Ok, first i am not here to offend any one or try and start a argument. Now with that out of the way my thoughts on this game.... After reading reviews and waiting for a bit i did end up getting Nier: Automata for ps4........ So i will say, graphics are fine. Nothing wrong there, it was what i expected graphic wise. Also graphics to me are not everything i personally still love my SNES and play that almost every day.

So graphics thrown aside.... The game felt like it has ADHD and did not know what it wanted to be. A side scroller, a guantlet, a Gradius style game etc etc. For me that just screams "We had no idea what we wanted so we make you jump around!" I do not know about many of you, but that does drive me nuts with all the jumping around for game style.

So i personally could not get into the game. If i do not enjoy the first hour or so i know there was no way id invest to really wanna beat the game. So i sold my copy for what i paid. (thank god i made my money back!) But was it like that for anyone else?

I wish the game part was more interesting; the various modules actually let you customize in some neat ways but none of the combat ever probes that depth. I loved the story part of it (hard to put a finger on what exactly, but something like the tone of it), and the music was really great too. Though I think the pacing of the story is definitely not for everyone as it is extremely deliberate.

The variation and jumping around between different styles and perspectives is part of the charm for me. The game would be worse off without it I think.

The only real issue I have with the game is that enemies could have been more interesting to fight. There's so much depth to the combat system itself, but none of the encounters really allow you to use it. I had to use the debug/training room to really mess around with crazy combos...

Part of the appeal of these games is they are willing to do some wild things most other studios wouldn't even touch, and rapid genre switching is one of them. I think they knew what they were doing in that regard.

It's great. I think they did better with it in the first Nier (the Resident Evil mansion is a high point), but I'm glad they brought it back and used it in some very key moments to great effect.

Any day in which a japanese game is returned is a good day. You are a hero, sir.

Whatever you do, don't play the first NieR. It changes style much more often (and really is a much worse game in many other ways.)

I don't think one hour of NieR is enough to show you what the game has in store, but that choice is your prerogative.

Even in Drakengard 3 there's a few sections which turn into an on-rail shooter. It's a style Yoko Taro has and it keeps thing from being too stale in my taste.

I was actually kinda the opposite. I really liked that the game jumped around in style/genre like that...it's just, for me, none of the parts are as interesting as games solely dedicated to those particular things so I slowly burnt out the more I played. The ground combat isn't remotely as interesting as other better offerings in the genre, the rpg elements are about as light as 'light rpg elements' can get and I don't even thing rpg should ever be used when talking about this game, the sidescrolling always felt like style over substance (in that it just seemed like a bullet point they could add rather than actually do anything fun with it), and a lot of the shooting segments go on waaaay too long.

At some point, I turned the game down to easy because I just wanted to see the rest of the story because that was the only thing keeping my interested. Honestly though, it's hard to blame someone for not sticking with it. The story, in my opinion, doesn't pick up until quite a few hours in (and, honestly, didn't make me go "oh shit!" until the beginning of Route-fucking-C) and if the gameplay isn't interesting to you now, I'd be hard-pressed to imagine you liking it more if you stuck with it longer.

I did not enjoy the first hour nor the other 15 or so to finish the game 3 times. I’m glad I can say this loud and proud. Nier is not a good game.

The gameplay is mediocre, the visuals are bland and apart from the soundtrack and some narrative bits in Playthrough C, it’s really not that interesting.

I also did most of the side missions and they were ...not good, to say the least.

Also the Fishing Minigame (good name for a band btw) felt very sarcastic and grungy, almost like Yoko was making fun of the player for doing it. I don’t like sarcastic, grungey stuff, as it pains my soul.

It's a pervasive design choice on the part of Yoko Taro throughout his projects so it's either something you get on-board with or not. I agree with @teddie that the first Nier did a better job with how clever the perspective changing got, and was in fact one of the things that led me to greatly enjoy that game. At the outset the original Nier felt like a clunky character action game with a few RPG elements and a whole lot of Japanese thrown into the mix. When I did finally reach parts where the camera started forcing crazy and interesting perspectives that altered the gameplay itself I became a lot more engaged with it, which eventually led to me finishing a playthrough and seeing the unique twist of the NG+ that solidified Nier as a great experience in my mind (albeit not a great game by any stretch).

It is curious that this very unique element that makes Automata stand out from the pack is something that would drive you away, but we all have different tastes and all is fair in love and video game criticism.

I didn't like Automata, but this was one of the best, most interesting parts of the game to me. It was pretty much everything else about it that put me off.

Just a small rant because this thread seems good for that.

The first Nier was really, really bad. Dunno if that was because of Yoko Taro style directing that didn't go hand-and-hand with the general ideas of the rest of the team or because the team couldn't implement the things the way he wanted. Its clear that he needs folks around him to keep him reality checked, so to speak. And Platinum especially seems very good at that. All the strongest parts of Nier can be pinpointed to what makes other P+ games great. To the very least, Nier: AM has amazing style and the fighting feels good, even if its a swallow and useless in parts as you can perform amazing acrobatic feels, yet button mashing gets the job better done).

I do believe that Nier: AM is the first good Yoko Taro game for a couple of different reasons and even then its not a really good game in parts, the player has to really dive into the world in order to find the fun. The setting itself is captivating enough however, but only to be badly designed by invisible walls that they kind of take away from the magic of exploring this interesting world. It feels intentional that the game only reveals itself while playing through it, rather than by your own exploration.

This game ain't seem to follow a cohesive gameplay scheme (as the thread creator stated, the game is all over the place in that regard). Its thanks to P+ ideas that the game functions really well as a video game, while still getting alongside it's weirdness. Personally, the Weapon stories were the best written parts of the game. The game was accessable enough that I didn't care much about using the weapons but rather I tried to collect them in order to read the stories behind them and some collectables were very rewarding even if finding them were bad on how the game is designed.

Its clear that the whole games setting and story is a great team effort rather than pure Auteurship. I've played other Yoko Taro games and they played more like anti-games where not even the story is the saving grace but the setting and the world.

Besides all of that, the games he were a part of are like the anti-thesis of logic and order to juxtapose his own ideas that people are highly unreasonable up by putting them into extremely surreal and deadly environments (settings of war, post-apocalyptic settings, etc). However, I could also argue that the unpredictability that comes with the setting is indeed his strongest suit. Its difficult to predict what happens next in any game he was a part of.

Regardless, even if parts of Nier: AM are not-so-good, I think that the general weirdness of the games he has directed became part of his own brand a long, long time ago. Which is why he can keep doing what he does and thats in general a very good thing.

I would've loved to see a "normal" game were Yoko Taro would be a part of. But perhaps thats what seperates Nier: AM from any other game he made already because compared to any other game this one carried the identity of a good action game.

I'm the weird person who likes both games a whole lot. I even enjoy playing the first Nier :v

I will give this a second attempt eventually. Seems like I was having to looking up guides just to figure out where to go in the main story. Its really bad at explaining what you're suppose to do. When I sat the game down I think I just unlocked fast travel. When I'm at the waypoint for the main mission it keeps telling me to go back and talk to someone at the base and I have no idea where the hell that was

@grandcurator: Its not really strange given that Nier: AM is basically just a retelling of the original Nier with different characters while further going into the whole nature of Gestalts and Replicants. The first Nier felt way more personal.

Nier: AM is way less calming than the first Nier was, too. Something about the atmosphere felt weirdly calm and idyllic to me.

Well...I'm actually surprised not to be the only one to have bounced off this game so hard. I rented the game, and glad I did, cause man this would have been a wasted 60$ for me.

For reference I completed..I don't know, the demo? The opening area, boss fight, after-math(Story and setting explained) and...turned it off and returned it. The shooter sections were fine but not amazing, the combat felt...bad. I was likely just bad at it myself or missed some key tutorial (There has to be a lock on but...). Even so, the thing I was suppose to be hooked by, the story was....meh?

It doesn't help the game that I know the big twist at the end, but if the story that gets you there grabbed me, I'd love to get too it. As it is "But we are human too!" is a theme I've seen done before, and with a better setup. I'll be absolutely willing to admit the game might blossom into a story-marvel, maybe the plot twists and points it raises become something..good. But I feel like I gave the game all the time it deserved to get me interested..and it failed.

If the combat was more challenging rather than just mashing dodge and attack it would of been way better.

The soundtrack though....one of the best IMO.

@bladededge: if you didn’t like it then you didn’t like but if you were looking to get hooked on the story and then returned it right after the tutorial then you kinda didn’t give that much time to develop or show its true colors. Granted Nier does require a bit of a time investment for the story to start getting really interesting.

@humanity: Mostly it was that the game seemed to show its hand for what kind of story it wanted to tell, the characters we were gonna get, the drama it was gonna explore.

I had no context going in, so I only saw what it had to show me up until that point and...no. Humans make androids to fight aliens..seen it. Aliens create machines to wage war..which maybe have intelligence? Seen it. "Emotions are forbidden"...but they actually have feelings! Seen it. "We exist to wage war..it is our purpose"...seen it. "Oh I did a wonderiful thing for you..but I have no memory of it, sorry!" seen it.

I am absolutely sure the game does more, and its the kinda game I will be happy to listen to a spoiler cast/plot synopsis/story-only movie via you-tube some day when I've got time. But when every single plot-point it drops on me is stuff I've seen, done better, and the combat doesn't grab me but actively turns me off? Eh, not my kind of game, not at all. Still expect there is something there, its gonna be on enough top-10 lists that I'm in the minority for a reason.

But then..I waited about this long post release to play the Last of Us..and bounced off it in very much the same way. (Seen it, calling it..yup. Seriously? Ok calling it but prove me wrong great game and...nope). No spoilers for that game, but I am a big fan of story-based games. Narrative >everything else for me. A good story and I'll play a game despite any number of other flaws. So when I bounce off something that is suppose to be really good story-wise, I bounce hard. I can forgive a lot of stuff about a game, I have higher standards then most people (snobish of me I am sure) for story though.

For even further nerdy reference I'm one of the people who hated ME3s ending for how it felt like the last 30 minutes got written by a completely differnt team. (NO! I proved multiple times through-out this game that organics and machines can live in harmony! That was literally the entire point of 4 of the characters/plot arcs 'best outcomes' (for me) Why can't I talk about Joker and EDI? Why can't I point out the harmony of geth and quarian. Why can't I inform that stupid bloody AI child "Uh no, Let me show you proof of two waring factions ending a war, reconizing the sacrifice and soul of each other and working in perfect harmony with one another?" Where is the "I earned the hardest and for me 2nd (Guess the first) most emotional moment in the whole game let me tell you off option!" -sigh-. At least they added a "Shoot the stupid kid in the head' ending. Only canon ending IMO.

See? I can get insanely grainular about stories in games. I expect a lot. I'm sure all of the above non-Nier talk is exactly why I bounced off this game. Its just me.

What you described is one of the things that makes Nier what it is. The first game even becomes a text adventure at one point.

I really did not like Nier: Automata and found it really disappointing. Even when just compared to the original Nier, but I do think the changes in gameplay was fine. I think the leaned too heavily on the bullet and hacking minigames which were not good enough for the amount of time you spend doing them and some of the stuff like the text adventure parts felt kinda recycled from OG Nier, but I am glad they were included. If that game was only the core combat the whole way through I would not have been able to force myself to finish it. The game really needed that variety even if it was not always great.

Some parts of this game were really cool, but it definitely felt like a slog partially due to the relatively boring gameplay

@bladededge: As cliched as it sounds, sometimes it's the journey not the destination that makes a particular story great. Of course you know yourself better than anyone else, and if you can tell from the outset that something isn't going to grab you then it probably won't.

Pretty sure you're supposed to fast travel up to the space station at that point.