I think I hate this game. For the record I love Automata, it was one of the main reasons I bought a PS4. It took me a couple of attempts to get into it, but by the end I loved what I played. Naturally, I had a pretty strong interest in the first game going in.
The combat is good enough, the story is a little dumb, but you know it's fine, and the characters aren't annoying or anything. What I was really wanting were more of the sort of weird amazing moments that Automata had. Replicant does not have many. The few places where any sort of strange atmosphere was instilled, it didn't come near the heights of Automata.
That leaves the plot, the structure of which destroys the game. Not really any other way of saying that. I see a lot of people reviewing this acting like this doesn't completely ruin everything. Here's the structure of Nier Replicant:
Part A - Play ~18 hour story with a timeskip around halfway through
Part B - Go back to just after timeskip and replay the second half of the game
Part C - Go back to after the timeskip and replay the second half of the game again, this time having to collect every weapon in the game.
These parts are generally referred to as endings. "Ending A" is at the end of what I'm calling "Part A", but isn't canon. The canon ending is Ending D, which you can choose to get at the end of Part C via story choice. Hope you saved before the final boss!!!
Getting Ending A is fine. I bought the game at launch and got this Ending around that time. Nothing feels that developed or well-explained, but I figured redoing the second half would explain most of it.
Ending B gives nearly nothing extra. Like the most basic of shitty grey area commentary. Probably on a similar tier to Fire Emblem Fates, to use that as a reference. Basically just a replay of the mediocre game I just played.
Getting Ending C and D was like eiorhg[s0pogh9poihfpoihfepsofhi. Nothing new is added to the story, it's just redoing the same shit for the third time but with a guide up on the other monitor so you can maximise your fucking fishing skill and make enough money to buy the overpriced weapons that have 0 significance to the story. It's just "get all the chaos emeralds" where you don't even have yellow hair in the final bossfight.
By the time I got ending D, it had been nearly a year since I'd gotten the game and I was doing it solely to say I'd finished it. NieR Replicant starts out as an okay game you expect to blossom, and then it just makes you play more okay game. I'm too mentally exhausted now for some metaphor.
There is a non-canon Ending E added just for the remaster, which I did decide to play and would probably say was the best part of the game. Was it worth it? No. It did add a new gameplay element which was cool but should have shown up wayyy earlier. I could rant about this as well but it's heavy spoiler territory.
I usually make reviews for games as soon as I finish them. Even ones like this that are 310 paragraphs long, but it's been nearly 3 months since I beat Replicant. It just took all energy out of me with its monotony by the end. It was cool to have some context on Automata, but nothing in it could make up for that plot. This is like something Tetsuya Nomura would make.
The combat is good enough, the story is a little dumb, but you know it's fine, and the characters aren't annoying or anything. What I was really wanting were more of the sort of weird amazing moments that Automata had. Replicant does not have many. The few places where any sort of strange atmosphere was instilled, it didn't come near the heights of Automata.
That leaves the plot, the structure of which destroys the game. Not really any other way of saying that. I see a lot of people reviewing this acting like this doesn't completely ruin everything. Here's the structure of Nier Replicant:
Part A - Play ~18 hour story with a timeskip around halfway through
Part B - Go back to just after timeskip and replay the second half of the game
Part C - Go back to after the timeskip and replay the second half of the game again, this time having to collect every weapon in the game.
These parts are generally referred to as endings. "Ending A" is at the end of what I'm calling "Part A", but isn't canon. The canon ending is Ending D, which you can choose to get at the end of Part C via story choice. Hope you saved before the final boss!!!
Getting Ending A is fine. I bought the game at launch and got this Ending around that time. Nothing feels that developed or well-explained, but I figured redoing the second half would explain most of it.
Ending B gives nearly nothing extra. Like the most basic of shitty grey area commentary. Probably on a similar tier to Fire Emblem Fates, to use that as a reference. Basically just a replay of the mediocre game I just played.
Getting Ending C and D was like eiorhg[s0pogh9poihfpoihfepsofhi. Nothing new is added to the story, it's just redoing the same shit for the third time but with a guide up on the other monitor so you can maximise your fucking fishing skill and make enough money to buy the overpriced weapons that have 0 significance to the story. It's just "get all the chaos emeralds" where you don't even have yellow hair in the final bossfight.
By the time I got ending D, it had been nearly a year since I'd gotten the game and I was doing it solely to say I'd finished it. NieR Replicant starts out as an okay game you expect to blossom, and then it just makes you play more okay game. I'm too mentally exhausted now for some metaphor.
There is a non-canon Ending E added just for the remaster, which I did decide to play and would probably say was the best part of the game. Was it worth it? No. It did add a new gameplay element which was cool but should have shown up wayyy earlier. I could rant about this as well but it's heavy spoiler territory.
I usually make reviews for games as soon as I finish them. Even ones like this that are 310 paragraphs long, but it's been nearly 3 months since I beat Replicant. It just took all energy out of me with its monotony by the end. It was cool to have some context on Automata, but nothing in it could make up for that plot. This is like something Tetsuya Nomura would make.