I just reached Route C and started controlling
. And I'm quickly running out of patience.
There are three ways to reach your destination in this gane, one of them is fast travel fro a save point that unlocks at the midpoint of every route, and fast travel alone wouldn't be so archiac if navigating the world wasn't so tedious.
You can sprint to your destination, and at that point the game tries its hardest to make sprinting as tedious as possible, from uneven terrain halting your momentum to the desert going out of its way to mess up your sprint.
You can also look for a mount, awkwardly go through the menus and use bait, and you have to do the same thing every time you dismount.
I don't have a problem with fast travel being only available at save points and being unlocked halfway through the game. But when navigation is this bad, the game is trying its hardest to make navigation as tedious as possible.
Which is a shame, because the combat and story are great, and it feels like traversal is holding the game back.
I have no problem with the small open world or the fetch quests because the combat is great, I just don't like navigating the world, which is what makes the quests terrible.
The map itself is pretty useless, my first playthrough was miserable because of that map and useless waypoints, but after memorizing the world with one week of play time, I don't even use the map or terrible waypoints anymore.
I'm not saying the game should be linear, but if you're going to make an open world game, make it fun to explore, Nier's open world is one of the worst designed open worlds I have played in the last few years.
TL;DR the traversal and navigating the open world is an albatross holding a great game back.
A2
There are three ways to reach your destination in this gane, one of them is fast travel fro a save point that unlocks at the midpoint of every route, and fast travel alone wouldn't be so archiac if navigating the world wasn't so tedious.
You can sprint to your destination, and at that point the game tries its hardest to make sprinting as tedious as possible, from uneven terrain halting your momentum to the desert going out of its way to mess up your sprint.
You can also look for a mount, awkwardly go through the menus and use bait, and you have to do the same thing every time you dismount.
I don't have a problem with fast travel being only available at save points and being unlocked halfway through the game. But when navigation is this bad, the game is trying its hardest to make navigation as tedious as possible.
Which is a shame, because the combat and story are great, and it feels like traversal is holding the game back.
I have no problem with the small open world or the fetch quests because the combat is great, I just don't like navigating the world, which is what makes the quests terrible.
The map itself is pretty useless, my first playthrough was miserable because of that map and useless waypoints, but after memorizing the world with one week of play time, I don't even use the map or terrible waypoints anymore.
I'm not saying the game should be linear, but if you're going to make an open world game, make it fun to explore, Nier's open world is one of the worst designed open worlds I have played in the last few years.
TL;DR the traversal and navigating the open world is an albatross holding a great game back.