NieR: Automata - Playstation 4

Just as Shakespeare wrote plays of genius masquerading as entertainment for the masses, so Yoko Taro has crafted an epic work of genius under the guise of "just another action hack and slash". After having played through 45 hours and having seen all five of the main endings (and having my save file deleted by the game...wait, what?!), I am here to tell you that there are going to need to publish new editions of "1001 Video Games You Must Play Before You Die", because this is one of the greatest games ever made. Yeah, yeah, overblown hyped-up hyperbole much? Well this game sold all of what, 2 million copies in a YEAR, when say, Horizon Zero Dawn sold more than that in about a MONTH. So yes, my ridiculous yelling about how good this game is, is COMPLETELY justified. So then, on to the review!Not Synesthesia, but Something NewFirst of all, this is an action game, but unlike any you have ever played. As a 30 minute YouTube review noted (SkillUp if you want to check it out), this game not only switches from third-person action game (Kingdom Hearts) to top-down shooter (Ikaruga), to Twin Stick shooter (Enter the Gungeon), to Geometry-Based Twin Stick shooter (Geometry Wars), to side-scrolling shooter (Contra), it also switches SEAMLESSLY between them. There's no load screen. The camera simply shifts or fades out and the controls stay the same. Combine that with a soundtrack that also switches seamlessly between 8-bit and orchestral versions, and quiet and dynamic versions (with and without vocals!) to adjust to what is happening, and you have something completely new in games. You have a game that changes the sights and sounds dynamically on-the-fly in tandem so that the visuals and audio are always expressing exactly the same emotion based on what you do. This is similar in concept to the game Rez, where your actions to destroy enemies make different sounds depending on what you do, but that game (while awesome), only performs on rails in 3D, and features one version of a song that you riff off of. Nier's audio/visual experience is a whole other beast entirely.A Circus Act Desperate For Your ApplauseThe same YouTube review likened the pacing and theatrics of Nier:Automata to a street performer constantly having to surprise you and top what they just showed you to hold your attention and get you part with your hard-earned cash, and he's not wrong. The first act of this three act (or three play-through, if you will) game ought to make you says "Wow!" quite a few times. I know that I was consistently surprised, shocked, amazed, and delighted in those first 15 hours. The tutorial level shocked me by KILLING ME(!), granting me an achievement for dying (!!), and allowing me to find my own corpse and grab the items I had lost (!!!). Once you get past that tutorial (don't give up! the game is teaching you how to play, I promise!), you are in for a roller-coaster of a ride. You'll have many "What the heck?!" moments followed by some of the most intense boss battles you've ever seen. The structure is, again, like Kingdom Hearts. You head somewhere, a cut-scene kicks in, you have somewhere to go, or something to do, you fight Machines along the way, encounter bosses, get new items, equip them, and unlock new places to go, etc. It's just that this core gameplay is taken to it's adult limit in terms of the unexpected and awesome. You have plugin chips that radically alter how you fight and heal, but they also can take away elements of the UI if removed (or even kill you!), you have many equitable weapons for both close range and long range attacks, and this means if you aren't enjoying the game you need to alter your combat style and equipment to reflect your personal taste and the situation at hand. Brilliant.More Than the Sum of It's FlawsMany people who don't like this game complain about it's flawed mechanics/execution. It's open-world, but there's invisible walls where you can't go. Your attacks don't evolve as you level up and the combat is repetitive. The game varies from too easy to too hard. There isn't enough character development. The plot isn't explained obviously enough/doesn't make sense. They don't like replaying the first campaign a second time. Well...I agree with others who have stated a 10 out of 10 doesn't have to be about perfection of mechanics and execution. It can be about being revolutionary in concept, and in a competent execution of said revolutionary concept. This game is not PERFECT. It has flaws and weaknesses. But it's 4th-wall-shattering revolutionary execution of it's concepts is so groundbreaking that the flaws just don't matter if you get what the game's creator was trying to make you experience.The MusicA lot of people have talked about the music of this game so I'll be brief. Not only is the music amazing but it dynamically changes in response to what you are doing in the game. You need to play the game to understand what I'm talking about but suffice it to say that you need to both play the game and listen to the score on its own to fully appreciate it, because it really is THAT good. Just when you think you're starting to get tired of it and think you'll soon never want to hear it again, it gets stuck in your head and haunts your dreams.The Plot, The Emotion, A Desolation That Leads to JoyThe first play-through of 15 hours is a shock-and-awe masterpiece of Grade A Action Movie Awesome. It tells a complete story, it's fun, it's fulfilling. But it's pretty obvious by the end that you known NOTHING about what's really going on. The second playthrough introduces a new hacking mechanic which is/can be used so often that many get tired of it. That said, it is certainly interesting, and adds, along with the new cut-scenes, a completely new dimension to the second playthrough. The second playthrough also grants you a new perspective, and has a HUGE revelation to the plot at the end that you probably saw coming a hundred miles away. Even so, it definitely adds to the game.The third playthrough takes everything you have seen up to this point and dials it up to 11. You gain ANOTHER completely new perspective, everything you known and love is completely destroyed, and you'll likely find yourself yelling at your TV along with the protagonists "WHAT IS GOING ON!?!?!?" It's not as "fun" as the first play-through, and the big shockers are in the plot, not in the gameplay, so in a sense it's not as "good" as the first play-through. That said, it carries the majority of the emotional weight of the game, and let's you play as my favorite character (and it's the second half of the story), so if you want to see the entire story I think it would be absolute madness to give up after beating only the first play-through as 2B. But hey, you paid for it, do whatever you want...The overall plot has elements of everything from Shakespeare (yes, the themes of his plays are buried in there, and even the character names are references), to The Matrix, Battlestar Galactica, and every dystopian futuristic anime you can think of (and the bible, for good measure). The character development is subtle, and if you like your plot points and character development anvil-dropped on your head you may miss the subtleties. A clenched-fist and mysterious quiet musing here echoes across multiple breakthroughs. I for one love anime stoic/heroic action girls (my fav anime archetype) so I loved 2B and A2 to death. 9S is something else but he's definitely a completely different character in the second half from the first and far less of a one-note performance than your first play-through might make you think.ALL of the voice actors who worked on this game deserve accolades. There was ample opportunity to cheese-it-up on this game, but every voice actor in the English dub gave a heartfelt nuanced performance (superb direction of the voice acting). Easily on par with a major motion picture with the top tier of actors. And the writing of both the spoken and written dialog (didn't I mention it? how stupid of me. there's written story that's just as good and sometimes better than the cut-scenes, just so you have even MORE types of gameplay experience to draw upon for the story(!)), is absolutely superb in its translation.If, like I was, you are feeling depressed after beating all three campaigns but have yet to play the "true" ending that comes after seeing both sides of the final battle, I advise you to keep going and see the final, final, FINAL conclusion of the game. Because believe it or not, the END CREDITS SEQUENCE is what is going to make this one of the greatest games you have ever played. Or...I don't know. Maybe not if you're really cynical I guess.In The EndNever has a game made me cry like this. Never has a game shocked me like this. Never has a game made this depressed, or this happy. Never has a game made me yell "Wow!" so often or so loudly. Never has a game made me say "Oh my god!" so often and so loudly (especially in the first 20 minutes of the third play-through). And never, NEVER has a game made me yell at the screen in hopeful joyous triumph like the true ending of this game did.If that's not enough to make you play it all the way to the fifth ending I don't know what will. And if the game's creator should ever happen to read my review I just want to say..."Thank you Yoko Taro. Thank you. Life is worth living and I'll never give up. I swear."P.S. Oh yeah. And for those who care, 2B is wonderful, but I LOVE A2. I married her after all.

Nier Automata is a critically acclaimed game that released in 2017 for the PS4 and PC and a year later for Xbox One. It got great reviews and a dedicated cult following that still talks about this game today. The sequel to Nier a PS3 and Xbox 360 game that nobody played. This time, Yoko Taro the game’s director teams up with Platinium Games for the sequel. Set thousand of years after the first game and following the Androids 2B and 9S fighting machine lifeforms that invaded the Earth. With Humanity on the brink of extinction retreating to the moon. It is up to 2B and 9S to help defeat this invasion for the glory of mankind. Is Nier Automata the masterpiece that everyone says it is? Or is it like Vanquish an overhyped game that’s average at best? Short Answer is it’s a masterpiece that everyone must play. Why? Let’s find out.Pros:The story. The simple plot synopsis I gave in the beginning doesn’t even begin to do justice to explaining the plot of Nier Automata. A game that incorporates philosophy, religion, existentialist themes in a surprising way that aren’t expected. At the surface Nier Automata is a weird Japanese game and it is weird Japanese game in a good way. Nier has a deep plot with 26 different endings in three main campaigns throughout the story; with five main endings. Which gives tons of replay value. The five main endings took me about 40 hours to complete and with the final ending leaving me with that empty feeling when you binge watch an entire show. It was one of the greatest and most memorable endings ever. With the best end credits scene ever that thing everyone skips Nier Automata makes it great. Can’t praise the story enough, it one of those games that you wish you can replay again for the first time ever.The gameplay. Nier takes it amazing story and pairs it with the most unique gameplay I ever played in a game. With constant switching of perspectives and mechanics but in its heart it is a hack and slash and a great one at that. It plays like a combination of Devil May Cry, Dark Souls, at 60 FPS, and it is glorious. It comes with your standard upgrades for weapons, abilities and a leveling up system. The game has a chip plugin system where you can customize the way you want to play whether being a glass cannon or unkillable tank the choice is yours with three sets to mix and match. The also has a Dark Souls like mechanic where death loads you to a previous save and with a game with no autosaves you can loss significant progress if you don’t save often. Happened to me late game and I lost two hours of progress which was a bummer but still I deserved it. Despite losing plot progress you can always recover you chipset and level in a mechanic that is like the Dark Souls’ soul recover. Wrapping it up with the traditional transition of getting your ass kick early on to becoming an unstoppable killing machine late game.The characters. Nier Automata’s characters might all be Androids but they act more human than most characters in other games. It all ties back to the amazing story where you see these characters and you grow to like them. All with superb voice acting from actors who do mostly anime dubbing. Can’t say more without giving spoilers to key plot but Suffice it to say the characters in Nier Automata are great.Music. I hardly mention music in games but Nier Automata deserves praise for it soundtrack as it is well orchestrated and memorable. When the music's playing in my head and I’m not even playing Nier Automata that’s when you know you have a great soundtrack.The Open World. Wasn’t sold on it at first thought it was another game just chasing the trends of open world games. The more I start to play it, the more it started to grow on me. To the point where I ended up loving the open world design of the game. Spend lots of time just exploring discovering new places, finding new weapons and of course fishing.Side Missions. Another mechanic which I thought was mediocre at first. The first side mission is a literal fetch quest but luckily that wasn’t the case for most side-quests. Most of the side quests had really great plots in them that are easily missable. From solving a murder mystery to finding out the memories of a Character from the first Nier game. Nier Automata has great side quests that help reinforce it main themes from the main quest. They’re not all perfect though some are just mundane tasks like go pick this up bring me one of each that are scatter around the map. Despite those side missions coming with the territory Nier Automata still has good side quests that worth playing.Cons:The one biggest flaw that Nier Automata has to be it’s entry level. Nier Automata is a hard game to recommend without giving major spoilers or even describing it one of the those things where it’s better to show rather than explain. I ignored Nier Automata for a year because of this. It just didn’t get my interest despite all the praise it was getting. Luckily for me I bit the bullet and manage to play it. Still, I won’t blame anyone who ends up ignoring or skipping this game as it’s hard to describe and recommend without showing it.Verdict:Nier Automata is one of those games that release once in a generation. It’s unique gameplay and deep story real affected me that no other game I played this generation has. Definitely my Game of the Year of 2018 in a year where I played the new God of War. Nier Automata had me playing late at night for just one more minute. A thing that I haven’t experience since Fallout 4 back in 2015. Hands down Platinum Games’ best game ever a studio who has been in a slump this generation bounces back. Nier Automata is worth playing it is a hidden gem that deserves all the praise and validation it got and is still getting by fans and critics. It one of those truly unique games that can’t be achieved in any other media. Nier Automata is a masterpiece and definitely worth buying and playing. An unforgettable experience from start to finish.