Topic: Nier: Automata

@kyleforrester87 Oh man! Thanks so much for sharing that! I loved watching that. It’s really interesting that he mentions some of the things we’ve independently talked about here, but of course he really goes a whole other level deeper in his analysis. I’m not a student of philosophy and didn’t know all that about the philosophers in the game, but his explanations are very well thought out and researched. After watching that I actually think I appreciate the game even so much more. Just pure genius. I was just scratching the surface in my interpretation of the content. Also after watching that I see the real value in a lot of the side quests and didn’t realize the significance of some of them.
@Ralizah - you should copy that YouTube link above to watch later. BUT definitely after you complete all the routes to the real ending credits. (You’ll know when you get there and you’re still quite a distance away from it). Obviously the video is completely full of spoilers for the entire game. This video on the analysis of the game and its meaning is right up your alley, I think. 😃

Finished Route A. The plot got a little muddied by the end, and, really, the last sequence was a bit of a let-down after the spectacular sequence in the factory. But I still enjoyed myself. Also gained, like, 5 levels in that last segment just fighting countless enemies.

The ending song is pretty. Cheesy, but it's a JRPG, and all the best JRPG's fundamentally wear their hearts on their sleeves. The almost childish sincerity of the writing in most of the notable ones is part of what makes it one of my favorite genres.

Let's see if this game follows tradition and ends with the player killing either god or some stand in for god.

@Ralizah Finish two games for every new game I buy sounds like a pretty good strategy

Anyway, do you guys recommend skipping all the side quests, because I remember hoarding some animals, delivering messages for the stupid robots in the robot village, and it wasn't very fun IMO. I feel like I would have a better time if I just went for the story, is that possible?

@Octane just do the story and the side quests if you feel like it. The side quests do actually have a fair amount of meaning but a lot of it will go over your head if you are not clued up on philosophy, which I am not.

Anyway just focus on doing the first and second chapters and see how you feel about it.

@Octane I'd suggest waiting until you unlock fast travel before worrying too much about side quests. Even then, there's some great side quests in the game, but the main story is easily the best part, so it's your choice whether you want to do them or not.

@kyleforrester87 @crimsontadpoles I can't remember whether I unlocked fast travel or not, but I do recall having trouble figuring out how it works. Maybe because the game gives you fast travel points before it actually allows you to fast travel. Just going for the story seems to be my best option.

@KratosMD yeah man. Hopefully his next game is about tenants and landlords, I'll probably have a clue what's going on then.

I'll re-evaluate once I actually play the entire game, but at the moment I'm inclined to call the "philosophy" in this game window-dressing. Which isn't a bad thing: I just get the impression that the creator is more interested in using themes and ideas to evoke certain emotions in the player than actually exploring them in a meaningful fashion. And it's the easiest thing in the world to invoke a few famous philosophical phrases and names in your work to achieve an appearance of depth that's not present in the actual text.

With that said, there are some games that you still gain additional appreciation of if you're even mildly well-read in philosophy and/or world literature. For example, Persona 4 as it relates to Nietzsche (there's a lot of pseudo-Jungian blathering in this game, but it's 99% window dressing, whereas you can actually do a very surface-level Nietzschean reading of the game itself), or Persona 5's true ending as it relates to Dostoevsky's famous "Grand Inquisitor" fable in his Brothers Karamazov.

Oh, and on a side-note, I officially hate the joke endings in this game. Started route B. Played some tedious 2 minute segment where you're a robot. That's cool. Lowered a crane after starting as 9S and ran down it, only for the game to give me another 2 lines of text and the RESTART ME BEFORE THE ROBOT SEQUENCE.

Okay, fine. I do the robot thing again. Kind of sucks this time. I figure: "OK, the crane had a place in the middle to drop down, and I was supposed to go there." I do that. Joke ending again.

Robot sequence again. I'm actively getting irritated now. I see another crane altogether. You can guess what happens.

Finally, on the fourth go, I figure out that I can just drop down to the flight unit below me. Which I didn't try before because most of the time when I try to jump off a platform like that, I'm greeted with an invisible wall. The game usually doesn't let you just skirt the middle man and go directly to your goal like that. Not this time.

This game has no respect for the player's time, and I hate it. Also not a fan of re-running the same story events, and 9s' focus on hacking over melee makes combat a lot less fun.

@KratosMD I don't know that I've encountered that boss yet, but would the "lover" you mentioned happen to be Simone de Beauvoir?

@Octane I'd do the side-quests. They add to the flavor of the total experience in a meaningful way.

I've done the vast majority of the available side-quests so far, and I think it was a good call.

@Ralizah Hmm. I didn't really like them. Lack of voice acting makes it difficult to enjoy story when I have to read a wall of text.

@Ralizah I found the second play through quite tedious at times but the game starts to give you bigger clues as to what else is going on.

The third time through is the winner though

@Ralizah Oh yes, I remember that sequence and I did the exact same thing with having to play the same robot sequence over and over about 4 times until I dropped down to the “correct” place. Fortunately, I don’t think I recall any more similar “cheap” endings that bad where you have to go back over and over until you figure it out or get to the right path by happenstance.
But I would prepare you a little for probably the most laborious part of the game to get through — route B. You probably are far enough in to be feeling this and your comment about the re-running of events and respecting he gamers time is a legitimate criticism at this point. However, I’m sure the other fans of the game would echo this when I say that it will be worth it to push through. 9S has some pretty unique things coming up and eventually you will make it to some awesome story points. Try to hang in there! You’ve made it this far so I feel confident that you won’t give up. Because to your point, the relative shallowness of the philosophical narrative will also hopefully crystallize into something more with what’s coming up. Such things are often hard to predict how another person will feel about them because we all interpret things on different levels, but I honestly feel that, although some of the philosophy is relatively shallow filler to evoke a targeted response, when taken in context of the overarching narrative it has more impact. I don’t know, I’m not really well-versed in philosophy, at least academically, but I do like to ponder things. And it’s rare to have a video game even attempt to ask the difficult questions and do so in a entertaining and engaging way. And the fact that I’m thinking about this game and enjoying the discussion about it 10 months after platinuming it is a testament to Nier’s quality in this regard.

By the way, all this NieR discussion had me put the soundtrack on in the background today and I just adore the emotions and memories of the game scenes that come back to me as I listen. I almost never listen to video game music (when I’m not actually playing the game) but it has been a joy to listen to today while I work.

A few things that came to mind:

• Framerate issues don't usually bug me too much, but this game seems to have some really unfortunate performance issues. It's definitely getting pretty chunky during multiple sections of the game, and is at its worst near the end of Route A (so far) when fighting numerous enemies in the really open city environment. Also, I don't think there's any AA here, because there be jaggies all over the place, which is more noticeable for a game like this that opts for a more realistic visual style. I thought about getting it on PC, but apparently it's really poorly optimized for that platform.
• I'm a bit tickled that the game really did record me messing around with the settings in Route A. Another really creative touch.

@Th3solution Oh, no worries, I'm totally pushing through to the end. I'll probably even do the majority of the Route B sidequests if they're as painless as the ones in Route A.

One of my favorite games from 2017 (that's becoming an increasingly long list) was Xenoblade Chronicles 2, and I complained pretty incessantly about it on NL at the time. The important thing is if the entire experience transcends the sum of its flawed parts, and I'm guessing that's not going to be an issue here.

@Ralizah Haha, oh yeah, I hear ya. My first several posts on the Bloodborne thread were pretty negative when I played that for the first time a few months ago. Unfair combat, poor hit detection, lack of tutorials and maps, horrible save system, repetitive gameplay, ... the complaints went on and on. And after making it over the hump, and with the help and encouragement of the PS community, it became one of my very favorites games of this entire generation. I think it sits at #5 in my top 5 list that I posted on the respective thread on here (Incidentally NieR Automata sits at #3). So there is something to be said for a game with a little bit of a slow burn or a nice crescendo with building rewards toward the end.

I loved every minute of it start to finish, warts n all 😂

I really need to attempt the dlc again, its pretty tough!

So, I'm a little over halfway through Route B, I'm around level 48 (a little overleveled for the point I'm at in the game, probably, but oh well), and have completed 52% of the quests.

I'm finding that 9S' hacking ability is quite OP. It literally trivializes any fight you use it in. With that said, his lack of melee proficiency when compared to 2B makes using it feel necessary to avoid tedium.

The cryptic cutscenes they keep stuffing into the familiar flow of the campaign now are quite interesting. I liked finding out more about the inhabitants of the forest kingdom, although it makes me feel even worse about what ends up happening to them.

Speaking of which, a lot of the sidequests are quite dark. I almost kind of regret helping the people in The Wandering Couple sidequest now. Learning what I learned about the woman, I imagine she left her male companion because she was just trying to save her own hide.. I want my 50,000G back!

There seem to be sidequests that aren't officially listed, but still come with narrative elements. The wise men robots I keep finding (does it end with the one that commits suicide?), those tough gold robots that apparently know eachother, etc.

Oh, and Emil can go take a dive off a cliff somewhere. I was finishing that quest with the robot who keeps getting stronger and challenging you, and the conclusion to that could have felt meaningful, but Emil's lousy song kept playing in the background and distracting me.

Still enjoying the game. If this is the low point of the experience, I think I'll be just fine.

@Ralizah Remember, with 9S you can hack and control an enemy if you do so without them spotting you. Each has a fairly unique set of moves and (if you're so inclined) I seem to remember there being a trophy tied to killing enemies with a hacked unit too.

I finally got the platinum trophy for this game. It wasn't something that I was originally planning on doing since some of the trophies are a bit tedious, but by the time I upgraded all the weapons to max to unlock a secret boss fight, I was already pretty close to that trophy. Plus I used the secret trophy shop hidden in the game to skip past the fishing and archives trophies.

I always read what people have to say about this game because its one of my favorites. I'm really thinking about doing another play through. Then try the dlc again.

@Thrillho Oh, is them not spotting you what triggers the ability to hijack them? I wasn't sure what was triggering that. I generally find the explosions to be more useful, though, especially if enemies are grouped together.