I've heard a lot of positivity on the podcast and here about Nier but I've just arrived at the robot village and I'm finding it a little dull.

Am I just around the corner from something that will ignite the rest of my playthrough? Or if I'm not hooked now, I'm not going to get anything out of it.

It worth me plowing on?

I just started my first playthrough of Nier about a week ago and initially felt the same way as you do now. The game really klicked for me once I unlocked the ability to fast travel, which is about halfway through the first playthrough. It speeds up the game dramatically and in my opinion makes for a far better experience.

As far as I know, you will also unlock the ability to replay chapters of the game so that you can finish sidequests you might have previously missed. You can just focus on the main story missions for now and just do some of the more boring sidemissions later if you feel like it.

Take my opinion with a grain of salt though because I have yet to finish the game's main endings except for ending A and can not tell you if the game takes a turn for the worse later on.

B playthrough (though it's also a bit long)

If you weren't impressed by the theme park, that's probably a bad sign for your enjoyment of the game.

I'm a couple of hours into the B play through and I haven't hit it yet....

I'm getting worried.

It's interesting-I think different points in the game hooked me in different ways. It was actually the demo that really made me want to get the game-the music, feel of the combat and the way it transitions between character action, mech game and schmup, as well as the boss you fight immediately grabbed me. But when I got the game I kind of got turned off when you have to start the entire first mission from the beginning when you die, as well the how wonky the difficulty is balanced. The first couple of hours were frustrating since I was playing on Hard, but once I got to Simone, I was immediately back in. That and Route B and beginning of Route C also kept me guessing. My advice is to take your time and just soak in the world by completing as many side missions as possible since they do a good job of building the themes and character development of the story.

And don't play on hard since the game is terribly balanced.

In my case, I put down the game a couple of missions from where you are and didn't come back to it for months because it was boring. My recommendation is to power through, forget the sidequests, and get to Route B, the second playthrough. That kept me engaged enough for the few hours until Route C, the third section, which kept me engaged the whole way through.

Having said that, my final opinion on the game is definitely mixed. You can't get that much praise from me when I'm bored with half of your game, and especially the bits where you play it.

I was pretty much all in before even buying it. But personally, if you don't think the amusment park/robot village weirdness was neat you might be in for a bad time. I think that's a pretty major showpiece for the game.

I got through the A ending and thought "yeah this game has some neat stuff, but I guess it's just alright. Guess I'll give it a chance and keep going."

Then I got to the B ending and started realizing that I really do care about these characters. I finally got the C/D/E ending(s) and somewhere along the line this became one of my favorite games of all time, and easily my GotY even after Mario/Zelda.

If you, like me, still aren't hooked by the end of Route A, there's a 50% chance it won't grab you. If you still aren't hooked by the beginning of Route C, just bail, because there's nothing for you here. I kept trucking out of curiosity and now I just want those hours back.

The demo was enough to hook me. Granted it gets a lot more engaging in the mid-late parts of the game, the only times I ever got bored was grinding for materials which is something most people won't even do.

I also loved the first Nier, ans while the combat was certainly mindless I was never really bored by it like the majority of people are, so maybe I just really like Yoko Taro games or something.

For me, it's Route B, at the amusement park. That's when I knew the game wasn't fucking around.

The first 10 minutes for Route B is definitely where I was hooked, though I was enjoying the game overall already.

I found the first few hours to be kind of meh. In fact, I stopped after 2 hours at launch, played an hour over the summer, then another hour a few months later. Then last week I powered through to the end.

First playthrough overall was ok but nothing special. Then sometime early in B I started to come around on it.

Now I'm a few hours into C and it might break my top 5 (total playtime is around 14 hours right now). Really glad I stuck with it.

Route A is certainly a more straightforward affair compared to route B and C. However, I'm not sure I'd recommend playing the game past the first "ending," if you're not invested in the story, characters or the world.

Pretty much this.

Everyone always says, just get to route B, that's where the good stuff is. Then if you didn't like that they will say, oh just wait till you get to route C. Then if you didn't like that, well then you don't like well written stories.

I platinumed Neir and still don't understand what people see in it. Music and dialogue is good but everything else about it is boring.

This is how I feel about Wolfenstein II. I've just had to accept the fact that I just don't get what others are seeing and enjoying with the game, and move on to something else. It just wasn't for me.

It might not ever hook you. I did the A-C playthroughs and just kept waiting for the game to get amazing. It never did. It's a good game, and I enjoyed my time with it, but it wouldn't even make my top ten for the year. The atmosphere and music are great, but I just didn't enjoy playing the game very much.

I think a lot of people get hooked on the questions it presents about consciousness, identity, mind, etc. Some of that stuff is pretty novel for a video game, but none of it is terribly original.

Route B is when things get interesting. After that, shit gets real.

There are different points in the game where it can hook the player (encountering the Amusement Park/Robot Village or the first 5 minutes of route B) but honestly if you aren’t invested and all in with the ending of route B and the first 10 minutes of route C, nothing the game pulls afterwards (as crazy as it is) will reel you in so you might as well quit.

@spamfromthecan: for me the game that the masses enjoyed but I just couldn’t enjoy was Horizon Zero Dawn.

Beginning of Route C with that dope intro, especially after 2B dies.

• Parts of Route A had me intrigued, but some parts also kinda lost me (struggling to think of a boss I gave a shit about besides Simone)
• Route B genuinely almost made me want to quit playing. Boring does not begin to describe how I felt about it. I sat the game down for months and took forever to come back to it.
• The reveal at the end of Route B honestly didn't wow me much at all as I kinda expected a lot of what actually happened (if you talk to all the YoRHa NPCs whenever you can, you start to pick up on a few clues that spoil where the story is headed)
• Route C grabbed me because what happened is absolutely nothing like i thought was going to happen. Then they do the thing for an extra whammy
• Game started to lose me again along Route C. Honestly...like, I understood it just fine, but all the philosophy and shit just didn't do anything for me at all. I was expecting a crazy sci-fi story and got an okay one.

My problem with this game is I still think the discussion surrounding it is a bit hyperbolic. It is a good game, no doubt about it, won't hear me argue otherwise, but the way people talk about it was soooo insanely glowing that I expected this game to change my life or some shit. Then I beat it and just sorta shrugged. I did not hate it, but oof.

Throw away your expectations and just take in the game. Different things click with different people. The game has a lot to like, I don't think it's one magical moment that'll hook you. I got a kick out of them playing with the option menu. The game is filled with moments but don't buy into the hype and just play it as you would any other game.

@spamfromthecan: Wasted over 35 hours trying to figure out what the fuck I was missing in Neir. lol

Sometimes you just gotta move on.

And in the end, it all amounts to nothing.

I don't know that it hooks you. I like Nier, but I was never hooked. Nier had me smiling a bunch of times when it subverted a few trope genres and disapointed when other times seemed to follow them blindly; Interested in the story and annoyed with the gameplay. I'm mixed on Nier, but I really don't regret playing it and finishing all the main endings. What I can say to you is that it didn't take me too long to know I'd play it till the end. I also think that calling the endings for Story Acts "Endings for the Game" was a really bad idea that made people think they would have to play the same game 3-4 times and alienated a bunch of people.

Oh... I'm kind of bummed out to hear that people think the good stuff is in B. I just got about 10 minutes into C before turning it off for a while and I still feel like I'm waiting for a big reveal. Is there more to come, or have I really already seen the bulk of it?

I predicted most of the story beats in B by the time I was half way done with A (including the big one). Yo, that blindfold symbolism combined with the defector make it so obvious.

I might have appreciated more of the tone of B if it wasn't such a slog to churn through those extended bullet hell segments again, and then hack every boss 20 times. I really wanted to like this game, but the ideas don't seem particularly unique, and 2B's character (i.e. ass) design is so awful that I almost uninstalled it as soon as I got past the tutorial.

@mvhvtmv: Pascal and 2B's butt are frankly all that got me through Route A

As a general rule, enjoying something has a lot to do with how much you are willing to invest in it. If you are going into something without really wanting to, chances are you are not going to like it.

NiER: A has been kinda weird for this reason. Too many people wanted to just check what the fuzz was about, creating high expectations. But many ended up playing a game they did not wanted to play.

I'd say it might be too late for this game to exceed expectations like it did in its first run. For half the people at least.

But back to the question: The hooks are mainly at the beginning of each play through after A.

Wow, i posted this before i went to work and thought i'd get 2 or 3 responses max. Thank you all for taking the time to share your experiences with me.

I think the music is spectacular and the art style is very good. I agree i went in with high expectations based on people i respect and have similar tastes to saying that it was a brilliant came. I suppose i'm guilty of waiting for something mindblowing and i might be missing the joy of the overall experience. It seems the general consensus has me, at least wanting to complete A and start playthrough B to see if that's enough to invest me in the whole story. I am finding the side quests a bit rote so mainlining the story might be best.

I think it's really interesting that the game provokes such a strong feeling in some people while others can play through the game and never really hit the same highs.

@craigeve: A lot of people seem to think that the sidequests have some of the best story in the game, or that they flesh out the world/characters better, but considering how shitty the gameplay is, I don't know how I was supposed to be encouraged to go looking for more mindless mashing outside of the main quests.

I got endings A-E and while there are parts of Automata that I think are awesome, the story and characters remained thin after 35 hours of gameplay and 5 endings.

I've had the game since it came out and am currently wrapping up the second playthrough after taking a long break from it. From the start, it's been a constant fluctuation between being bored and engaged. It's definitely a good game, even great at times, but there's a LOT of filler in that game, a lot of backtracking through drab environments, a lot of tedious fetch quests that occasionally have some really neat writing, all of which is held together by combat that is merely serviceable. I hate to sound down on the game because I seriously do enjoy a lot of it and am committed to seeing the true ending, but the game's high praise is incredibly overblown. I would understand completely if someone could not get deep into this game, as it asks a lot of the player to see the best stuff.

I got a lot more out of the spoilercast that Alex did with the Waypoint folks than the game itself. The philosophical musings, for me at least, were better in hindsight than in the moment. Played through ending E, and the strongest feelings it evoked were of mild annoyance.

I was ready before it came out because I love the first game. It's now my third fav of all time with the first NieR at number 5. When I finished the Desert fight with Adam was when I was like "Oh yeah this is definitely a NieR game"

My feelings were like this:

Ending A - I love this game

B - I LOVE this game

CDE - I LOVE THIS GAME

Also

The first and second playthroughs have a lot of downtime in them. Though that isn't a negative sticking point for me as it is with some others. My biggest frustration with the game was the combat. I don't know if I missed a tutorial prompt or something but I didn't know how to upgrade your chip capacity until most of the way into the first playthrough. This made the combat overly harsh and I died a lot. I had so much money by the time I learned though that I basically maxed out everything and had a much better time with the game. I know that's my fault but that first playthrough still left a negative taste in my mouth.

Story and character wise the game takes a while to truly show its hand but I at least found the parts leading up to that to be enough to carry me through. I don't love Nier as much as other people seem to love Nier bit it is definitely one of my favorite games of the year maybe even my top 5.

This is my exact experience with BotW. Sometimes things click for people, sometimes they don't.

One thing regarding Nier Automata is that it is not a game about shocking surprises. Its narrative does not rely on the twists and turns to hold you. Instead, it relies on you taking in new information, and reflecting on how it re-contextualizes events you have already seen, whether in the main plot or the side-quests. Route B actually tries to suggest you start doing that in a variety of ways: the most obvious being the different story moments and point of views, but its also the point at which the game reveals to you extra information such as the names of the bosses you are fighting, nudging you to start thinking of them differently than in Route A.

The plot itself isn't the point. The big 'reveal' at the end of B doesn't actually matter. Even the reveal at the end of C/D is only impactful when you use it to reframe character interactions and motivations earlier on. It's about understanding what drives individuals and societies, and then revisiting those understandings with new knowledge.

And sometimes it's also just meant to be silly and nothing more. 2B's butt is just a great butt.

((On a side note, one thing I simply don't understand is the stance that the game has terrible game play. Just, what?))

@turambar:There are a lot of complaints that can be levelled at it. The absolute best part about it is the motion of your main character. With all the dashes and dodges and jumping, I felt like I was in total and complete control. What drags it down for me is this(SPOILER for all things):

1. The amount of moves available to you is pitifully small. Every weapon I encountered of the same type did the same attacks(one combo on light, one on heavy), the only difference being the numbers and the modifiers(I was fond of the weapons that charged up and become more powerful if you didn't use them for a few seconds). You only have four weapon types in addition to barehanded, and while some weapon combinations result in unique attacks, there weren't a ton. Nier Automata is 40 hours long, at least it was for me. Comparatively, Platinum have done Bayonetta, which features hundreds of combos and weapons with wildly different movesets and attributes, and Metal Gear Rising Revengeance, which is even shorter and still features more, or at least just as many, moves. The four weapons and limited moves is more akin to The Legend of Korra's extremely budget combat system than anything else they've done, and you're stuck with it for more than any of their other games.
2. The dodging situation is out of control. In Bayonetta, you have a limited amount of dodges you can do before she takes a knee. There was also a sort of parry thing you could to if you tap the direction the enemy is attacking from at the right time, which I could never do right. As reward for a perfect dodge, time freezes and you can beat up on your enemy in peace. The dodge is kind of short and specific in Rising, and instead the parry is expanded and easier to perform, with a guard done instead if you parry early. If you parry perfectly, time freezes and you can choose to enter a stance where you attack specific parts of their body with your sword. In Nier Automata, you can dodge forever, as long as your finger will hold out. The reward for a perfect dodge is time slowing down and the ability to do one of three punish moves, one for your pod and one for either of your weapons. The risk is significantly smaller and the reward is as well.
3. Because of the RPG layer, some enemies are now absolute bullet sponges. The way to deal with this is to chug damage up for 30 second-bonuses, but that doesn't last long before you gotta put it on again. Route C improves on this somewhat because of the abilities you gain.
4. The reason for the insane dodge is because enemies are attacking in more crazy patterns than they ever did in their other games. The most basic enemy in Bayo or Rising has a well telegraphed slash. The most basic move of an enemy in Nier Automata is to swing their arms around and keep walking towards you, damaging you if you come into contact with it. The same move repeats for those snakes that damage you just by touching you, and the bigger enemies that can enter a spin state for a good amount of time. Unless you specifically have a weapon with the STUN UP bonus, they're hard to stagger, and even after entering the slow-down "Witch Time" you get from a perfect dodge, they don't stop of you just hit them most of the time. Additionally, enemies are often shooting tons of projectiles at you, which must either be dodged, slashed apart if you have the chip for the ability, or shot out of the air. It feels like most of the enemies are damage sponges that won't back down, and will keep shooting.
5. Not helping matters, the enemies you fight the most are variations on the most common humanoid ones with merely different weapons. The more exciting ones, like the dog robot or dinosaur robot, are rarely used. You can really feel the budget constraints in the enemy design, how almost every one of them are made up of the same parts. If you like balls, you'll love Nier Automata, because that's a majority of enemies. Even the final boss is just two of the big balls cooperating.
6. In addition to the endless dodge to compensate for the wild and unstaggerable enemy patterns, you can instantly heal any injury with a press on the D-pad, and even put that to automatic. They're cheap and easy to stock up on. The screen even pauses when you take a hit. The only way to die is to opt not to heal, take a OHKO, or get hit twice in quick succession. Managing your healing is effortless.
7. The pod that can fire bullets is a waste of space. If you're not constantly locking on and firing, you're simply not doing as much damage as you could. On a related note, having a partner character with you makes the combat even more of a visual mess to keep track of than these games normally are. They are there for the story, not for making the combat more interesting. I somewhat appreciate having the special moves, especially the laser, but it might have been better to just have those and not had to hold down a button all the time for bullets, missiles or the beam. It's just there to have shared controls between melee and the other modes of combat.
8. Locking you into specific camera angles is murder in some circumstances. Specifically, fighting Simone is a nightmare during some of the forced camera changes.
9. Similar to how the melee combat is a shallow version of their more involved games, the top-down/sidescroller shooter sequences and hacking minigames are shallow and repetitive. With hacking, you never gain new abilities besides basic shooting and will see the same stages repeats dozens of times. The shooter stages are incredibly easy, especially with the ability that allows you to hit bullets out of the air with your melee attacks, considering bullets are all the flying enemies can do to you besides lasers. Hacking gets some good scenes towards the end, but it's good for story reasons, like hacking the start menu or going through archives. Hacking gets an extra point for giving you a fixed amount of hit points with no way of healing, though.

Hope that makes it clear for you. It's not the worst action-RPG around, but it sure as hell isn't the best, and you're asked to deal with the shallow systems for a long time. It's just not up to snuff compared to the deliberate pace of Souls combat, Nioh or Bloodborne's quicker take on it, Platinum Games' own Bayonettalikes, or, I'd argue, the climbing of Dragon's Dogma or all the wacky systems you can interact with and use during brief combat encounters in Zelda: Breath of the Wild. For most of my time with it, I was just bored. It's mindless.

NieR isn't trying to be like those other games tho? It's a story focused game first and foremost. It's just trying to have flashy combat.

Also I've played through the game twice and never got tired of fighting or hacking.

Lol anyone complaining about how Automata plays wouldn't even last 10 minutes into the first game.

@redhotchilimist: Your claims that the game play has problems, and is mediocre are fine. But there's a difference between that and claiming its down right terrible as some are.

On an aside, having played every single game you listed there with the exception of Breath of the Wild, none of it made me bored of Nier Automata's gameplay.

@turambar: @rubberluffy:

I believe Yoko Taro said in some interview that the point of all of Nier's different systems and elements(I didn't even mention the visual novel bits or the changes in perspective that make some of the melee combat sections play more like one of those platformer beat 'em ups) was to entertain and surprise the player and specifically keep them from getting bored. Guess that works better for some people than others. I do think that objectively simply comparing what's in Nier to those other games, the systems are all shallow. I'd heard the first Nier had an awesome story and rough gameplay, while Platinum are gameplay-first developers that are really strong in that area. So I was stoked to see the combination of amazing writing and awesome gameplay... and then I end up getting a story I think is pretty good, but a very slow and aimless burn, and gameplay that's about on the level of Platinum's least fun games, and repetition on the level of Anarchy Reigns. That's actually a pretty apt comparison, considering you gotta play through that game several times with different characters to get at the real ending too.

I'm mixed on the game, but I'm not gonna blame anyone that thinks it's garbage because of super repetetive content and a story that's more about themes than actual plot. And in the same way, I'm not gonna blame you if you thought it was all good. But I do think there are some really different tastes at work here, and people should try and figure out how they might feel about it all before they dive in and discover it's really not their thing no matter how much praise the game gets.

These are probably my biggest complaints with the gameplay. I could deal with the lack of moves if there was enough enemy variety, but there's just not. The bosses are the true disappointment though because I can't recall much about any of them except SImone and that's only because she was like one of the first ones and she was weird in a good way. I remember a few faces like Adam and Eve, but like I can hardly recall "that one thing that happened during the fight" like I can with Bayonetta or pretty much all the Revengeance bosses.

Speaking of which, I wish they went the Revengeance route and stuck to a handful of bosses because shit got real whenever you fought a boss in that game. I feel like there really fucked up with every single Android fight in this game. Your first fight against A2 is...well...shit. It's not hard. It's not interesting. It's just shit. Your fight against 21O is, from an emotional standpoint, pretty well handled, but it's once again dragged down by mechanics and doesn't end up carrying much of any weight because it's just more non-stop dodging with no real nuance or escalation to it. The two fights at the end are kinda shit too now that I think about it. Again, I feel like you just don't really do anything and those fights aren't as meaningful as they should be.

They somehow even managed to make a fight against a giant robotic sea monster boring because they turned into a shoot em up. A fucking shoot em up. Revengeance starts with you throwing a goddamn Metal Gear Ray down the street with your own two hands and then while it's in mid-air,you run up it's arm and cut it up...and the fight still isn't over. I wouldn't even call the combat in this game flashy as much as I would say "hey, 2B and A2 are animated pretty well, right?" because setting them aside, fucking nothing is flashy about any combat scenario in this game except for that one moment in the beginning where you steal the giant robot's arm and punch him with it.

Again, maybe it's my own fault for getting too excited, but Platinum's name carries a lot of weight for me. From a pure gameplay perspective, barring their licensed stuff like Transformers and TMNT, this was easily their weakest offering.

Probably making it sound harsher than I intend to, but the best way I can sum it up is: I found the gameplay to be merely serviceable at best.

@cheetoman: That's what happened with me. I got about a little over halfway through the first play through and I wasn't enjoying it. I wrote it off as a $60 lesson. I wasn't going to slog through another dozen endings until it "got good".

I was immediately into the mix of character action, bullet hell, dual stick shooting, and bullet hell whilst in character action mode.

I also found the boss fights pretty cool.

That said, I pretty quickly started avoiding side quests as they felt laborious.

I'd suggest sticking it out, if only because the game has some really good moments that build up to a fantastic third act.

When you close the game and just listen to the OST playlist on youtube instead.

I agree that the first playthrough is actually pretty boring from a narrative standpoint. Its the second playthrough where things get interesting. The third is straight up bonkers.

The whole point of the combination of Yoko Taro and Platinum is that YT has never had a competent developer, decent budgets or good sales for his games. He made 2 games with Cavia who were mostly a licensed game factory, and one with Access Games (famous for...technical powerhouse Deadly Premonition) that had a shoestring budget and frequently couldn't even hit 30 fps during most scenes/fights, regularly dropping into the single digits. But Square keeps giving him a chance.

You can sit there and say "Automata plays bad yada yada" but it's so leagues above what people have come to expect from a Yoko Taro game that it's amazing. Drakengard 1 is actively (and mostly purposefully) a hellish chore to play, Drakengard 3 can't even sustain a consistent above-30 framerate, and NieR: Gestalt/Replicant while being serviceable gameplay wise is nothing to write home about and has a Block ability even more overpowered and broken than dodging in Automata. It's literally a "I need to be invincible" button.

And NieR: Automata is much more a Yoko Taro game than it is a Platinum game, despite YT's pre-release insistence that the story is "poop" and people should only play it because Platinum made it.

Fair point, I never played the original.