Nier: Automata is an absolute masterclass in game design. It surpasses expectations time and time again resulting in an experience not to be missed by fans of action titles.
Nier: Automata is brilliant. Its mature storytelling is filled with intrigue and philosophy explored through fascinating character work that delves into the depths of the human experience and the complications inherent in artificial intelligence. Combined with some incredibly tight and fluid gameplay that pulls together a multitude of ideas with ease, it’s made all the more impressive by the multiple endings and massive replayability. Taro and Platinum Games deserve praise for creating a game that values the player’s time with regular rewards, and one that deserves to be experienced.
Nier: Automata is a delectable buffet of remarkable experiences that seamlessly and beautifully mesh together. In spite its plethora of elements, the game doesn’t suffer from the sometimes inevitable pitfalls of trying to do too much.
Nier: Automata is a crazy, beautiful, and highly entertaining journey full of nutty ideas and awesome gameplay. It may not include the most sensical story or compelling characters, but its frenzied combat -- coupled with beautiful visuals and a stunning soundtrack – make it too much fun to pass up.
Excellent action jumble of genres and play styles, which does not look that good, but all its cons are masked by its great story and unconventional narrative. Automata definitely isn’t for everyone. But if you are not afraid of the Japanese weirdness and instead of sweet tearjerkers you’d want a proper depression with philosophical questions, you won’t regret buying this game.
Loads of interesting ideas and plenty of good intentions, but nothing sticks. It’s like it was made by a team of people with super short attention spans. They’d come up with a good idea, carry it half way, then get distracted by another thought, and do it all over again until ending up with an unfocused, unsatisfying, incomplete product.
Pretty unique in a lot of ways, but definitely super overrated!!!! The open world isnt exciting at all and it has a lot of annoying game design choices (for example the save system).
A good game, but VERY overrated. While polished and enjoyable, has many flaws. Huge lack of enemy variety, too few bosses, combat is clean but gets repetitive, the story is predictable if you are not under 14yo, and I couldn't care for any of the main characters. A good game overall and better than most of modern games, but as I said, really overrated.
I struggled through this game until the bitter end, and although that ending was cool, the experience left me frustrated. Its set in an open world, but that world is empty and boring. There are sidequests to be done, none of which I encountered offered anything more than busy work. After the 1/3rd mark in the game it became clear that I just wanted to get to the end, hearing good things about the story made me think that this would redeem it. Skipping side-missions and rushing through main missions I acknowledge that this left me underleveled for some later missions. But the difficulty spike is steep, leaving what was already mundane combat, also needlessly difficult. The last half of the game was played on easy mode. The remainder of my play-through was a glorified lets play because of this, at-least allowing me to participate in its story. This too however left me frustrated, the story never gets much better. There are certainly interesting concepts at play here, but fumbled horribly with bad writing, unlikable characters, and what I felt were very predictable twists. Despite it landing its ending, I find myself wishing I had left the controller down after one of the many encounters when the visuals got too confusing to see the overpowered enemies.
I really struggled to see why there was so much hype around Nier:Automata. One of the biggest areas of praise I heard about N:A as how powerful and original the story is. Whilst it isn't bad, it doesn't cover anything that hasn't been done in sci-fi media numerous times before and relies on anime clichés to try and deliver an emotional punch. This is made all the worse by the fact that in order to see the full story you need to play the game 3 times. If you can't get into the game on your first play through then you are in for a painful slog trying to see everything, especially as the second playthrough is by far the worse.
From a gameplay perspective this is really poor. There are some epic moments. The prologue delivers an exciting introduction to the game and there is a great boss battle just past the halfway point of the first route but these moments are few and far between. Combat is so simple that it quickly becomes tedious. As enemies don't block or dodge, the game quickly becomes a case of just mashing square with the occasional dodge required. I didn't expect this to match the depth of combat games such as GoW or DMC but I expected at least a bit of skill to be required rather than just the mindless button masher that this is. RPG elements are also paper thin offering no depth beside
I could probably forgive the poor combat and lack of depth if the open world was interesting and fun to explore. Unfortunately this is bland and empty with nothing really to see and do bar some really tedious side quests that are no more inventive than fetch quests or killing a bunch of enemies. There is so much backtracking throughout this game both through the main story and side quests that it quickly becomes soul destroying. This is made all the worse by how ugly the open world is, looking like a late PS2 game. I appreciate that this is a low budget game but there are plenty of low budget games that still manage to look like they belong in this generation by using an art style that is appropriate for the budget. This would look so much better if the devs had gone for a cel-shaded style rather than trying to adopt a more realistic approach.
One thing that N:A does do really well is mesh numerous different game styles together seamlessly. One minute you can be playing a hack and slash game, then an old school space shooter like Galaga and then a Metroidvania style level. But the novelty of this quickly wears off as the general gameplay just doesn't have enough depth to keep things interesting.
Nier:Automata is really a niche game that is well suited for those who have a deep interest in Japanese anime culture but will feel a chore for most other people.
SummaryNieR Producer Yosuke Saito, director Taro Yoko and composer Keiichi Okabe return, teaming up with character designer Akihiko Yoshida and PlatinumGames to present the next entry in the saga – NieR: Automata.