ballet as combat, sleek shmup minigames, and a blend of narrative and game design that other games still struggle to get right; what makes nier automata worth your time is the parts that come together and get tossed back out at you with all the pomp of someone spitting their blood and teeth into your face. theatre is the heart of the game, operating fully on the fringes of a b movie space opera. it is, in fact, that good, and the deconstruction of philosophical ideas is not even the core of it but rather a familiar means to discuss the ideas present at it's core.

as a port, it's a damn fine one: it plays exactly like a 2016 playstation title, looks about as well as it can on the switch and usually runs smoothly. that said, the switch can't really handle playing it for long periods of time - i experienced two notable crashes in game. once immediately following the grun battle in route A and again just before the emotional climax at the beginning of route C. additionally, the joycons just don't feel like the ideal controller for this game. everything is mapped to the very top of it, and unless you wanna fiddle with it for several minutes, you're pretty much stuck holding your controller awkwardly. finally, i don't think that handheld automata is the optimal way to experience it.

but it's worth your time in every way you can imagine and more, really.