So I finished up Nier in the past week and thought it was worth discussing. There were a lot of design elements that I thought were pretty noteworthy.
I can't even say there are good minigames to break up the mundane combat. The cultivation game is set to real world time so I had to 'game' my PS3's clock, as ain't nobody got time for that, and it's random. The fishing game is a thing, that exists in the game. I didn't find it as frustrating as some of the initial players did, but I also used a guide for that. They're relatively shallow ways of burning lots and lots of time (which I did, I knew what I was sorta doing with the minigames and I still lost a good five to six hours) and were somewhat annoying actually. Other than the one fishing bit early on, none of it is required but I did it for 100% on the sidequests. So much of the loot in the game is randomized, which I can assure you, gets annoying real quick.
. I should note though that the color shift in the Mansion representing time having stopped for Emil and his butler was pretty great.
There is also Nier as the main character. He doesn't really grow/develop that much and is a hulking savage essentially from start to finish. He's very unlikable
. His most interesting moments are when he's not talking about Yonah or Shades but doing/commenting on something else. Too bad that a good chunk of his dialogue focuses just on that. I also wasn't really that found of his actual character design either.
So I've pretty much bashed the hell out of the game; the gameplay is average on its best day, the graphics are poor, and the lead character is insufferable. Why then did I like it? Well, there are four areas I thought the game was exemplary in.
. Weiss is an elitist prick but he can also understand human emotions as well as the ability and desire for self-delusion. Emil is also a loner but unlike Kaine, he's more shy and reserved. I could go on about Yonah's letters that are scattered across the loading screen, that really help to flesh the relationship she has with her father, or about tidbits of info regarding Devola/Popolla in the sidequests, or the friendship Nier develops with the King of Facade. It really feels like the side characters all have their own story and history. I actually really liked that the party size remained small so unlike Xenoblade Chronicles, I didn't feel some characters were being neglected.
Then there is the dialogue, which is phenomenal. Kaine's banter with Weiss is great as they both play really well off each other. It's both hostile and funny at the same time. Nier also has some great stuff with Weiss as well, mainly in their conflicting ideology regarding some moral conflicts in the game. The best moments of Nier as a character, come when he's interacting with Weiss. Emil plays the little brother dynamic pretty well to both Kaine and Nier, and his banter was a great way of looking at different sides to some of the other characters as he's more happy and hopeful than anyone else in the party. All their banter really comes together to create a really cohesive party that made me want to do some of the side missions just to hear some of the commentary. A key element of this was the VA work. I should really note how well Laura Bailey read Kaine's lines. Kaine's rant at the end of
Liam O'Brien also did a really notable job with Weiss in that he got both the haughty and contemplative tone of Weiss, really perfected. I should note that I think Spike Spencer as Tyrann was a bad call on the VA level for sure (also possibly on the writing level too). The best piece of voice acting in the game though is
It's a scream of absolute rage and loss, and it really threw me for a loop, hearing it.
I'm a bit leery of vocal tracks in music as I think they can become overbearing if used too much or if the vocals aren't a good fit for the scene. Emi Evans should be applauded for her work here. The vocals have a very soft sound to them and due to this, avoid that overbearing aspect in the scenes they're used. The vocals become part of the atmosphere and background and really give a lot of character to the music. I also think the use of a female singer was the correct call as it gives a surreal feeling to the music. Then there is the amount and quality of work Evans did in regards to the lyrics.
I should mention how the OST was used, such as how parts of The Song of the Ancients would fade in and out depending on how close the player was to Devola when she is playing. It really gives a lot of texture to the player's location in the world. Also I thought the use of The Song the Ancients when
was some really great stuff as the player associates the song with them. I also liked how The Dance of the Evanescent warped at the end, which fit the warped party. I do think the game started to rely on Emil/Sacrifice a little too much near the end though, especially when it started to play back to back.
and the use of multiple playthroughs to see the entire 'story'. I think the
Then there is the 2nd playthrough which really highlights how incomplete the player's first playthrough was. This is interesting on a couple of levels. The first is that while the players are seeing these new scenes and dialogue, the characters in the game aren't. The player wants Nier to
but Nier can't hear you and keeps on. it's a great way of highlighting how
. It also rectified one of my major issues coming out of my first playthrough, is that I felt there wasn't really any sort of strong theme to the game.
. The other aspect is that it fleshes out many of the
. I also think the additional scenes work as a sort of deconstruction of these types of monster fighting games in general, for example Zelda.
. It's sort of gamey but I also think it's pretty effective at affecting the player due to the consciousness input on the player's part. It's not much but I think it's a good case of small gameplay bits being more effective than a cutscene at getting an emotional point across. Another element that I found pretty cool was how the camera would go this psuedo 2D when you entered some rooms indoors. It gave the game this sort of old school 2D RPG feeling.
On that note, I want to talk about Ending D briefly. I've been reading Grimoire Noire and the interview with the staff, and one thing that struck me was this segment:
. It's more rewarding seeing that cutscene at the end instead of making a choice between A and B and then loading up your save file to see the other ending.
.
Gameplay-wise, Nier isn't anything special. In fact, the combat is janky as fuck and the movement can be somewhat clumsy. I wouldn't say it's outright bad though as . The combat is really easy as it's not hard to juggle or stagger enemies. Also once you start levelling up both your weapons and your character, you can do insane amounts of damage. Near the end of my first playthrough, I was able to oneshot bosses and was able to beat pretty much any boss in a matter of a couple of minutes. The only enemy I had issues with was the floating witches as you can't really use magic on them, they float around everywhere, and they're hard to hit with your sword/spear. Absolute pains. I do wish there were more weapon types and enemy types. The three weapon types do play very differently but that's sorta it. The rest is cosmetic and stat differences. The real variance is in the magic spells from Grimoire. I never really experimented much with them though as many of the spells weren't really that viable and you can only have two activated at a time. I wish they had allowed more at a time, that way the player could do more of a mage build. The party dynamics are pretty flat in that you can dictate the AI actions but that's generally it. As it stands, the combat is serviceable. It's not that boring but there isn't any sort of spark to it. It's a pretty forward low budget hack and slash in this regards. [I should also note that the loot system in this game is frustrating as fuck when you're trying to get materials for weapons.]
I can't even say there are good minigames to break up the mundane combat. The cultivation game is set to real world time so I had to 'game' my PS3's clock, as ain't nobody got time for that, and it's random. The fishing game is a thing, that exists in the game. I didn't find it as frustrating as some of the initial players did, but I also used a guide for that. They're relatively shallow ways of burning lots and lots of time (which I did, I knew what I was sorta doing with the minigames and I still lost a good five to six hours) and were somewhat annoying actually. Other than the one fishing bit early on, none of it is required but I did it for 100% on the sidequests. So much of the loot in the game is randomized, which I can assure you, gets annoying real quick.
I'll be frank, the graphics are pretty awful. It definitely looks like a low budget PS3 game, and at times something like from the PS2 era. There is a lot of aliasing going on, the character models look cheap, the texture work is on the low end, the effects are crappy, and the environments are sparse. There were also some framerate drops as well when things were getting hectic. It's an ugly game. Even the art design isn't really that stellar, although there are some good bits such as Facade and
parts of the Shadowlord's castle
There is also Nier as the main character. He doesn't really grow/develop that much and is a hulking savage essentially from start to finish. He's very unlikable
which is the point, but that doesn't make him any easier to deal with
So I've pretty much bashed the hell out of the game; the gameplay is average on its best day, the graphics are poor, and the lead character is insufferable. Why then did I like it? Well, there are four areas I thought the game was exemplary in.
The first really stellar segment is the sidecharacters. Nier himself isn't that interesting but Kaine, Weiss, Emil(sorta), Devola/Popolla, and the King of Facade certainly are. Kaine has had a lot of suffering in her life and she has a lot of, rightfully, built up rage that is outwardly reflected in all manners of her personality. She's a loner, crass, and a bit of an asshole but also capable of caring and compassion. Her background never becomes overbearing but it's there for the players who actually invest the time into trying to understand her. I think how the game handles sexuality is pretty classy in that
it's not blown up to be a big deal but also not downplayed either. Most people probably played through the game not realizing that Kaine was a hermaphrodite or that Emil was gay
Then there is the dialogue, which is phenomenal. Kaine's banter with Weiss is great as they both play really well off each other. It's both hostile and funny at the same time. Nier also has some great stuff with Weiss as well, mainly in their conflicting ideology regarding some moral conflicts in the game. The best moments of Nier as a character, come when he's interacting with Weiss. Emil plays the little brother dynamic pretty well to both Kaine and Nier, and his banter was a great way of looking at different sides to some of the other characters as he's more happy and hopeful than anyone else in the party. All their banter really comes together to create a really cohesive party that made me want to do some of the side missions just to hear some of the commentary. A key element of this was the VA work. I should really note how well Laura Bailey read Kaine's lines. Kaine's rant at the end of
Part 1 is legendary because of Bailey.
Popola's scream when Devola died.
The music is out of this world. I've been listening to the soundtrack for the past few days and it sounds even better out of the game (and in higher audio quality). People have been raving about the soundtrack for awhile, in pretty much every "Greatest OST in Gaming" thread, and I very much doubted that it was that good. Yea, I was wrong, it really is fantastic. I've listened to some stuff from Studio Monaca in some anime shows but the work here is by far the best from the studio. Okabe really knocked it out the park with the compositions. For example the use of drums in the battle songs adds a visceral element to the music, contrasted with the music when exploring. Each area of the game had a really distinctive feel due to the variation in the OST. The OST has a really haunting feel to it which fits the tragic aspect of the game very well. There were also some good chord progressions bits sprinkled throughout the music, which I loved as I'm a big acoustic fan. There's a lot of different instrument usage which gave many of the songs their own element.
I'm a bit leery of vocal tracks in music as I think they can become overbearing if used too much or if the vocals aren't a good fit for the scene. Emi Evans should be applauded for her work here. The vocals have a very soft sound to them and due to this, avoid that overbearing aspect in the scenes they're used. The vocals become part of the atmosphere and background and really give a lot of character to the music. I also think the use of a female singer was the correct call as it gives a surreal feeling to the music. Then there is the amount and quality of work Evans did in regards to the lyrics.
I really want to point out Song of the Ancients due to this as it both sounds familiar but foreign as well. I think this is a sort of storytelling through music as it evokes a sense of loss to the player, who can then extend that to the character they're controlling.
I should mention how the OST was used, such as how parts of The Song of the Ancients would fade in and out depending on how close the player was to Devola when she is playing. It really gives a lot of texture to the player's location in the world. Also I thought the use of The Song the Ancients when
after Devola died and you're fighting Popola
Finally there is the way the narrative was told, not so much the story in of itself. It's a weird way of phrasing it but the main story itself of Nier trying to rescue his daughter is pretty standard fare and it's not overly that interesting. What is interesting are things like
the five year timeskip
timeskip was a very cool method of justifying Nier's fighting ability and also a good breaking point for the later playthroughs. It's fairly rare to see that sort of timeskip in a single work of fiction but I think the game does utilize it somewhat effectively by showing not only how Nier has changed but also the world around him.
stop massacring all these Shades
much an asshole both Nier and you as a player were
It's clear that a big theme of the game is understanding and communication. The shades have no real effective way of communicating with the Replicants leading to all this fighting and death
villains in the game and really gives a bigger emotional context for many of the events. So it becomes less about slaughtering these monsters and more about the tragedy surrounding these morphed humans. It really expands the game as a tragedy in that you see how the young shadeling and P-33 are becoming friends, only to be slaughtered minutes later. It's also a great way of building off the twist that all the Shades are humans and instead of the twist being there just for shock value, it adds a lot of emotional depth and impact to the twist
There were also some gameplay mechanics in the game that I actually really enjoyed. The first was the Forest of Myth, with all the stories being in text form. Yea it feels somewhat cheap but it's also sort of cool in that it's something almost any other videogame would try to avoid. It requires a person to take a break from mindless slashing and actually read something. This was a game 'mechanic' that will never end up in a AAA or SE developed game because it would have been heavily lambasted by focus testers. There was also the bit at the end where
the game asks you who Yonah loves most in the world and instead of it being some meaningless selection, the game forces you to type out your own name
On that note, I want to talk about Ending D briefly. I've been reading Grimoire Noire and the interview with the staff, and one thing that struck me was this segment:
I think that's absolutely true and something that struck me right after the credits rolled.
Nier as a person wouldn't do this in the game as he wouldn't just abandon his daughter but the player themselves would make the sacrifice. This is compounded by how the deletion occurs in that the player sees all their progress and effort slowly wiped out. Not in some cinematic cutscene but rather in real time. The players themselves are suffering that loss
All in all, I think it was a pretty good experience even if I think the game is heavily flawed in a lot of ways. I wish they could have released the Replicant version in English as it seems a closer to what the original goal of the game was, which was to show the love between a pair of siblings. There's also the bit about what happens after the end of the game in Grimoire Noire and holy fuck. So
turns out everybody is going to die soon anyway and there really were no happy endings in this
