Johnny Novgorod said:
Holy fuck, Sterling is on a roll.
Lisker84 said:
To be fair, Jim Sterling seems to hate just about everything.
He gave Nier: Automata a 9/10 like a week ago.
And Horizon Zero Dawn a 9.5/10 before that.
That's like straight out of his front page. I don't even follow the guy.
Which is nuts. There's NO WAY NieR: Automata is a 9/10.
The combat is too simplistic and shallow, the balance is poor and the character you play as for most of the game has a mediocre hacking mechanic haphazardly replacing the Y attack. By the time you get to play as 2B again in chapter select, you're overpowered. I think this game would have been better without leveling. Just the upgradable chips. It's implied that 2B, 9S and A2 have been doing this for a while, so the leveling system serves little narrative purpose, and it unbalances the game later on. Or, give me a Bloody Palace mode or a challenge mode or something in which I can continue to play as the three characters while being challenged.
It would be nice if you at least had to dodge in the correct direction and were not invincible while dodging, which would require reworking the enemy attacks.
I usually don't use the term spectacle fighter, but it describes the combat pretty well. It's about looking cool rather than having depth and being challenging. The harder modes don't fix it either. I tried Very Hard because I wanted to replay some chapters and was overpowered at level 80-something. I died from one hit in the prologue, by one of those little trashcan enemies. Same thing happens if you start the game on Hard mode at level 0. Instant deaths in the prologue. Normal is far too easy and hard is far too punishing.
I enjoyed the game a lot, but there are significant problems with it.
I'm very doubtful Horizon is a 9.5/10. Decimal scores are stupid anyway.