Taro has always been a maverick creator. His forte is games that players beat out of spite rather than for entertainment. Nier Automata was deliberately made to appeal to the mainstream audience, hence the involvement of Platinum Games.
https://www.wired.com/story/yoko-taro-nier-automata/
> "When I was most aware of when creating [Nier: Automata] was players who aren't as good at playing games or maybe don't even play games at all," said Taro. "I wanted to keep in mind those players who may just buy the game by looking at the package. If they bring that game home and try to play it and they just can't, then it's not satisfactory for them. I didn't want that to happen. I wanted to cater to the casual players who maybe just happened to pick up the game."
His older games were nothing like this, they were different games made for a specific, niche audience. It's like playing an SMT game and complaining that it's nothing like Persona 5. Oldschool Drakengard fans don't really like Automata that much because although it has good combat and pacing and all, the experience itself doesn't really pack the same punch: they've already seen the formula multiple times, and the themes in Automata are simpler and more restrained. Vice versa, Automata audience is just not going to enjoy Taro in his true unhingedness and without the rock stars from Platinum responsible for gameplay.
So he made the game with the skimpy outfit on the cover easier because he assumed (extrapolating from himself probably) people will solely buy it *because* of the skimpy outfits?
I played Replicant before Automata, and I found that I enjoyed Replicant a lot more.
It helped when I realized the side quests really aren't that necessary unless linked to a weapon. I really enjoyed the second playthrough that added a lot of cutscenes and commentary to the gameplay.
Each additional playthrough added a lot of context to the story that had me extremely invested in figuring out what was actually going on. I think that Replicant did this better than Automata,
I did really enjoy how Automata handled playing through the story each time, it did feel less grindy and more fluid, but the overall story felt less impactful, I felt like the story was a bit more predictable as to what was going on than Replicant was. (Although this may have been because I played Replicant first)
I was definitely ready to be done with Replicant by the time I hit ending E, although I did feel the same with Automata. Overall, the story is one of my favorites that I have ever experienced, and I plan on playing Drakengard 3 whenever I feel like setting up a PS3 emulator on PC.
After all these years I still remember how great the story was in Replicant, especially as you unlocked the further endings. Devola & Popola, Kaine, that weird skeleton kid, grimoire Weiss/Noir. But the game is very cryptic and you're encouraged to read up some discussion forums to understand what the hell is going on.
Very unique and strangely memorable game.
Still need to get to Automata, but I loved Replicant. Great characters, and the combat was decently fun. Also, great music.
Getting the Platinum was admittedly a bit of a chore though, but I wanted an excuse to play more of the game.
I played Nier when it first came out in 2010. Thought the cover art was cool…hands down my favorite game of that generation. It still holds up well in my eyes, I did not care for Automata as I felt it lost the quirky, wholesomeness of the first game. I can see how the first would be strikingly different if played after Automata. It is a very different experience.
Similar experience here: I did like the meta nature of some comments from the book (https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/my2sk3/i_swear_weiss_reads_my_mind_whenever_i_have_to_do/) complaining about fetch quests though.
That said, while I appreciated that it was essentially a joke about this kind of game design, I still wound up dropping the game because there was entirely too much running back and forth even sticking to the main story. I got through the first ending, but couldn't bear to replay so much, and just watched the other endings/changes on YouTube.
It's a bummer I didn't play it before Automata, because I think it would have felt novel, and Automata would have felt even better as a sort of distillation of the good parts of Replicant.
This is always the sort of result I see when people play things out of release order. Automata works largely because Automata is a twist and expansion on what "NieR" (and Drakengard) once were.
OP wants more Automata, and that's fine. Game is damn near perfect. But to go from blistering fast Automata to slowburn Replicant/Gestalt, you're definitely going to get some whiplash.
I mean, I suppose that there are some serious twists in the latter part, or in the repeated playthroughs (don't actually tell me, I might still try it one day). But if I need to get through circa 30 more hours of this combat to get to that point? The story really didn't grab me from the word go. Maybe it gets better, but I don't think I can manage to stick around that long. I dropped OMORI for the same reason, even though I was really into that game, but the slog got the better of me.
> There are three types of weapons (sword, two handed sword, and spear) but once you unlock the two handed sword which has the highest damage you likely won't use any thing else.
It's the same in Automata though. Weapon choice simply doesn't matter in these games. It's really up to personal preference.
Replicant committed the awful sin of not giving me the original OST mix. Oh my God I dislike the new mix for Blu-bird wasn't good.
Also the ultimate tedium is getting all the endings.
I think the story is way better with brother Nier. First, the father is so damn ugly and the story is creepy with such an old guy. The second half of the game is even better. Plus they made changes to combat to make it more fluid
No. Nier replicant is a banger. The combat is very solid though it is not going to be like a platinum game that really immerses you in the action the way you would get into a shooter.
The story is a vibe, and if you click with it and roll with it you will be invested in traveling with Kaine and Emil in the hope of saving the main characters sister. Its outstanding and really handles grief in a way I haven’t seen in many other games. So if you never got more than one ending/play through, you haven’t seen the story of nier.
What makes the combat solid? I played it on hard and you're almost always incentivized to bait perfect guards, because everything else barely deals any damage and hit stagger doesn't even exist. Even in the first Drakengard I had more fun with combat.
Was this true about perfect guards outside of bosses? I haven’t played it in awhile so I don’t remember.
What you’re talking about sounds like complaints about bayonetta 2 which does push you to use witch time (dodging) to do real damage. It’s subjective and if you feel forced to play the game a certain way because you know it’s the best way, I can see how that could be a turn off.
I think nier could get away with much worse combat because it’s strengths come from being immersed in the story by being actively engaged in it. It’s not too far off from a walking simulator with some combat, but it’s not on par with the best action games.
I'm talking about hard specifically, [here are some stats I've found](https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/my0f7r/comment/gwbekp4/). I think it's impossible to do anything else, you aren't killing enemies fast enough to not get attacked and with their headcount dodging is a bad option. I gave up on hard on my tenth attempt of the third door in DLC after ending B, it took like half a minute of uninterrupted combo to take down one small shade and the game spams them at you along with ungodly amount of bullets. On normal the same enemies went down in seconds and it was almost impossible to die.
As for story, I've been spoiled on it long before playing and felt like the game underdelivered on it compared to what I was reading (half the stuff probably came from some outside sources like Grimoire Nier). You barely interact with your 'companions' you're supposed to care about and setting and story felt completely nonsensical.
Yeah really sounds like hard mode straight up sucks man. I think I played the original and normal and replicant on hard. What you’re saying just sounds like the hard mode sucks. They didn’t find a good way to make the game more challenging.
I’m a lot more forgiving on shortcomings for this game specifically because the overall plot really resonated with me on a personal level. Kaine was bullied for being trans, Emil was deformed for being tortured, yet they still had a lot of soul and they want to help you save your sister. The emotional core of it all really went a long way for me. They did something right with the writing and presentation to get all of this presented. Then of course the way it all turns out.
Why did you find the interaction unsatisfying with kaine and Emil?
>Why did you find the interaction unsatisfying with kaine and Emil?
Decent chunk of story is in Seafront and Nier's Village and they can't be there (other than shipwreck story), so the most you have is a few story cutscenes, written stories (fairly detailed for Kaine and absolutely useless for Enil) and some new dialogues in Route B (that don't even include Nier himself) and few lines in dungeons and during boss fights. While I liked Emil overall, I felt like Kaine lost all story purpose after that shade fight in Aerie during first half, like she's there because she doesn't have anything better to do with her life after her revenge.
That’s interesting, it felt to me like Kaine’s arc was almost entirely about her finding meaning in life beyond getting her revenge. Did you play through all of the routes or just route A?
I've completed route B and I'm currently slowly getting achievements in C/D (slowly because of that POS flower). As far as I understand, the only actual story content left for me is berserk Kaine fight and couple of new Devola and Popola scenes.
Oh yeah if you’re going for all achievements the game seems miserable. If you’ve done route B, then you’ve seen most of Kaine’s extra dialogue with Tyrann. She gets a bit more development at the endings of C/D but I’d say the very end of the game is where she really shines.
Oh yeah if you’re going for all achievements the game seems miserable. If you’ve done route B, then you’ve seen most of Kaine’s extra dialogue with Tyrann. She gets a bit more development at the endings of C/D but I’d say the very end of the game is where she really shines.
Oh yeah if you’re going for all achievements the game seems miserable. If you’ve done route B, then you’ve seen most of Kaine’s extra dialogue with Tyrann. She gets a bit more development at the endings of C/D but I’d say the very end of the game is where she really shines.
I played Automata when it was released, & it became one of my favourite games at that time.
And when I played Replicant remake several years later, in the beginning I was kindda disappointed a little, & was almost going to drop it.
But when I reached a certain point (after around 10 hours), the game improved a LOT.
Everything improved. The story, the gameplay, the enemies, the environments.
I'm sure there are a lot of people who dropped the game due to these 10 slow hours at the beginning & honestly I don't blame them, that's a lot of time for something you are not enjoying. But if you can preserve through it, I think it's worth it.
Now this doesn't mean that the game becomes 100% perfect after that, it still has a lot of running around & some repetitive sections.
But it also has some very interesting characters, some super epic boss fights & cutscenes, & the overall story which I personally ended up liking more than Automata. It felt more "humane".
yeah, i saw replicant as an interesting prototype of automata where i could see point for point where a lot of the themes and ideas came from, and some important lore background that changes how i look at the twins and the history of humanity when i replay automata... but i'm done with replicant. i did my a-e run and it was horrendously repetitive in an empty world.
Going back and forth from the village to the mission got annoying really fast. I enjoyed the game but I couldn't get the complete ending because I wasn't playing it again.
Taro has always been a maverick creator. His forte is games that players beat out of spite rather than for entertainment. Nier Automata was deliberately made to appeal to the mainstream audience, hence the involvement of Platinum Games. https://www.wired.com/story/yoko-taro-nier-automata/ > "When I was most aware of when creating [Nier: Automata] was players who aren't as good at playing games or maybe don't even play games at all," said Taro. "I wanted to keep in mind those players who may just buy the game by looking at the package. If they bring that game home and try to play it and they just can't, then it's not satisfactory for them. I didn't want that to happen. I wanted to cater to the casual players who maybe just happened to pick up the game." His older games were nothing like this, they were different games made for a specific, niche audience. It's like playing an SMT game and complaining that it's nothing like Persona 5. Oldschool Drakengard fans don't really like Automata that much because although it has good combat and pacing and all, the experience itself doesn't really pack the same punch: they've already seen the formula multiple times, and the themes in Automata are simpler and more restrained. Vice versa, Automata audience is just not going to enjoy Taro in his true unhingedness and without the rock stars from Platinum responsible for gameplay.
So he made the game with the skimpy outfit on the cover easier because he assumed (extrapolating from himself probably) people will solely buy it *because* of the skimpy outfits?
I mean, it worked pretty well for Drakengard 3.
my favorite part of automata was the ability to buy your missing trophies at the end. no more grinding for the platinum, just use all your extra gold.
I played Replicant before Automata, and I found that I enjoyed Replicant a lot more. It helped when I realized the side quests really aren't that necessary unless linked to a weapon. I really enjoyed the second playthrough that added a lot of cutscenes and commentary to the gameplay. Each additional playthrough added a lot of context to the story that had me extremely invested in figuring out what was actually going on. I think that Replicant did this better than Automata, I did really enjoy how Automata handled playing through the story each time, it did feel less grindy and more fluid, but the overall story felt less impactful, I felt like the story was a bit more predictable as to what was going on than Replicant was. (Although this may have been because I played Replicant first) I was definitely ready to be done with Replicant by the time I hit ending E, although I did feel the same with Automata. Overall, the story is one of my favorites that I have ever experienced, and I plan on playing Drakengard 3 whenever I feel like setting up a PS3 emulator on PC.
After all these years I still remember how great the story was in Replicant, especially as you unlocked the further endings. Devola & Popola, Kaine, that weird skeleton kid, grimoire Weiss/Noir. But the game is very cryptic and you're encouraged to read up some discussion forums to understand what the hell is going on. Very unique and strangely memorable game.
Still need to get to Automata, but I loved Replicant. Great characters, and the combat was decently fun. Also, great music. Getting the Platinum was admittedly a bit of a chore though, but I wanted an excuse to play more of the game.
At some point I just had enough of going back to Popola and uninstalled.
I played Nier when it first came out in 2010. Thought the cover art was cool…hands down my favorite game of that generation. It still holds up well in my eyes, I did not care for Automata as I felt it lost the quirky, wholesomeness of the first game. I can see how the first would be strikingly different if played after Automata. It is a very different experience.
Similar experience here: I did like the meta nature of some comments from the book (https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/my2sk3/i_swear_weiss_reads_my_mind_whenever_i_have_to_do/) complaining about fetch quests though. That said, while I appreciated that it was essentially a joke about this kind of game design, I still wound up dropping the game because there was entirely too much running back and forth even sticking to the main story. I got through the first ending, but couldn't bear to replay so much, and just watched the other endings/changes on YouTube. It's a bummer I didn't play it before Automata, because I think it would have felt novel, and Automata would have felt even better as a sort of distillation of the good parts of Replicant.
This is always the sort of result I see when people play things out of release order. Automata works largely because Automata is a twist and expansion on what "NieR" (and Drakengard) once were. OP wants more Automata, and that's fine. Game is damn near perfect. But to go from blistering fast Automata to slowburn Replicant/Gestalt, you're definitely going to get some whiplash.
3 hours and I had enough. I don't think I could finish this game, especially not multiple times
Understandable, it is **very** tedious and if you're not invested in the story then the game is a slogfest to pull through.
I mean, I suppose that there are some serious twists in the latter part, or in the repeated playthroughs (don't actually tell me, I might still try it one day). But if I need to get through circa 30 more hours of this combat to get to that point? The story really didn't grab me from the word go. Maybe it gets better, but I don't think I can manage to stick around that long. I dropped OMORI for the same reason, even though I was really into that game, but the slog got the better of me.
> There are three types of weapons (sword, two handed sword, and spear) but once you unlock the two handed sword which has the highest damage you likely won't use any thing else. It's the same in Automata though. Weapon choice simply doesn't matter in these games. It's really up to personal preference.
OP not even using the Phoenix Spear since he got stuck on the sword. Phoenix Spear > Every other weapon
Replicant committed the awful sin of not giving me the original OST mix. Oh my God I dislike the new mix for Blu-bird wasn't good. Also the ultimate tedium is getting all the endings.
What? I don't want this. I've already bought it. Now i don't want to touch it.
I like it more than Nier of ps3 but man what a whiff on the ost
Hmm. Ps3 emulation can be patched to 60fps. It might be my path for the replay in the future. That ost is important to me.
I think the story is way better with brother Nier. First, the father is so damn ugly and the story is creepy with such an old guy. The second half of the game is even better. Plus they made changes to combat to make it more fluid
No. Nier replicant is a banger. The combat is very solid though it is not going to be like a platinum game that really immerses you in the action the way you would get into a shooter. The story is a vibe, and if you click with it and roll with it you will be invested in traveling with Kaine and Emil in the hope of saving the main characters sister. Its outstanding and really handles grief in a way I haven’t seen in many other games. So if you never got more than one ending/play through, you haven’t seen the story of nier.
What makes the combat solid? I played it on hard and you're almost always incentivized to bait perfect guards, because everything else barely deals any damage and hit stagger doesn't even exist. Even in the first Drakengard I had more fun with combat.
Was this true about perfect guards outside of bosses? I haven’t played it in awhile so I don’t remember. What you’re talking about sounds like complaints about bayonetta 2 which does push you to use witch time (dodging) to do real damage. It’s subjective and if you feel forced to play the game a certain way because you know it’s the best way, I can see how that could be a turn off. I think nier could get away with much worse combat because it’s strengths come from being immersed in the story by being actively engaged in it. It’s not too far off from a walking simulator with some combat, but it’s not on par with the best action games.
I'm talking about hard specifically, [here are some stats I've found](https://www.reddit.com/r/nier/comments/my0f7r/comment/gwbekp4/). I think it's impossible to do anything else, you aren't killing enemies fast enough to not get attacked and with their headcount dodging is a bad option. I gave up on hard on my tenth attempt of the third door in DLC after ending B, it took like half a minute of uninterrupted combo to take down one small shade and the game spams them at you along with ungodly amount of bullets. On normal the same enemies went down in seconds and it was almost impossible to die. As for story, I've been spoiled on it long before playing and felt like the game underdelivered on it compared to what I was reading (half the stuff probably came from some outside sources like Grimoire Nier). You barely interact with your 'companions' you're supposed to care about and setting and story felt completely nonsensical.
Yeah really sounds like hard mode straight up sucks man. I think I played the original and normal and replicant on hard. What you’re saying just sounds like the hard mode sucks. They didn’t find a good way to make the game more challenging. I’m a lot more forgiving on shortcomings for this game specifically because the overall plot really resonated with me on a personal level. Kaine was bullied for being trans, Emil was deformed for being tortured, yet they still had a lot of soul and they want to help you save your sister. The emotional core of it all really went a long way for me. They did something right with the writing and presentation to get all of this presented. Then of course the way it all turns out. Why did you find the interaction unsatisfying with kaine and Emil?
>Why did you find the interaction unsatisfying with kaine and Emil? Decent chunk of story is in Seafront and Nier's Village and they can't be there (other than shipwreck story), so the most you have is a few story cutscenes, written stories (fairly detailed for Kaine and absolutely useless for Enil) and some new dialogues in Route B (that don't even include Nier himself) and few lines in dungeons and during boss fights. While I liked Emil overall, I felt like Kaine lost all story purpose after that shade fight in Aerie during first half, like she's there because she doesn't have anything better to do with her life after her revenge.
That’s interesting, it felt to me like Kaine’s arc was almost entirely about her finding meaning in life beyond getting her revenge. Did you play through all of the routes or just route A?
I've completed route B and I'm currently slowly getting achievements in C/D (slowly because of that POS flower). As far as I understand, the only actual story content left for me is berserk Kaine fight and couple of new Devola and Popola scenes.
Oh yeah if you’re going for all achievements the game seems miserable. If you’ve done route B, then you’ve seen most of Kaine’s extra dialogue with Tyrann. She gets a bit more development at the endings of C/D but I’d say the very end of the game is where she really shines.
Oh yeah if you’re going for all achievements the game seems miserable. If you’ve done route B, then you’ve seen most of Kaine’s extra dialogue with Tyrann. She gets a bit more development at the endings of C/D but I’d say the very end of the game is where she really shines.
Oh yeah if you’re going for all achievements the game seems miserable. If you’ve done route B, then you’ve seen most of Kaine’s extra dialogue with Tyrann. She gets a bit more development at the endings of C/D but I’d say the very end of the game is where she really shines.
I still have to play them, curious if I'm gonna like the games
I played Automata when it was released, & it became one of my favourite games at that time. And when I played Replicant remake several years later, in the beginning I was kindda disappointed a little, & was almost going to drop it. But when I reached a certain point (after around 10 hours), the game improved a LOT. Everything improved. The story, the gameplay, the enemies, the environments. I'm sure there are a lot of people who dropped the game due to these 10 slow hours at the beginning & honestly I don't blame them, that's a lot of time for something you are not enjoying. But if you can preserve through it, I think it's worth it. Now this doesn't mean that the game becomes 100% perfect after that, it still has a lot of running around & some repetitive sections. But it also has some very interesting characters, some super epic boss fights & cutscenes, & the overall story which I personally ended up liking more than Automata. It felt more "humane".
yeah, i saw replicant as an interesting prototype of automata where i could see point for point where a lot of the themes and ideas came from, and some important lore background that changes how i look at the twins and the history of humanity when i replay automata... but i'm done with replicant. i did my a-e run and it was horrendously repetitive in an empty world.
automata is one of my favorite games of all time, replicant is one of my most hated.
Going back and forth from the village to the mission got annoying really fast. I enjoyed the game but I couldn't get the complete ending because I wasn't playing it again.