Nier

[Post Tenebrae Morte]

Let's talk about one of the most under acclaimed titles in recent gaming history.
This game has it all: a beautiful soundtrack, a wonderful and engrossing story filled with actual characters, great lore, serviceable gameplay, and nice graphics. Yet where the walking dead recieved game awards, this was ignored due to being an unknown Japanese made game.

 

[Rozalia1]

Cavia has always made good interesting games even if the mechanics of them have never been the best. I actually didn't like it much when i saw just some gameplay when a friend was playing it...but at the advice of some people I picked it up and loved it.

Awards go to the big names, or any current internet darlings so you shouldn't be concerned about it.

 

[Andy Shandy]

Yeah, I loved it.

The way that they did the story was particularly excellent, although I think the review score suffered for it, which subsequently meant not as many bought it.

And that soundtrack

 

[ItouKaiji]

I picked up Neir because I thought the box art looked interesting despite knowing nothing about it and it was one of the best gaming decisions I made. It really is an under appreciated gem of a game and one that breaks several of the most annoying Japanese RPG tropes which makes the story that much stronger. The game play was good enough to me, even if there were some annoying mini games involved.

The game does have some negatives though. Forcing more than one play through to get the full story is pretty sucky. Other games will have bonus material upon replays but Neir leaves out crucial plot information through the first play through. Also, level design is very limited. The dungeon designs are okay, but get recycled but that's probably due to budget constraints.

Overall, one of my favorite RPGs from the last generation.

 

[Tanis]

I liked the game, though it's one of those 'diamond in the rough'.

I also wish the fishing mini game wasn't REQUIRED to get the 100% ending.

 

[Blitsie]

Nier still remains my best impulse buy I have ever made. I initially skipped the game because of poor reviews and I remember months after its release I just thought "to hell with it" and blindly went in to buy it because it was part of a special at a nearby store.

Probably the only time I will say that those professional reviewers who gave it low scores really deserve taking a hard look at themselves in the mirror and ask why the hell they even bother gaming in the first place. Nier has got one of the best soundtracks I have ever heard in a game and its story was one of the most emotionally impactful I have experienced (had me crying in the end, have yet to run into another game that has that effect on me). It certainly is a rough game and gameplay itself isn't all that hot, but everything else about it just made it so, so special.

You guys also really enjoy the side missions? I know many people had lots of negative things to say about it but I absolutely loved them, some of them were heartbreaking (the old lady and the lighthouse), some funny (getting trolled by that one guy who basically abuses the fact that you just openly accept any quest without question, nice meta-jab there at gamers) and most just really built the world up nicely, made the second half that much more hectic because of how different everyone you initially helped out ends up being.

 

[krazykidd]

Eh. The quests and crafting was tedious. The 10 second music loops were annoyig as hell. The bullet hell thing was fun, and weiss was funny. 6/10.

 

[Someone Depressing]

It was a decent game; good art and music, some pretty interesting ideas. It just needed some polishing up.

Also, The Walking Dead is a pretty big franchise; whether or not Nier had as much polish as it needed or not doesn't matter; YWD would have been more popular regardless.

 

[jademunky]

Wow, um I really should dust off my xbox 360 and give that game another go.

Seriously, I bought it in the bargain bit years ago, played an hour of it (something about a man and his dying daughter), found the combat to be rather boring and forgot that I owned it.

Is it worth my time? how much playtime before it actually gets good? Because JRPGs and me have kind of a mixed history: I loooooooove SMT: Nocturne but have hated just about every Final Fantasy game since III (VI).

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

Is it worth my time? how much playtime before it actually gets good? Because JRPGs and me have kind of a mixed history: I loooooooove SMT: Nocturne but have hated just about every Final Fantasy game since III (VI).

It's hard to say. The game can be quite diverse; there's even a text adventure dungeon! But for the general hack 'n' slash-y bits that make up the general gameplay, if you didn't like it to start with, you probably won't find that it improves much. You'll be required to do more bullet-hell style dodging as you get further in. Personally, I thought that was pretty fun. You may not agree.

The basic combat system leaves something to be desired and it really, really needs a lock-on. That element of it doesn't improve; the camera will always be screwy.

It also requires a bit of a time commitment, because the story changes with each NG+, so if you want to whole plot then it requires multiple playthroughs.

The game's "atmosphere" is really good and the story is one of the most interesting and bizarre (and depressing) I've come across in gaming; at least amongst those that aren't explicitly trying to be surreal nonsense. Since you already own it, maybe go on for an hour or two past where you got last time, to see if it sucks you in. If not, it's probably not for you.

 

[jademunky]

It's hard to say. The game can be quite diverse; there's even a text adventure dungeon! But for the general hack 'n' slash-y bits that make up the general gameplay, if you didn't like it to start with, you probably won't find that it improves much. You'll be required to do more bullet-hell style dodging as you get further in. Personally, I thought that was pretty fun. You may not agree.

The basic combat system leaves something to be desired and it really, really needs a lock-on. That element of it doesn't improve; the camera will always be screwy.

It also requires a bit of a time commitment, because the story changes with each NG+, so if you want to whole plot then it requires multiple playthroughs.

Now i'm really torn.

One one hand, you had me at "text adventure dungeon"

on the other: multiple playthroughs required

Aw screw it, ill give it a go.......... riiiiiight after a play more Dark Souls.

 

[Rozalia1]

It's hard to say. The game can be quite diverse; there's even a text adventure dungeon! But for the general hack 'n' slash-y bits that make up the general gameplay, if you didn't like it to start with, you probably won't find that it improves much. You'll be required to do more bullet-hell style dodging as you get further in. Personally, I thought that was pretty fun. You may not agree.

The basic combat system leaves something to be desired and it really, really needs a lock-on. That element of it doesn't improve; the camera will always be screwy.

It also requires a bit of a time commitment, because the story changes with each NG+, so if you want to whole plot then it requires multiple playthroughs.

Now i'm really torn.

One one hand, you had me at "text adventure dungeon"

on the other: multiple playthroughs required

Aw screw it, ill give it a go.......... riiiiiight after a play more Dark Souls.

If I remember correctly new game + actually starts you at the half way point so you only need to do 1 full playthrough, and three half playthroughs. You also keep everything you had so the difficulty if it was there to begin with gets wrecked.

Second playthrough I believe is the one with the extra scenes so its worth paying attention to. The other playthroughs I believe just have different endings with no extra stuff.

 

[Seracen]

What perturbs me about the game is that, to get the "final ending," you basically delete ALL your data. Still, great game, I just tend to youtube that particular ending, lol.

 

[ChupathingyX]

It's a shame how little people seem to acknowledge how well NieR managed to portray and tell its story through gameplay mechanics and other subtleties.

I absolutely love the characters, setting, story, music, atmosphere and dialogue, but the foreshadowing and "show, don't tell" attitude of various scenes is where I believe the game truly shines.

I also find it hilarious that the game received hate due to the first fishing sidequest because players didn't know where the beach was (even though there is a big red X on the minimap)...in a game that features a sidequest that directly that makes fun of completionists[footnote]Though most sidequests in Yoko Taro's games do.[/footnote] and people/games that rely on quest markers and handholding.

 

[Mahorfeus]

The gameplay had always felt pretty mediocre to me, though the voice acting was pretty awesome.

And watching all of your progress vanish right before your eyes was actually a pretty powerful moment. The game goes out of its way to literally erase your character's existence.

 

[00slash00]

It's hard to say. The game can be quite diverse; there's even a text adventure dungeon! But for the general hack 'n' slash-y bits that make up the general gameplay, if you didn't like it to start with, you probably won't find that it improves much. You'll be required to do more bullet-hell style dodging as you get further in. Personally, I thought that was pretty fun. You may not agree.

The basic combat system leaves something to be desired and it really, really needs a lock-on. That element of it doesn't improve; the camera will always be screwy.

It also requires a bit of a time commitment, because the story changes with each NG+, so if you want to whole plot then it requires multiple playthroughs.

Now i'm really torn.

One one hand, you had me at "text adventure dungeon"

on the other: multiple playthroughs required

Aw screw it, ill give it a go.......... riiiiiight after a play more Dark Souls.

It isn't multiple full playthroughs. Each ng+ starts you off at the halfway point with all your gear and levels and the enemies don't scale, so each playthrough takes less and less time. By my final playthrough I was so over powered that it only took maybe an hour.

I never found the gameplay to be bad, just pretty average but the story is why you're really playing the game. You eventually get back story to the bosses too, and then feel super bad about killing them

 

[SmallHatLogan]

Nier is a weird one for me. The game has quite a few flaws but for some reason I was able to overlook pretty much all of them. I really love that game.

What perturbs me about the game is that, to get the "final ending," you basically delete ALL your data. Still, great game, I just tend to youtube that particular ending, lol.

I actually loved that aspect. At first I was torn and was going to back up my save data, but then it made me question why I cared so much about a save file I'm never going to use again. I opted to not back up my data after thinking about it and took the plunge.

The 10 second music loops were annoyig as hell.

Yahtzee said the same thing and I have no idea what you're both talking about, there are no 10 second loops that I'm aware of. Most, if not all of the songs have some kind of progression.

 

[Schadrach]

It's hard to say. The game can be quite diverse; there's even a text adventure dungeon! But for the general hack 'n' slash-y bits that make up the general gameplay, if you didn't like it to start with, you probably won't find that it improves much. You'll be required to do more bullet-hell style dodging as you get further in. Personally, I thought that was pretty fun. You may not agree.

The basic combat system leaves something to be desired and it really, really needs a lock-on. That element of it doesn't improve; the camera will always be screwy.

It also requires a bit of a time commitment, because the story changes with each NG+, so if you want to whole plot then it requires multiple playthroughs.

Now i'm really torn.

One one hand, you had me at "text adventure dungeon"

on the other: multiple playthroughs required

Aw screw it, ill give it a go.......... riiiiiight after a play more Dark Souls.

If I remember correctly new game + actually starts you at the half way point so you only need to do 1 full playthrough, and three half playthroughs. You also keep everything you had so the difficulty if it was there to begin with gets wrecked.

Second playthrough I believe is the one with the extra scenes so its worth paying attention to. The other playthroughs I believe just have different endings with no extra stuff.

All this is true. Of course it makes all the difference in the world when starting with the second playthrough you can hear the monsters for what they really are (something they couldn't do before because it isn't really revealed until the ending).

Also, there are no properly happy endings. Every ending dooms humanity. Get used to it.

Also, the DLC is relatively difficult if you want a challenge.

 

[Post Tenebrae Morte]

Actually, a canon book was written that offers another ending which is somewhat happy. Essentially, kaine and Emil look for nier, who though he's been erased, is slightly rememberd by kaine. Ending E. Just have to remember its Japanese in origin, so they use the boy nier. Just replace boy nier with father nier and your good.

 

[krazykidd]

Nier is a weird one for me. The game has quite a few flaws but for some reason I was able to overlook pretty much all of them. I really love that game.

What perturbs me about the game is that, to get the "final ending," you basically delete ALL your data. Still, great game, I just tend to youtube that particular ending, lol.

I actually loved that aspect. At first I was torn and was going to back up my save data, but then it made me question why I cared so much about a save file I'm never going to use again. I opted to not back up my data after thinking about it and took the plunge.

The 10 second music loops were annoyig as hell.

Yahtzee said the same thing and I have no idea what you're both talking about, there are no 10 second loops that I'm aware of. Most, if not all of the songs have some kind of progression.

You must have been playing a superior version of the game, because at the two hour mark i had to turn off the music, i just could not listen to it anymore. It baffles me because people always say the soundtrack was good. Hell Nier, was the first thread i made on the escapists and people told me the same thing. I played Nier before yahtzee reviewed it and seriously i was wondering why he was the only person to mention it.