{"id":434,"date":"2018-01-27T23:54:13","date_gmt":"2018-01-28T04:54:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=434"},"modified":"2018-01-27T23:54:13","modified_gmt":"2018-01-28T04:54:13","slug":"game-ramblings-64-nierautomata","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=434","title":{"rendered":"Game Ramblings #64 &#8211; NieR:Automata"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.niergame.com\/\">More Info from Square-Enix<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Genre<\/strong>: ARPG<\/li>\n<li><strong>Platform<\/strong>: PS4<\/li>\n<li><strong>Also Available On<\/strong>: Windows<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>TL;DR<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Excellent story largely based around what it means to have a soul.\u00a0 Multiple endings work fantastically in keeping you coming back.<\/li>\n<li>Excellent combat that takes a mix of action and bullet hell mechanics and somehow blends them into a cohesive whole.<\/li>\n<li>Biggest downside is that enemy variety is pretty low, with the environments being fairly sparse.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Now that the winter doldrums are here, I&#8217;ve got a bit of time to get to games that should have been played before and <em>NieR<\/em> was high on the list.\u00a0 Having dipped my toes a bit into the overall\u00a0<em>Drakengard\u00a0<\/em>universe, I had some idea of what to expect but I was still surprised by how well this one was pulled off.\u00a0\u00a0<em>NieR<\/em> is a game that spends a lot of time making you think about what it means to actually be alive and have a soul, whether synthetic beings can actually be capable of emotion, and ultimately what would happen when you find out everything you knew was a lie.\u00a0 It wraps this into a fast-paced action combat system that seamlessly blends melee elements of standard ARPGs with ranged mechanics straight out of bullet hell games to create a game that is uniquely its own.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_435\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-435\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_bullethell.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-435\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_bullethell-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_bullethell-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_bullethell-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_bullethell-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_bullethell.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-435\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Combat mixes melee and bullet hell in a fantastic manner, usually to spectacular effect.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Since this is an ARPG and you&#8217;ll be spending the majority of your time involved in it, we&#8217;ll start off with combat.\u00a0 Rather than being a straight melee hack and slash game,\u00a0<em>NieR<\/em> blends in a lot of ranged mechanics for both player and enemy to make the actual process of fighting enemies a lot more varied than is typical of the genre.\u00a0 Beyond the obvious picture of an enemy screen spamming bullets above, the player characters also have both a friendly pod that provides ranged damage as well as the ability on a lot of the weapons to do ranged attacks via slashing attacks that send out projectiles themselves.<\/p>\n<p>The end result of all this is that directly hitting an enemy isn&#8217;t really all that important, and the movement ends up being the driving factor of battle.\u00a0 Regardless of what range the player is at there&#8217;s always at least some damage source that can be used, so the actual process of avoiding damage becomes the most important factor.\u00a0 The combination of all these attacks and an instant dodge with no cooldown gives the combat an extremely fun and fluid feel that I can&#8217;t really remember out of any other ARPG series.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_438\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-438\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_variety.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-438\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_variety-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_variety-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_variety-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_variety-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_variety.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-438\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Variety in battle is also a key, with multiple other battle types popping up to keep things from being repetitive.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>It is worth noting that other battle systems do pop up from time to time to keep the player on their toes.\u00a0 At times, you&#8217;ll take over giant ass robots that act as bullet sponges just for the sake of blowing lots of things up.\u00a0 Sometimes you&#8217;ll enter a flight suit or hacking segments and switch between both vertical scrolling and dual-stick shooter modes to take out flying enemies.\u00a0 Sometimes even in standard combat you end up in camera-restricted sections, giving a more side-scrolling focus to combat.\u00a0 Just being able to hop into all of these things on the fly kept the game fresh when it could have otherwise been a long train of the same action combat on repeat.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also worth noting that all of these combat types are tied into the same fantastic gearing system.\u00a0 While there are the basic trappings of the genre (player level boosts base stats, weapons are upgradeable, the player&#8217;s ranged pod helper is upgradeable, etc), the real core of the system is the game&#8217;s chip system.\u00a0 Chips are a customizeable feature where the player can slot helper items into a board.\u00a0 Each item has some effect and some cost, so managing the benefits of the chips that are applied allows the player to setup the character in a style that fits how they want to play without being stuck in one path the entire game.\u00a0 For my playthrough, I ended up applying a few basic increases (HP, Attack Power, etc), a few HUD helpers for convenience (in particular, one that revealed items on the overworld map), and most importantly for me a passive helper that gave me 40% of my own health back on a kill.\u00a0 For me this meant that I could go into any encounter, dodge around like crazy killing things, and not be overly worried about taking too many hits.\u00a0 If I took some hits it wouldn&#8217;t be a big deal.\u00a0 I&#8217;d get a kill, heal up, and continue on.\u00a0 A more passive player could load up on HP, defense, and ranged attack power, leaving it to their pod to whittle away enemies while they stay out of danger.\u00a0 A real glass cannon could go heavy into attack power one shotting enemies in their way, but without any real safety if they got hit themselves.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_439\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-439\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_visuals.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-439\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_visuals-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_visuals-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_visuals-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_visuals-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_visuals.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-439\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Visuals are generally pretty good but some standout areas are definitely there, such as this area built entirely out of untextured assets.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>The rest of the game may not be as good as core combat, but overall the pieces are all on average pretty damn good, and certainly better than most ARPGs out there.\u00a0 Combat visuals are flashy but don&#8217;t interfere with the player&#8217;s ability to understand what is going on.\u00a0 Environments are generally kind of sparse but all look really good with solid differences in theme between them.\u00a0 Enemy variety is kind of low but the silhouettes always give proper immediate feedback as to what can be expected out of attacks.\u00a0 The soundtrack has too many instances of repeating songs but what is there is extremely well done and catchy.\u00a0 That&#8217;s kind of the overall end result where I can nitpick all day about specific things but end of the day what is there is all really high quality.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_436\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-436\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_laughs.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-436\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_laughs-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_laughs-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_laughs-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_laughs-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_laughs.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-436\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The story ends up being a great thinker if you pay attention, but it&#8217;s certainly not without its moments of comedy; intentional or not.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Ultimately I&#8217;d generally recommend playing this game if for no other reason than to play through the story.\u00a0 I really don&#8217;t want to say any more than I did in the opener to avoid spoilers, but suffice to say if you are a fan of stories that involve ponderings over the meaning of life, this one will likely stick with you.\u00a0 It&#8217;s also spread out over multiple characters to allow for great side-by-side comparisons of multiple viewpoints.\u00a0 For reference, the game plays through the first half of the story from the perspective of two main characters (listed as A and B routes in the game).\u00a0 It then provides a C\/D route that plays through the second half of the story with two branching endings.\u00a0 An E route then provides an ultimate ending after the conclusion of the game.\u00a0 Because of the multiple viewpoints the story is able to give much greater depth to the overarching theme of what it means to truly be alive, with each character fighting their own struggle to figure it out.\u00a0 The rest of the alphabet is then filled with a number of secret endings, typically the result of some joke sequence.\u00a0 For example, the player can remove their OS core from the android player characters, immediately killing them and ending the game.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose the question becomes, should I have gotten to this sooner? Ya, probably.\u00a0\u00a0<em>NieR<\/em> is a game that mixes a lot of action combat elements into a cohesive whole that somehow works.\u00a0 It adds a great sci-fi story from multiple viewpoints to keep you coming back to the game.\u00a0 A dash of comedy here and there keeps things light, while segments of other combat types keeps the variety strong.\u00a0 If you haven&#8217;t gotten to this one yet, I guess you can consider this my glowing recommendation.\u00a0 Just make sure you play after the first credits roll; there really is a lot more there.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_437\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-437\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_romeo.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-437\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_romeo-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_romeo-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_romeo-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_romeo-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/nier_romeo.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-437\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">I&#8217;ll leave you with this &#8211; the best rendition of Romeo and Juliet of all time.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More Info from Square-Enix Genre: ARPG Platform: PS4 Also Available On: Windows TL;DR Excellent story largely based around what it means to have a soul.\u00a0 Multiple endings work fantastically in keeping you coming back. Excellent combat that takes a mix of action and bullet hell mechanics and somehow blends them into a cohesive whole. Biggest &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=434\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Game Ramblings #64 &#8211; NieR:Automata&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":443,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,6],"tags":[48,144,29],"class_list":["post-434","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arpg","category-ps4","tag-arpg","tag-nier","tag-ps4"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=434"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":442,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/434\/revisions\/442"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=434"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=434"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=434"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}