Recent reviews by Paphvul

Man, what is there to say about this one?

Absolute legendary 3D platformer, with one caveat: PLEASE do yourself a huge favor and download the Mod Loader, then turn on the code that fixes that stupid Emerald Radar. It'll make the Emerald Hunting stages SO much less tedious, and your enjoyment of the game will skyrocket.

Wow...

Once in every few years, you find a game that truly changes everything you think you know about the medium, and what games can be.

Nier, and its sequel Nier: Automata, are two such games. I'll be reviewing the latter, today.

As on my blog, I'll be reviewing games with the DRAGONET metric.

Since this game doesn't feature dragons, the Dragon Factor part of the score is going to be replaced with "Duuuuuuuuude, look at those ROBOTS!"

Speaking of!

1. Duuuuuuuuude, look at those ROBOTS!
There sure are a lot of them! And boy howdy, do they not waste the xenofictional potential with these guys. Because the YoRHa units have a form of functional immortality, using your core as a suicide bomb is considered a legitmate tactic. 9S at one point refers to himself in the plural, since he IS the latest-manufactured in a series of identical units. As is 2B.

Yet, they waste no time in making it abundantly clear that androids (or gynoids, as this game never calls them) are intrinsically human. Meanwhile, the Machines you fight are ALMOST human, yet unpredictable and inscrutable enough that you can't quite call them truly human.

The game also never wastes an opportunity to use the idea that these are robots you're playing as to make as many things you take for granted in a video game diegetic.

Menus? They're part of your OS. The HUD? Thanks to the blindfold-like visors you're wearing. Saving your game? You're backing up your memory in case you die. That's why your characters repeat things they've already said or done, because the memory of having done it didn't get transferred.

10 points.

2. Replayability and Content Volume

The only games I've ever seen have this many endings are the Chrono duology. Radiant Historia has plenty more, of course, but the attention to detail here is incredible.

You get alternate endings for nearly any stupid decision you could think to make: wanna blow up in the Bunker? You get an ending for that. Wanna slaughter the village of peaceful Machines for no reason? You get an ending for that. Eating a poisonous fish? Ending. Removing your OS chip? There's an ending for that, too.

Even screwing up the prologue counts towards your ending count (as I'm sorry to say I found out firsthand).

Exploring the world map will show you plenty of areas the main plot doesn't lead you to, and plenty of sidequests to pursue, should you be so inclined. And oh, Gosh, the sidequests. One weak point of the first Nier was that sidequests had a strong tendency to be tedious, despite the strong writing making them worth it in the end.

Automata has no such problem, with sidequests that are more often than not fun to carry out, in addition to the writing.

All in all, you're looking at some 80 hours of gameplay, should you take the time to do everything this game has to offer.

9 points.

3. Aesthetics and Presentation

The environments are crafted with loving detail, the locales truly feeling like hastily-abandoned ruins of humanity. One car even has a forever-unpaid parking ticket on it.

The HUD will glitch out the more damage you take, and certain status effects will even make the screen turn monochrome and/or lo-res.

And how can we forget the animation? From the fluid combat animations to little things like characters shaking themselves dry after getting wet, the characters never feel lifeless. Walking animations don't stop on a dime, either, instead slowing down a little before standing still.

Even the enemy animations are expressive, with the little stubbies that flail their arms in that classic "if you get hit, it's your own fault" attack.

The sound design is the true star of this show, however. Dynamic music that changes depending on where you are in relation to where the song is coming from, what point in the game's plot the song plays and whether you're in a hacking. And of course the sound effects are superbly utilized, as well. Footsteps changing depending on what surface you're walking on, bullets making different sounds depending on what they hit, it's all there.

And, of course, there's the soundtrack: nonsense lyrics imitate a long-forgotten tongue, from a race long-departed from this world. Their absence is ever-present, the voices of the dead reaching across time to comment on what's happening. Truly haunting stuff.

10 points.

4. Game Design

If there was any doubt before that Yoko Taro knew what he was doing as a director, this game dispels it entirely. Yoko Taro and Takahisa Taura knew exactly what they were doing, even if some parts were unfamiliar territory for Platinum.

Your next objective is always clear, and you're not likely to get stumped figuring out what it is you're supposed to do to progress said objective.

The default controller layout is easy enough to get a grasp on. For instance, firing and dodging are two actions you need to be able to do at any given time, so they're both mapped to the R buttons (on a PS4 controller, at least).

The game's prologue teaches you how to play the game with a minimal number of button prompts, letting you piece together the rest. The skills you learn in this section last you the rest of the game, so it's very efficient in that regard.

One neat thing that I wish more games did is the chapter select that opens up once you finish the game's third act (you'll know what I mean when you get there). It makes going back to finish more sidequests much easier, and it even tells you how many quests are in each chapter.

The only real complaint I have is how easy it is to get lost in certain sections, but then that might just me being an idiot, so I'm not going to dock points for that.

9 points.

5. Overall Gameplay Loop

Nier: Automata isn't content to fit neatly in any one genre.

The style of gameplay is always changing, from 3D character action, to side-scrolling, to overhead shmup, to run-n'-gun, to visual novel (yes, really!). No gameplay style ever lasts long enough to feel stale, with the constant switching always feeling seamless.

Because the game always sticks to the same control set at any given time, none of these gameplay styles feel out of place (the VN part works like any other menu in the game).

If there's one criticism I might levy at the game, it's that at higher levels, combat feels increasingly trivial, especially once you have the right skill chips equipped. Even so, there are still challenging battles to seek out at any point in the game, so it never feels like you're completely invincible.

8 points.

6. Narrative

Where do I begin?

To talk about the plot in too much detail is to spoil its many strange, funny, and heartrending surprises. You WILL be crying at some point. Thankfully, unlike the rest of the director's work, this game has a happy ending.

The character interactions all feel organic (ironic, considering the characters themselves are technically anything but), and the acting is superb. 2B and 9S's relationship turns out to be a lot more complicated than it seems at first, and even the villains have understandable reasons for what they do.

Some quests are just silly little diversions, while others give a significant insight into the world at large. All of them are worth doing, in my opinion, especially since a few affect how certain scenes play out later in the game.

If I might pull up one problem, I think I could cite the relative lack of development A2 gets during the main plot. In part, this is due to the game actually being a sequel to a stageplay from 2015 wherein A2 was the main character. Her story up to this point has already been told, and when we meet her, her character arc is at its tail end.

10 points.

7. End of Review

If you haven't already picked this game up, then I strongly urge you to do so, and look into the first Nier as well. This is one of those truly special games that leaves no person who plays it unchanged.

(Warning about the PC Port: it's not well optimized, and you WILL want to install the FAR mod.)

To be honest, this game bored me within the first 28 minutes of playing it.

The controls are over-complicated, requiring the memorization of keys all over the keyboard. Flight felt wonky, as did firing; you should not have to stop what you're doing so that you can fire at an enemy. Firing in any flight-based game needs to be something you do while moving, challenging your aim and reflexes.

This game's combat feels more like a watered-down Baldur's Gate where you only have one party member. In theory, the addition of two extra axes of movement should make movement more involved. In theory, capitalism works.

Ideally, controlling a dragon in flight should make you feel powerful, and your enemies should feel insurmountable to mere mortals. A game where you control a dragon SHOULD feel much faster-paced and more exciting, but this fails to deliver on both fronts.

I wanted to give this game a chance, because you just never know when you'll find a hidden gem, but this isn't one of them.