- Spoiler: show
-
12/01 - The Legend of Zelda: The Missing Link
28/01 - Tony Hawk's Underground
02/02 - Max Payne
03/02 - The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess HD (Hero Mode)
07/02 - Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne
14/02 - Max Payne 3
23/02 - Splatoon 3: Side Order (first clear)
28/02 - Splatoon 3: Side Order (all Palettes cleared)
05/03 - Alan Wake
08/03 - Alan Wake's American Nightmare
17/04 - Skye
27/04 - Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate HD (Hard)
04/05 - Star Wars: Republic Commando
13/05 - Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
23/05 -
NieR: Automata (endings A-Z)
I’ve been thinking about revisiting this game for a while, and finally got around to it. Still a fantastic game that holds a place as one of my all time favourites. I do have a few quibbles about it though, but they are more or less the same thoughts I had when I first played it years ago. Since I last went through this game I have played all the Drakengard games too, so that adds an interesting new layer of context to things as well.
One of the main things I wanted to pay attention to this run was the combat mechanics. I’ve always enjoyed it a lot and think it’s really good, but it tends to be one of the more common complaints about the game. I think people are usually too harsh on it, but it’s also one of the areas I have some issues with as well. Despite what you might hear some people say, these systems do have real depth. There is a lot of room for creativity, and there’s plenty of videos out there from people who have mastered this game showing what crazy stuff is possible. It has dodge offset, counters, pause combos, on-the-fly weapon switching, and more. But I have to admit I never dug in to it as much as I wanted to originally, and I wanted to fix that on this attempt. I was only moderately successful however. I did have some fun stringing together some basic combos and experimenting with different weapon sets, and I felt like I was able to add a bit of that flourish to fights I was aiming for, but at the same time I did find myself falling in to the trap that I was explicitly trying to avoid this time around.
The problem is that this game does a lot to not just provide no incentive to engage with these more complex systems, but it actively pushes the player away from exploring them in many ways. The biggest culprit being the plug-in chip system. The game pushes you towards using and tinkering with this system a lot, and the rewards for doing so are immense. It’s very easy to trivialise the combat in this game with that system, in many different ways. That’s something that I did try to avoid doing, but other barriers got in the way too. It takes a very long time for the game to roll out a decent variety of combat options alongside the chip system, and often puts limits on what you have access to at any given time. By the time you start getting a half decent array of options as 2B, you then switch over to playing as 9S who can’t do anywhere near as much. And then once you finally get access to that wider set of options again it’s been so long that you’ve gotten used to the simpler mechanics and there’s less desire to push deeper again.
I do appreciate that those more complex mechanics exist, and I did enjoy making what use of them that I did though. But aside from these issues, I think it’s worth acknowledging the intrinsic quality of this combat system regardless of what extrinsic motivation it may or may not provide. Exploring these mechanics provide a very aesthetically pleasing experience just on its own, and it allows you to be as expressive as you want. The game feel is sublime. The controls feel so immediate and responsive, like there’s no barrier between what you want to make the character do and them doing it. All animated in such a wonderfully expressive and stylish way too, polished to perfection. I feel like that sort of thing gets disregarded too easily these days, but having recently played other games that show how badly these seemingly simple things can do wrong, it makes you appreciate it so much. Before I ever got interested in any kind of technical stuff with character action games, it’s these qualities that first drew me to them, and has always been a big part of why I continue to enjoy them.
The story still stands up as being one of the best in games too. It goes in to so many interesting existential themes that give you a lot to think about. Like questions about how we construct meaning in our lives, how we use or even create conflict to justify our existence, considering the idea that conflict is necessary for growth, how we construct beliefs to drive us even when we know they aren’t true, or how we lionise figures from the past to give our current selves meaning. It’s all really compelling stuff. I was actually a little apprehensive how this stuff might hold up after playing Disco Elysium, as that game basically set the gold standard of how a game can deal with topics like this. While I have to admit Disco has this game beat, I think having played it actually helped me appreciate this one on a deeper level too.
Most of the really interesting stuff takes until the third route of the game though, and a lot of it is rather abstract and theoretical. While I do like it a lot, I still think I slightly prefer the story of the original Nier because it had a more human touch with its characters, while still dealing with a lot of the same themes. It’s a bit harder to connect with the intentionally robotic characters of Automata. That said, a lot of the big dramatic and tragic moments still manage to hit hard, even when they’re no longer a surprise.
The extra context from having played the Drakengard games did add a little to the experience, but not much to be honest. Going over how exactly gets in to specifics though so…
- Spoiler: show
-
The symbol for the Cult of the Watchers appearing on Eve when he succumbs to the virus perhaps implies that the virus is somehow an iteration of the dark magic that the cult used to brainwash people. That, along with the machine network creating the emergent consciousness of the Red Girl also maybe lends some validity to the time loop theory of this franchise. Perhaps she somehow became the god of the cult. There’s also a connection to Manah, both in her appearance, and how at points she also talks with two overlapping voices of opposite genders. I have heard that Reincarnation (the mobile game) adds some significant pieces to the overarching lore of the series, and that might throw a spanner in the works for this theory, but I didn’t play enough to get to that stuff.
So aside from all that, there’s only a couple of smaller things I wanted to mention. The soundtrack is still incredible. I haven’t been thinking about this game’s score so much since getting obsessed with the Drakengard music and playing Replicant, so I was a little surprised how much it hit me this time around. It has such an eerie, otherworldly beauty to it. It’s melancholy, but still has a glimmer of hope to it. The more dramatic action scene pieces have a great driving energy to them as well. Playing through this got all those songs firmly stuck in my head once again just like before.
I also swear this game is more buggy than it used to be. It was always a bit rough around the edges, but I feel like I ran in to more problems than I did back in the day. One that came up a few times was weapons getting stuck through characters’ bodies when not in use. Once or twice there was a glitch where music didn’t cut out when it should have. Another time I got the witch time visual effect getting stuck on screen for a while because I triggered it at the moment the scene transitioned to another. Weird stuff. Don’t expect any of that is getting fixed at this point though.
I was really glad to finally get every single optional ending on this run too. I was so annoyed that I missed ending Y on my original run. The only missable thing in the game. That irked me so much, denying me the platinum, so I caved and bought that one last trophy from merchant who sells them. But now that I’ve done it, that platinum is now 100% legitimate. No lingering threads left with this game.
So anyway, had a great time. Still an all time favourite. There are some things I wish it did a better job at, but it’s hard to hold anything against it too much. It’s incredible, and truly a modern classic.
