Truthfully, I think it's one of the best game's ever made. All elements including the dialogue, soundtrack, narrative, and gameplay, are beautifully intertwined and cohesively work together to create a singular experience. The pacing is top-notch, and the variety of weapon's, gives a sense of individuality to each playthrough, while the adjustable difficulty that appears before every level allows for everyone to play; properly rewarding those who are willing to challenge themselves. This game feels so effortless in its delivery, it makes me wonder how we don't have 500 video games like this already, each great in their own right. Kid Icarus: Uprising is simply the perfect step-up in nearly every department a video game can have, and it knows exactly how far away it needs to be from the sun in order to be successful.

To top it all off, I think it looks flawless on the 3DS. Every piece of the environment assists in the obfuscating of hidden chests and secrets, Pit's model looks great and always stands out from everything else on the screen, while still being detailed and animated enough to capture the concept art drawn of him. The enemy design's contrast and interact with the environment well, and the green directional arrows that casually point you to where you need to go don't ruin the sense of progression. The ground combat, can seem shallow, but like I mentioned above, the variety of the weapon's, and the will to challenge yourself is the deciding factor here in your experience. It's amazing to me that this game manages to do all of this, and still casually progress the narrative of each character introduced by having God's banter about trivial and mundane things. Not a single joke feels out of place, and it's consistently enjoyable to listen to, even when you're replaying missions.

Hoping to see more Drakengard-likes in the future.

Okay okay, I know this is really weird game to see a review for but I just have to share the IGN review for this one.

+Master Tracks
+Singing's Fun
-No Flair
-No Soul

7.2/10

So what do you guys think? Singing's fun?

(Here's the link if you want it)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDba4pKsQcg

A surface level attempt at interpreting what a "underground crime" is. "Black Monday" is the worst fucking name for a thing ever. Did Garfield write this? It's genuinely insane to me that people engage with this narrative to any capacity, when there's shit like this. This game's plot plays out like a Resident Evil movie. Or a Silent Hill movie. Or any other video game movie for that matter.

Why do character's randomly start speaking English? "Beautiful Eyes." Huh??
Has Kashiwagi been practicing his English?
What about Kiryu's eyes, have you seen them recently?
Here, I'll show you what they look like: ⚫ ⚫

Imagine Kiryu is at his step-father's funeral.
"Kiryu-san, I'm so sorry for your loss. Tell me, what were his last words."
"I don't fucking know I'm fucking Japanese."
What a joke.

By the time I reached the final boss, I was so disconnected from the story that I was surprised to find out I was actually at the end of the game. I was confused, I knew who Mine was, but I was waiting for the actual bad guy to show up, but apparently he was the reason for Monday's being so Black. I'm sure he's also behind the month of February too.
Of course, this was after they decided to throw some stupid American cunt with a gun who takes zero effort to take down at me, The Dragon of Dojima. I love the part where they stab the guy in the stomach while on a peaceful walk with his daughter, and then it turns out to be a fake out death. You guys know this game already "faked out" the death of its protagonist the second you started the game right? Why even bother with this redundant scene, if you're just going to have a shot of him looking up to sky at the Orphanage.

Speaking of redundant, this game's story is redundant. This paragraph is redundant. I'm surprised the later games haven't retconned the death of every single character in this game, like they did with Kashiwagi. It doesn't help that Kiryu remains apathetic towards the people that have died or gone away, only emoting in the moment it happens, and then never bringing it up again. It wasn't until Yakuza 5 that we actually got to see the "real" Kiryu that had all of this anger built up inside of him, as a result of the people he had lost, questioning why it was them and not him. It's not the most complex thing imaginable, but it held weight and meaning, and I understood Kiryu's rage, because I would've hated experiencing Yakuza 3 first hand, like he did.

The problems the combat system have range from not being able to throw people in the Sotenbori river to the enemies having recovery times that extend the length of battles to the point of tedium. Disregarding the famed title, "Blockuza 3, Patriarch of shitty games; A Tojo Clan Subsidiary" this game doesn't have any difficulty to it. The sheer variety of heat actions is immediately undermined by the horrible sound design that makes it seem like the entire country of Japan is an ass by virtue of having everything, from a punch to slamming someone on metal, sound like a pathetic slap.

All the goofy ideas here are absurd, but there's also way too many opportunities for you to get into combat because they spawn like 4 guys every 5 seconds. I was desperate to find Komaki, but gave up when the game kept cutting me off by making me fight more fucking guys that take forever to kill. Thankfully, they fixed this issue in the 4th game by having Komaki be one of the first character's you meet in that game.

Grabs do no damage, Kiryu does no damage, and the enemies do no damage, and the Heat action meter takes so long to build up to the point where I just say fuck it and slam buttons until I reach the end of the story.

To summarize,

Pros: some creative ideas for heat actions

Cons: Mandatory golf section.

Never revisiting this title.

Less of a review, and more of a notice to anyone unfamiliar, because I have noticed that literally no one has ever brought this up.
I've noticed that most people who talk about this game played it when it came out, and that's fine. This is not an attempt to participate in Gestalt/Papa NieR erasure. So feel free to just take in the situation when I make the claim that NieR: Gestalt is not the legitimate version of NieR: Replicant.

What we have here with NieR: Gestalt is a combination of angry Kirby face boxart mixed together with "Revelations: Persona." NieR: Replicant was turned into NieR: Gestalt with the only purpose being to sell copies to the American consumer. The title is localized as, "NIER" because they thought it would sell more copies to the hardcore angry gamers in 'Merica (fuck yeah) if the letters were capitalized. After all, Replicant is a little too much of a baby name for WOMEN! Ha! Gayyy! They also changed the brother & sister dynamic to a father & daughter dynamic, because they believed the American consumer (only capable of playing shooty game with graphic realism) would find a story about a father protecting his daughter in a world where humanity is on the brink of extinction more compelling than a brother trying to protect his sister in a world where humanity is on the brink of extinction. The localizer's were not wrong, however. As 3 years later, The Last of Us 1 came out and it was the best game ever made with a story about a father trying to protect his surrogate daughter in a world that is on the brink of human extinction. The Last of Us 1 was also hailed as one of the greatest video games of all time. Wow. A masterclassic. It's a masterpiece and a classic fused together. Wow.

To anyone unfamiliar with conventions of boxart when it comes to Japanese games being released in the west, American box art tends to go through arbitrary changes for the purpose of selling more copies to that demographic. The most common example is to make it so that the box art has 3D models on the front cover instead of a proper illustration. NieR: Automata & Replicant v1.22 both follow this convention, and I think it sucks dick. "Realism" is also applied into the designs. The infamous, "bad Megaman boxart" still haunts the ghosts of the victims it took to this day for being such a horrible box art. "NIER" follows the practice of assuming the gamer is a male, by having the boxart show Papa NieR to have rippling muscle with the veins and everything. Being a super mature dark evil game for adults allows for a hue of piss to be poured all over the black and gray. There's also a bright light shown to show that it is a fantasy game. It seems the intention with the NieR: Replicant's Japanese boxart was to have NieR look directly at the player, as if to imply it is a reflection. NieR: Replicant (and all of Yoko Taro games) are metafiction, so this does have clear intention behind it. As a bonus, the title, "RepliCant" seems to be some sort of joke about how the Replicant's can't, y'know...

NieR: Replicant was exclusively released on the PS3 and not the Xbox360 because nobody gives a flying fuck about Xbox in Japan. Keep in mind, the Xbox360 sold only 1.6 million units in Japan, whereas, the Xbox360 sold over 46 million units in America (and only 38% of them worked). There was nothing legally binding this game to the PS3, so they pushed to have the western release of NieR: Replicant be turned into just "NIER" in the west, and have it released on both Playstation 3 and Xbox360, with the Xbox 360 version of "NIER" released in Japan having the title, "NieR: Gestalt." The Japanese boxart also retains the "looking at you" boxart I mentioned earlier. Just from my own experience, I've seen more people flash their physical copies of "NIER" on the Xbox360 than the PS3 version. It's easy for me to say that they made a decision that was ultimately better for them when it came to selling copies.

There were various changes to the script to make sure that the game acknowledged the age of Papa NieR. "You look like shit" is the best one in this regard, because I chortle at the screen whenever Laura Bailey opens her mouth, and it also has to do with the fact that Papa NieR's design sucks. You can really see how Gestalt falls apart (that's a stretch) when a grown ass man is going, "Yes! You and I, are friends now!" and I still find it incredible to me how they didn't change that.

Speaking as a fan of Yoko Taro directed games, this game's idea of having a father and a daughter doesn't make sense when you know the ideas that Yoko Taro has, as a writer. His hatred of the "little sister incest" trope that was frequently seen within Japanese media inspired him to write Caim and Furiae. Furiae holds incestuous feelings towards Caim and Caim rejects Furiae, disgusted by her feelings. This hatred of incest carried over into Replicant, however the relationship between NieR and Yonah is explicitly about authenticating the relationship between a brother and a sister, not sexualizing it, something he is obviously against.

A sickly sister stuck with a disease that will kill her. She wants nothing more than to spend time with her brother, but her brother is too busy trying to keep the both of them alive, applying for mundane jobs and forcing himself to participate in others' depravity, he has nothing but clear conviction when it comes to the desire of providing for his sister. His gullibility leads him astray. He is told the story of a fairytale, brandishes himself the hero in an attempt to bring to life a legend, and chooses to reject the one thing his sister actually wants from him, because a child would rather believe in a fairytale that tells him his wish will be granted, and all will be well, than accept the reality handed to him. In spite of his wrongdoings, you do not blame the child for this, for he is nothing but a perfect replica of the person causing him problems. His inability to--his refusal to--communicate with himself is his ultimate downfall. "You want me to understand your sadness? You think I'm going to sympathize with you?" he says to himself. Kneeling down and allowing his blade to rise, he strikes diagonally and kills himself.

If you strip away context, it's not dissimilar to Studio Ghlibli's, "Grave of The Fireflies" and I argue that Grave of The Fireflies is one of the most human films ever made. I think it speaks volumes to the quality of Yoko Taro's writing when you can essentially recontextualize an entire character by turning him into a widowed father without any friends, and keep most of what's happening in the story intact. To me, NieR: Gestalt is a game that can strike a chord with you if you have some connection to the father & daughter dynamic, and I find it interesting how we largely went in the direction of accepting Papa NieR as some kind of alternate universe, rather than pretending he doesn't exist. Kind of like how they turned Bad Boxart Megaman into a real character in Street Fighter x Tekken.

So yeah, the next time you want to like NieR: Gestalt, just remember that I fucking hate you and think you're worthless for liking this ILLEGITIMATE piece of garbage.