I assume you don't need to play the previous two games to understand this one? It's a war in a distant future against androids vs oldschool machines that have more primitive AI, and people are long extinct, right? I remember someone saying that people expecting a typical crazy Platinum action out of this game are in for a rude awakening - I guess based on the previous two entries in the series - which I never played or was really aware of?
Depending on how you count, there are either 1 (Nier) or 3 previous games in the franchise (Nier + Drakengard 1 and 3), as they all are set, despite carrying different names, in the same universe, similar to FFXII, FFTactics and Vagrant Story.
The games all have isolated, character driven stories that don't require you to know about the other games at all, but there are connections of one game being the cause/effect of another game and such, as well as certain characters reappearing and events being mentioned.
When talking about rude awaking for people expecting pure platinum action, it's meant that these games are much more than just straight forward action games, even if they look like one at first contact, especially the first Nier.
Nier had a lot of non-action content like small puzzles, platforming moments, farming, fishing, a lot of middlelong cutscenes and even two really long text adventure segments,
Furthermore the creator loves to troll and punish the audience and do things that go against common expecations, like locking the ending of Drakengard 1 in such a way that it becomes literally impossible to finish the game without a guide or having the last boss be
.
He also wanted to implement a boss in Nier: Automata who's abilities include the intentional drop of the framerates, tho he apparently wasn't allowed to.
Basically, it's okay to expect good action, but you set yourself up for disappointment if you want it to be
only action.
It's mostly just repeated because there were quite a few people here on GAF who called it "literally MGR2" after seeing the first bits of gameplay.
The demo was also on an easy side in Normal mode, I felt like I took quote a few hits, and still lived, I did't die once in the whole demo. Not that I was terrible or anything, but it seems easier than Bayonetta for example.
Normal was definitely too easy, hard is the way to go for the release version if you're somewhat experienced.
If you want a really good challenge, you can try playing on very hard aka one-hit mode
