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NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139...


DisturbedSwan
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Started this off earlier and put just under 4 hours into it. 
 

This has set the record of making me cry the fastest in a video game, just felt overcome with the music in the tutorial ? also the fountain in the middle of the village at the beginning of the game is just amazing, I must’ve walked around that fountain about 30 times just listening to the lovely music (cried again here), amazing. As soon as I got free reign to explore the village I explored every corner of it, there’s not much to it but it creates such a strong sense of place and unique vibe, it’s already memorable and familiar even in my short time there.
 

Combat feels like a more simplistic version of Automata’s. It looks flashy and feels good but is bit more shallow than Automata’s. If I had to compare it, it feels a bit like FFXV’s (without all the warp-strikes) or one of the earlier KIngdom Hearts games. You start off without any ranged abilities with just your sword to rely on, but pretty quickly you pick up a ranged weapon which has added to the variety on offer and cool abilities you can pull off.
 

Story-wise not much has happened so far, I’ve just been given a few meaningless tasks to do by Popola, been to my first dungeon and met a certain literary figure. I’ve done a few of the side quests too just to see how bad they are for myself, and yeah, they’re not great but I don’t mind them so far, they’re inoffensive, a damn boar kept fucking me up in one of them. 
 

Spoiler

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  • DisturbedSwan changed the title to NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139...

I'm at the Aery. In terms of combat I'm not sure if they've changed a lot or very little. I wouldn't compare it to XV personally cause there's still a lot of intentionality behind attacks in Nier even if that intentionality boils down to 'hit things hard or more hard'. Kingdom hearts yea probably, or BOTW maybe but with more flourish. The game is mostly exactly as I remember it which is somewhat of a relief cause personally I contend that part of what makes Nier so lovable is how shambolic it is. That's not the same as saying "it's so bad it's good" but a game about a bunch of misfits and underdogs oddly benefits from not being this extremely polished and refined product*, which so far this remake definitely isn't. It feels more of a slight uplift.

 

I might un-characteristically hold off on talking much about the game until I'm at the very end cause there's almost nothing I can say really that I've not already said and my blow by blow feelings of Nier is that a lot of the moment to moment stuff can be very repetitive, sometimes draining. There are large parts of this game that are plain bad. Yet somehow it is all fundamentally worth it in a way that's hard to explain. If you are the kind of person who will be affected by a game like this. 

 

 

*I think this is also as time has passed I've grown cold on Automata, cause it somehow lacks the rustic nature of this. The way Nier Gestalt/Replicant is so earnest, while Automata is a much more mature work it is the way this game punches above its weight which endears it to me. It also probably didn't help tho that Automata starred in a bunch of rubbish raids in FFXIV and now I'm sort of sick of seeing and hearing about tubes and nines

 

 

Also I applaud the effort in typing out every single number

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Played the first hour yesterday. It's not exactly what I expected in terms of structure. I knew it was a JRPG in its essence but I didn't think it would start off with some basic fetch quests around a small village. I'm not saying that to diminish it or anything, it's just not what I thought I was getting into, particularly after the prologue/tutorial (wich is just a big, huge question mark at the moment). Not entirely sure if I'm in the mood for this game right now, but I'll see where it goes when I play a bit more today.

 

Combat feels super basic but at least it's responsive. There's a bit of a disappointing lack of hit feedback when fighting shades vs. physical enemies, but I suppose that's by design. It also took me about ten minutes to find the best camera speed and acceleration setting, the default makes the game feel simultaneously sluggish (accel.) and too hectic (speed).

 

If there's one thing that's pretty much excellent from the get-go it's the music. The prologue already features a very otherworldly piece that very subtly reminded me of the choir in GitS's main theme (not acoustically, but as far as the emotional response to it). But the music in the Northern Planes was so good I was just running around with the sheep for a couple of minutes for no other reason than listening to it. Oddly enough there was another music playing when I returned later, not sure what that was about.

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Some very rude people out there have suggested btw to play this game on 'hard'. I have tried this now and to prevent tears and disaster I'll tell you to NOT PLAY THIS ON HARD. It unlocks a special feature called 'the game is really shit now', so don't do it. This is your warning.

 

You can change the difficulty mid-game, but only on the title screen btw. So you're not locked in either way

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Not that I'm aware of.

 

I suppose this sums up Square PC ports but the steam version has the PS trophy sound effect in it, lol. This is sort of late game so I guess it's kinda a spoiler but it basically isn't

 

Spoiler

 

 

Anyway, I marathoned this. I have 'beaten' the game, I have 'ending A' and have unlocked

 

Spoiler

Nier Automata soundtrack? What? Why not give us original soundtrack lol

 

Obviously there's more to do, but not that much really. More like time consuming stuff.

 

Most of my thoughts on this game when I talk to people come from the old man papa Nier version and it is weird how changed the character dynamic feels even tho fundamentally nothing is actually changed in the story. I think I still prefer the papa Nier but it's very blatantly obvious to me now how non-canon and shoe-horned in that version is. Specifically there's moments in the story where Nier (who btw isn't actually the name of the character according to Yoko taro, so wtf does that word even mean then) talks with sense of childlike wonder and then has a very different attitude in the later half of the game. In the original 'text' you barely observe what is happening but the switch is so obvious and impossible to ignore just cause the character is so much younger. You'll know what I mean when you get to that point, like the fact that the protag decides to use 2 hand swords all of a sudden in old Nier is sort of whatever but when it has actual plot justification it's 'oh'. It's very obvious how the narrative arc is so tailored to the brother character and it does help sell some moments and make their outcome more powerful. But the character itself is much more generic anime which I think takes away some of the unintended appeal of the older one. He feels like the only 'normal' person in an abnormal JRPG party and I dunno if Square or Taro realise how well the character worked even if it was something basically forced on them by producers

 

But I mostly think Replicant is a perfectly good 'replacement' for the original, except in the event you want to see what it's like with that other version of the character. So it's nice we finally have both versions of the game localised. I would lean towards recommending this version of the game over the other one but the interaction between Weiss and MC is much more enjoyable with the father character, not to diminish the effort by Ray Chase here (Noctis from FFXV, which also I think points to the elevated cachet of Nier in this moment, that it's gotten Noctis as its main character now). But they didn't 'Twin Snakes' the new VA which was my main fear, it all sounds great. 

 

The combat is actually a lot more enjoyable now, though I can't decide is it cause this is my 2nd time playing this game and I finally decided to use other Sacred Verses like Dark Wall (trivialises everything), Dark Execution and the one that swings axes around you. The more finesse driven combat feels out of place tho when the game hasn't made any changes whatsoever to the way things attack you, it's largely for creating cool videos and gif moments than it actually adds anything substantial mechanics wise. But it is good fun I guess and I enjoy it a lot more than Automata's fighting which IMO feels even more shallow than this does. 

 

I'll give some tips if ppl want but put them in spoilers if they dont want

Spoiler

There are 'hold' moves as well as 'pressing' moves that have slightly different properties. Also you can cancel out of air attacks with double jump if you want to just get slightly fancy about it. Lots of the sacred verse powers can be charged up while doing melee as well, which always looks cool from an animation perspective. The counter attack for blocking is effective in one-on-one encounters but against big groups I'd grab one of the AOE-oriented spells instead

 

 

Remaster spoiler

Spoiler

They add tho a whole new set piece in the game right before returning to facade which is this massive set piece which is really cool but feels out of place cause right after that you're in facade doing this terrible boss fight against a dog. I feel like they should have put it in right before the finale instead and made up a sixth seal, it does help the second half of the game feel less rushed but its insertion is super inelegant, I'm interested in seeing what ppl think of it.

 

 

I still love Nier but it's almost in spite of its weakness as a game. It's just more than the sum of its part I think. The actual act of playing and completing Nier is still very tedious, you will see a lot of re-use of some of the worst dungeons in the game. It can't be overstated how much work is being done by the characters and music in carrying this game so to the post above if the characters fail to connect you could be in for an even tougher time, maybe. Unfortunately they changed some of my favourite tracks from the original in this and added way more brass and orchestration, specifically 'Gods bound by Rules' and 'Song of the Ancients: Fate'. The former has way less noticeable percussion and the latter is way over-orchestrated imo, but then again Emil's theme is improved so there's that.

 

The thing I think will mess with people's expectations a bit here coming from Automata is how much of the game is pure setup. There's no moments in it like 'become as gods' or meeting Adam and Eve the first time, you will be waiting an extremely long time for anything remotely similar to that. It's hard to know sometimes how much of the cliche in Nier is intentional and which is just the way it is cause of the limits of the development team's craft. How much of it is deliberate and how much of it is excuse. Yoko Taro likes to point out his game's shortcomings not in subtext but actual text, like characters giving out that there's no fast travel and making up silly reasons why they can't exist. Or having to go really long distances for fetch quests. But it's also part of what makes the game so charming, as well as the messy way it throws a billion ideas at the screen and the sometimes ingenious solutions it has to its budget constraints. There is an entire section in this game that got cut for release that basically has no content at all that might be my favourite section in the whole game. The variety of different styles and how it gets into pastiche is really fun, but other times the constant re-use of locations hurts it and makes it feel like work.

 

Spoiler

Mostly what makes me fall in love with it is how it's all just a story about loving someone too much and the cliche early on catches you offguard when it violently dismantles and dashes your expectations with what comes later. But I wonder now will this have any impact when people's expectations for this type of thing have been setup by Automata, it may not be very surprising for people now. 

 

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4 minutes ago, Nag said:

it's a good job the lead runs fast though because I can see a lot of backtracking happening here.

lol you have no idea

 

You wont get locked out of the endings, when you get to that stuff I can post some spoiler free links on it but nothing is missable endings wise, unless they added/changed things

 

But for your first 'ending' just feel free to do whatever you want and ignore whatever you want, you wont miss stuff.

 

Also I'll add again that a lot of the side quests are pretty bad, some have nice stories attached but if you feel obliged to do all that stuff then it will punish you for it

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I hope that's not true because I really don't want to bother glancing at a wiki while playing. Edit: Okay, good.

 

Will probably take me forever to beat it anyway, got a whopping two hours out of this over the entire weekend. It's not quite pulling me in and motivating me to go on to be honest, feels very basic and the cast is straight up boring so far. With the exception of Grimoire Weiss maybe, but that could just be Liam O'Brien's fantastic voice.

 

I've obviously not even seen the tip of the iceberg so I'm not going to judge it yet but I don't think these last ten years of cult classic hype have done this game any favours from the perspective of newcomers. Which of course isn't the game's fault, but expectations have such a massive impact on how you perceive and enjoy a game and it's really hard to shake them off. 

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Tbh, if you've not already met Kaine I'd give this a swerve and see how you feel about Nier Automata instead. Bearing in mind that Auto Tomato doesn't start spoiling the first game until really far in anyway, if your mind ever changed.

 

Regardless of hype and expectations, a point I take, it's just great I think that this game has been preserved now and not lost and forgotten on those old consoles. Which is a far worse fate than being an overhyped cult classic.

 

Now if I had that Square money I'd be pouring FFVII Remake part II funds into an ambitious saga of Drakengard games, but alas not even Weissy can summon such power

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11 hours ago, one-armed dwarf said:

Tbh, if you've not already met Kaine I'd give this a swerve and see how you feel about Nier Automata instead.

 

Something particular about Kainé that makes Automata better or worse?

 

I'll keep going for a couple more sessions with this, don't quite want to buy yet another Nier game before I know if this one's eventually going to convince me. It did take me forever to like BotW and Witcher 3 and I have fond memories of Too Human which wasn't really good until the the postgame, so I should be able to tap into the right mindset for this somehow.

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She's just a great character, imo. It's more if the characters dont click don't expect the game to, if that makes sense. Cause if you think it's repetitive now it's even more repetitive later. It's one of those things where I don't really feel like the original reviewers got it wrong so much as our industry obsession with metascore as a signifier of whether something is worth someone's time robbed a lot of people from experiencing something that could actually be pretty wonderful even if the game part was often shonky. But if you're not captivated by that stuff (and to be fair it's not like you're expected to be immediately invested in these characters) then a game like Nier has way less to offer. While Automata starts off with impressive set pieces and grand statements about the self from the get go, it's obvious why that game was the breakthrough hit which onboarded lots of ppl onto Yoko Taro's style

 

I would say the litmus test for what you will feel about Nier might be the second time you meet Kaine. If I had to pick something

 

@Nag I have some spoiler free sidequest tips for you

 

https://www.resetera.com/threads/nier-replicant-otver-1-22474487139…-no-one-stops.414030/post-63559410

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To be fair the only thing that's really bothering me right now is the protagonist. I don't know why that's such a big personal issue because normally I'm very open to whomever I control in a game. Maybe it's because I know I would have preferred the old man, but then again this is how the game was meant to be experienced. Two hours in and this is screwing with me on a meta level more than Psycho Mantis ever was.

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I'm up to about 10 hours into this now, it would've been more than that if I hadn't fallen asleep whilst pissed on Friday night but that's the way the cookie crumbles lol.

 

I made my way through the Aerie but don't remember too much of it due to the drunkenness, a really cool environment with a unique atmosphere, doesn't really remind me of anything else aside from some of the small outposts in parts of BotW. A really eerie place with a weird feel to it. After that I met Kaine for the first time and she's just as badass as I remember.

 

Done quite a few more side quests, one of which was incredibly poignant.

Spoiler

You are tasked with finding an old man's dog. when you finally find him he's dead (killed by Shades) but he has something in his mouth. You take this back to the Old Man but he has died off, you show the item the dog had in its mouth to the man's Son and find out that it was medicine the dog had fetched in order for its owner to survive, just a lovely heart breaking little tale. 

 

Been to Seafront a few times. A really cool place that I remember literally nothing of from my YT watch years back, spent awhile exploring every nook and cranny of its winding streets, had an absolute whale of a time here, just a lovely place to be and explore. Got a nice relaxing feel to it, aesthetically it looks very similar to Santorini in Greece. Met the Lighthouse Lady here and brought an item back for Yonah. 

 

After that I made my way to the Scrap Heap, which is a far less interesting area aesthetically but I still enjoyed exploring its labyrinthian industrial hallways and slaughtering quite a few robots along the way. Got up to just before the boss fight in this area and left it there, will pick it up from there tonight. 

 

Loving it so far. Just a very relaxing game that's easy and fun to play. 

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See here I'm thinking about getting in the right state of mind for this and convincing myself that this is indeed the original protagonist while Blakey doesn't give a flying book and just goes through this with only 30% of his braincells being active while the rest are doing the drunken dance.

 

Maybe I'm taking this whole videogame business too seriously.

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Now I have actually beaten the game. Which meant oh so much busywork, the thing that sours me on Taro's games where he devours your patience by making you do so much of the same stuff over and over

 

But (full spoilers of everything, including speculation based on every other game in the saga. So uh nobody will click this I guess)

Spoiler

this new ending is extremely elaborate. An extended interquel into Nier Automata which undoes the save deletion and has extensive fan service where Kaine uses the Sacred Verses in digital form to obliterate the granny murderer with an even more extreme version of the Grandma track. It's very moving especially if you've been with the character for a long time, it kinda gives her arc a catharsis that wasn't possible in the original game probably cause of budget being shit. Then a massive Drakengard callout, except I can't figure out what it's trying to signify. Only that the predecessors of 2B/9S say 'I hear a song' which is the name of the final mission in Drakengard with the big white giant and the rings, then a giant flower appears which is callout to Drakengard 3's ending.

 

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But what it specifically is getting at I dunno, other than writing in plain text the explicit theme of the game itself. Which isn't that you're 'the baddies', but that everything anyone does in the world of Nier is motivated by love and if that puts you in the path of destroying humanity itself then so be it. So I like that aspect of it, cause it sometimes feels like this is the point that gets missed when people play Nier. It's not about 'being the baddies', it's about whether or not love is a strong enough reason to be on probably the wrong side of a war. In this case a war against rescuing the entire world.

 

The snippets of stuff that lead into Nier Automata I can't really latch onto cause I don't remember the game well, what I do remember is Automata is mostly just the very end of the timeline. Like you can't make a sequel to it cause there's nothing that could possibly happen after it. But you could make a sequel to this game, which they seem to very overtly hint in the 'thank you for playing' message that plays at the end. Dunno what that could look like though.

 

The undoing save deletion stuff is a bit cheap I think, but also I think the effect of that particular trick has been undone by now anyway cause Taro did it in two games and the way he did it in Automata was much more powerful. So I think it's justified to just go 'fuck it, it's been 11 years you can have your data back now'.

 

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Also this is the first time I did the Nier dlc, it's a requirement now to unlock the endings. I never did them before but what I didn't realise is they are filled with a bunch of lore stuff explaining the aftermath of Drakengard ending E, it's just in there. Not very deep or elaborate but it's something

 

I guess it's onto the wikia rabbit hole to remember a bunch of stuff I forgot. I dunno if I could play Automata again cause it just doesn't have the characters that interest me in Taro's games but I'll play the opening of it at least as a compare and contrast to this

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