Be Honest With Me: Why Do You Love NieR Automata? [spoilers]

I do no like NieR: Automata at all. I'm not going to dilute the purpose of this thread by listing all of my reasons for feeling this way-- I'm genuinely curious as to what exactly people liked about this game, so I want to hear it straight from the fans. Every discussion I've seen around this game has been full of people walking on eggshells around spoilers and folks who mention little moments they like rather than what makes them enjoy the game holistically. I have played and beaten the entire game and I still don't "get" the appeal. Let's get real in here.

Yes, I realize that my confusion can be addressed with a simple "it's not for everyone," but I'm absolutely flabbergasted by the love surrounding this game and I just want to understand. I also feel like it doesn't hurt to have a thread filled exclusively with positivity. So be honest: why do you love this video game?

EDIT: Because a few people have suggested it, I figured I'd pop into the OP and say that I've already listened to the Waypoint Nier spoilercast multiple times. It did not give me the kind of deep dive I was looking for. I have found this thread much more helpful thus far.

As a game, I think Automata kinda sucks. The combat's a mashy slog, the same areas are used ad nauseum, and there's not a lot to see in the first place. The reason why I still like Automata is because I think the story's pretty neat and goes to interesting places. The theme of what constitutes humanity and life, among others, is a particularly resonant one for me. Then there's just a smattering of great moments all throughout: "This cannot continue", "You want to **** her", deciding what to do with Pascal and the consequences of that, 9S' slow descent into madness, and so on.

@elmorales94: For me Automata was an uneven experience, filled with peaks and valleys, but when it was good it was really good. Here's a short list of the things that I liked. (There will be some spoilers following.)

1. The music. This is a total personal choice, but for me Automata had the OST of the year. Even when I had to do backtracking that I didn't want to do, the music never got old.

2. The game feel. So I really like the way Platinum's games feel to play. Even though I often felt many encounters were weak, and launchers being tied to character level was super dumb, movement and combat just felt pleasing. (Too many shmup sections though.)

3. The armchair philosophy into what it means to be "human". I could see this turning a lot of people off, but I really love that the game went there. This could be filed under "Anime Bullshit" but I liked it.

4. The ending credits. This was the gaming moment of the year for me. At first it seemed fun. Then irritating. (I really didn't want to ask for help.) Then when I finally accepted the help, only to then discover these were the save files of other players... Man that just took my breath away.

While there were plenty of other moments that I liked, these were the big things for me.

Yeah, I'm a sadist.

Anyways, those were two examples of many. I could go on, but you should really just listen to http://vicegamingnew.vice-media.libsynpro.com/bonus-pod-nier-automata-spoilercast. It covers most of what you're going to find here.

Because it's one of the few ''deep'' video games that has a decent amount of actual gameplay. It's one of the few with a decent budget to back up its thematic ambitions. Give https://www.acast.com/vicegamingsnewpodcast/bonus-pod-nier-automata-spoilercast a listen if you want a full breakdown of why people dig this game

@pyrodactyl: I've listened to the Waypoint spoilercast multiple times, it just didn't do much in the way of articulating why they liked the game. I see what they liked about it, but they don't do much in the way of explaining why or how those moments resonated with them. It's a lot of "this bit was great" and not "this is why this bit was great."

I don't feel like I love the game as much as others do, but that's almost entirely due to gameplay problems I have with it. It just doesn't have a lot of depth as an action game to me. If it weren't for how the game is able to transition from its regular combat to the shoot-em-up stuff to at least change things up a little bit, I could've easily gotten too bored to finish it.

What kept me going was the story, which I think is still the best story in a game for me this year. Whether I liked or hated anyone in the main cast, the game did a good job making you feel invested in their outcome. Even when the game could be a grind, I wanted to keep going because I wanted to believe there was some hopeful ending for these characters trapped in a cycle of destruction. And I thought what the game does with Ending E is a surprisingly brilliant way to achieve that. I'm not gonna say all of it's perfectly paced, but it's a story that stuck with me long after I finished it.

So yeah, if its story doesn't grab you in some way like it did for me, I suspect you will have a lot of trouble getting anything else satisfying out of the game. To me, that's the game's one real selling point.

It's an open world Platinum game but with added RPG-elements and a crazier story than Metal Gear Rising, this is a recipe for success for me.

I kind of assume that platinum games usually has a wacky spectacular story and a good soundtrack but this game just exceeded all that.

I'm also a real sucker for the games that just presents a crazy scenario/mystery that keeps me wanting to find out what the hell is going on in this world and how stuff ended up this way and I know that it will have some interesting revelations near the end, those games was kind of restricted to Visual Novels that I got into recently like the Danganronpa, Zero Escape and possibly Ace Attorney series of games. It's nice that the crazy story twists of games like this can exist outside of visual novels somewhat.

I'm trying to think if Metal Gear Rising or Nier Automata had a crazier story but they feel like kind of different types of crazy, anyone got any thoughts? Are they even comparable?

I've been putting a lot of thought into this myself, so excuse me if this is kind of rambly because I'm making sense of this as I go.

A lot of it is history. I've played Taro Yoko games since the first Drakengard, before I knew that there was a "Taro Yoko". It was just a cool Dynasty Warriors game with a dragon. Dragons are cool!

Now, you want a bad game? Like, a legitimately bad, poorly written, looks-like-dogshit game? That's what Drakengard was. It's a terrible game and it's also one of my favorite games on the PS2. So on some level, something about this guy, the director, just *clicks* with me. The games, even when good, are always slightly off. Even when backed up by a proven studio like Platinum, and what appears to be their A-Team, Nier: Automata doesn't play that great, and I think at least some of that is on Yoko himself. He's just not that skilled at actually making a video game. But what he lacks in technical skill he makes up for with a willingness to be different. To challenge the player, and not necessarily in search of profundity? Sometime the challenge is "why are you even playing this?" There are so many side quests in the original Nier that are straight up, Grade-A Garbage, and it feels like the developer is explicitly taunting you. The original Drakengard's final ending (which leads into Nier) requires you find every weapon in the game (many of which have garbage requirements), then fight a rhythm game boss (which was garbage) and then unceremoniously kills the main character. Roll credits. It was basically a joke ending. Which is a super weird thing to list as a positive, right? But there is a personality in all of this and I just. Works with me. I can't explain it beyond that.

Okay, now for this game, with some more traditional positive points. The gameplay gets me to where I need to be. It didn't bother me, I didn't love it, it was easy to button mash through, especially towards the end. I think I died 3 times. What I love are the characters. I love Pascal, I love the interplay between 2B and 9S, I love how that interplay changes in retrospect when you learn the twist (I won't spoil here, but it's one of the good "see all previous scenes in a new perspective" twists). I even kind of like the villains, who in their own way were just as clueless as the player characters, even if Adam tried to let on that he knew everything.

But I think the biggest thing is that this is one of the only games that's made me think about it afterwards, and think about what it means or says. The original Nier made me cry, but in the end is kind of shallow (though does some cool things with expanding perspective). But Nier: Automata makes me think about certain life question and no, it's not "are robots people?" At least, that wasn't what I got out of it. To me, Nier: Automata is past that question halfway into the desert chapter. The answer is yes, they're people. Not too long afterwards you meet Pascal. If the question was "are robots people" then Pascal would be a much bigger deal. 2B and 9S (especially 9S) never quite make it all the way over that hill, but their confusion is not the main point of this story. The main point, or I guess I should say the question, is "where do we find purpose?" The game is distilled existentialism, and it tells the story in a way that is both applicable to living humans and also uniquely suited to a story about robots. Because in Nier: Automata, the androids and machines are created with a clearly defined purpose. They have real, physical, present Gods. And over the course of the story, the main characters, and the machines has a whole, learn that their Gods are dead. And that they are specifically created People with no purpose. What happens next? And it all runs perfectly into Ending E, where the player is forced to confront and define what they attribute purpose to, one way or the other.

I'm not going to keep going down that route. I just wanted to highlight that no other game has actually made me think about it in these kinds of critical terms. Which is why I "love" this game, despite it's flaws. I'm not going to tell you it's perfect. I'm not going to say that it's perfectly justifiable that 2B is a sexy lady. But I love this game. I hope that reading this all makes sense. It's very personal to me, you'll probably read it and go "what the fuck is beforet talking about?" But it's the best explanation I've got.

TL;DR: It's not the only reason, but I really like NieR: Automata's story and themes.

• The music and style: Not everything is great artistically about NieR. The PC port could have handled things better and some textures look plain. That said, some things really stand out, with the music being #1 with a bullet. Some songs are unlike anything I have ever heard in a videogame. Some are incredibly peaceful and relaxing to listen to while I am laying down. But there are also those epic tracks for those epic battles. That's not to mention how there are chiptune style versions for so many of those songs. Besides that, there are some other nice stylish touches, like how the moon base is black and white, the costumes, etc.
• The story: The A to Z (or, you know, A to E) plot is pretty damn great. I like how the game builds intrigue and then has those really big, hard hitting moments, with the opening of Route C and some of the climatic encounters in C & D. The game's themes are conveyed really well through the different side stories, like the forest kingdom, the zealots, the THIS CANNOT CONTINUE familial unit, etc. All of those story beats add layers to The End of Yorha in such an eloquent way. It's easy to point to the ending and say "Hey, isn't that nuts", but it's honestly a lot more than that. The ending happens to do such a fantastic job putting a period on the whole thing.
• The side quests: Beyond the story, the game's themes, world, and tone builds through side quests and side characters. One notable example is how 2B is tasked to hunt down the defected Yorha units. This foreshadows how she is actually 2E, which itself builds upon the true nature of 2B and 9S's relationship.
• RPG elements & UI: The chip system, the weapon stories, being able to remove the OS chip, seeing a recording of 2B navigating the menus at the beginning of the game, allowing yourself to self destruct, etc. All of that stuff is really neat. Not the biggest thing in the world, but all of that presentation and customization stuff I really enjoyed.
• Oh by the way, it's also a Platinum game: The big set piece battles are really cool. The game opens with 2B ripping off an Engels machine's arm and hitting it with it. The bigger air battles were pretty spectacular as they were happening. A2 and 9S's chase up the tower, with how the game alternates between the two different encounters is one of my favorite gameplay sequences I've played this year. Yeah, the gameplay is in some ways dependent on what you put into it. If you use the same weapons or don't customize your chips in a unique way, it's going to get stale. With regards to the gameplay, I think it is fun, but it is a little button mashy. I think most of the gameplay criticisms people (including myself) may have can be tied back to how long the game is. I put in about 37 hours into NieR. A game like Bayonetta 2 may be more fun to play, but that game is also like 6 hours long. If you add another 30 hours on top of that, Bayonetta will also have some of those same issues.

The characters and themes resonated with me, not just because I relate to them (and I don't relate to a lot of them), but because they're just presented with the brutal honesty they require. The game gave me a lot of things to think about that no other video game has come close to offering, and the thing everyone says: Ending E uses the format of being a video game and the way I think about video games to covey a message (in a way that even the original Nier didn't manage). A lot of video games have very cliche, safe stories that pull their punches, and even the ones that don't like The Last of Us are trying so hard to emulate movies that they become cliche, safe stories, that also aren't even as good as their contemporaries.

There's also the fact that it was a rare case of a game full of intrigue that was actually satisfying when it concluded. Yes, there's a bunch of additional reading you can do outside of the game to find out about the history and lore of that world, just like with the first game, but I haven't ever felt the need to seek any of it out because the game pulled off its ending and tied up all of the themes and questions it had perfectly.

The soundtrack is fantastic, and combining it with the Platinum tech that lets them seamlessly transition between different versions of the tracks gives the world and scenarios a sense of progression. It's in a similar vein to the original Nier, so the "uniqueness" factor wasn't there for me, but it just adds so much and sounds so good that even the few recycled tracks didn't bother me.

I'm also a big fan of the art, it's very serene and bleak at the same time, enough that I just felt calm and pleasant whenever I was running around that main city hub. The amusement park is breathtaking, and a great example of how to make something look incredible without a CoD budget. There's also that sense of progression again as parts of the world change, though admittedly this is pretty minor (though used to great effect when your base is suddenly gone for the last 3rd of the game, and you're stuck in the increasingly empty world with no escape from the increasingly horrible things that are happening there).

Honestly there's also just a lot about this game I can't put into words. I saw Alex saying something along the lines of "I don't have counter arguments when people say they didn't enjoy X in Nier, because I just didn't feel that way", and that's about the same for me. Everything in the game clicked with me, even the gameplay which is usually regarded as the game's worst feature by critics and fans alike. I can explain why I like the game on a base level, but putting into words why I loved the stuff I truly love about this game is so deeply personal that you're not going to suddenly understand why I like it any more than you do now.

While I don't think Yoko Taro has come anywhere close, I think he is basically trying to make the Watchmen of video games. (I also doubt that Yoko Taro knows what Watchmen is, except maybe that there was a film.) A lot of people don't like Watchmen, or at least don't see what's so special about it, because they take it all on face value. They don't delve into the complicated relationships, the detail packed into each little interaction, the conflict of philosophical positions, the parody of common conventions, or how so much of it can only be done in the comic book format. I mean, look at chapter V of Watchmen. The whole issue is in perfect symmetry, with panels on the first page mirroring the panels on the last page, and so on until the middle two pages are symmetrical with themselves. The inability to transfer so many of these ideas (and that was the easiest one to explain) are part of why the film was so, "meh."

Anyway, Yoko Taro is trying to tell a story that can only be told in video game format. A lot of what is done in these games cannot be done in other mediums. (I suppose House of Leaves comes close.) It's really hard to explain some of this without getting into spoiler territory, so slight spoilers ahead. An example is how the opening mission doesn't have a save state. At first this is annoying, especially on hard, but there comes a point in the game where you can see that entire section from another character's perspective, and if you pay attention, you'll notice that you are actually playing next to yourself from the opening mission, with all the same moves and actions. Yeah, that example is not that mind blowing, but it is an example of something that could not be done in another format. I won't spoil the rest.

There is also a wealth of philosophy, musings on what constitutes life, and even little jokes made at the expense of some existentialist authors. We sympathize with the androids, because it is in our nature to sympathize with point of view characters and those we see struggle, but as you play the game you come to realize that many of the enemies are going through their own struggles, and as you watch the machines try to emulate different aspects of human life, only for so many of them to fail, you begin to ask yourself what exactly makes human life unique. Is it the struggle to survive? Is it meaning derived from worshiping a possibly unreal god (humanity in this game)? Is it family? A king? We see both machines and androids struggle with these ideas and fail. One particularly haunting scene even shoes a machine trying to imitate the concept of beauty and desire, only for it to backfire.

It's actually fascinating how many different 'meanings for life' are shown in this game. Brotherhood. Peace. Work. Guilt. Revenge. And so on. We are presented with surface details, and then as we go through path B, we can see more perspectives that we didn't consider or have knowledge of in path A. Then path C/D shows an ultimate conflict (ironically about killing 'god,' in a nod to many old JRPG tropes) that twists in a way that is again about life and the struggle to just be.

Oh, and that ending. I had no desire to delete my save, but once it got to the point, I didn't think I had a choice. Sure, those little messages were a bit on the nose, but after seeing so many other people make that choice and leave those messages, I felt a weird sort of connection that I never really felt in a video game before. The ending of Earthbound comes close, but this was on a whole different level. I felt both sad and happy. After some of the very lackluster video game endings this year — I'm looking at you, Breath of the Wild — that was just fantastic. That may go down as my favorite ending in a video game.

~

A wild edit appears! ~~~ Oh, and the soundtrack and connections to the original NieR title, such as the twins, were also fantastic. Oh, oh! And the subtleties in the titling of words such as NieR and YoRHa, and how they possibly relate to the Enochian or Angelic Alphabet alphabet, are just fantastic little hidden details that are left for the player to discover.

~

All that said, the gameplay is alright and often sacrifices itself for the sake of the story being told. Path B is definitely not amazing from a gameplay perspective, and as good as I got at the hacking mini-game, I really dreaded playing as that character. That section where you have to cross the map while injured was also frustrating, though again, it was designed that way for the sake of the story. If you're approaching this game from a purely "I want to have fun by killing stuff and exploring", like you would in a Mario, Zelda, or another game, you can and will be frustrated. The action is much better than previous titles — Drakengard 3 was particularly bad — which makes this game more palatable, but it is not the main draw. It is merely the vehicle through which the game is played.

Though I will say that the gameplay isn't all bad. I did have fun in a lot of sections. Unlike that damn desert section in Drakengard 3. Damn you Drakengard!

I just wanted to point out that the **** is probably not the four letter work people think it is. Okay, spoiler territory:

See, little details like that, that play upon people's expectations and subvert them, is part of the charm of the game.

While I love Nier Automata and everything it stands for and I think you don't know anything about video games if you don't think it should be game of the year, if I'm really being honest, I haven't even played the thing yet.

After playing through Nier for most of this year I finally got sick of the awful combat and garbage fetch quests and just looked up the rest of the story on youtube. Love the soundtrack and the dumb anime story but I just couldn't stand playing it anymore.

There's an atmosphere and general philosophy/outlook out of Yoko Taro that really speaks to me. Nier the original and Automata both just have this ethereal aura around them that I really enjoy. I spent a lot of time just roaming in the original because I liked being in that world and soaking in it.

It's the kind of thing that's difficult to be specific about, and even if I can make specific examples, I don't think I can give you the full picture of how I feel. But I'll give it a shot.

Drakengard and Nier exudes nihilism, but not strictly in a depressing or dark manner. They are actually surprisingly upbeat at times, and the meaninglessness of the world ties to a certain extent into hope and the strength of the people in the games. I feel like they are worlds of rampant and sometimes ludicrous hardship, but through perseverance and sacrifice you can always live on with what little you have. It's not quite bittersweet, but more like bleakly hopeful. It just really speaks to me (and perhaps says something about me as a person).

And other than that. I have strong interest in looking at the mind of of the author in most art forms. And even if I don't get everything (or even anything) correct. It's still an enjoyable exercise to look at something and then try to look past the thing itself and see where it was coming from. Yoko Taro is a really interesting dude, and he wears his design on his sleeve. His games has always come across as not having an editor, a stream of consciousness from a really unique mind. There's a lot of neat stuff about how he disrespects design convention and his view on what can be done with games. While fucking over the player to make a point is frowned upon in gamedesign, he will see an opportunity in it (for better or for worse) and make decisions that any regular studio would have shut down instantly, giving the games a really unique flavor that you really won't get anywhere else.

Oh and Automata plays pretty well which none of the other games did so that's a huge bonus. And the maid costumes are cute.

The end

Exciting, satisfying and fulfilling combat system with a lot of depth. Engaging story, characters and side-quests. One of those games you can lose a lot of hours to without really realising it. Game gets better as it goes. Your first two play throughs deal with different perspectives of the same timeline, but your third play through is a continuation of that timeline, which is something I didn't expect. I found myself thinking about this game when I wasn't playing, and researching the previous Nier game.

For the whole of my playing experience, it fills me with simultaneous and equal feelings of oncoming dread, deep sadness, excitement at future developments and eventually, as though a reward for persevering: the happiest I've ever been during a video game.

Also, I really actually dig the gameplay but no one ever believes that.

@poobumbutt: The gameplay has a lot of hidden depth to it, and really solid "feel" to everything you do. The problem is just that the enemies are really dull and basic, and things die too fast to get fancy on. The DLC actually had some really fun battles that I wish would've been more prevalent in the main game.

So yeah basically I like it too, but it's not hard to see why a lot of people don't.

Great art design, engaging characters, amazing soundtrack, not to mention one of the best stories in a game I have played in years, lots of hidden stuff and cool secrets. While maybe some parts of the game play dragged on, a bit, I still enjoyed it. But I can see why the tone and themes of NieR Automata can be above some peoples heads.

@rich666: Please don't do the "You have to have a very high IQ to understand..." thing.

The game itself is clearly made for teens and I doubt people have any problems understanding the game when most sidequests rub it directly into your face. The main quest even more so. The plots main themes and why it matters in context is directly spelled out in the main story is for the most part directly adressed.

I can understand why people may find it obnoxious though or don't find the tone of the game all that strong until the ending. Some parts of the game are more subtle (see what @viking_funeral wrote) but most of them really aren't.

All in all, its a creative game but also thanks to the whole team of P+. I wish people would stop hailing Yoko Taro as some sort of auteur god-king but its all about the games while I also have my doubts that most people are actually this serious about it and are mostly joking and just having fun :).

All in all, I think the general consensus is that Nier: AM is a good and fun game. People not really liking the game isn't detrimental for the ones enjoying it.

EDIT: Also you can really see why they took the piss on the game itself with the DLC.

@tobbrobb: Read this and this on the matter. Some of the themes of the game are simply some of the darker aspects of these two things. Nier: AM does try to explain these sort of things to the player, at least more or less so (Drakengard but especially Nier step into Anime territory a little too much for my taste, it comes off as silly in tone). And some things are just made dark for the heck of it, because Yoko Taro comes from the same school of thought as people like Anno (quite a lot even) and in some parts Kojima (who also draws some of his inspirations from people like Anno). Hes not that good at it, some of the inspiration is brushed a little bit too thick and since hes not as proficient as either Kojima or Anno (there are more, but I'd rather just list these two people since they're popular) but we're still talking about the person who made the game about people eating Giant Babies so thats ok as there have to be games stepping into semi-absurdist territory where things don't have to make contextual sense.

Sometimes you can even be more creative about the thing, kinda like how they made the post-apocalyptic setting of Lordran interesting in both writing and the gameplay.

And when it comes to translating weird stuff like this into the video game format hes pretty great, just not in terms of his general writing since Yoko Taro is more like the type of video game director who is the weird, creative and in parts even experimental and its neat even if the games aren't all super-great.

I think I mostly just enjoyed the combat, except when you had to play as 9S. The story and characters were okay. The world was fairly boring though. But yeah the combat, and the shmup parts were quite enjoyable to me.

The themes of the game resonated with me very strongly, culminating in an emotional ending E segment.

I also love everything else about it, the world, the music, the combat, the sidequests, the story.

It's my 2nd or 3rd (still waffling) game of all time.

When I played the first game 6 years ago and loved it, I didn't imagine there'd be a sequel that I'd love even more.

@beforet: @viking_funeral: @tobbrobb:

These responses have gotten me closer to getting what people see in the game, so thanks to you and everyone else who has replied thus far.

A large part of what has put me off to Nier since playing it has been the fanbase. I was very lukewarm toward it to begin with, but the discourse around the game has embittered me towards it. That's why I wanted to make this thread for frank positive discussion. I realize that it isn't fair to hold the fans against the game itself, but it's hard to ignore whenever I'm trying to engage in these sorts of conversations about the game. It has the Undertale (or, more recently, Rick and Morty) problem: a rabid condescending fanbase that is quick to tell you that you're too dumb to "get it." That part of the community has shown itself a few times in this thread, but I'm happy to see that, more often than not, there are people here that are willing to admit the game's flaws while also gushing about why they love it nonetheless.

I've studied English my whole life and I currently teach it for a living. I've been reading mainly dystopian and existentialist fiction for my entire literary career. This game is not above my head-- in fact, it has a lot of the problems that repel me from most fiction in these genres. The unique part of Nier's story isn't what ideas or stories it conveys, it is all in how the game conveys them. That is the part which I find most narratively intriguing here. However, the success of these incidents of story-telling through game mechanics depend heavily upon how much the player is enjoying the gameplay experience to begin with which, for me, was not very much at all.

I spent my early teens thinking about the questions the Nier: Automata poses, and I came to my own conclusions. That's what I am most disappointed in here-- it doesn't offer conclusions. I'm not looking for the game to confirm my understanding of the world, but I am looking for it to posit anything beyond overwrought philosophical questions-- any solution that I may not have thought of or seen before. It does not, in my experience.

Someone mentioned seeing the empty landscape of Nier as being brimming with potential for a rich future despite the world's apparent destruction. This is the sort of thing that I was hoping to see explored, but the game did not do nearly enough of that for me. It's a lot of hours of robots moping about what has passed as opposed to looking at what could be. The conclusion that I'm nearing (pun not intended) thanks to these responses is that this game largely represents a worldview that I no longer have patience for. The hope that I'm looking for isn't there, except at the very end. Honestly, I still feel that, as much as ending E gestures toward hope, the mechanical implications of that sequence work against its stated intentions.

Again, I'm getting closer to understanding the passion that people have for this game, even if I do not relate at all. Thank you for your input!

I enjoyed the combat quite a lot. It was INCREDIBLY improved from the first Nier's combat, so I saw it wholly as an improvement in every way, instead of "Platinum's next action game" like I think a lot of people looked at it as.

Compared to Bayonetta the combat ain't all that, but compared to original Nier? It might as well be the greatest combat system in the world.

Plus that soundtrack is so good! Even after finishing it I sometimes hover over the Automata icon in my PS4 tray just to hear a bit of that beautiful score again.

Route B can be a bit of a slog, especially if you don't like/ aren't good at (ME) the hacking minigame. That's probably my most substantial complaint.

@elmorales94: i love automata but I understand what you mean about conclusions. It's completely different in, well, basically every facet, but that's why Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is probably my favorite TV show of all time. It's a parody of the Crazy Ex stereotype, but it's also explaining why someone would be that person, why someone would do the things they do, etc. Not only that, but they're offering conclusions/solutions, and the best part of the show is the fact that the main character IS healing from her mental health issues, and she's working on it.

Maybe that was a meaningless tangent, but people love Automata because this level of, well, storytelling is rarely made, and especially not on such a high budget. I would have a hard time thinking of games on this scale that asked the deep questions and did so meaningfully. Maybe KotOR 2? It's something unique, and there's a lot of charm in it's... earnestness, I guess.

First i will say that i played the original NieR and loved its characters and world, so the loose connections to that game present in Automata are really cool to me.
I like Automata for most of the same reasons as the first game, and although the characters have a much more meaty and varied experience in the original game, there are enough intricacies in the plot of Automata to make it enjoyable.
I'm a fan of Platinum Games' work, Automata doesn't represent their best combat engine but overall i wouldn't say it's terrible, it's basic but i enjoyed mixing up attacks not just to find the "best" ones but also to see their awesome animations.
The mixing up of genre tropes which was so prevalent in the first game is used to good effect here, and the return of the incredible style of music is very heart warming, it's clearly a project which the people involved cared about.

I can't really talk much about what i liked about the story, i finished it 6 months ago so i don't remember much about the minutiae, i remember very well designed enemies, seeing a robot experiencing a tragedy it can't fully understand breaks my heart and this game is full of that, the crazy guy who you have to help fund his space cannon, the various human moments between the androids like the idea of shopping for fun and buying 2B a t-shirt, the Emil heads in the desert and the explanation behind them (i wish i remembered what it was), Emil just generally being insane, the robot village full of character and innocence, the fierce dedication of the robots in the forest kingdom, all these little sugary bits on top of the really good main plot, and the way they use unexpected mechanics of the game to also tell story, it's just innovative and creative in an industry full of same-old's, it was unique and special not in its budget or gameplay but in its whole.

If this isn't the response you were looking for i'm sorry, but it's the response you're getting :P.

Firstly, I enjoyed the gameplay way more than other people. I don't think it's amazing or anything, but people act like its' nearly unbearable and I just don't get that.

The soundtrack might be my favorite of all time. This is boosted by how it's used in the game, with different versions of the songs playing at different times/as you transition to different areas.

I really think the story is incredible. A lot of people seem to boil it down to just another "can AI achieve consciousness?" story. If that's all you got out of this game, I feel like you weren't paying attention. It asks and answers that question within like three hours.

The rest of the game explores the deeper implications of that. If robots want to be human, what does that look like? How might AI try to emulate humanity? What would different machines see as the defining characteristics of humanity? Some see it as mortality (Adam and Eve), or love (Amusement Park machines), or peace (Pascal), or duty (2B), or hatred (9S), or beauty (Simone), etc.

Are humans even like humans? If you try to isolate what makes humans unique and emulate these characteristics, you realize that humans themselves don't even act on them. Despite their efforts, none of the various types of AI ever really become humans, they just capture very specific truths about humanity.

The biggest question this game asks, though, is why? Why should AI try to be like humans? Humans aren't the "good guys" of the universe. The robots are left in world without them, and for most of the game, their obsessed with trying to recreate them. Only at the very end do the machines realize that Humanity doesn't matter, Earth doesn't matter, and they should just leave and create something new.

All this is done with a cast of (mostly) extremely well-defined often very likable characters. You see how different people react to the undoing of a society that was always doomed. Thier own pursuits of Humanity come back to destroy them. Shifts in perspective are one of the most important part of this game. They show you different ways of thinking, show you more pieces of the larger puzzle that no single robot can see. Ultimately, they start to signify that something terrible is about to happen (the A2 shift, the Pascal shift, the Ending C & D choice).

And of couse, all the meta shit. There's no argument I can really make for all that. If it really did nothing for you, there's nothing I can say.

In the end, this game presented an extremely nihilistic and hopeless view of the world, and humanity, and the future. In Ending E, it somehow manages to take all these and, without rejecting it all, says that despite all of that being true, there is still purpose and hope. And that is worth the rest.

So yeah, I loved this game, and there's nothing else quite like it. I hope this at least helped you understand it a little. You should really listen to the Waypoint spoilercast if you want some more specific stuff.

@theloyaltraitor: I enjoyed the combat in Nier: AM. It felt fluid and the animations themselves also showcased just that. While very Anime-like it still really felt like actual human fluidity, its in a way really like watching Wushu movies but in actual playable form.

Not to mention the weapon stories, the best part of the game, were freaking amazing and made combat more worthwhile.

@elmorales94: In my case, I didn't actually care too much about the game's themes or story (it's all stuff that I feel has been handled better elsewhere). Personally I felt like the reason so many people are impressed with Neir's ruminations on existentialism and humanity is because it's their first personal encounter with it, particularly the Japanese flavor of it. The presentation feels a tad unfocused and the game occasionally dips too far into shock value for my tastes. It probably has to do with fact that I'm a big fan of both traditional scifi and anime, though. So the whole "what does it mean to be human" thing is well-worn ground for me.

In any case, what I really enjoyed about Neir is the way it plays with genre conventions and player expectations, particularly with how it disregards the 4th wall. Little touches like the chip systems affecting the UI, or when the game plays back your own unique setup inputs to you when playing as 9S, or shooting the final credits like a vertical scroller. I loved how the game swaps back and forth between being a Platinum hack-n-slash, a bullet hell shooter, and a Geometry Wars-esque twin stick shooter depending on what you're doing. I loved all the random "bad end" endings, and how the credits scroll super fast for those. I loved how the availability of saving and fast travel tied into the plot regarding the status of the bunker. I liked how game toys with the idea of player choice, especially the very end of route E when it asks you to delete your save to help other players through the net. There's tons of examples like that, and it all felt very Hideo Kojima, when he was at his peak of fucking with the player in MGS2.

But yeah, Neir: Automata suffers by making the player slog through all the trappings of a B-tier Japanese game to see all the wacky stuff. But don't get me wrong, the Japanese flavor, both to the gameplay, the storytelling, and the characters, are a critical part of what make Neir unique in gaming these days.

@theloyaltraitor: what if I got all that and still found it an obnoxious boring slog of a game? None of what you said or what the game did resonated or was presented in an interesting enough fashion. A lot of it felt almost South Park-y in its executions of:

- Present Character A

- Learn that Character A is either childishly virtuous or childishly fiendish

- Learn that Character A's childishness comes from twisted mutation of desires of humanity from eons ago

- Repeat

I say its South Park-y because presenting something as cute and ineffectual and then turning it into a monster is essentially the basis of South Park's humour. I don't know if Nier's creator is laughing at the characters, or the audience, and frankly, I assume he's doing both and i find that really obnoxious. Relentless nihilistic self-deprecation and flagellation is a little played out, in my opinion.

I feel the few interactions Legion has with Shepard in Mass Effect 2 do a better job at putting forth these undoubtedly heady and interesting subjects.

ah, well, to each their own... art and whatnot, amiright?

Everything

Everything expect the gameplay is pretty amazing. Music, story and all the great ways it plays with the medium were big highlights for me.

And I don't think the gameplay is terrible, but as a Platinum game it's dissapointing. The difficulty's also suck, either the game is too easy, or it's brutally hard.

@katygaga: Yeah, I guess I just don't know what to say other than "I didn't feel that way about the game at all." Nothing about it came off as obnoxious or boring or poorly-executed to me. I think the fact that the characters are cartoonishly good or evil is kinda the entire point. They capture the extremes of human emotion without any of the nuance, until near the end of the game.

Those bits of Mass Effect 2 present some these ideas more clearly, but I don't think it goes nearly as far as Nier, and they lack any emotional weight. They're just philosophical conversations. I prefer a "show, don't tell" approach. And honestly I thought Nier was the only game about AI in recent memory that didn't feel played out. I wouldn't call the nihilism of this game self-deprecation or flagellation. Given Ending E, I think it very specifically rejects that way of thinking.

So...yeah, to each their own, I guess.

@theloyaltraitor:

Yeah the whole point of Ending E is to tell the player through the actions of the characters that it's okay to fail, but you need to do things for yourself. But even if you falter, don't be scared to rely on others. There's a message of hope (for the androids and the player), that destructive cycles can be broken. As someone who is constantly stuck in a self-destructive cycle, the game meant a lot to me.

I'm very much a western gamer, but Nier got its hooks in me.

It has its faults, but it won a place in my heart for:

- General weirdness

- Amazing music (orchestral and 8-bit + dynamic switching)

- Subversive ideas/story telling

- Gameplay variance/mash-ups (character action + bullet hell / character action + bullet hell + dual stick shooter / space shooter + bullet hell, etc.)

- The direction of the very late game is amazing

- Memorable locations, such as the amusement park

- The entire ending sequence, credit sequence, etc...it's oddly uplifting and poignant.

The entire game is kinda down about things, but also hopeful. It has a beautiful melancholy about it. It's introspective (enough) without being preachy.

I found it to be a unique and flawed game that had a ton of heart and quirk to it.

EDIT: -10 points for 9S being a fuckboy

@theloyaltraitor:

I understand, and I don't want anyone to take it as that they're "wrong" for liking a game. its just for me Nier was a complete misfire and the more fervent and loud its fanbase gets, the more I realized how off-the-mark Nier was. The thing is that I don't like answers to questions, I like questions. That to me is the basis of the best works of art. Nier feels like its all "answers" by some emo kid that read wiki articles about Jean Paul Sartre for first time.

The fact that the characters are extremes are completely antithetical to what I find interesting, which is the nature of existence and if that can really be fully appreciated or even understood. All Nier does is present things that are relatable at the most basic level and then apply them to cliched questions of Sci-fi, all of which result in failure to me. The irony of ironies is that the question of "can AI achieve consciousness?" is much more complicated and interesting a question than Nier lets on or wants to venture into. The narrative of the game simply implies "Yes, but it sucks anyway....(cough)...".

It just feels so MTV in the 90's-lame.

I didn't play through Ending E, so maybe it'll change my perception, but the 3 main endings were pretty boring.

The thing about Mass Effect 2 is that its much more focused and concise than Nier. Moments where there is a long pause after Shepard asks Legion why he took his armor, are in my mind better than Nier ever could be.

There's some of that in Nier but its compounded by such drivel and hatred that it reminds me of Harmony Korine's Gummo.

blah blah blah, art, eye beholder...and so forth.

This doesn't make any sense and makes me feel like you're lying about playing the game. I've played through it -twice- and that's definitely not even close to what it's like.

Like, the whole point of the game is that "yes life can suck, but that doesn't mean it's not worth experiencing". That's what Ending E is about.

Also I didn't get like a single thing from anything Legion related in ME2 or 3 that I got from Automata.

@rubberluffy: I stated I didn't play through Ending E.

Also, you playing it twice doesn't negate the fact that I feel Nier is the Gummo of gaming. Yes, I said it. THE GUMMO...OF GAMING.

Everything just meshes together so well. The look, the design, the music, the story, the characters...it's just everything. I know that's not a real specific answer, but it just nails everything for me.

I love Gummo and Nier: Automata is pretty good too.

For me, the existentialism in Nier is not the main reason I've grown attached to it. It is its story telling done in a way only video games can, use of game mechanics to do simply weird and interesting things, and its re-framing of its narrative multiple times from endings A to E that gets me emotionally hooked on it. Existential robots is simply window dressing.

What does this even mean?

I was responding in kind to TheLoyalTraitor's comment. We ended our comments with an understanding that art is in the eye of beholder. Which I believe it is.

I also wrote "I don't want anyone to take it as that they're "wrong" for liking a game.".

Im not sure how you can find me not liking a game a form of passive-aggressiveness. Ill say it again, if you like Nier, you're not wrong or right. This is a matter of opinion. Im sorry you find this so ..."shitty"....

Sorry, I could have said that better. I was responding to the commenter's opinion on how the extreme characters meshed with the idea of consciousness. To me, Nier was presenting basic characterization, that is ultimately very relatable, and mixing them very complicated questions about morality and existence. Its as if it was presenting questions that were genuinely interesting only to destroy them by presenting characters that had childish delusions thoughtlessly foisted upon them by the madness of human beings. It was presenting these characters as answers, and I found that pretty obnoxious.

This actually gives me some clarity. I also 100% disagree with the notion that the characters are presented as answers. They are simply lenses, nothing more.

Oh, I forgot to mention the music. The music in these games are all fantastic. It was the only actually good part of Drakengard too.

it's a japanese game, which was your first mistake in thinking it was worth something.

Ending E is some stupid thing about going through and shooting the credits until you die enough times, and then other accounts save you. Except it's all a lie because japanese people lie, don't believe that tiny little country.

Nier: Automata is a weird game. I probably have as many issues with it as I do things I enjoyed (but overall I still like the game and would recommend it to all my friends). But you asked for the positives so here they are:

1) The soundtrack. Best soundtrack this year, hands down.

2) The framing of the story. Going through A, then loading B and seeing your menu choices in A happen, then the parallel story lines, etc etc. I thought it was all pretty well done and refreshingly unique.

3) I enjoyed a number of the side quests and the story overall and it's themes.

4) The perspective changing of the combat and switch between bullet-hell sequences and regular combat.

5) I can enjoy ending E for what it is trying to do, but as a more mechanics/logical thinker I wish it was designed a little better. The whole "delete other people's saves" thing was diminished in my mind because I knew that logically there was no way that saves could exist to help people out unless they didn't actually get deleted. Otherwise there would have had to be a whole slew of people who managed to make it through the credits w/o dying (and accepting help) to be able to offer up their saves for other people. Instead it is more likely that once you offer up your save it can be used for any number of people. Unless there was some option that let you delete your save to help others w/o making it through the bullet hell credits that I missed?