The original NieR was a fantastic game that sadly fell under the radar for numerous reasons. So i'm glad that they decided to rerelease it in this way, along with adding additional content to it.

The story is as fantastic and grim as ever, and the new polish to the visuals is really quite stunning. The gameplay might be too simplistic for some, but I think there is a good deal of choice in how you handle the combat. Eitherway, I find thr combat satisfying, even if it isn't why I love this game so much.

This isn't a game everyone will love. It's imperfect, half of the sidequests really are just busywork and it can get very repetitive in long play sessions. But that imperfection, along with the overall tone, the atmosphere, the story and the soundtrack, make this game simply unforgettable.

I loved everything about NieR Replicant, it's crazy how the game plays with your heart like nothing. The characters have to be some of the best I've ever seen all with great stories and developments.

You can tell this game was made with love and dedication.

The ost is the best in the industry.

It's in another league, so full of emotions that elevate the moments. I swear that just by listening to some tracks I get emotional and relive moments.

One of the things that I liked the most about the game is that it has a time to appreciate the world through missions or small interactions that the characters have.
Which makes you care more about the characters.

I'm glad I experienced this game, Yoko Taro is truly one of the best storytellers of our time, all of his stories have something that resonates with me and that I will always remember.

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.

How do you even review a game like Elden Ring? A collaboration by Hidetaka Miyazaki of FromSoft fame and one of the biggest and best High Fantasy novelists since Tolkien AKA George R.R. Martin known for his world famous A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones series in the form of a massive open-world action RPG? No amount of words or arbitrary scores and ratings will ever do this game justice. Elden Ring is the kind of game that comes around once in a generation. A rare game that has an immense amount of hype and expectations behind it and yet lives up to and even exceeds everything it promises, this must be a dream right? How is this game even real? I truly believe people will be playing and talking about this game for years to come.

The story premise is simple and very much in line with other works from Miyazaki. Elden Ring takes place in a world known as the Lands Between sometime after the Elden Ring has been shattered, there are various demigods, the children of Queen Marika the Eternal who each hold a piece of the shattered Elden Ring in the form of Great Runes that taint and corrupts them. All these demigods are locked in a constant struggle to take all the shards of the Ring so they can reforge it and become the next Elden Lord. The player character, the Tarnished are exiles from the Lands Between who lost the Ring's grace, but are summoned back after the Shattering and now hope to claim the Great Runes, repair the Ring and become Elden Lord themselves.

Simple story premise aside what makes the Lands Between so special and unique, much like any other Souls is the world-building, character back-stories and lore itself. This is where George R.R. Martin's influence in the game shines. The Souls games have always had great detailed world-building if you dig into it by reading weapon descriptions, wikis and videos on YouTube. Elden Ring however is a bit more straightforward and easier to connect with for the average player and I can only imagine that was partially due to GRRM's involvement. NPC dialogue tells more about an NPC and their personality than ever before, item descriptions aren't nearly as vague and even some cut-scenes are much more descriptive now. The Lands Between is dense when it comes to lore, maybe even more so than any past Souls game and despite being less vague than past Souls games, there is still a lot of mystery to it still. This world is also an incredibly unique combination of various mythologies and legends like Celtic, Arthurian and Norse alongside obvious influence from Martin's own A Song of Ice and Fire series, Eastern mysticism and some Lovecraftian themes of occultism and cosmicism especially how the concept of sorcery fits into the world. The Lands Between is one of the most creative and immersive worlds I've had the pleasure of exploring in years and I just can't get enough of it.

Speaking of the world, let's talk about the actual open world design and levels now because Elden Ring is already being called one of the greatest open world games of all time and I have to say I agree wholeheartedly. The sheer sense of adventure and exploration Elden Ring gives is simply unparalleled. The entire game feels like one grand, epic fantastical journey that takes you all over an amazing, detailed world with so much gorgeous (and sometimes grotesque) scenery. Every single one of Elden Ring's 13 different regions from the grassy fields of Limgrave to the swamps of Liurnia or the volcanic rocky mountains of Mt Gelmir feels completely unique and distinct from the rest so they're all an absolute joy to explore and never feel boring. Elden Ring is open world in the purest sense, much like Breath of the Wild (Though I think Elden Ring is even better personally) as soon as you get out of the tutorial you can go anywhere and do anything you want to do. There's no map markers until you start discovering Lost Grace Sites (the Bonfires of this game) and dungeons. The game let's you discover things at your own pace and it feels so natural and authentic unlike most open world games which tend to overwhelm with map markers and make you feel like you're just checking things off a list. Elden Ring also has an insane amount of side content from optional dungeons (that remind me of Bloodborne's Chalice Dungeons, but even better), NPC quest-lines which you'll randomly stumble across in the open world in true Dark Souls fashion and whole secret areas with plenty of optional side bosses. I would honestly say 80-90% of Elden Ring IS optional content. You can explore as little or as much as you want, but I would recommend exploring as much because you get rewarded for it since some of the best content in the game is optional or hidden in secret areas. I also can't praise the topography of the map enough, the way it plays with elevation is unlike anything I can recall seeing in a video game before and there are areas that are obviously designed that way because the developers gave the player a horse that has the ability to double jump and they want you to utilize the feature. Elden Ring is the new benchmark standard for open world games as far as I'm concerned and I truly hope more games follow suit with its design philosophy because we need more Elden Ring's and less of the typical Ubisoft formula.

However the open world isn't all Elden Ring is. No, there's plenty of secular levels which are called 'Legacy Dungeons'. These are in the form of castles, ruins, cities etc. These are smaller more intimate areas us Souls fans have grown to love over the past decade which typically lead to a main story boss and right alongside the open world, these Legacy Dungeons are also some of the best levels FromSoft has ever designed and how all of these flawlessly connect to the open world is simply a master-class in level design. What makes Elden Ring's design philosophy work so well is because it never compromises what the Souls games have always done. Excellent handcrafted levels with tons of hidden secrets and items to find. This is just now done on a much bigger scale than ever before. I like to think of Elden Ring as a bunch of little Dark Souls areas that combine to make one massive Dark Souls area. Oh and if you're worried there isn't a hub area like our Firelink Shrine or Nexus of the past, there is one and you can upgrade weapons and talk to various NPCs there as well. This game legit has everything.

I could talk about the lore and world for days, but let's be honest, Souls fans are mainly here for one thing and that's the combat. So let's talk about the meat of the game and boy is it meaty. This is the culmination of everything FromSoft has learned in the past decade. This is the absolute best Souls combat has ever been. The pacing of the game is in a sweet spot between Bloodborne and Dark Souls III. Not quite as fast as Bloodborne, but not as slow as Dark Souls III either. You have your ol' reliable light attack and heavy attack as always, but now there's new mechanics like Sekiro's stealth and jump attacks (which deal heavy poise damage and help break your enemy's stance quicker) and the Elden Ring specific guard counter (immediately after blocking you hit the heavy attack button for an instant counter attack which makes defensive play styles more viable than ever) and of course even mounted combat. All these features add so much more depth and flexibility than you'd ever imagine. There's a joke that the Souls fan's favorite button is R1 because we tend to just spam and rely on the light attack as it's the most useful option, but there was a point in Elden Ring where I realized I was just naturally always using my entire moveset because the game is designed to make you do so, nothing feels like a useless addition and to make matters even better Weapon Arts which were powerful skills from Dark Souls III come back in the form of Ashes of War, but now these can be changed and experimented on with new weapons whenever you want and they can even change your weapon's status effect too. This isn't even mentioning how many cool and fun spells and incantations there are for magic or faith users to use, the insane variety of weapons and armor or the return of dual wielding power stances from Dark Souls II. Elden Ring is without a doubt the pinnacle of Souls style combat with the most variety in build options and playstyles than any other Souls style game and since you unlock a way to respec your character fairly early on (you can do this multiple times just in one playthrough too) and you find ample materials to upgrade weapons, the game encourages you to experiment and try new weapons and builds.

Difficulty will always be a major talking point when it comes to Souls games and Elden Ring is no exception. Here's my take on it. Elden Ring is simultaneously one of the hardest and most punishing FromSoft games, but also one of the most forgiving and newcomer friendly. How could that be you might ask? It's because of the open world. All other Souls games are linear. If you want to get past a specific area and progress you either have to 'git gud' or farm/grind in the same spot to level up more. Elden Ring isn't like this though because if you're having trouble in a specific area or find a boss you aren't strong enough for yet, just come back to it later. Go explore some more, get new gear, maybe level up a bit and you'll find that the boss won't be nearly as impossible. If you're a Souls veteran you probably won't have to do this as often, however the game does expect you to do this and certain areas are naturally going to have stronger enemies and bosses so you could get punished a bit for lack of exploration. This isn't Dark Souls 4, so don't play it like it is. Elden Ring also gives Spirit Ashes which are helpful NPC summons you can call on for boss fights even when in single player mode. This could range from a pack of wolves to a jellyfish or even a dragon knight, these help a LOT. There are definitely areas of the game that were designed with this mechanic in mind and if you don't utilize it, that's not the game designer's fault or poor balance. There is also a very useful quality of life feature called 'Stakes of Marika' which act as spawn points before boss fog gates. Some people might say this makes the game more 'causalized', but let's be honest here, speaking as a decade long FromSoft fan spending 3 minutes running back to the boss was never a highlight of these games. Having spawn points incentivizes trying things you might not have before and gets you to fighting the boss quicker which makes it more fun than ever before. You've been given all the tools necessary to succeed, you need only use them to overcome your adversaries now.

Another very crucial aspect of Souls games is the bosses themselves. Demons Souls, Dark Souls I-III, Bloodborne and Sekiro all have some of my absolute favorite boss fights in all of gaming and now I happily add Elden Ring to that list as well. Due to the sheer size and scope of the game Elden Ring has the most bosses of any Souls game yet with a whopping 80+ bosses. Yeah there's a handful that are reused, but I feel some people make that seem like a bigger deal than it actually is because the fights are still fun and with a game this size I can't fault them for reusing a handful of bosses. I'd say at least 50 of those bosses are still unique encounters, that's still more than any other Souls game yet none of them feel forgettable, even mini-bosses in dungeons are awesome. They're all incredibly designed with amazing move-sets, designs and memorable locations you fight them in too, as always you feel rewarded for your patience and determination to win when you memorize a bosses move set through trial and error and beat them afterwards. A few bosses also have fun puzzle/gimmicks as well which really make the fights stand out even more. The end-game areas especially have some of the absolute coolest and most fun bosses FromSoft have ever made in my opinion.

I have to mention that I'm hardly a graphics guy, but there were multiple times my jaw dropped because of the indescribable beauty of Elden Ring. I was playing on PS5 and this has to be one of the best looking games I've ever played. I think that's due to two reasons, 1), FromSoft stepping the graphical quality up a good bit because they didn't want to be outdone by the Demons Souls Remake and 2), an absolutely impeccable art design. This game truly shows how far an amazing art design can go to improving the visual look of a game. Every single area of the open world, the characters, the dungeons, the weapons and armor and most importantly the enemies and bosses, it is all peak art design. This is the absolute best visualized dark high fantasy game setting I've ever seen bar none.

Last but not least I have to mention the immaculate OST by master composer Yuka Kitamura. She helped compose the OST for both Bloodborne and Dark Souls III alongside Motoi Sakuraba and she composed the Sekiro OST by herself. However Elden Ring might be her best work yet. From the calm ambient tracks which add to the atmosphere of the open world to the various distinct bombastic epic orchestral boss themes Elden Ring's OST is a treat to the ears and one you'll remember and still be hearing melodies from long after your playthrough.

All in all Elden Ring deserves every single bit of praise its gotten, it has fully lived up to the hype and even far exceeded my astronomically high expectations in every way possible. I never could've imagined I would end up loving it nearly as much as I did or that it would become my all time favorite game. Whether it be masterclass level design and the greatest open world ever made with an unfathomable amount of side content, the pinnacle of Souls style combat, the most build variety and options yet, a one-of-a-kind and unique world and lore, cool, creative and memorable boss fights, some of the best art design and graphical capabilities in gaming or masterfully composed OST, Elden Ring truly has it all. I struggle to find a flaw in the game because it is as close to a flawless, perfect game as you can possibly get aside from some minor performance issues that I'm sure will get patched anyways. Simply put Elden Ring is the culmination of everything FromSoft has done since Demons Souls, it is FromSoft and Miyazaki's magnum opus, a true evolution of the Souls formula, a groundbreaking, genre-defining masterpiece that everyone deserves to experience in their lifetime.

One of the greatest games ever made. One of my top 10 favorite games ever made. The best Final Fantasy in everything, but the name. Both Sakaguchi and Uematsu's magnum opus.

The characters are amazing, Kaim is one of the best protagonists ever, the world is super unique and fleshed out, I'm always a sucker for that 'Magical based industrial revolution' aesthetic. The visual novel styled short story segments are just incredible, the main story itself is really well written and feely and if you didn't cry or tear up at least once while playing this game you probably have no soul. The gameplay is godly, one of the most fun turn-based systems I've experienced and the OST is just simply one of the best ever composed for a video game. If you haven't played this game yet, please do yourself a favor and rectify that.

PLEASE GIVE US AN HD REMASTER PORT, MICROSOFT I'M BEGGING YOU, I WILL LITERALLY BUY AN XBOX SERIES X FOR IT I DON'T CARE.