Nier Automata is a Action-RPG game was originally released in 2017 for PS4 and PC, and was later ported to XBONE release in 2018. It was developed by Platinum Games, and published by Square Enix, and it was sequel to 2010's original game titled as Nier for PS3 and X360, which also got an 2021's remaster release as Nier Replicant for PS4, XBONE, and PC.
First of all, I never actually played the 2010's original game back then because at the time when I first had my PS3 in around 2011, I was busy focusing on most of the common PS3 games that I'm more of interested to play which is the reason why I've failed to notice the game till I've discovered it around nearly mid-2010s.
It's one of the title that is a spin-off to main series called Drakengard which I also never heard of it before, so I was originally planned to get a original copy of the game for my PS3, but after finding out the release of the 2021's remaster comes with new story content and the additional improvements over the original which I will eventually get the PS4 version instead in sometime near future.
So going back to this review, in case you've been wondering why I pick this copy if I haven't been played the original game back then, so to tell you the truth? The reason behind picking up this copy is because it's one of the game developed by the same company behind the high quality action games like Bayonetta and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance which got me really curious to play this game and see if anything just as epic as the previous Platinum Games's past titles.
As I enjoyed the past Action-RPGs games back then, Nier Automata is entirely a full different things that I had never seen anything like such an groundbreaking experience which I've spent playing an hours of fun roaming around the worlds, completing all quest as possible, and having to replay again to reveal the multiple outcome is what I consider the game an outstanding work of art.
I'm going to discuss the story presentation, the open-world design, the combat, and the whole campaign to share my all thoughts on this game.
So without go further do, let's start the review.
Presentation
The game set in the year 11945 AD, the story revolves around a proxy war between the human-made androids and the machine army of invaders from another world.
It focuses on YoRHa combat android named 2B who is accompanied by 9S was sent out on the mission to prevent the machine army from invading the planet earth.
What I've learned about the story is that you're the human android working under the YoRHa forces led by top officer known as Commander who's given out the mission brief to resistance team to protect the humanity from the ongoing threat known as the machine lifeforms who are invented by the Aliens thousand years ago when they invaded Earth.
I know its sounds pretty strange to have a two different beings fighting one and other, but I think it's delivers a very good concept for the game which I really liked the idea of having a existence of two robot races facing in conflict, the corruption of the leader, and the extinction of humans is what interest me to learn all the history behind the events.
You have the female protagonist named 2B which I really liked her design choices such as sliver-white hair with black hairband, blindfolded eyewear, long-black heels, and of course her black outfit with skirt.
A relationship with 9S who is a scanner unit who can displays more emotion than the other YoRHa units, so unlike 2B who has sadly suffered with her PTSD that led into cold personality, as she believes its completely unnecessary for most androids to have a open feelings. It takes sometime for those two to get used to know each other during the in-game conversation is what makes the character's development quite interesting especially I liked both 2B and 9S are still an great fighter during the in-game sequences.
Then you have an unsociable mysterious girl named A2 which has long white hair and a sleeveless black outfit. She's one of the character who is not very keen to interact with someone as she prefers to keep to herself, but despite all that I also find her just as good other protagonists in the game.
There are supportive NPCs in the game such as Anemone who works at the camp as the resistance leader, a machine buddy Pascal and his villagers who is not like any of machines army seeks for the peace, and the twin android sisters Devola and Popola who aid the resistance team.
Finally you have the twin brothers as a duo villains are the leaders of machine network are responsible for creating the hordes of machines and plotting to wipe out all androids with the assist from the Red Girls are served as the ego of the machine network.
I got to say the story in the game is fantastic because it not just the whole plot are being well written, it has the multiple of different story scenarios in each playthroughs depending on which characters you're playing as, so having a multiple paths and rich detailed storylines is what makes the game so unique that keeps you playing more till you're reached the true outcome of the game's single-player story.
I also want to give the game's credit for creating the best looking design for the machines in video games such as cute little small stubby, tall medium biped, hovering medium flyer, suicide attempt small exploder, iron giant like goliath biped with big arms, the constructive like unit Engels, an opera performer unit Simone, baby forest king unit Immanuel, and of course the friendly buddy unit Pascal is looking spectacular for the design overall.
What I liked about the game as a whole is the strong setting of the open-world design in each locations such as Resistance Camp is the place that provides you maintenance shops, and weapons and supply trader.
City Ruins has a large opening areas of broken buildings covered with greenry leaves and has underground caves.
Desert also had broken housing, but outside of it has wide-range of sandy landscape and winds scattered around.
Amusement Park packed with many carnival stuff, bunch of rides, and crazy jester machines. Machine Village is where Pascal and his villagers lives on the tall tree with scrappy homes. Forest Zone is the kingdom which has many the sculptures like colosseums and pillars of bridges, the waterfalls, and the huge castle.
Abandoned Factory which has big construction site like the crane, the tower, the facility, and the lava room, and lastly the Flooded City filled with flooded buildings.
Everything on these visiting areas is pure substantial with big open landscape and well constructive environmental design brings the importance of the Action RPGs is all about having a large open-world and varieties of sceneries to make the whole game appealing to everyone's eye.
This is what I considered as the best overall presentation that I finding it as the most imaginative and beautiful things they had ever designed for video games.
Overall, it has unique storylines with multiple paths, recognisable characters, spectacular design for machines, and strong settings of the open-world design.
Gameplay
The single-player campaign comes with 3 different playthroughs, so you take control of either 2B or 9S in both the first and second, where as the last third continues where the event been left off in the large open-world perspective.
You will have the map inventory which has the highlighting pinpoints and icons, zooming in/out maps, and has the list of numerous quests will help you to locate and navigating the areas are mainly used for the exploration.
You move the playable character with the left stick to roam around, while the right stick controls the camera to look around at the surroundings.
Your player can able to sprint faster by simply hitting the right trigger once starting from slow to fast pacing speeds, and you can able to jump by hitting the X button, while you can also do dash jump by hitting the right trigger in mid-air to reach the mid-distance platforms.
On the combat, you will start off with the primary and secondary weapons depending which ones you've equipped, so mashing the square button uses as primary attack where as the triangle button acts as secondary attack, so you will use these to attack on enemies during the battle.
You also had unit buddies known as Pod which you can use them as the range attack such as firing with gatling gun, missiles, lasers, and bombs works effectively on long-range distance can be aimed in multiple direction by using the right stick controls.
You can use the lock-on system by hitting the left trigger which allows you to easily auto-target on the enemies, and you can evade the enemy's projectiles by tapping the right trigger which allows you to dodge their attack.
You can quickly change the weapon set of the player's and pod's equipment by hitting on the d-pad button which you can also customise these settings from the option menu.
Stuff like you can equip any choices of weapons that you had previously own such as light weapon which are quick and fast but balanced, the heavy weapon are slow but deals with larger damage, the spears works well for the long distance attack, and bare fists are weaker but performs better use of combos.
You can get it from the shops which gives you a wide range of items, weapons, and upgrades. The restorative items that you really need that recovers your health points and curing your status ailments. The enhancement items that temporary increases your melee and defense in short time, replenishes your skill gauge twice as fast, and prevents staggering from an attack.
The support items will increase your movement speed and make enemies drop more currencies in 1 minute.
The game has variety of weapons to purchase such as beastbane, phoenix dagger, type-3 sword, type-40 blade, machine axe, dragoon lance, type-3 fists, and etc. which these can be upgraded when you obtained enough materials and currencies in order to maximize your weapons level will improve your melee attacks with greater damage.
The Pods has the list of abilities such as mirage delivers deadly slashes to all enemies, hammer that unleashes a huge blow upon the target, blade spins the pod around at high speed, shield deploys a protective barrier to prevent enemy's projectiles, wave generates a powerful shock on the ground, and many more can be also upgraded and purchased from the shop.
What I also liked about the combat is that you can install the additional chipset from the option menu that benefiting your player's skill such as maximised health points, increases your damage attacks, displaying EXP huds, increases your movement speeds, reducing player's hit damage, and etc. which can be purchased from the shop.
So far, I am really happy with the combat gameplay because it's one of the game where it urges you to get enough upgrades and abilities are mostly required for the later quest, so these will enhance your play mechanics that makes you feel stronger and get better at the fighting system such as being able to pull off many combos and more stylish techniques.
You will gain enough EXPs which is a skill level that made your character becoming even stronger by having to defeat many enemies or completing numerous of quests, so this will also allow your attributes increasingly going forward making your enemies and bosses feel vulnerable for later battle.
From outside of Action-RPG genres, What makes the game so unique at the time is that it is one of the first title to experimenting the multiple mix-style of genres such as the side-scrolling platforming and twin-stick shoot-em-ups segments which I got to say it is very incredible indeed because it delivers a groundbreaking experience that made the game so much different from the past Action-RPGs games back then.
The boss battle is genuinely epic to play because it's heavily focuses on the bullet-hell elements where they fires a crazy amount of impossible projectiles which adds the overall in-depth challenge. Stuff like Engels, Grun, Goliath Tank, Goliath Flyer, and those twin brothers will fire multiples of lasers and projectiles that scattered everywhere making impossible to evade it, but its what makes the game so good to play because it requires to memorising their weak patterns and finding ways to defeat them without taking damage is what makes you keep playing the game further.
I got to admit the game does have really awesome side-quests to play around such as bringing child back to mother safely home, helping animal carer to find medicine to heal poor sick moose, finding a lost machine in desert, retaining the girl's lost memories with photographs, helping out the android couples, and more to do things in the game that really expands the playthrough's length.
I just love spending time to exploring around the big open-world environments stuff like collecting all randomised scraps and materials, killing and encountering every enemies you see in the game, and completing all the quests as possible that you've participate will gain you lots of rewards and EXPs is never gets really tiring to play.
The thing that I don't like about the game is that there are some areas may have some minor invisible walls that you trying to get pass through which is kinda bit annoying, so you may want to go for a different route to find another way to get through the stucked paths, and I also wanted to point out the map inventory screen which I considered as ugly because I don't like the way the map screen looked filled with blocky 3D mapping and the mix of muddy brown/grey colours around it makes it difficult to navigate things, so I've managed to locate the new area for most part, but please next time make the map inventory better.
Overall, it has magnificent combat system, unique mix-style of playstyle, epic boss battles, big open-world environments, and multiple of awesome quests.
Graphics
I got to say the overall visuals is stunningly beautiful on the open-world design with huge environments of city buildings and village homes, fantastic draw-distance of landscape shows lot of backgrounds details, the sharpness of texture-mapping on the surfaces, has great usage of lighting and shading effects looking really crisp, and the whole performance of the game ran smoothly up to 60 fps with no signs of slowdowns and screen tearing which proves that the 8th generation gaming has going forward with the technical aspects of the whole game handling pretty well for most part which is the reason why the game is looking quite big are the huge beneficial for the exploration and quests.
The character's animation is looking outstanding because the body figure and facial details on the actual cutscenes is quite astounding as the Platinum Games's previous work which you can't go wrong with their expressions and emotions which really nails it so far.
Overall, it has beautiful open-world environments, fantastic draw-distance of landscape, great usage of lighting and shading effects, smooth performance, and outstanding character's animation.
Music and Sounds
You got to admit the original soundtrack is what I consider as masterpiece work because I really liked how they fused the hard classical and soft melancholy style of orchestrated music really fits the game's environment starting from epic cinematic action to calm soft melody depending on situation.
It was composed by Keiichi Okabe, Keigo Hoashi, and Kuniyuki Takahashi did a amazing work on their score where as others such as Emi Evans, J'Nique Nicole, and Nami Nakagawa provides their three-part chorus for some of musical work, as well as Shotaro Seo did an additional vocals which I really liked the range-mix of Japanese and Scottish Gaelic style.
The use of sound effects in the game are very good with environmental design starting from mechanical background noises to more natured atmosphere depending on which locations you're in, and I also give credit to voice acting for their role did a splendid job on their performance which really shows the character's feelings worked flawlessly for most part in the in-game sequences.
Overall, it has amazing soundtrack, very good sound design, and splendid voice performance.
Special Features
The game did have a DLC content which has 3 arenas, 3 costumes, and some new events are also included in the special editions for PS4, XBONE, and PC.
It does have unlockable feature such as hacking mini-game which is a bullet-hell style top-down shooter are also seen in 9S's playthrough are kinda fun to play too.
Overall, a fine features.
Advantages
Unique storylines
Recognisable characters
Strong settings of the open-world design
Magnificent combat gameplay
Multiple of awesome quests
Beautiful visuals
Amazing soundtrack
Disadvantages
Some minor invisible walls
Ugly map inventory screen
Final Verdict
Presentation 10/10 - unique storylines with multiple paths, recognisable characters, spectacular design for machines, and strong settings of the open-world design.
Gameplay 9.5/10 - magnificent combat system, unique mix-style of play, epic boss battles, big open-world environments, and multiple of awesome quests.
Graphics 9.5/10 - beautiful open-world environments, fantastic draw-distance of landscape, great usage of lighting and shading effects, smooth performance, and outstanding character's animation.
Music and Sounds 10/10 - amazing soundtrack, very good sound design, and splendid voice performance.
Special Features 8/10 - DLCs and mini-game.
Overall 9.5/10 - Nier Automata is a masterpiece class which I consider this as one of the finest Action-RPGs of 8th generation era that is doing something original that you've never seen anything so much different from any past Action-RPGs libraries.
The game forms with mix-genres of playstyle, the well-written storyline with multiple playthroughs, the big open-world design, the astonishing original score, the well-made combat gameplay, and has numerous of quests to play and challenging bosses is what makes the game so special.
I am glad I've played it and I don't feel regret choosing this because I've made the choice of picking the game that I dared myself to play it, so I did it at the end and I really liking the game has turned out successfully.
I am hoping to look forward to give a try with the Nier Replicant in near future to see if anything great as this game had to offer.
This game cost around between £15 to £20 as a physical copy, where as digital releases cost about £35 are slightly bit high in comparison. Sadly the game was removed from the Xbox Game Pass as it today, so if any of you are interested in playing the RPGs stuff then go buy this and you won't be regretful to play because Nier Automata is a work of art.
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