthrough 1 and this game's opening level. It might be this game's biggest strength. It's opening level is certainly one of the best openings to any video game I've ever played. Going from Mobile Suit gundam, to DMC lite combat, to sidecroller camera, to bullet hell shooter, to fighting a building sized boss and then using its arm as a sword to kill it is INSANE. It immediately sold me on this game. While the game will hit some bumps in pacing and story, I will always remember how batshit insane this opening was. It was like playing an E3 demo that actually lived up to the hype. The story and the characters might be a little much at times but I would be lying if I said I didn't love 2B and 9S's relationship Especially with the added context of the other endings. It makes their relationship so tragic. But seeing 2B lower her guard and let herself get more and more attached to 9S is really sweet and really well developed. The way the game makes you learn and understand the robots is really well done as well. It draws parallels to humanity. The robots have an amusement park and they're pacifists. They just want to make people smile and have a good time. Same with Pascal's Village. They present you with the idea that robots are evil and the game opens showing you the threat of these creatures only to slowly peel back the tape on the idea that there is more to these machines than meets the eye. The side quest where you have to escort a scared machine back to her sister in the desert was really sweet. 9S is trying to comfort this machine even if he doesn't even believe that they can have feelings or thoughts of their own. Yet he still does the right thing and so does 2B. It makes the player question if Yorha is really the right side of things and without discussing spoilers it brings up the right questions in the right ways that makes this game memorable and well thought out.
A weakness of this playthrough would be some off pacing and weak sidequests. Some of them are just typical go here kill that type of quests. There are certainly diamonds in the rough and some awesome sidequests that push this game's themes and ideas but they are too far and few between. The ending of the first playthrough is very sudden and you have to playthrough the same story but as 9S and depending on how thorough you are it can take just as long to reach the second ending to get any resolution.
Playthrough 2/B
The opening sucks. To be fair I ran out of healing items at the end of my first playthrough and I really liked how tense that made the last battle but since I opened up the second playthrough without a way to heal myself I threw myself against a wall for about an hour before I just decided to play on easy until this segment was done. But I don't think it was fun either way. This is easily the lowpoint of the whole game. You get to playthrough the same story but you get to talk to 9S's pod and operator. His operator is boring and his pod is just a female robot voice. So nothing much is different except instead of having a secondary weapon that can use heavy attacks you have a hacking ability. This is kind of a strength and a weakness because having the option to just halve the healthbar of any enemy, other than bosses, whenever you wanted is a big buff but the minigame gets very boring very fast. I felt like half my 9S playthrough was spent playing the bullet-hell hacking minigame. So 9S's gameplay is just an instant win hack button, and mashing the attack button and mashing the easiest dodge mechanic in any action game. I didn't rush this playthrough because I wanted to be fair but I didn't find any of the 9S exclusive quests or sideactivities very interesting or memorable. And it's the same ending mostly. The only real change is getting these lore scenes intersperced throughout the playthrough at significant moments in the story that give context to the wider world. It is fine but it grinds the playthrough to a halt and it's already slow since everything you're doing you've already done before. I didn't give the first playthrough a grade but I'd give it like an 8 or 8.5/10 but this one would get like a 5.5 or 6/10.
Playthrough 3/C
This is the meat and potatoes right here. All the same gameplay gripes are here. By the time I was done with this playthrough my hand was hurting because of the amount of holding down the autotarget button, holding down the shoot button, and mashing the attack and dodge button. The combat got really lame by the end of the game and a lot of this playthrough has you go through several waves of enemies in-between story beats. So While playthrough C has to best story beats and a really strong opening and ending sequences, it over-relies on a gameplay loop that got really stale after 30 hours. Playing as A2 was really fun. Cherami Liegh is just the queen of voice acting because I knew it was her the second she spoke. I think giving her devil trigger (lol) was enough of a gameplay difference between her and 2B that I wasn't bothered. I will say I think 2A's story is much more engaging than 9S's. 2A goes through a similar arc that 2B and 9S went through learning how not all machines are evil and the Pascal bits in 2A's story are deeply moving and emotional. I would say that climbing the towers as 9S were snoozefests but only the first one was both boring and easy. The latter 2 were infuriating and unengaging. The second one was just a hackathon that got progressively more and more annoying. And the last one is just another wave of enemies per floor that gets bullshit when you meet the kamikazi drones for the first time. I forgot to mention that this game doesn't have an auto save and the last playthrough doesn't give you a lot of options to save between missions. So I died in a bullshit way and was thrown back like 20 minutes due to some poor saving opportunities. The end was really good. This was my last playthrough but I did do the cursory look over the other route D and E endings to give me the full context. The choice at the end of route c is really nice story wise but I will say that it feels too black and white. The game makes this decision feel too binary. You're with 9S the entire game and only spend the final third with A2 yet one is clearly the good ending and one is clearly the bad one. Like I didn't feel as conflicted as I should. I will say the game probably wasn't trying to make you feel conflicted but if a choice's consequences are THAT clear they should be.
I have no real transition to talk about this but the game has some MAJOR glitches on the nintendo switch. I would heavily recomment playing this on any other system. It has nothing to do with the way the game runs. I was shocked at how well the game ran and how stable the frame rate was. This game runs better than Breath of the Wild or Tears of the Kingdom does and they're designed by Nintendo! The big problem with this game is that it will often get stuck in loading screens. If the Yorha boot menu does not show up during a loading screen then you're game is just frozen. This happened upwards of ten times in my playthrough. In a game where there are no autosaves, this glitch is game breaking. I got into the habit of saving every chance I had and would save every time I fast traveled because I was afraid the game would just stop working. So when the game works it works beautifully, but every time you enter a loading screen you're playing a roulette game that has like a 1/10 chance of screwing you over. I also encountered a funny glitch where I broke the camera free of the side-scroller effect and saw the other half of the world I wasn't supposed to but that's my bad and not the game's. The game also froze the first time it went into the hacking minigame mid combat. So I'd recommend staying in handheld mode for some of the more technically demanding parts of this game.
So other than some weak gameplay that struggles to carry the game to the end and some bumpy pacing the game is pretty excellent. I don't think its some masterpiece. The theme is battered over the player's head too much for it to carry itself as far as people think it goes. It certainly was a great time and one worth playing but I certainly don't have the love for this game that most of the internet does. The technical state of the game is really crappy because it works 99.9% of the time but the one time it freezes you could lose god knows how many hours depending on how often you save. Still, it's a damn good time and one I'd recommend anyone's way who loves high concept sci-fi and action games