NieR Gestalt has been one of my top 10 favorite games for years now and I was worried Replicant wouldn't be able to reach the same level due to having a different protagonist and slightly altered script, but after putting 70 hours into the game and reaching the final ending I have no problem with saying that this truly is the definitive NieR experience.
This is everything I love about the original, but with beautiful visual enhancements, a 100% fully voiced script (Even the most minor NPCs are voiced) combat that is closer to Automata which is much more polished, fluid and tight and some added story content including the true canon ending which had previously only been available in a novel that never came to the west.
Let me tell you first hand that I'll always love Father Nier, but I am now a Brother Nier convert and believe him to be the superior protagonist because a lot of things in the story just fit better with Brother Nier.
Like the time-skip for example works much better with Brother Nier. Father NieR hardly changes in appearance or personality because he's already a fully developed adult. Whereas Brother Nier has tons of development and goes from an optimistic, slightly naïve and inexperienced teenager to a battle-hardened and more emotionally cold 21 year-old who has experienced the world's pain and suffering and wants revenge and doesn't care if he has to go on a murderous rampage to get it.
It's like he goes from Link from the Legend of Zelda series to Guts from Berserk (Hell he even has a sword that looks like the Dragonslayer) over the course of 5 years.
Now that I've gotten all that said the rest of this review is mostly going to be for those who don't know anything about NieR. I'm sure most people looking on this page have played the original, but for those who haven't hopefully this helps sell the game for you.
Let me start off by saying NieR has one of the most beautiful OSTs I've ever heard in a video game. Keiichi Okabe is a genius composer and the music is just so incredible and very unique and the fact that the languages of the vocals in the music are sung in accelerated versions of their current forms, as though 1,000 years have truly passed as each one evolved independently really gives NieR an atmosphere unlike any other game. For example, "The Wretched Automaton" is mostly English based, for example, but you can't understand it despite many morphemes being very familiar. It's alien yet familiar and that's the intention, which is absolutely brilliant.
The singer, Emi Evans, created these languages herself. One sounds French, another Gaelic, etc. She did an absolutely marvelous job too. That is a dedication that is unprecedented in most things nowadays, I can't imagine how long it took to create languages specifically for the music in game like that. I could honestly go on about the music for multiple paragraphs by itself, but as amazing as it is there's so much more to love about NieR, so let's talk about some of that now
The story and characters have to be some of the most well written and realistic in the whole media of video games. At the risk of sounding pretentious, the game is very "deep" the world, lore and side quests just captures the human condition so perfectly, truly a story about humanity itself and while there is a lot of nihilistic crushing despair and tragedy, it also never loses that glimmer of hope and love and tells us despite our lives being pointless in the grand scheme of the universe we should always strive to live it to the fullest and cherish every moment we spend with our family and loved ones because how long you live isn't important, but how you spend your life and the impact you have on others is. All the plot twists show just how truly unpredictable life can be and how even when you think you know the full story and things seem very black and white, it's not always that simple. The fact that more and more of the story is revealed on subsequent playthroughs after the first is amazing too, more games should do that, it really gives an incentive to do NG+. I especially love seeing certain plot points viewed from the villain's point of view and without going into spoilers one of the endings is still among one of the most mind-blowing meta things I've experienced in a video game.
NieR is one of the most immersive games I've ever played, all the characters and the story just feel so real. The dialogue and banter between Nier, Weiss, Kainé and Emil is a big part of what makes it so immersive, all the voice acting performances are just phenomenal and the script feels so natural, like a good group of friends just talking to each other and making comments about the world around them.
This is to say nothing of how incredibly unique the gameplay is too. Melding all kinds of genres and styles together into one, NieR is primarily an action RPG/hack n slash, but also has many other elements like bullet hell, side-scrolling platformer, dungeon crawler and even some text-based adventure and visual novel moments makes NieR unlike any other game you'll ever play and a truly unique experience.
What more can I say that hasn't already been said? If you want a truly incredible story with unforgettable characters, a beautiful OST and super fun and unique gameplay I can't recommend NieR enough, truly a one-of-a-kind experience. Peak fiction so they say.
This is everything I love about the original, but with beautiful visual enhancements, a 100% fully voiced script (Even the most minor NPCs are voiced) combat that is closer to Automata which is much more polished, fluid and tight and some added story content including the true canon ending which had previously only been available in a novel that never came to the west.
Let me tell you first hand that I'll always love Father Nier, but I am now a Brother Nier convert and believe him to be the superior protagonist because a lot of things in the story just fit better with Brother Nier.
Like the time-skip for example works much better with Brother Nier. Father NieR hardly changes in appearance or personality because he's already a fully developed adult. Whereas Brother Nier has tons of development and goes from an optimistic, slightly naïve and inexperienced teenager to a battle-hardened and more emotionally cold 21 year-old who has experienced the world's pain and suffering and wants revenge and doesn't care if he has to go on a murderous rampage to get it.
It's like he goes from Link from the Legend of Zelda series to Guts from Berserk (Hell he even has a sword that looks like the Dragonslayer) over the course of 5 years.
Now that I've gotten all that said the rest of this review is mostly going to be for those who don't know anything about NieR. I'm sure most people looking on this page have played the original, but for those who haven't hopefully this helps sell the game for you.
Let me start off by saying NieR has one of the most beautiful OSTs I've ever heard in a video game. Keiichi Okabe is a genius composer and the music is just so incredible and very unique and the fact that the languages of the vocals in the music are sung in accelerated versions of their current forms, as though 1,000 years have truly passed as each one evolved independently really gives NieR an atmosphere unlike any other game. For example, "The Wretched Automaton" is mostly English based, for example, but you can't understand it despite many morphemes being very familiar. It's alien yet familiar and that's the intention, which is absolutely brilliant.
The singer, Emi Evans, created these languages herself. One sounds French, another Gaelic, etc. She did an absolutely marvelous job too. That is a dedication that is unprecedented in most things nowadays, I can't imagine how long it took to create languages specifically for the music in game like that. I could honestly go on about the music for multiple paragraphs by itself, but as amazing as it is there's so much more to love about NieR, so let's talk about some of that now
The story and characters have to be some of the most well written and realistic in the whole media of video games. At the risk of sounding pretentious, the game is very "deep" the world, lore and side quests just captures the human condition so perfectly, truly a story about humanity itself and while there is a lot of nihilistic crushing despair and tragedy, it also never loses that glimmer of hope and love and tells us despite our lives being pointless in the grand scheme of the universe we should always strive to live it to the fullest and cherish every moment we spend with our family and loved ones because how long you live isn't important, but how you spend your life and the impact you have on others is. All the plot twists show just how truly unpredictable life can be and how even when you think you know the full story and things seem very black and white, it's not always that simple. The fact that more and more of the story is revealed on subsequent playthroughs after the first is amazing too, more games should do that, it really gives an incentive to do NG+. I especially love seeing certain plot points viewed from the villain's point of view and without going into spoilers one of the endings is still among one of the most mind-blowing meta things I've experienced in a video game.
NieR is one of the most immersive games I've ever played, all the characters and the story just feel so real. The dialogue and banter between Nier, Weiss, Kainé and Emil is a big part of what makes it so immersive, all the voice acting performances are just phenomenal and the script feels so natural, like a good group of friends just talking to each other and making comments about the world around them.
This is to say nothing of how incredibly unique the gameplay is too. Melding all kinds of genres and styles together into one, NieR is primarily an action RPG/hack n slash, but also has many other elements like bullet hell, side-scrolling platformer, dungeon crawler and even some text-based adventure and visual novel moments makes NieR unlike any other game you'll ever play and a truly unique experience.
What more can I say that hasn't already been said? If you want a truly incredible story with unforgettable characters, a beautiful OST and super fun and unique gameplay I can't recommend NieR enough, truly a one-of-a-kind experience. Peak fiction so they say.