NieR Replicant™ ver.1.22474487139..., my thoughts

Context

Having played and loved Nier Automata earlier this year, I was ecstatic to find out that Nier was having a rerelease. I had not played the original and was very curious to see where Automata came from. I will be giving my thoughts on how this game resonated with me but not drawing comparisons.

My Setup

My System:

• RTX 3060TI
• 5800x Stock
• 32GB 3600MHZ
• Installed on SSD

I played the PC version of this game (yeah….) while the port was immeasurably better than automata’s, there were several caveats.

For starters, I had to use a mod to get it working at 60 fps (specialK mod). Controller support was there but is very finicky, for example I had to spam the A button on my controller to get it working while booting up the game, if my controller disconnected, I could not; get it to reconnect, so I had to restart the game. For me, the game was literally unplayable on mouse and keyboard. The mouse camera movement was unusable and extremely sensitive and could not get it fixed.

But once these issues were settled, the game performs well. I played this game on a 4k TV, and It pretty much stayed locked on 55-60 fps all the time with some drastic drop a couple of times in my 40 hours in the game.

Sound and Music

This is easily one of the highlights of this game, featuring a very Choir like soundtrack, it’s omnipresence during the entire game elevates the entire atmosphere of the game not only during intense Boss battles but also while traveling the world. Although the soundtrack is great, the repetitive nature of the game may remove some emotional impact that some tracks provide.

For voices, they are the original VA. They are pretty good, with good direction.

Gameplay and Story

You play as Nier, at the start a youg Nier and then later in the story as an older better Nier :). Anything I say about the story will spoil something in it, so I will stick to just that.

This is a Yoku Taro game, so multiple endings are expected, there are 5 endings A, B, C, D, and the new E ending. This is were my main criticism lies, without spoiling anything I will say this: the endings make you replay certain parts of the game but certain endings require you to replay said part again making it a very repetitive experience even with the newly added story (mainly talking about C and D and E) but the question comes down to is the ending worth repeating the same story beats with a new cherry on top? Personally some endings were not but in overall I did not regret my time with the game.

The game leverages the use of varying its camera angles in very creative ways to vary up gameplay as well as using lon paragraphs of text in order to convey story (i would guess this is a more technical limitation). Although it varies up the gameplay, sometimes it does not benefit from it, sometimes the camera angles make it really wonky to attack enemies and getting oriented.

Let's talk about gameplay, it's similar to Automata, very flashy button mashing action packed lots of enemies and very fun. As you mow down dozens of enemies you really feel powerful. There are a different types of weapons to choose from ranging from light sword to heavy and spears each with their own attributes and wielding styles. Every weapon is upgradable and increases physical and magical damage.

Speaking of damage, you carry this Flying book around called Weiss who shoot magic out of his mouth. As you kill more enemies, you get more and more magic abilities. In conjunction with magic abilities are words, words can increase certain traits like magic or physical damage by a certain margin. These you get by killing lots of enemies.

Bottom Line

Ok... that's great but how was this game for me? Well it's a Yoku Taru game it's weird it's fun to play and make you feel. It manages very well to convey an actual message to the player through the story. Although different from Automata it follows closely in how that message is conveyed to the player. If you like Automata you will feel right at home with Nier replicant. If this your first Yoku game it's a great starting point, and you will benefit immensely if you choose to play Replicant before Automata.

Will this game stay with me for a long time? Probably not as much as automata but a very fun and worthwhile time.