Getting tripped up by other people diving too much, losing because your team is just not putting any effort in a team game or just being bored playing a mode that's just too easy are the biggest plagues of this game. It's a really fun experience for the most part, but the challenge it poses is less on the levels themselves, but more on the sheer randomness that other players and object physics may provide. Cheap losses are endless. The game is based on individual success yet it commonly places you in a mode where you have to rely on a team to make it to the final round. Two of the final round levels are absolutely non-dynamic and just feel like blind luck with no strategy. The idea of future content and rotating out levels makes me hopeful for the game's future, and I do like it a lot. I just think it's a little too frustrating and unreliable for skilled players to win.
Also Slime Climb is the best level

The amount of times this game has been recommended to me is bordering the lines of parody.

I've consistently been met with, "this is literally the greatest piece of fiction ever conceived" or "there are so many endings its awesome lol" or "this changes your perspective on games in general."

yes to all, and then some.

NieR: Automata is better than everyone says it is. This experience has surpassed any expectations put forth by myself and all others who constantly nagged me to play it.

Something always drew me away from this game. It might've been the fact that it's actually a pseudo-sequel of sorts, or the fact that the bar had been set so high by my friends that I was scared that it would never reach those impossible expectations.

To quell my original fear I decided to wait until the remaster of Replicant released, so I could take in the experience fully, instead of having that nagging guilt pester me my entire playthrough(s) of Automata.

Replicant surprised me in a multitude of ways. I found myself engrossed in the world for a little over 100 hours. Going back and forth between sections, completing every quest and talking to every side character, nipping at their heels in an attempt to uncover everything the world had to offer.

The only downside I found originally in Replicant was the way that it chose to handle subsequent playthroughs. I found it to be tiring and nonsensical, going through the same old dungeon and completing the same old quests over and over again.

I do not feel this way anymore, and I now understand what they were trying to do. It only took me completing all of Automata's main endings for it to click.

Playing both of these games back to back, within days of each other has been one of the most rewarding, and painful experiences. The questions posed by the themes and stories within are all truly from the heart and difficult to accept. From a thematic standpoint alone this game is extremely important.

From a gameplay and world-building standpoint, just as much.

Getting away from what the game is about, (as I wholeheartedly believe that you should just play it), from a moment to moment gameplay POV this game is a stellar ride.

Off the bat, we need to get the issue of the camera out of the way, because the amount of complaining and issues I've seen about it online is insane, but is not without reason.

When immediately starting the game, the camera is nauseating, and requires a lot of player tinkering to make it even usable. Thankfully, the camera menu is the most in-depth I've seen in a hack and slash, and making it perfectly tailored to your tastes is simple.

Now that that is out of the way...

Holy. Fuck.

How.

How did they make it this good.

This is hack and slash perfection, with the perfect amount of RPG mechanics sprinkled in.

NieR: Automata gives you total control on how you approach this game in terms of character builds and weapon choices. You have complete say over every little thing within the combat and exploration system.

You want to completely turn off your HUD? Cool, it's baked into the game and makes sense in its world, just take out the corresponding Plug-In Chips.

You want to be a total glass cannon? Sweet, remove everything from your OS System and replace it with attack value modifiers and become a total chad.

You want a huge health pool and to focus solely on long range attacks and a hacking bullet hell minigame that is actually totally viable in your second playthrough and not at all underpowered? ....you're not gonna believe this.

I've found that the possibilities within this system are almost endless, and I know I will be watching build videos for months to come.

Onto the overworld and exploration aspect.

The world in NieR: Automata is split into multiple sections, much like Replicant. (minus the constant loading screens. ;D)

There is a central hub with branching paths that lead you to other sections of the overworld, including but not limited to, The Forest Kingdom, or The Amusement Park.

I'm happy to say that every location in Automata is memorable and great in its own way. Each area is full of secrets to uncover and characters to fall in love with. You can really tell the amount of care that went into crafting each of these locales, and it is beyond impressing.

The soundtrack.

There isn't much I can say that hasn't already been said. As a self proclaimed music-enjoyer, this shit fucking rules.

Every melody is an ear worm, every ambient track is a haunting soundscape, and every boss theme a thunderous roar of keep going, you got this.

Everything that makes up this experience consistently raises the bar for the medium.

NieR: Automata is a perfect piece of art, truly.

Hats off to the developers, and..

Thank you, Yoko Taro.

I've been meaning to write a proper review for this for years (and I'm still planning to), but I think Hattori's review is pretty much spot-on, especially as a rebuttal to some of the more low-hanging criticisms I've seen floating around. It is pretty clear that Automata is the kind of game where you either vibe with the (categorically uncool, decidedly no-good) idiosyncrasies of its director Yoko Taro—world-renowned scoundrel and self-professed creator of "weird games for weird people"—or you don't. As for me, I'm not ashamed to admit that the tonal, thematic, and emotional registers explored in both of the mainline NieR games have pretty much conquered my soul. All-encompassing sadness interlaced with the grotesque and the absurd, but also full of heart and empathy where it counts—that's my shit right there. Incidentally, ⁠I was originally drawn to the world of NieR after spontaneously giving the Automata soundtrack a spin and just instantly clicking with it on a fundamental level—in fact, I'd say the music is such an integral and representative part of the experience that you can likely skip this game if listening to a track like "City Ruins" doesn't immediately make you want to fuck off to some forlorn corner of the world and weep for the soul of humanity. And trust me, weep I shall, seeing to what extent lewd fanart of the ostensible protagonist is stealing the public spotlight away from the actual, real star of the game: the Small Stubby Machine.

I've quickly developed an intense love for and fascination with this game. Probably the most remarkable thing about it for me is how the world and story can both feel really fleshed out, immersive and engaging, and then some new detail will emerge that shakes up the very foundation of all of this in some big way and yet this space you're engaging with becomes more convincing as a result, not less. It's amazing to me how the game manages to keep redefining your relationship to it in this manner, and yet the effect was always such as to draw me in further rather than push me away.

Somehow for me this process continued even after the game had concluded, with the side materials (https://theark.wiki/w/I_just_got_Ending_E) redefining my relationship with aspects of the game too. The word 'journey' is thrown around a lot, but my experience with this game was quite literally an emotional journey, one that even brought me to tears at points, a journey that continues even after the game has reached its end.

As well as being incredibly well designed from a narrative perspective, the philosophical ideas the game tackles are fascinating, and the way in which the game's structure is built with these in mind is something that is honestly kind of remarkable. My first time completing the game (by which I mean, getting to ending E) was, in this sense too, a journey, but there's also this feeling that there is so much to be unpacked here, and so much that only grows in impact once given full context, that I can see myself continuing to think, feel and explore new emotions, thoughts and ideas on repeat playthroughs. Despite tackling heavy, challenging ideas though, the game is good at managing to not be too heavy except when it needs to be; it has a delightful sense of humour, and is very willing to be silly at the right moments. I can't even begin to imagine the balancing act involved in making all of this work at once.

I have a dear love for these characters, with all their human imperfections and struggles, their hopes and dreams and fears and losses, and the world you explore with them is wonderfully realised. This is both in terms of the detail with which it evokes this dystopia, and also on a technical level of how beautiful these environments are and how well the music compliments them, helping evoke the emotions caught within these locations.

I don't think the game is wholly perfect by any means, though the imperfections rarely annoyed me for any great length of time. The side quests lean a bit too heavily into fairly simple fetch quests, and a handful of the side quests are just frustrating; that said the process of completing side quests feels rewarding with many of them meaningfully contributing either to world-building or the game's philosophical concerns. The base combat can get a bit repetitive after the 20 hour mark or so, and you can easily find yourself over-levelled for the fights you're engaging in; that said there's a gracefulness to the movement in the game that makes the combat generally satisfying, and the game is keen to dip into different genres and styles to try and mix things up and present different experiences.

I could probably list a few more minor complaints like this but it always feels like there's some twist that makes it actually fine, and like ultimately it just doesn't matter because everything else the game is doing in evoking this world, telling this story, and calling forth these emotions, is just so good. I can't remember the last time a game made me care this much, and feel this much.

A masterpiece. I honestly don't care about the sometimes tedious hacking sections of 9S' playthrough. I don't care that the writing becomes a little cryptic, confusing, and hard to parse near the end. And I (mostly) don't care about the fact that Adam and Eve are pretty ineffectual and unengaging villains that only serve as a vaguely-interesting counterpart to 2B and 9S. I don't care. Every now and then a game comes along that's just 'perfect for me', and this is one of those games.

But in Nier: Automata's defense, it's really fucking close to being perfect. The movement is sleek, slick, and streamlined as hell, the actual combat loop is simple but engaging and punchy, and the way it combines hack-n-slash action gameplay with RPG and shmup mechanics is practically flawless. You can actively choose to remove parts of your HUD to make room for more upgrades, an inspired and intriguing choice that makes the game feel meta. The soundtrack is grandiose, heavenly, and elegant, the wonderfully sad and empty game world paints a compelling picture of apocalyptic pathos, and the philosophical story and its small cast of impeccably fleshed-out main characters wrenches some gut-punch emotions out of the player that most anime-esque games simply are unable to (I mean, shit, even the Pods, the fucking Pods that follow the androids around, get some legitimate character development). 2B's final mission is perhaps the greatest gaming moment of the 2010's, second only to something like the Sans boss battle from Undertale. It is a lengthy and stunning display of violence, death, chaos, and - at the very end - slow, painful, and glitchy, yet quiet and peaceful, goodbyes. It hits every possible mechanical, narrative, and emotional note it needs to, and right when you think the game's peaked mechanically, it truly peaks at the end with the absolutely thrilling and gripping Tower mission shared between 9S and A2. The dual-perspective elevator sequence is so legitimately heart-pounding and exciting that you actually forget it's taking place in a fucking elevator.

This game is so crazy fucking good that it can believably balance scenes of characters crying about how beautiful the world is with a mechanic where you can blow up 2B and get to see her shapely ass on full display. You can get an achievement for looking at her ass upwards of ten times with the in-game camera, and yet none of it detracts from how moving, serene, and strangely mature this game can really be. Who cares how pretentious it is to call Nier: Automata, a game about a hot BDSM french-maid hitting things with a floating sword, a work of art? Objectivity is a fucking fantasy, and Nier: Automata is really, really good. 5 / 5.

What can I say about NieR: Automata that hasn’t been said a million times already?

Don’t go into NieR expecting one of Platinum’s usual character action games, full of deep combat mechanics and challenging fights. This is very much Yoko Taro’s project, where philosophy and story come before gameplay. That’s not to say that the action is bad per se, just that it isn’t the main focus.

When it launched, many people dropped off early from NieR, whether it be due to the game being “too anime” or simply from not understanding that each ending (complete with credit roll) is no more than a chapter break presented in an unusual way that doesn’t pay off until you reach Ending [E], the actual ending to the game. This is a huge shame, as a lot of the themes presented during route [A] are fleshed out in great depth later on and some of the best moments are hidden inside side-quests which some players may outright avoid.

With so many games featuring androids feeling a bit “Cyberpunk 101” with regards to the question of whether artificial intelligence can be considered sentient life (I’m looking at you, David Cage’s Detroit), NieR: Automata jumps straight to “yes” and then examines the deeper questions beyond that. There are a few topics that NieR touches on briefly — such as the concept of gender when removed from human physiology, or the sense of self one might lack when their memories can simply be backed up and restored from a server, making “death” meaningless — that I would be excited to see Taro explore in more depth in the future.

It may not be the best game of 2017 in terms of pure gameplay but as a narrative piece, it feels like one of the few mainstream video games that holds up to scrutiny. At the very least, it’s one of the only games that gave me genuine goosebumps.

My sincerest apologies fellow Taro heads, but this is my favorite one. Nier Automata is the inevitable conclusion that the series has been working towards to, with the actors of the stage play set by its predecessors finally rebelling against the 4th wall and breaking past this ever beautiful aging artform we love. Videogame characters being aware that they are inside a videogame is nothing new, but Nier Automata masterfully utilizes ever interactive system, device, mechanic and language at its disposal to bring new life to this concept and create an incredible purposeful metanarrative that could only work within the limitations of the medium and nowhere else.

Utilizing videogame conventions and expectations to frame its story as one of existential crisis and nihilistic despair experienced by what could be the protagonists of any kind of shmup, a genre defined by its disregard for narrative context and its primordial struggle where the player throws themselves to death over and over again oblivious to such purpose, Automata pits its characters against the bleek reality devised for and enforced on them and instills a level of self awareness that brilliantly paints a baroque moving picture that paralels our own communial absurdity on this tiny rock floating in space. That same interactive narrative continues on outside of the 2D ships, where Drakengard 3's intertwining of violence with sexual drive is further expanded and improved upon in Automata through its combat design.

Just as the characters are built to derive pleasure from the killing, so too do we from the now immediate and highly satisfying stylish Platinum combat, and just as purpose and meaning starts to inevitably crumble in front of them, so too does the fighting quickly decline into Drakengard territory, as the non threatening and non hostile enemies fail to ilicit any desire for engagement. No better is this exemplified then by the shift from 2B's two weapon combo fare to 9S's stop and start combat that perfectly reflects his state of mind and increasing frustration that explodes at the tail end of the game. And at the peril of shooting myself in the foot and being sent to the internet gulags, even the much (deservedly so) maligned peek at 2B's undergarments ends up reinforcing through gameplay the protagonist's self awareness and rejection of player control.

Carrying on the post 9/11 sentiment of Nier, Automata from the outset presents "the Other" as the consequence and victim of an eternity of perpetual warfare born from a conflict that none of the current perpetrators remember or fight for, and through an engrossing narrative that constantly delivers devastating revelation after another that repeatedly shatter the character's sense of purpose and resolve, it takes the ethos of a greek tragedy and creates a fascinating dialogue between the player and the screen. Route B and C provide the best use of sequential playthroughs in the series that cleverly switch between numerous point of views and further hammers home the theatricality of the game's construct, with 9S especially being a standout case with his pechant for breaking the boundaries of the game with his 4th wall breaking quips and hacking mechanics that ultimately make him the most vulnerable to the reality of the fiction he lives in. A world screaming out of the edges of the monitor, trapped in a nightmare of their own making and restricted by our very own code.

And that finale. That fuckin finale. What a glorious and exuberant display of love and admiration for the power of videogames and its capability to unite the world with empathy and optimism through a beautiful message of perserverance and struggle that only this artform knows how to deliver. Constantly do I see Automata criticized for being filled with philosophy name drops and references, implying an "emperor has no clothes" sort of deal that aspires to a pretense at depth, an odd critique that I fail to understand when the game consistently mocks said name drops and references and doesn't treat that lack of subtlety in the same manner as something like MGSV did with Moby Dick or 1984. If after witnessing that ending, you still believe that the philosophy musings aren't just the coat of paint through which the world of Automata communicates its message and are instead the focal point of the game, you my friend, have missed the forest for the trees. And I love how Automata's callback to Nier's final sacrifice gains a new whole meaning by its more open optionality.

Could go on about the perfect use of dynamic soundtracking, the cohesive selection of side quests that explore the game's ideas from numerous angles and humorous vignettes, or the clever use of achievements, but I guess I just did so time to wrap it up. I'm sorry the normiecore took this franchise from you, I truly am. But you wanted a new MGS2, right? Well, you got it. This is it.