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Squeenix NieR: Automata from Yoko Taro and Platinum Games

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,157
On the plus side, The Dark ID has begun the LP, yay! It will be complete and fully uploaded in a year or two, though. :negative:
 

Haplo

Prophet
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Sep 14, 2016
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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Why? Has it been published on the only platform I give a damn about?
 

Dayyālu

Arcane
Joined
Jul 1, 2012
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4,466
Location
Shaper Crypt
Yeah, seems they just put the game out and it will not receive any kind of support.
I'm glad I only added it to my wishlist and did not buy it.

Again, depends on the rig. I'd suggest to buy&refund if it does not work, after all I played it with something barely above minimum reqs and it went swimmingly.
 

Urthor

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Mar 22, 2015
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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Supposedly the reason it isn't patched is because Platinum switched publishers from Square Enix for the Bayonetta release, so the speculation is there's bad blood between dev and publisher leading to the roadblock.

Pretty sad at the end of the day.
 

Martius

Liturgist
Joined
Nov 24, 2013
Messages
1,058
That sounds strange since Platinum were doing work for different publishers since company was found. Sega own rights to Bayonetta so its not like other company could release it on steam. Considering history of Square pc ports that is just part of their "fire and forgot" approach.
 

Sentinel

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Nov 18, 2015
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Ommadawn
"Scenario staff". IIRC Yoko Taro described himself as a the guy who came up with the scenario. If I also remembered correctly, he said something about wanting to do something different next that doesn't have to do with videogames (even talked about how he wanted to own a restaurant). That Square is going to milk NieR is inevitable, but could it be that Yoko Taro is not making the sequel?
 

Dayyālu

Arcane
Joined
Jul 1, 2012
Messages
4,466
Location
Shaper Crypt
Remake Drakengard 3 with proper combat faggits.

PC port of Drakengard 3 with proper combat?

I'd pay for that. And I rarely pay for games.

Zero is indeed of the most amusing Taro characters.

"Scenario staff". IIRC Yoko Taro described himself as a the guy who came up with the scenario. If I also remembered correctly, he said something about wanting to do something different next that doesn't have to do with videogames (even talked about how he wanted to own a restaurant). That Square is going to milk NieR is inevitable, but could it be that Yoko Taro is not making the sequel?

Taro shitposts all the time, who knows what he is truly planning. I do worry about the milking of the thing, though, the Japs have an almost American sense of ruining things through otaku autism and hunt for whales.

Let's hope for the best.
 

Leechmonger

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Joined
Jan 30, 2016
Messages
756
Location
Valley of Defilement
So despite loving the first Nier, I didn't get around to playing through this one until recently. I haven't read this thread to avoid spoilers but I'll skim it after I finish writing this up.

When the game was announced I got hyped for shitty gameplay accompanied by a good story and great OST. Then I found out it was being developed by Platinum and got hyped for that sweet character action gameplay.

Having now gotten all the real endings, I can say: Well, at least the music is good (including the tracks that weren't lifted from the original!)

SPOILERS AHEAD

Let's start with the gameplay, which is presumably the most important aspect of a game. It is mind-numbingly boring. It's pretty fluid, sure, but that's where the praise ends. You just mash an attack button until the enemy you're attacking attacks you back (what's stagger lol) then you dodge through the attack. If you're playing on normal, it's almost impossible to die since you can spam healing items. If you're playing on hard, many attacks will one-shot kill you. I'm told that if you buy and equip enough defensive chips, this becomes less of a problem. I believe it, but I couldn't be arsed to put more effort playing the game than the devs did designing it, so I switched to normal at the first desert boss fight. ("Truly, this cannot continue") I should also mention this game's (shit) twist on Dark Souls' death mechanic: you don't lose xp or money, but rather equipment instead. Additionally, your corpse is not immediately recovered when you interact with it, but rather you have to go through an animation to get your shit back. I can only imagine the grief this caused the poor suckers trying to challenge themselves in this shallow game.

The gameplay manages to become even worse after the first ending, as you now have to rely on hacking enemies to get anything done. Because slashing enemies was not monotonous and time-consuming enough. Speaking of which, why the fuck can't 9S open the chests when I'm 2B? Oh right, because then you'd lose one of the justifications for the merciless padding in this game. God even most of the bosses feel like a waste of time (with the exception of the opera boss, which of course they plastered all over the previews).

All of that said, I could have still liked or even loved Automata despite its gameplay, as I did the original. But the story and especially the characters just aren't as good as Nier's. 2B is boring as fuck, 9S is barely better, and the other characters get virtually no development. You'd think a game that focuses almost exclusively on two characters would get at least that part of the story right. Its predecessor managed to flesh out its four protagonists better than Automata's two, and it had more interesting side characters to boot! You can argue that 2B is supposed to be boring as fuck because she wants to remain distant, but that seems like a convenient excuse for writing forgettable characters. The story itself is mostly a series of random events that happen abruptly (the ground just collapsed! a giant tower appeared out of nowhere!) in sharp contrast with the first Nier, which had a sense of progression with the characters actually trying to achieve something. A lot of the emotional dialogue and voice-acting is pretty bad and cringey, too. Eve is terribad, and 9S doesn't fare much better. (No YOU shut the fuck up, goddamn)

What kills me is the potential this game had. It had lots of good ideas, but the developers and writers consistently make bad decisions to undermine it all:
- When A2 reveals that 2B's purpose is to kill 9S, the game shows flashbacks of 9S dying... for reasons completely unrelated to the point being made. How the fuck did this scene make it into the final game in this state? Did the writers think this made sense? This is I think the best example of a really cool plot point being handled unbelievably poorly. They could have had 9S lose his memory at some point in the game for unknown reasons only for A2 to reveal that 2B had killed him (cue flashback). Instead you get a cutscene that makes no sense if you think about it for longer than 2 seconds.
- Throughout the game you interact with three Bunker androids: 2B's operator 6O, 9S's operator 21O, and the Commander. 6O is outgoing, 210 and the Commander are frigid. Who does the game try to use to pull at our heartstrings? The latter two, of course.
- How about instead of giving 9S an annoying hacking minigame and letting him keep his light attacks, they instead made hacking not a chore and took away his light attacks as well? This would have made his sections more unique and less annoying, and it would have made the fight against A2 work as intended. Instead, mobs of enemies take forever to destroy with 9S, and by dealing some damage to A2 with melee attacks I robbed myself of the very last hacking segment which reveals you've been hacking her menu the whole time. They cheated themselves out of one of their memorable moments.
- Why did lacking "pure water" prevent me from upgrading my pods at all?

I'm glad I held off on replaying Bayonetta until after I beat this turd. I'm not sure I would have been able to finish Automata had such an obvious point of comparison been fresh in my mind.
 

Ezekiel

Arcane
Joined
May 3, 2017
Messages
5,373
I liked it. Didn't love it. It's a good game. But I agree that it should have been much better. When I wrote my Steam review (which I almost never do), I had more negative things to say than positives. I still gave it a positive rating, though.

NieR: Automata is a good game. I like how it tells its lore and existentialist story with different point of view characters and relevant side quests, how much there is to discover in the ruined world, the quirky inhabitants, the music and art direction. The controls are responsive and the animations fluid. The game kept me interested through almost its whole length. It embraces its medium as few modern games do. But I don’t find it amazing or even great, like most players seem to.

I didn’t have any issue with the flying sections. This isn’t one of the better scrolling shoot ’em ups I’ve played, but it’s fine. The hack and slash combat, while polished and totally serviceable, is simplistic and shallow. The balance is poor and the character you play as more than any other, 9S, has a mediocre hacking mechanic haphazardly replacing the Y attack.

The hacking that comprises so much of 9S’s combat is just more shoot ’em up gameplay, which the game already has in abundance. The only big difference is that the mini-games are set on a little square map instead of a long scrolling level. There are a select number of hacking mini-games that are replayed over and over, not including the small number present during unique bosses and areas. The hacking makes 9S too powerful. His wins are usually instant. I hacked in such rapid successions that the characters didn’t even have time to speak whole sentences. It would be nice if hacking were something you did after finding some kind of opening.

I also find it weird that 2B is supposed to be the one in charge and 9S the support, yet in Route B, which is largely a repeat of Route A but with you playing as 9S instead of 2B, he is always running ahead and doing everything.

By the time the story has ended and you get to play as 2B again, you’re overpowered. I think this game would have been better without leveling, with only the interchangeable, combinable chips serving as upgrades. It’s implied that the playable characters have been performing their combat and scanning roles for a while, so the leveling system serves little narrative purpose, and it unbalances the game later on. Alternatively, give me a Bloody Palace mode or a challenge mode or something in which I can continue to play as the different characters while being challenged.

It would be nice if you at least had to dodge in the correct direction and were not invincible while dodging, which would require reworking the enemy attacks. You can spam the dodge through every attack.

The hovering pods that accompany you have offensive and defensive programs, ranging from protective barriers to a giant hammer. You eventually get a wave attack that can instantly take out every lower tier enemy in your vicinity. It takes less than a minute for the pod to recharge, at which point you can do it again.

I usually don’t use the term spectacle fighter, but it describes the combat pretty well. It’s about looking cool and feeling powerful rather than having depth and being challenging. The harder modes don’t fix it either. I tried Very Hard because I wanted to replay some chapters and was overpowered at level 80-something. I died from one hit in the prologue, by one of the little trashcan enemies. Same thing happens if you start the game on Hard mode at level 0: Instant deaths in the prologue. Normal is far too easy and hard is far too punishing. I’m not fond of difficulty levels. I like how Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls have just one difficulty. It forces the developers to find a good balance with their game.

The lack of checkpoints makes the prologues sometimes feel like annoying wastes of time. I had to do all of the Route B prologue again because I died during the last part. Even though there were do-over checkpoints before that point! It’s not a difficult part, but I had practically no hit points left (and didn’t yet know that I could heal during the flying sections) when I started the sequence, and mistakes happen. Forcing me to sit through the same story sequences again is excessive and hurts the pacing. I failed the sequence again the second time because I wasn’t aware that I was supposed to prevent the machines from passing my pod. I’ve experienced some crashes. They don’t occur regularly, but I’ve had them often enough that they made long sequences without save points slightly more worrying.

It’s always disappointing when cutscenes that are created with a game’s engine in production are played as compressed videos. It wastes a lot of space and doesn’t look as good as a live render. NieR: Automata’s cutscenes take up 24.5 GB, half the size of the game. If Kojima Productions can render all their in-engine cutscenes in real time, Platinum Games should be able to.

I thought the relationship between 2B and 9S could have been handled better. We learn more about them late in the game, but for most of the story they seem distant. So it’s a little weird when 9S has an emotional breaking point because of 2B in Route C and goes on a self-destructive quest for her. I would have liked to see the two of them grow closer instead of just having the significance of their relationship justified by complicated exposition so late in the story. The final ending is alright. It makes prior events feel a bit pointless, though.

It’s because of how absorbing the world and the story are and how proud NieR: Automata is of being a video game that I’d still recommend it. You can tell that it was created with passion.

The game runs generally okay on my GTX 780 and i5-4670k, after lowering the resolution to 1920×1080 and turning off anti-aliasing, blur and ambient occlusion. I find AA overrated anyway, because of how it softens details in many games, and motion blur always looks bad, in my opinion. It makes sense in 30 fps console games, like Shadow of the Colossus, but at 60 fps it becomes distracting. I have Effects set on high, Shadows on low and Texture Filter at 8x. The framerate does drop into the forties and sometimes thirties, but not often enough that it significantly detracted from my experience. Installing the FAR fix has also helped. Some of the cutscenes, however, are currently choppy, no matter what specifications you have, and the subtitles are delayed by about a second at times.
I wrote this before the Bloody Palace mode was added, so part of what I said is out of date. Haven't tried that DLC.
 

Durandal

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Joined
May 13, 2015
Messages
2,117
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New Eden
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
How playable is it with the mouse and keyboard?
not

it's possible, but for some retarded reason dodging with M/K is hardbound to a double-tap input with no way of rebinding it to my knowledge, whereas with the controller you just press one button to dodge
it's way easier to spam dodge and avoid damage using the controller as opposed to having to double tap to dodge, you'll suffer from a massive disadvantage if you don't use a controller
 

Haplo

Prophet
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Joined
Sep 14, 2016
Messages
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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
M+Kb is quite okay.
The hacking minigames, which start with the second playtrough, can be a royal pain - at least untill you adjust (mouse cursor rotation was too sensitive for me).
 

Jaedar

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Aug 5, 2009
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Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
How playable is it with the mouse and keyboard?
I played it like this, I dodged a lot of crap too. Not sure about higher difficulties though, the hacking minigame in particular is very hard to aim in, but it doesn't matter on normal since you have lock on there.
 

Suicidal

Arcane
Joined
Apr 29, 2007
Messages
2,208
Beat it on hard with kb+m - the 3d sections are fine (double tab to dodge is annoying but I got used to it pretty fast) and aiming ranged attacks with the mouse is very convenient (don't know how it is with a controller though). The 2d sections and hacking games are cancer because you can only aim your gun at 45 degree angles and it often keeps snapping back and forth whenever you make the tiniest mouse movement.
 

Haplo

Prophet
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Joined
Sep 14, 2016
Messages
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Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire
Personally didn't mind double tap to dodge. Dodged a lot. Played on normal though. 2d sections are all very easy on normal so a non issue also.
 

Gerrard

Arcane
Joined
Nov 5, 2007
Messages
11,927
Everything that I've seen, and everything I've read here indicates that the gameplay is garbage meant to waste your time while moving between story bits. Imagine, if they hadn't implemented those retarded bullet hell segments they might've actually made good combat.

Platinum is a fucking meme studio now, they made less good games than bad or mediocre ones. The fact that Jim Cuckling praised this should've been a hint.
 

Suicidal

Arcane
Joined
Apr 29, 2007
Messages
2,208
So basically this should've been a visual novel.

Nah.

Even with all its gameplay flaws N:A still has one of the better action game combat systems especially if we consider the existence of those one button one brain cell abominations like in Shadows of Mordor or Witcher.
 

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