I just "beat" the game and my save file says I have endings AKT. What is my next move? I have some vague sense that I need to do certain things in certain ways in order to maximize the amount of endings I receive for my time.

I don't want to risk a google search so can someone point me in the direction of a spoiler free ending guide of some kind? Do I even need one yet or do I keep going and see where the game takes me?

Keep playing until you get ending E.

Just load your save and keep playing, you don't have to do anything special.

Load and continue. You will start the game again - sorta. Let it play out. Everything is pretty straighy forward after that.

@golguin As others have said: just load your save file and keep playing. Don't worry about missing endings, you'll be able to easily return to them later. To avoid spoilers, don't look up details on acquiring specific endings until it's obvious how you're meant to see all of them.

It will be obvious when it happens, don't worry until then (you literally cannot miss it).

I beat ending A yesterday and while there were a few moments that I found clever, I was really let down by how the game ended. The beginning of the second playthrough was super interesting with how it starts, but the way it's continuing on with that same idea is breaking down really quickly for me (I just finished the desert). I know that the playthrough for ending C is where things peak so I'm hoping that's true because I'm starting to feel the pangs of fatigue with playthrough B. I'm also having to temper my thoughts on the game with a really bad game breaking input issue I ran into that took over an hour to "fix" and even that didn't fully fix it (I'm playing on PC). Really hoping I don't run into the same issue with playthrough B.

Also all of the random game ending endings I've encountered have been really dumb with the exception of the one involving Jackass, and that one was only mildly amusing because it happened right across from where I had last saved and did't involve repeating parts of the game again within a core playthrough.

Endings after E are just joke ones that you don't need to pursue; they're cool to run into organically. The "choices" for alternate endings will be pretty obvious and you can't lock yourself out accidentally, so just play on

ATTENTION

I reached a point in the game after the first credits roll where I encountered a section in the Emil sidequest that immediately prompted me to go digging into the backstory of the series. I saw two videos that showed me that there was stuff I was completely missing due to my lack of context. If you have seen Ending A then you should watch these videos.

This video is for the narrative that goes from the start of the series to Nier: Automata.

This video explains the first Nier game (and a small summary of what the video above explained in greater detail) and how it leads to Nier: Automata.

Please don't actually overload yourself with homework you don't need and enjoy the game as presented.

The weird structure of Nier is already kind of a big ask for most people.

Each video is around 20 minutes so it's not that much considering a person is missing the context required to understand some things that are going on. I'm sure there is still more I don't know that's informing some of the stuff I'm seeing, but at least I now know that character designs that I thought I saw YEARS AGO are not simply a figment of my imagination.

I think there's a single side quest in the game that is designed to punch returning players in the gut and I think that only works if you played the game and catch up videos wouldn't really help.

The rest is incredibly removed from what actually is going down in Automata.

That SuperBunnyHop video for the first NieR is bad. Just stick with ValkyrieAurora or Clemps.

@efesell: I can think of a number of side-quests that hearken back to the original from the top of my head. More or less everything involving Emil, as well as Devola and Popola. There's many traces of the older cultures across the world, the desert probably being the most obvious example. I personally think there's plenty to appreciate if you know more about the backstory. Emil finally remembering Nier, and his sacrifice, at the moment of his death is both heartbreaking and beautiful for instance. Besides, even outside the context of Automata, I'd still recommend people to watch "Movie" versions of Nier and maybe Drakengard 3. Some good-ass story-telling right there if nothing else.

@goboard: Playthrough B plays with things a little bit in ways you may or may not see coming. It doesn't do enough, though. Once you beat playthrough B, what's left isn't overly long and is really good.

This game really sticks the landing and leaves you scraping the plate looking for anything else to gobble up.

I got a little fatigued in playthrough B, but it was 100% worth sticking it out to enjoy the complete story.

I really don't like that lore summary video because it strips out all of the characters and just boils everything down to the major story beats, which makes the lore seem way more confusing than it actually is when it's dolled out over the course of hours in the games. When there's no room to breath and absorb each plot point because they're just hammered out one after another over the course of twenty minutes you're going to retain none of it at the end. If you really want to catch up with the previous games (which I don't think is really necessary to enjoy Automata) I would recommend Mr. Clemps, who's done summaries of the stories for all three Drakengard games as well as Nier. The Drakengard games are 99.9% irrelevant to the Nier lore though.