Back in 2017, I bought this game alongside the Digital Devil Saga duology and Vagrant Story. I happened to find it at a convention and knowing I had just played Automata that year and loved that, I figured I'd pick it up. I honestly didn't even know there was a NieR game before Automata at the time, so I was pretty surprised. I started playing it, got up to seafront and had no idea how to fish and then promptly dropped it. Fast-forward to 2021, I see that a remake of the version with Brother NieR was releasing soon and I decided to go back and actually beat this game. I play through the entirety of it (besides ending D) and thought it was great, though I did have some issues with it that held it back from me loving it more than Automata. Fast-forward again to this year, I had planned to replay Automata for a while now and decided that November would be the month to do so. Before that though, I decided I wanted to replay Gestalt and see if I ended up liking it more now. Well seeing my updated rating, I'm sure you can see how I felt. This game is honestly not objectively perfect but it does certain things so well and I love it so much, that I can't give it anything less than a 10/10.

So the thing people like about NieR the most is the story. When I played it in 2021, I thought the story was good but overrated. I also somehow missed the gestalt documents at the end of the game, so that plus appreciating the story as a whole a lot more, made me realize it really is peak. A big part of the story being amazing too, are the different endings you can get. Ending A is great but the game really comes together when you go through route B. Some things get revealed to you at the end of Route A, and so there's a bunch of little changes in Route B that flip your perspective on what was going on and I just love it. You're basically replaying the 2nd half of the game all over again but because of all those little changes, I had no issue with it. There's also ending C and D and the route for those is basically the exact same as B, only the ending changes. The endings for those are great (especially ending D, holy shit does that ending feel impactful) however I can see how it would get tedious for someone playing considering it's pretty much all of the same content as route B. Either way, the story is just fantastic I think and definitely better than I once thought.

Though, the story is not actually my favorite aspect of the game. My favorite aspect is the main cast. Honestly may be my favorite cast in any game ever tbh, I love all of the main 4 so much and think they complement each other perfectly.
Weiss and Kaine are always throwing insults at each other, Weiss is always complaining about NieR's tendency to just help someone no matter what, Emil has a great affection towards NieR as seen later in the game, Emil and Kaine get along well because they both see themselves as outcasts...there's a lot of different character dynamics going on and when it's all 4 of them together they just make the perfect JRPG team imo.

The other big thing I absolutely loved was the OST. When I initially beat the game, I realized that the OST was really good but as time passed, I kept coming back to certain songs. I was listening to Gestalt's soundtrack more than Automata's and now that I've beaten it again, I can confidently say I 100% like it more than Automata. It's honestly just perfect and probably in my like top 3 Game OST's ever now. Stand out songs for me are Grandma, Emil Karma and it's other variant, Song of the Ancients, Shadowlord and more. The music is just top tier.

Another thing I really love is the gameplay changes that happen throughout the game. Besides your normal combat, there's also little sections that change things up. There's several 2D sections throughout, there's a forest area that plays out like a Visual Novel, the first visit to Emil's Mansion is basically Resident Evil with its semi-spookiness and fixed camera angles, Emil's Mansion's basement gives you this top down view that plays like Diablo, not to mention most of the bosses area bullet hells. There's just a lot of variety in the gameplay and really makes the game feel fresh.

Speaking of the core gameplay though, let's talk about the combat and the other "flaws" I see this game having. The combat...compared to more flashier, fast paced action games is lackluster. I remember it was a big issue to me when I initially played the game, but honestly it grew on me a bunch and I learned to enjoy it now. I don't think the game ever really needed super flashy complex combat and so I think it gets the job done. Plus there's something I enjoy about how chunky the combat can feel, idk I said the same thing about Yakuza 1 and the same thing applies here too.

My other biggest issue back then, and this was purely just a me thing, was I didn't like the world and it's aesthetic nearly as much as Automata's. The post-apocalyptic world in that game was my absolute favorite aspect when I played, and so to go from that to this was disappointing back then. I still much prefer Automata's world but I honestly do enjoy Gestalt's now. It's far from my favorite gaming world, though I also don't play it for that so it also gets the job done I think.

A couple small issues I did actually have with the game this time around were the bloom effects in some areas and the Exp system. I think the bloom in seafront and the fog effect in the northern plains can look kinda ugly at times, I'm sure that's probably fixed in the remake so that's really only a Gestalt issue. I also disliked how if Kaine or Emil got the finishing blow on a normal enemy, you missed out on any Exp. I hope that got changed in the remake because it can kind stink when playing here. I can also see why people would dislike all the backtracking, hell I was getting a bit burnt out myself going for ending C and D lol. But overall, I think the backtracking to old areas isn't as bad as people say. The area you go back through the most is the junk heap and even then, that area isn't too long and has banger music so I had no problem going through it several times.

Last time I played, I only did a few of the side quests that were needed to get every weapon for the latter endings. This time around, I did every single one...and while they could get very fetch-questy, I enjoyed them overall. A lot of the time there's some voiced Weiss/NieR dialogue that makes the entire quest worth it imo. The best quests overall were I Facade I thought. Most of those were very memorable, alongside the lighthouse lady ones of course.

I did also get a chunk of the trophies I was missing before, the big one being the Lunar Tear one. That definitely took a bit of effort on my part but once I finally got it, it was pretty satisfying. I still have the speedrun trophy and the weapon upgrade trophies to get so maybe I'll do those on my next replay who knows.

So yeah, is the game perfect? As I pointed out, there are some issues I can see others having and there are even some things I still wasn't a fan of in this game. But the absolutely peak story and especially peak cast and OST, just makes me want to give it a 10 and that's what I'll do for the time being. The game has a lot of heart and I think it's worth playing if you haven't already.

Anyways, next is Automata and it's been even longer since I last played that so I'm hyped to see if I'll still love it as much as I did six years ago!


Also sorry if this review is incoherent at all, writing this at 3 AM randomly lole.

It's ironic that a game with intergalactic space travel and so many different planets feels so bland to explore. Bethesda's philosophy to game design has always been "size matters" and Starfield feels like the natural evolution of that approach.

However, by having so many planets, moons, even galaxies to explore ... everything feels bland. We all know deep down that no developer could ever create entire galaxies of content. And honestly, nobody would even want that, because even if it sounds cool, after a while you would realize that it gets tiring to play the very same game over hundreds of hours because the mechanics simply can't carry such a massive experience.

Thanks to the amount and the resulting emptiness of these planets I ended up wanting to explore none of them. I occasionally tried to wander around aimlessly, looking for markers on my map and usually just ended up in samey caves and outposts that provided nothing of interest. It was "content" in the strictest sense but it wasn't worthwhile or meaningful. It was just there to make the game bigger.

A good game, as far as I'm concerned, leads the player to where the good content is. Starfield does this by randomly putting quests into your log (seemingly by your character hear about rumors NPCs talk about) and while that is definitely an option that does work, it also makes it feel like you're just working off a list.

Maybe that's a matter of preference, but if I reach a new location in an RPG I want to talk to NPCs, gather information, stumble upon interesting places and actively look for the quests. In Starfield it feels like you're running around and your questlog gets filled automatically while you're doing something else. It's the Ubisoft design of doing content. Nothing needs to be explored, everything is on your map or your questlog. Now choose something and do it, damn it!

And it feels wrong to me. My questlog was filled with stuff like "talk to person X", talk to person Y", "apply for random job", "go there" and without context I simply did not know what I should even go for. Sometimes I ended up randomly following a marker to a quest and it ended up being something that my character that I had in my mind wouldn't even be interested in. But since he put it in his questlog, he obviously is somehow.

There are some quests in this game that I liked. Most of them don't really offer the interesting decision making of something like Fallout: New Vegas, but you can choose to be an asshole or a helpful citizen and I particularly enjoyed the lengthy storyline of Ryujin industries, full of industry spionage and betrayal. It wasn't interesting in terms of gameplay, but it lead to some cool choices at least. Though I imagine the end result will still look fairly similar in every case.

The gameplay is basically Fallout, but more boring. Instead of having the cool V.A.T.S. system you have nothing interesting to do. There are tons of weapons and also grenades, mines and drugs to use but combat encounters boil down to simply shooting people without really having the character use specific abilities or really any decision making. The skill tree mostly offers percentual boosts to your weapons and nothing really stood out to me that made combat interesting. There is one thing you unlock fairly late in the game, that feels like the equivalent of Skyrim screams, but these also did not seem very interesting to use.

It also has the typical hacking, lockpicking, pickpocketing, sneaking ... It does nothing new in that regard. The only real thing this introduces to Bethesda RPGs are the spaceships. However, these can mostly be ignored, since your ship isn't really meant to be used for flying from planet to planet, but mostly just as a way to make quick travel more tedious, since you always have to enter your cockpit before jumping to the next galaxy. The actual fights in space are something I always tried to avoid, since they simply aren't fun to do, but they're there and I suppose it could be fun for some people to upgrade and customize there ships. I certainly didn't need it. I also never bothered to create and outposts since it was simply not something I ever found use for.

The main storyline was there. Really, I could not care less about it. I liked how they handled New Game + in regards to the story, but I was never invested, did not care for the characters and it all lead to a generic conclusion that offers nothing of value. You might as well not do the main story, but you'd miss out on the powers you unlock at some point, so at least play to that point.

In conclusion, I think this game simply caters to a specific type of audience. People who enjoy spending a lot of time in one game, gathering materials and money, building bases and spaceships and have constant progression and tons of quests will probably be happy with this. It does offer a lot. It's a gigantic game and even though I put about 40 hours into it, it still feels like I only scratched the surface. But people who want their RPGs to have some deeper mechanics, quests with interesting choices and less bloat will probably end up like me and leave the experience unimpressed.

Buying another roguelite deckbuilder after just feeling like I can't take any more StS clones was a risk, but I had heard that this was different and it is! This game actually doesn't really play anything like StS. Instead, you're presented with a block puzzler style level where the row closest to you can attack you and you have to stop them before they do, by playing cards that manipulate the board somehow. The dagger can be chained for as many daggers as you have and the axe can only attack once, but can kill the whole front row. The other interesting quirk is that cards are spent permanently when you play them, so you have to constantly redesign your deck based on what you find.

That's really about it. It's simple but quite neat, refreshing and not at all a StS clone. It's also got a unique art style and color scheme that just works, as well as a personal atmosphere combined with the dark story of a bullied kid finding her pride in designing... Well, I think she's designing the game we're playing?

Because the problem is that I will never see the ending to this plot since I felt like the first campaign was all I needed. The game doesn't even really clarify very well that there are three campaigns - there's just a menu selection that says "Path of the Giant" by default and I only found out that you can click that button and switch to a new campaign with a new story and new cards by random exploration and not because the UI invited me to - and so I thought I was done with the game when I finally beat the giant after maybe 10 hours of trying. I was satisfied and felt like I had completed a fun, if perhaps too simple, little diversion and I was actually a little annoyed when I realized that I had really only begun.

The issue is that this simple design is too simple and after one campaign, you start feeling like you want more complicated decks, like how it'd be cool to combine the dagger card with more cards that let you draw cards and more complicated combos. On top of the simplicitiy, it also becomes clear with time that the base design doesn't truly work. Permanently spending your cards means that you're left to RNG a little too often, and you can lose because you got to the stage where you absolutely must have strong ranged attacks without lucking into very many ranged cards, which isn't very fun in the long run. The game can also create some impossible scenarios, like how two copies of the creature on the anvil will just give each other armor every turn, so you get stuck in a loop where you turn is spent knocking off the armor they will then give themselves on their own turn and you can't get out of that loop since cards are finite.

I will still recommend this game as a neat little diversion with an interesting idea and a personal story and theme. It's a strong little title that just doesn't survive further scrutiny, but I will say that I think this game should be the new standard intro deckbuilder that we recommend to newbies. It's still got challenge and it'll still teach people deckbuilder logic, but with a more personal touch and simpler mechanics. I liked this one even though I found a few major flaws and won't be playing it to the end.

I certainly did not expect this to be one of the best puzzle platformers I’ve ever played.
It has a fun art style with wonderful environments and colors.
Each level had amazing atmosphere and was designed very well.
All the different hat powers played well for every part they were needed in every level.
Great storytelling and characters.
Surprisingly good boss battles.
The soundtrack is great. (The Snatcher boss battle music had no right to slap as hard as it did)
Funny writing with great interactions.
Dare I say this is on level with Nintendo made platformers.