Post by Corporal Derpy on Mar 20, 2017 18:05:49 GMT
So this is a game I got to Platinum already. I think like a week after it came out. If I'm entirely honest I currently think this is the best game of 2017.
I should make it clear I will spoil parts of it, though I will attempt to have them hidden in spoilers for the most part there are some times it will end up that way regardless. If you don't wanna run that risk then yeah you might be better off not reading the wall of text I'm about to make.
The most I knew about Nier as a series up until the demo for this game was seeing it on someone's 'Top whatever games list', where they brought up how great of a choice it had at the ending. The only reason I even got the demo was cause a friend popped up and said 'Shithead play this demo, it's a good game'. I downloaded it that same day, beat it maybe three times and a couple days later I had the full game pre-ordered.
This was a Platinum Games game, of which I've only played Metal Gear Rising, but when that bastard said it had Androids in it and difficulty sorta like Dark Souls it was set in stone. I'd say that was perhaps the best way to go into the game as I didn't know what to expect either from the series as a whole or from what Platinum would do with it.
The game does take place in a long distant future of the same world that the original game took place in, yet at no point did this cause me any issues, the story doesn't rely on one that was already told years ago. Aliens showed up and unleashed Machines on Earth which immediately set to decimating Humanity, but a large amount of Humanity managed to flee to the Moon and set about on creating Androids to get Earth back.
Characters for this 'world' are done fabulously, from the main characters to even some of the random quest givers that I even ended up sitting on one of the choice menus for over 20 minutes. I even started liking the Machines and went into one area without killing any of the ones that didn't straight up attack me.
This is perhaps however the biggest 'issue' I had with it. I played it entirely with the Japanese voices, I don't think the English voices are that bad but I didn't think they 'fit' the characters, I feel like the Japanese is top-notch and that it should be played with Japanese voices and English subtitles. There are minor moments though where there are no subtitles such as when you pet your Pod(Which you can totally do by the way and that's fucking top).
The difficulty, yeah we're on to one of the few slightly negative parts I guess, when I was told it was sorta like Dark Souls and that there looked to be a difficulty spike in it I got quite hyped for the hours spent dying to this or that boss and the joy of finally beating them. I still bloody loved most of the boss fights but yeah it didn't seem that difficult at all.
Admittedly I was playing on Normal, but I died only 3 proper times in the 48 hours it took for me to get all trophies on the game, with any of the other deaths being me needing to do so for some of the secret endings.
There are some sidequests that felt like I was suddenly back to playing Xenoblade, as the game pitted me against Lvl 40 or even a Lvl 50 for what was a quest I got at Lvl 26. Levels for the most part don't mean that much to the game as you can usually handle enemies higher than you but for some like that Lvl 50 you kinda do need to be at least Lvl 40 to kill it in less than an hour of just slowly harming it.
The way I see it, the pacing was done quite well even with those rather 'eugh' moments with the super high level enemies for my current level. I'd say the only time I really got sick of it was a part where I had to do something a significant amount of times purely to farm for the Platinum Trophy.
I really liked the world of it, I usually don't get that much into Post-Apocalyptic stuff such as Fallout cause it just seemed like a boring world to me, but apart from the Desert area which I wasn't a big fan of because well, it's the Desert, all of the other areas were rather nice to just explore, run around and fish at. Yeah I fucking went fishing as a special ops Android designed to destroy Machines.
I like to pay big attention to OST's of games, because if it's a game I really enjoy I will absolutely listen to that OST over and over again. It's kinda like Xenoblade in that there is almost always some kind of music playing, either with vocals or just like Super Mario underground theme, there's a lot of times where they use a slightly different version of existing music and I'd say that was done pretty well, at no point did I get sick of it even when I spent an hour with no pants on for a trophy hanging around in one area.
I'm going to likely delve into spoiler territory here so that'll be hidden unless people actually wanna have some of it spoiled.
Now I think it's safe to say that on this shithole, I'm the 'Dark Souls' guy, I can talk for hours on end about Dark Souls and I fucking love the series as a whole, gonna be finishing that up with the final DLC when that comes out.
I was super hyped up for Dark Souls III, when I played it I absolutely adored it and I obviously got it to 100% as fast as possible.
If you told me I could play Dark Souls III, or Nier: Automata again with no memory of having played it before, so getting that first experience again. I would immediately pick Nier, it would not even be a contest.
I do intend to play it again one day, I certainly wont go for a Lvl 99 Max Everything again, but while I will still enjoy it and it will still have it's moments I just don't think I could ever get that feeling of satisfaction again when I finished it.
I should make it clear I will spoil parts of it, though I will attempt to have them hidden in spoilers for the most part there are some times it will end up that way regardless. If you don't wanna run that risk then yeah you might be better off not reading the wall of text I'm about to make.
The most I knew about Nier as a series up until the demo for this game was seeing it on someone's 'Top whatever games list', where they brought up how great of a choice it had at the ending. The only reason I even got the demo was cause a friend popped up and said 'Shithead play this demo, it's a good game'. I downloaded it that same day, beat it maybe three times and a couple days later I had the full game pre-ordered.
This was a Platinum Games game, of which I've only played Metal Gear Rising, but when that bastard said it had Androids in it and difficulty sorta like Dark Souls it was set in stone. I'd say that was perhaps the best way to go into the game as I didn't know what to expect either from the series as a whole or from what Platinum would do with it.
The game does take place in a long distant future of the same world that the original game took place in, yet at no point did this cause me any issues, the story doesn't rely on one that was already told years ago. Aliens showed up and unleashed Machines on Earth which immediately set to decimating Humanity, but a large amount of Humanity managed to flee to the Moon and set about on creating Androids to get Earth back.
Characters for this 'world' are done fabulously, from the main characters to even some of the random quest givers that I even ended up sitting on one of the choice menus for over 20 minutes. I even started liking the Machines and went into one area without killing any of the ones that didn't straight up attack me.
This is perhaps however the biggest 'issue' I had with it. I played it entirely with the Japanese voices, I don't think the English voices are that bad but I didn't think they 'fit' the characters, I feel like the Japanese is top-notch and that it should be played with Japanese voices and English subtitles. There are minor moments though where there are no subtitles such as when you pet your Pod(Which you can totally do by the way and that's fucking top).
The difficulty, yeah we're on to one of the few slightly negative parts I guess, when I was told it was sorta like Dark Souls and that there looked to be a difficulty spike in it I got quite hyped for the hours spent dying to this or that boss and the joy of finally beating them. I still bloody loved most of the boss fights but yeah it didn't seem that difficult at all.
Admittedly I was playing on Normal, but I died only 3 proper times in the 48 hours it took for me to get all trophies on the game, with any of the other deaths being me needing to do so for some of the secret endings.
There are some sidequests that felt like I was suddenly back to playing Xenoblade, as the game pitted me against Lvl 40 or even a Lvl 50 for what was a quest I got at Lvl 26. Levels for the most part don't mean that much to the game as you can usually handle enemies higher than you but for some like that Lvl 50 you kinda do need to be at least Lvl 40 to kill it in less than an hour of just slowly harming it.
The way I see it, the pacing was done quite well even with those rather 'eugh' moments with the super high level enemies for my current level. I'd say the only time I really got sick of it was a part where I had to do something a significant amount of times purely to farm for the Platinum Trophy.
I really liked the world of it, I usually don't get that much into Post-Apocalyptic stuff such as Fallout cause it just seemed like a boring world to me, but apart from the Desert area which I wasn't a big fan of because well, it's the Desert, all of the other areas were rather nice to just explore, run around and fish at. Yeah I fucking went fishing as a special ops Android designed to destroy Machines.
I like to pay big attention to OST's of games, because if it's a game I really enjoy I will absolutely listen to that OST over and over again. It's kinda like Xenoblade in that there is almost always some kind of music playing, either with vocals or just like Super Mario underground theme, there's a lot of times where they use a slightly different version of existing music and I'd say that was done pretty well, at no point did I get sick of it even when I spent an hour with no pants on for a trophy hanging around in one area.
I'm going to likely delve into spoiler territory here so that'll be hidden unless people actually wanna have some of it spoiled.
Let there be Spoils.
Since the first time on the demo, I had seen that the motto for YoRHa was 'Glory to Mankind'. Every single time I've seen that kind of thing I've immediately thought 'Yeah they'll be the secret bad guys', there is a twist in the game as I think the writer of it all is well known for doing. I wont really go further into it than that.
Still, saying that there is a twist I feel is spoiling enough, as that just leaves people playing the game waiting for the twist to happen.
As I made it known in the shitbox a number of times, cause of that motto I did go in expecting something bad to happen. By Playthrough 1/2 I had got into the habit of expecting the worst case scenario because it was rather apparent quickly that a lot of it got dark.
Yet when Playthrough 3 came around, it took everything I thought I knew about the game, put it in a catapult, launched it into outer space so it could land on a planet far away in another galaxy where it'd be glassed by The Covenant Fleet. With how much it turned so quickly I coulda sworn Initial D was being muffled in the background.
And I don't mean that in a bad way, that sense of utter devastation when I had no idea what was going on was fantastic, I loved it. I was torn between being incredibly sad at it at all and yet wanting to praise it for what it had done.
While I admit I usually didn't put THAT much care into some of the side characters, like the one guy who has you race him three times. There was more feels when the game told me to make a choice of what to do with my favourite character than even when a familiar piano tune played during the final Dark Souls III boss fight. Not even gonna lie I had trouble sleeping that night.
I've already praised the pacing but I feel it needs to be done more where I can spoil, there are 26 endings to this game, 5 story endings and 21 secret 'bad' endings. You effectively see that credits screen 5 times and then 21 times at mach speed. A game you need to beat 5 times to truly 'finish' and it didn't get boring, the three playthroughs changed up enough during them that it felt new the whole time.
I usually dislike credits, a lot of times I don't think much work is put into them for what is usually the 'final' screen your players will see. Yeah I felt like the credits for the first 4 endings were the usual case, just with a nice song playing during them and an ending that made me feel really pleased to sit there and just watch the names go by.
Ending 5 just set a new standard, I don't think I'll ever be able to see a better credits.
Ending E stands for 'The [E]nd of YoRHa, and the same song plays. But then the Pods have a discussion and you are given a choice.
Do you let the credits roll for this ending, or do you choose your own ending.
There's a hacking game you play as the secondary character when you play him, and a few times as the other two characters. I really expected to see it as purely a gimmick and not enjoy it. When E put me as that same little shooty-thingy and pitted me in a Bullet Hell against the names on the credits, I fell in love immediately.
The singer for 'Weight of the World' that plays during the Credits couldn't be praised enough, creating an entire 'fake' language for a large portion of the songs due to the state of the in-game world. When it cuts in during that Bullet Hell it's the 8-Bit version, to the English version and onwards. They transition it amazingly.
When you 'perish' during it, the game keeps asking you questions, do you think the game is meaningless, will you just give up, yada yada as this song plays. I do not think a single player choose to give up. By that point you care too much about the characters to just let it end.
Die enough, and someone sends you a rescue offer, another player. When that happens the song breaks out into Chorus as people from Platinum Games and the writer sing in the background. Every hit you receive loses that player's data and another takes their place. Until you beat it.
After one of the best feelings in the world of seeing what you accomplished, you are given a choice. Do you sacrifice all of your data to save another who was in your position. Everything you did is taken from you as you watch it get deleted but your data will now be used as a rescue offer to help someone else.
Someone's comment described it amazingly.
Ending C and Ending D are the endings they created for the game, following with the writer's usual 'No Happy Endings' way of going about it. Ending E is the ending where they allow the players to say 'No', and create their own canon ending.
There are thousands of messages you see during it as you perish, you can tell others to give up in those messages but I have yet to see that happen, tons of players gave up their data so others may follow their path.
All you get for making that decision, aside from watching all your work disappear is the knowledge that someone out there that you will never know will have your rescue offer save them, your data likely lost in the Bullet Hell, and a new Title Screen.
Since the first time on the demo, I had seen that the motto for YoRHa was 'Glory to Mankind'. Every single time I've seen that kind of thing I've immediately thought 'Yeah they'll be the secret bad guys', there is a twist in the game as I think the writer of it all is well known for doing. I wont really go further into it than that.
Still, saying that there is a twist I feel is spoiling enough, as that just leaves people playing the game waiting for the twist to happen.
As I made it known in the shitbox a number of times, cause of that motto I did go in expecting something bad to happen. By Playthrough 1/2 I had got into the habit of expecting the worst case scenario because it was rather apparent quickly that a lot of it got dark.
Yet when Playthrough 3 came around, it took everything I thought I knew about the game, put it in a catapult, launched it into outer space so it could land on a planet far away in another galaxy where it'd be glassed by The Covenant Fleet. With how much it turned so quickly I coulda sworn Initial D was being muffled in the background.
And I don't mean that in a bad way, that sense of utter devastation when I had no idea what was going on was fantastic, I loved it. I was torn between being incredibly sad at it at all and yet wanting to praise it for what it had done.
While I admit I usually didn't put THAT much care into some of the side characters, like the one guy who has you race him three times. There was more feels when the game told me to make a choice of what to do with my favourite character than even when a familiar piano tune played during the final Dark Souls III boss fight. Not even gonna lie I had trouble sleeping that night.
I've already praised the pacing but I feel it needs to be done more where I can spoil, there are 26 endings to this game, 5 story endings and 21 secret 'bad' endings. You effectively see that credits screen 5 times and then 21 times at mach speed. A game you need to beat 5 times to truly 'finish' and it didn't get boring, the three playthroughs changed up enough during them that it felt new the whole time.
I usually dislike credits, a lot of times I don't think much work is put into them for what is usually the 'final' screen your players will see. Yeah I felt like the credits for the first 4 endings were the usual case, just with a nice song playing during them and an ending that made me feel really pleased to sit there and just watch the names go by.
Ending 5 just set a new standard, I don't think I'll ever be able to see a better credits.
Ending E stands for 'The [E]nd of YoRHa, and the same song plays. But then the Pods have a discussion and you are given a choice.
Do you let the credits roll for this ending, or do you choose your own ending.
There's a hacking game you play as the secondary character when you play him, and a few times as the other two characters. I really expected to see it as purely a gimmick and not enjoy it. When E put me as that same little shooty-thingy and pitted me in a Bullet Hell against the names on the credits, I fell in love immediately.
The singer for 'Weight of the World' that plays during the Credits couldn't be praised enough, creating an entire 'fake' language for a large portion of the songs due to the state of the in-game world. When it cuts in during that Bullet Hell it's the 8-Bit version, to the English version and onwards. They transition it amazingly.
When you 'perish' during it, the game keeps asking you questions, do you think the game is meaningless, will you just give up, yada yada as this song plays. I do not think a single player choose to give up. By that point you care too much about the characters to just let it end.
Die enough, and someone sends you a rescue offer, another player. When that happens the song breaks out into Chorus as people from Platinum Games and the writer sing in the background. Every hit you receive loses that player's data and another takes their place. Until you beat it.
After one of the best feelings in the world of seeing what you accomplished, you are given a choice. Do you sacrifice all of your data to save another who was in your position. Everything you did is taken from you as you watch it get deleted but your data will now be used as a rescue offer to help someone else.
Someone's comment described it amazingly.
Ending C and Ending D are the endings they created for the game, following with the writer's usual 'No Happy Endings' way of going about it. Ending E is the ending where they allow the players to say 'No', and create their own canon ending.
There are thousands of messages you see during it as you perish, you can tell others to give up in those messages but I have yet to see that happen, tons of players gave up their data so others may follow their path.
All you get for making that decision, aside from watching all your work disappear is the knowledge that someone out there that you will never know will have your rescue offer save them, your data likely lost in the Bullet Hell, and a new Title Screen.
Now I think it's safe to say that on this shithole, I'm the 'Dark Souls' guy, I can talk for hours on end about Dark Souls and I fucking love the series as a whole, gonna be finishing that up with the final DLC when that comes out.
I was super hyped up for Dark Souls III, when I played it I absolutely adored it and I obviously got it to 100% as fast as possible.
If you told me I could play Dark Souls III, or Nier: Automata again with no memory of having played it before, so getting that first experience again. I would immediately pick Nier, it would not even be a contest.
I do intend to play it again one day, I certainly wont go for a Lvl 99 Max Everything again, but while I will still enjoy it and it will still have it's moments I just don't think I could ever get that feeling of satisfaction again when I finished it.