Johnny Novgorod said:
Is the original game worth picking up? Never played the series before.
Obviously it is going to depend on what you want out of it. If you like Nier Automatas story and characters or rather writing in general then quite possibly yes if you just like its gameplay then absolutely not.
I have not finished Nier yet (bought it late last year) but I find it a real mixed bag the sidequests are annoying as hell but I do them because the writing is great and I honestly want to hear the characters converse on them as well as find out more on the world also the combat in Nier while functional is for me at least not very engaging.
I will go back to Nier simply because I find the world, characters and story so compelling I feel the slog of some of the gameplay is worth it also you can skip pretty much all sidequests if you wish which may save your sanity.
As an overall product Nier Automata is much easier to recommend but Nier is different enough to be its own beast. It is also nice seeing how the world and landscape has changed from Nier to Automata.
Personal reasons why I have not finished Nier yet are I hate the sidequests but love the banter when doing them so sorta makes me do stuff I hate to get stuff I do not, the combat is not very engaging outside of a few encounters i.e bosses. Some of the drop rates for parts are annoyingly low and it is tedious to get them so much so that I pretty much stopped caring about the idea of fully upgrading weapons and finally their are other games I wanted to play that gave me more overall pleasure such as Nioh and Nier Automata.