Hey gang,

Basically what's in the title. I finished the game for "Ending A" last weekend, and I started what I can assume is "Playthrough B" earlier today. I'm a little disappointed mind you. I'm just replaying the exact same game, except the gameplay is a lot worse. I liked the sword play for 2B, but for 9S, it's all this hacking minigame, which is fucking tedious and boring.

I'm worried about this, and subsequent playthroughts. I've seen people throw around 60 hours to finish it, and I just don't have that sort of time to put into games anymore, I'm an adult.

Is it REALLY worth playing the game through to get all these endings?

Cheers lads!

Playthrough B is a truncated version of A. Unless you want to mop up the sidequests you haven't done yet it won't take nearly as long.

Playthrough C is completely different to the first two and is 100% new content. This is the last playthrough you need to do, as endings C, D, & E all come from it.

Yes! :D

@milijango: Yeah but to get D & E you still need to play through C twice again don't you?
Or can you do a chapter select to get those quickly? I stopped at Ending C myself.

@boonsong: There's a chapter select that takes you literally right to that choice. No need to replay anything.

I don't know why people call them playthroughs. They're not. A playthrough is reaching ending E. You wouldn't say GTA consists of several playthroughs just because you play through the same areas repeatedly. The credits don't mean much.

Yeah as others have already said, if you don't like playing as 9S you can just speed through that playthrough pretty fast. Then the last run you have is all original content and you are back to more action.

I also think the ending/playthrough terminology really hurts the game. It's more like a 3 act structure where the second act retreads some old ground. The game shares more structure with route based visual novels, but even that isn't quite right either.

@dinosaurcanada: Ah I see. Thanks for clearing that up, I wasn't sure.

I'd say you have to replay it once(sort of). The 9S playthrough is basically the same thing, but with you playing a different character. Sure, there is some different stuff, but it's close enough to me.

Anyone saying you have to play the game three or four times is just flat out wrong, though.

60 Hours is a huge inflation, I did all 5 endings and over 80% of the side quests in 32 hours (I checked this time whoever pulled me up before). You only really replay the game once by the way.

Everyone else pretty much has you covered, but I'll add that it only took me 37 hours to reach ending E. Mind you that's with having done all the sidequests, so it can be completed in an even shorter amount of time, if you're not a completionist.

Yeah 35 hours with me doing like 95% of side quests for all 5 endings. Just fucking do it, definitely worth.

Just cleaned up playthrough B

Didn't like it anywhere near as much as A when it comes to actual gameplay (the point of a videogame). I skipped almost every combat encounter I could, disliking the tedious hacking minigame.

The extra story stuff was pretty interesting, aswell as the "Humans have been dead since the start" reveal. That was really cool.

Eager to get into the C/D/E playthrough, as I hear it's some of the best stuff the game has to offer.

@matoya: Fyi, you don't have to hack everything with 9S. Just get yourself a good lv 4 weapon and some decent plug-ins and most enemies will go down pretty quick just with some whacking and shooting. His gameplay will never feel as good as 2B, but if you hate the hacking you can definitely keep it at a minimum and get through the game fine.

@ezekiel: I've been thinking about this a lot since that review came out where the reviewer finished ending A and said, "I'm not going to finish the game again just to get a 'slightly different ending'".

Sure, you replay some areas and see similar cutscenes with some changes and some completely new scenes, but that's the game, right? Like, if you have to "replay" those parts of the game, then that's part of a playthrough, right? You haven't "finished" the game yet. Now, if one were to say that doing all that is a bad design choice, I can listen to that (although I don't agree), it's a valid criticism. But saying stopping there is equal to finishing the game? No. The game is made a certain way and the credits and everything after them are part of the overall experience, for better or worse depending on your opinion.

As far as I can see, you might as well stop playing MGS3 after the Virtuous Mission. Some will think that's a terrible parallel because you don't "replay" anything, but I think it's apt in that you are stopping after only getting the tip of the iceberg as far as story and characters, just because technically, it IS a valid stopping point - for a very bad, unfinished story, that is.

Oh, and yeah, it's worth it. The opening hour of Route C alone will get you hyped by itself. I can't follow you on the 9S stuff though, I thought the hacking game with the chiptune music was great.

It's probably the worst non-indie game of the year.

I just finished A route. I don't know how I could not go back. I never maxed out a weapon, never opened one of those chests with a lock thing on top, left a dozen unfinished side quests because I didn't know they were going to take them all away from me (dick move game! Probably to be expected from Yoko Taro.) I also can't help but feel there was a whole lot left unexplained especially with regard to the nature of the machines and the androids and are there really any humans left on the moon directing all this? Why is the bunker in black and white?!

I basically felt the same as you about Route B and ended up loving the game for what its worth.

@sinusoidal: All of that is explained in route B,C & D

I think I'm just about done with this terrible game.

I was doing route C, everything was going fine. Fucking SUPER tedious killing little groups of enemies that were 20 levels higher than me, that took fucking AGES to kill.

I then get to a section where I have to play as 9S, and did LITERALLY 30 minutes of hacking minigames to "save" 2B.

When I did that, all the androids got infected with a virus. Fine I thought, I'll hack them all to save them from the virus. I did that, and everything was cured. Then the game throws out ending "O" to me. When I looked it up, it said I'd abandoned the battlefield and ran away from the final boss of that section. I was just standing still waiting for an event to happen.

Seriously fuck this game. I like the story a lot, and finding out new things is pretty interesting, but I'm not replaying an hour of gameplay again because who knows, it could just spunk me out a bad ending again. Plus I already have no healing items, and I can't go back and get any. I used them all the first time around

Fuck me

Just wait.

For what? I'm not replaying an hour of tedious gameplay for the CHANCE that it MIGHT work this time.

I'm selling it and buying Horizion

Yeah. I didn't run into the same problems you did, but I had the same feeling of "fuck this shit" when going through what I felt was the same thing over and over. Yes the cutscenes are different, yes you play as 9S instead of 2B. It's still a lot of the same mashy combat with a in my opinon not so great story despite what everyone else is saying. Yeah it's crazy and it's anime as fuck but it overstays its welcome very quickly.

It's a shame. The characters and the story are proper interesting. The OST is fucking terrific and the art is superb

But the part where you actually play the game is fucking shit.

I heard playthrough C was really interesting and opened up a lot, but they must have hid it behind a shitty intro. Unless I have an extreme change of heart by tomorrow, I'm selling this shit

Nothings for everyone, I guess.

Seems crazy to me but you be you.

The longest possible way to get ending O is apparently by hacking all of the other androids before 2B. If you hack her first, she'll wreck shop and make that sequence much, much shorter. I agree that it would make sense to hack everyone, but essentially all the androids are intended to die in that scene. I might recommend knocking it down to easy for the sake of time, if you end up giving it one more shot. It doesn't affect anything but the numbers on enemies, so there'll be less time spent on the bits you're less pleased with.

I'm sorry you didn't dig it. I'm about 60 hours in on playthrough C, guess I'm dragging my feet a whole lot but I never really felt tired of anything about the game. I know the combat is simple compared to something like Bayonetta but plug-in chips, pod programs and upgrading equipment are really compelling to me. Sometimes the gameplay just isn't for everyone but I'm struggling to understand how someone could call it "fucking shit".

I was already on easy. I don't know why I was 20 levels lower than the common enemies. I fought tons on both the A and B playthroughts.

But I literally did hack 2B. I hacked them all. I had 20 seconds of standing around doing nothing becuase I hacked them all. The game just threw me into a "Gee I dunno I guess he ran off" ending.

I just can't be arsed doing that whole tedious section again with no healing, and having to fight all that shit again. I like the game, but it just got tedious.

Playthrough B is only interesting in that you get to see a few small sequences 2B didn't see, and that there's some important 9S related stuff that happens during it.
I agree that his combat isn't as good and that the hacking stuff gets boring, but it's worth seeing through because of the 3rd playthrough.

Ultimately, I'd argue that Nier: Automata's story is worth seeing, but not necessarily playing. Admittedly, the world design is drab and this isn't Platinum's tightest and most frenetic action game. However, there are some moments that only a player, not a viewer, would get the impact (this was mentioned in Beastcast 100).

That being said, I don't have the same problem with hacking as you seem to be having. I actually enjoy it and PREFER it to 2B's combat, because it's safer to engage with enemies due to having less risk of a One-Hit KO. I also gave 9S a Stun Chip to stun/damage surrounding enemies after hacking within a radius.

I'm doing both runs on Hard (not Very Hard), my initial and my second playthrough, after sacrificing my save file.

I'm at my second playthrough as 9S, and hacking is a lifesaver and a timesaver.

It is true that most of the things I enjoyed about the story comes to light at the third act, when you get to play A2. She controls similarly to 2B with minor differences.

The way I see the story is structured:

2B's playthrough is your typical triumph over the machines, but riddled with plot holes.

9S's playthrough recontextualizes the bosses and some origins about the machines.

Nier: Automata has made me think of specific existential quandaries without necessarily giving answers. It's seeded some questions, that can haunt me if I dwell on it. As Alex and Austin said: it brings up the philosophical rhetoric, not with a wall of scholarly text, but with characters, interaction, and anime-like tropes.

I thought Horizon: Zero Dawn was my favorite story, because of what the ancient humans had to do.

But seeing robot societies completely misunderstand the point of human behavior, therefore birthing futile cycles of life and death (mind you, this is a only one small aspect of the game), takes the cake for me.