Topic: Nier: Automata

Fast travel unlocks later on? Oh, thank god!

When I left off, I fought a large robot in the city ruins, which appears to have made a large hole in the surrounding environment and revealed the location of the aliens which conquered the Earth.

I actually don't mind most of the side-quests so far. Primarily because they tell you where you need to go to find the stuff you need! So, in that respect alone, the side-quests are better than the ones in certain other open world games I've played recently. I HATE hunting around for something when the game doesn't tell me where that something is.

A couple other things:

Does this game warn you when side-quests are about to become inaccessible?

And apparently I received "Ending H," which involved some small bit of text about how I doomed the world followed by what looked like credits scrolling by at lightning speed. I'm guessing this game has "bad ends," and I met the conditions for one. The whole thing went by so fast that it barely made an impression, though.

@Ralizah Not sure it does tell you when specific side quests become inaccessible, although there are only a small number where this happens and off the top of my head it is after a big story event. However, the ones that do expire can be easily done on the route B playthrough. You won't have to redo quests that you have already completed as it carries over.

Most of the endings are fun little jokes. I liked them. 😂

@Ralizah There's no warning for when a side quest is about to become inaccessible, but I don't believe any quest is permanently inaccessible. Later on in the game there will be a way to go back and do things you missed.

@Ralizah yeah don't really worry about missing anything, you can mop things up later on.

As for fast travel, it does open up as mentioned, I really don't think I ever used it though? I just found it so easy to zip around using weird traversal techniques like this:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKbeNiA1pqo

Alright. Good. Sounds like I don't need to stress about doing everything as soon as it comes up.

I'm glad I saved right before that joke ending. Joke endings that suddenly terminate the game with little warning + no auto-saving could be a spectacularly bad combination. Thankfully, my gaming habits were forged in the fires of PS1 JRPGs, where not saving when you have the opportunity could mean losing hours of progress.

@Ralizah If you don't like joke endings... BEWARE THE MACKEREL!

And yeah, don't worry too much about missing side missions. Some will appear on your map and you can't even do some of them until your repeat play throughs and you unlock level select after you've properly finished the game anyway.

@Ralizah yeah no auto save "can" be a pig but it does serve a narative purpose. The trouble is later you can become pretty indestructible but then die stupidly having not saved for hours. So just get into the habit of saving every now and then just in case.

9S is the best character, btw.

So, yeah, apparently I was 20 minutes away or so from unlocking that fast travel feature when I posted the first night! It definitely makes side-questing easier. Although, after doing those for a few hours, I think I'm moving on with the plot. These side-quests are okay distractions once in a while, but they're not really meaty affairs that I can happily dig into for hours. In general, though, I feel like there's too many of them available too quickly for my tastes.

I do like how the game attempts to address the issue of ludonarrative dissonance by pulling game mechanics into the fabric of the narrative itself. Fast traveling is a plot point. Changing your in-game settings is your android messing with her programming. etc.

This game's soundtrack is growing on me. I don't like it as much as the soundtracks for Xenoblade 2 or Persona 5, but there are still a number of beautiful tracks that I'm enjoying listening to.

The strongest point so far, though, is the fascinating backdrop of robot behavior. I really enjoyed visiting the theme park and watching a... unique rendition of "Romeo and Juliet" that was written and acted out by robots. I feel like there's amazing potential for rug-pulling here: my androids are being ordered to engage in morally terrible acts, and the information we're being fed is limited at best.

@Ralizah Stuff gets bananas! I need to replay it really. Just on the soundtrack, I would say it's the best of any game in a long long time. I absolutely loved XBC2's (and Persona 5 had one or two goodies) but overall I think Nier has a next level soundtrack.

@Ralizah @kyleforrester87 I would say the soundtrack was top tier as well. I usually don’t notice such things in games honestly, but this one did stick out.
But the unique approach to gameplay and the even more unique approach to story telling is where NieR really shines in my opinion. And it doesn’t really reach its full impact until the end. (the actual end). Yeah, stuff gets a little bananas.

So, I spent another 5.5 hours with this game tonight (I've basically been on the PS4 since coming home). Something about it just keeps me enthralled. Well, anyway, the combat is insanely fun, as is customizing my chip loadout (although it seems a bit OP: I now do 15% extra damage with melee, gain health while not getting damaged, gain 10% health while killing enemies, gain back 20% of the damage I inflict as HP, have a couple of seconds of invincibility after getting hit, 18% extra EXP from combat encounters, etc.). And, while the quests are mostly unremarkable in terms of gameplay, I think the fantastic writing and decent rewards are making them worthwhile to clear. I've already completed 33% of the quests in this game, apparently.

Also really digging the character interactions: the increasingly affectionate but mentorly relationship between 2B and 9S; Operator 6O's unflagging enthusiasm and individuality, which contrasts hilariously with 2B's focus and stoicism; and the increasingly humanized robots the characters encounter around Earth. I think it's clear as day that at least some large portion of the robots on Earth are intelligent and emotional beings. Command is clearly trying to hide this fact, alongside ordering atrocities to be carried out against their own (the 'YoRHa Betrayers' quest is pretty blatantly an assassination mission that is meant to cover up something Command doesn't want getting out).

A few things:

1) I assume these locked boxes I'm finding all over the place are accessible in a later route? It's really annoying that I can't mark them on the map or anything.

2) Why are boars the most fearsome enemy type in this game? I struggle more against the average boar than I did against Adam.

3) I really appreciate the little touches of weird humor throughout this game. Makes the whole experience so much more enjoyable.

But yeah: cool game.

@Ralizah the chip system is good, but you are right you can become OP easily and in the end I didn't feel like it was as good as it could have been, despite early signals suggesting it would be awesome. I guess it allows you to customise the difficulty of the game to your preference - you COULD have a build that gives you HP whenever you cause or take damage, but if that's too easy you can take chips out. I guess that might have been the point.

Yes you can open the locked boxes later. I dunno why the boars are so hard compared to the regular robots haha.

I watched an analysis video yesterday, I've seen a few, and a lot of them kind of missed the point, but this one really went into specific detail and to be honest a lot of it was over my head as it relates to various philosophers which I know little more about than the names of. But it was interesting, and I am reminded that the director is not concerned with telling a coherent story as such, he basically picks his desired end point and works backwards and crams a bunch of stuff in. So when I think about the game I really struggle to recall the narrative arc, and reading Wikipedia doesn't really help either. But this game just gets inside your head and stirs you on an emotional level, and by the end it does have a very strong point, and that's why it's above the likes of Horizon and Uncharted this gen, despite it not being "perfect" in a bunch of ways

@Ralizah Yes, boxes are something to worry about later on..

@Ralizah Yes, I would agree on the way that this game can be critiqued on a granular level and exposed as inferior to a lot other ‘more polished’ games like Horizon or Uncharted, but taken as a whole, to me it was superior and my GotY over HZD and UCLL. It just does things that no other game does, which is hard to do nowadays. The subsequent playthroughs are a major part of that as well. And I don’t think you’ll have too much trouble finding the lock boxes again. I don’t remember it being an issue.
It’s really fun to read your insight as you experience it for the first time and your analysis is very well thought out and I think this game speaks to a person who just doesn’t take things at face value and likes to contemplate how the game is delivering the experience to the gamer. Yeah, the crazy flashy combat is fun and exciting, but the things you are noting are what I also really appreciated. (...Weird humor, character interactions, narrative and philosophical tone, integrative mechanics to the theme, etc.). So keep the impressions coming. I’m enjoying it! The game is far from perfect but is quite a joy to talk about.

@kyleforrester87 I wouldn’t mind seeing that video. Do you have a link or a search term I can use that would take me right to it?

Looks up bunker music on youtube

Title: Fortress of Lies

Remind me not to look up this game's music until I'm done with it. Although that confirms my suspicions, I guess.

Speaking of poor decisions, I also decided I'd check out the mission at the abandoned factory this morning... whiiiiiiiiiich is apparently some gigantic, amazing set-piece. This band of robots went full Jonestown almost as soon as they were disconnected from the network, which might imply a fear of annihilation setting in (which is ironic, considering they seem to be a kind of death cult). The music for this section was pretty awesome, and the bit with the crushers on the conveyer belt was actually kind of challenging. Unfortunately, I have work, so I had to save at the second save point in the factory, so it kind of disrupts the pacing.

In retrospect, I should totally have supported this at launch. But I'd never heard of NieR before, and, honestly, I'm not a huge fan of most of Platinum's games.

This feels like the Ghost in the Shell game we've always deserved. There's also a dash of Kojima's weirdness and pseudo-philosophical jibber-jabber, for good measure.

@Th3solution Thanks! I enjoy talking with people about it. It's nice that the game has maintained such a sustained level of interest since release.

@kyleforrester87 Well, I could also play on a harder difficulty. But part of the fun of JRPGs is figuring out how to break them with OP character builds, so I'm perfectly okay with the situation. A "chipless" run (aside from the core stuff I need and come with by default, obviously) might be fun in the future, though.

@Ralizah The game constantly surprised me. I have to say it's story is actually quite magnificent and packs some of the hardest emotional punches in anything I've ever played. There's quite a gut wrenching bit coming up if you're where I think you are.

The oddball humour dotted throughout is laugh-out-loud funny and the music is something else. It all adds up to something quite unique, I think. I have the soundtrack on my phone now so shall give that a good listen when I have the chance.

There's plenty of great music tracks in this game. Most of the locations music do a good job of setting up the general feel of that area, the set-piece battle themes are all fantastic, and the credits song fits the mood very well. My favourite track has to be the This Cannot Continue chant, it goes so well with what's happening, as well as getting you pumped up for the big fight.

Before I started playing this, I was expecting the game to be a fairly generic hack and slash game. But thankfully those expectations were quickly shattered in the opening segment of the game. The game doesn't feel as polished as some other games, like for instance there's lots of invisible barriers and I often seem to be either underlevelled or overlevelled, but it's still one of my all time favourite games. It has great combat, excellent story, and the characters are surprisingly well fleshed out even with emotions being prohibited.

Right. I completely forgot I still have to give this game another try. How about I don't buy any new games until I'm done with my backlog?

@Octane See you in five years, then. Maybe Pikmin 4 will be available for preorder by then.

I'm doing a more limited version of that. Limited because I'll still buy games for systems like Switch and 3DS where my backlog is tiny and in control. But only $60 or less worth of games every two months, and nothing on PC/PS4/Wii U.

I have games I bought new in 2015 and have never even so much as booted up on PS4! No longer. I'm clearing my entire PS4 backlog next year (sans PS+ games, which I haven't even had access to in over a year).

@Th3solution https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=63PzQIbTrM8

Here you go, it's not a super short watch, the guy seems to know his stuff though - a lot of the references in game went straight over my head so it's nice to have them pointed out.