Nier Replicant is a very frustrating game. As someone who played through Automata, yes the story alone makes it absolutely worth it, but honestly, just barely. I made the unfortunate choice of choosing 'Hard', which is one of the most egregiously awful hard modes that I've ever played in a game before, especially after the first playthrough, at which it is not even remotely worth it. Enemies have 13x health and I was in absolute agony trying to stick with my difficulty choice to the point where I ended up changing it, something that I NEVER do unless I literally have no choice.

Of course the characters, voice acting, narrative structure are absolutely phenomenal, but that is really the only good part of the game. Replicant does not do nearly enough to fix the many problems from the straight-up bad original game. Combat is brutally repetitive and the RPG-element, the Word system, just sucks and is not interesting nor satisfying to use in any capacity. Fast travel is only available for a certain part of the game, instead forcing you to run through the bland and mostly uninspired environments over and over again. Apart from a select few, the side quests are not good and pale in comparison to the best-in-class sidequests of Automata. There is not even an option to start at the end of the game for endings C-D, so if you didn't save, well fuck you, get ready to go through the abysmally boring Junk Heap a few more times.

I really, really wish that this game was good but it is not. I am glad to know the story of Replicant and experience the masterful soundtrack first-hand, but I was just genuinely desperate to finish the game about 20-30 hours before I finally forced myself to.

6/10