So, 03.07.2022, at 4 am I completed the first playthrough of the game. Experts are already preparing to write to me that it is impossible to make a final verdict, because you need to go through the game N times to fully familiarize yourself with the story. Take your time, gentlemen, I already have something to write.
This is a very controversial project, after meeting it you want to complain for a very long time, but even more you want to turn on the soundtrack and think about the story you saw, which will not let you go for a long time. And who, if not me, will tell you about this unique game?
Oh old eccentric
Both the successes and failures of the game, judging by the available information and the handwriting of the creator, are the result of the work of Yoko Taro, screenwriter and game designer of the Drakengard universe and its spin-off NieR under the publishing house Square Enix. To some extent, the wide audience reach and salvation of the last non-mobile project NieR Automata was in the hands of Platinum Games, who had already accomplished a similar miracle with Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. And let’s be honest, thanks to fanservice designs and rumors of a good story, Nier Automata was able to amass a fanbase and profit. Better than its predecessors because NieR Replicant was a commercial failure with very average critic scores.
And for some reason the user rating was inconsistent with 6.5 from experts, and over time the project began to acquire cult status and recognition. Here, thanks to the success of the sequel and the fact that Square Enix doesn’t want to make games we saw the remake of Replicant, which I went through.
That’s how we got NieR Replicant. A very original work, AA arthouse from the world of game development even before Death Stranding.
What is the game about?
Here I will borrow a short synopsis of the game from the wiki:
The main character, together with his ill sister Yona, live in a small village ruled by the twins Popola and Devola. Soon Yona runs away in search of a flower that, according to legend, grants wishes – the Moon’s Tear. Having gone after her, the main character finds a talking book – Grimoire Weiss. Together with Yona, they return to the village. Then, the main character helps restore Weiss’s lost memory, while meeting new characters who will become his companions in the future – the outcast girl Kaine and the boy Emil, who turns everything to stone with his gaze.
In fact, we have a compact RPG, where we have a “base” in the form of our native village, several locations in which we will walk in circles according to the plot and sidequests, and we will beat our enemies with sword and magic.
From the outside it looks like a slasher film, but the dead system of combinations, alas, does not allow you to fully spin the combos, and as a result, their variability is extremely small.
Very briefly bypassing the details of the plot and simplifying, we can say that this is a small adventure with friends that you need to collect along the way, and the main goal is to save your sister.
We dissect the patient and analyze
So, I briefly talked about the game, time to take out a magnifying glass and take a closer look at what worked and what didn’t.
Combine incompatible
Question for genre connoisseurs: how many open-world https://gibsoncasino.co.uk/bonus/ slasher films can you remember?? I would say 0 up to a certain point, because things seem difficult to combine: combinations, style points, calculating the level score… This is the legacy of DMC, which seemed to have created a certain framework, but our esteemed creator decided to abandon style points, (SORRY) from combinations, and add RPG elements. As a result, if you understand the genre and style of the game, you can try to build dynamic gameplay yourself with all the necessary tools. All this, by the way, appeared only in NieR Automata, here we have no combinations, switching weapons takes a long time, throwing does not work very smoothly, so the current experiment, unfortunately, did not succeed, but it created a precedent. So here we have a contribution to the development of the genre and to the industry as a whole. But fans of slasher films have nothing to do here for now, I strictly recommend NieR Automata to them, but if you like the story, then you can look here.
The plastic world has won
This point will disappoint another audience. The game claims to be an open world, which may attract pioneers and explorers, but there is disappointment here too. The world is open, but dead (I would even say false (ah, irony)), in itself it is quite small, nothing happens in it, only new additional tasks and related events appear. Unfortunately, there is nothing to explore.
Atmosphere
With the gameplay plus and minus it’s clear, it’s time to move on to the pluses.
This video of completing one of the additional quests with walking around our village is very indicative: the gray flower bed straight from Fallout 3 plays into the atmosphere, and does not repel; the melancholic soundtrack is soothing and mesmerizing; Conversations can sometimes be heard in the background; the villagers will interact with the hero during dialogue (even if only with one phrase), but this is quite enough to immerse themselves in the local atmosphere.
And, according to unspoken rules, every self-respecting player must stand and listen to Devola’s singing at the beginning of the game.
Literally in the first few hours of the game, I was already to some extent familiar with the characters and the place, I even became a little attached to it: it’s nice to be here, which breaks up the walks around the world, because after the player’s nerve-wracking quests “go here and there,” we find ourselves here, check the vegetable garden, go to the tavern for quests, and the soundtrack accompanies us throughout all these activities. At the same point, I’d like to mention Keiichi Okabe’s music, which not only complements, but leads the mood.
Additional quests. Boar farm with surprises.
And here, too, not everything is so simple. The game has a lot of quests of the “go get it” level at best, and at worst “go farm”, as a result of which you are simply given loot and that’s it. Very bad, Yoko Taro, very. But sometimes they are diluted with funny moments, sometimes sad stories, and sometimes even aesthetic pleasure.
For 3 quests with a search for loot, you will come across a funny story about a couple who just can’t stop arguing. Immediately after farming the boars and their parts, we learn a sad story about an old man and his dog, and as a result of collecting the tails of mice and lizards, our reward is the joint singing of Devola and Popola. This is the only moment in the game where they sing together in a tavern, and it is the player’s reward for their work. From the point of view of the RPG component, everything is bad and the player should be disappointed, but these are emotions and events not for the character, but for the player himself. And there is something charming and very valuable about it. Where else will we see this??
Even the fishing quest, which was done with varying success throughout the game, had its own dramatic outcome. For all 50 hours I perceived it as a dubious mini-game and additional activity, and this turn of events really made me feel the story. After all, I didn’t take what was happening seriously and didn’t think about it, thereby superficially becoming involved in the fate of a lonely fisherman, like the main character.
In general, if you don’t want to complete it 100%, then I recommend looking somewhere for a guide on worthy quests that need to be completed. On the downside, we learn little about the world and setting, but we do learn a lot of intimate and interesting stories that deserve attention.
A game design nightmare featuring helicopter from Devil May Cry 2
I paint everything so colorfully, it’s time to drink. What’s in action games?? Enemies and bosses. If I have already described the combat as a whole in detail, then you can complain about the bosses for 2 eternities. I can think of 2 good ones, 2-3 acceptable ones, and the rest… I CAN’T HIT THEM WITH A SWORD, I CAN’T HIT THEM WITH A SWORD, I CAN’T HIT THEM WITH A SWORD. O YOU HAVE NO RIGHT, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT, AND THEN YOU HAVE NO RIGHT.
This is a disgrace to the Horde, this is a disaster, half the bosses tell you “shoot me for 10 minutes on hard”, this is literally a helicopter boss from DMC 2. A boss on the wall that needs to be shot, a target boss from a shooting gallery in the village, a boss with immunity to melee attacks who has a SAFE SPOT in the ARENA. ALO? WHO DID THIS? FOR WHAT? We’re not even talking about a challenge here, it’s hard to get banal pleasure from this.
I really don’t recommend going on hard, not because it will be difficult, but because the most terrible moments will increase in time by 3 times. I want to turn off the game and learn a new hobby. And here a natural question arises: is it worth playing?? There are advantages, yes, but so far the disadvantages greatly outweigh them.
Characters
Let’s take a little step aside. We can often hear in discussions about different stories an assessment of the development of characters. What distinguishes flat characters from interesting ones?? Depth of elaboration, probably… And here we once again have a unique case. Abstractly and in a vacuum, we have the following participants.
Main character. ± default qualities of the protagonist. According to the formula we know best from The Witcher, with its own predetermined personal qualities. The only unique trait: a strong motivation to save her sister and a hatred of shadows that grows over the course of the story.
Caine. The most natural redneck in a fanservice costume.
The Arrogant Magic-Casting Book, Our First Companion.
And this is Yona, our little sister, sick with an incurable disease. Kind, naive, small (explain your smallness)
Emil is a little out of line with my thesis about the simplicity of archetypes due to his abilities. A naive child, blind and locked in a mansion for a long time. He is the ultimate weapon for destroying all living things, but at the same time he is a kind guy.
Noticed an interesting feature? A few words are enough to describe it, and we get the most standard and boring archetype, it’s difficult to find a more dull set for your team. But here Yoko Taro once again showed off his unique approach and screenwriting skills (no joke).
What if you put the most ordinary characters at the center of a tragic story?? Let me give you an example: from the story of a reformed egoist you can build a dubious children’s film about chipmunks, Iron Man and even Oskar Schindler. Your deeply developed character is worthless without a story that reveals him, which is what our party proves. Kaine and Weiss (Shiro in the Japanese version) are always fighting, but the dialogue is written in a funny and convincing way that makes it easy to believe. And on top of this, a muddy story about the power of friendship in a matter of minutes gave way to the bitterness of defeat and loss. Just as an oil painting that looks unattractive when viewed closely becomes a whole canvas if you take a few steps back, so the story of our group becomes more dramatic and touching when we remember the path we have traveled and the adventures we have experienced. Especially at the end of the game.
Plot (no spoilers)
I played Replicant after NieR Automata, where I rated the plot and local stories very highly, but there were some questions about the main storyline: on the first 2 playthroughs the ending looked blurry. Yes, everything seems logical, we came to the end of the story, but it didn’t give me any feedback. Only in the last playthrough did I feel the integrity of the storyline. And after completing NieR Replicant, I got the feeling that Yoko Taro put all his soul and all his ideas into this story. The franchise of a mad game designer with dozens of ideas and plots, stretching over 12,000 years, feels like the most developed, dramatic and personal story here.
We met many characters to whom we became attached to some extent and learned their stories. Touching and dramatic, with carefree days and ruthless twists of fate. At the same time, we follow our own path to the goal, so that in the end it all merges in a whirlwind of events. Broken lives, broken dreams, the bitterness of loss, the cruel truth, the desires of different people that can only be fulfilled on the broken destinies of others. And in the center is the same team of the protagonist. And we, as spectators and accomplices. The last chord will be a touching and dramatic finale, where you feel a bitter victory at too great a cost, because you cannot fully share the triumph with the main character, the “flat characters” have sunk into your soul too much. And already at the credits, listening to Ashes of dreams, the player is left alone with his emotions and the taste of bitter victory. In the damned world that he himself created.
Results
We have a lot of problems from a game design point of view: weak combat, dead open world, backtracking, terrible boss design, boring sidequests. But all this fades when the plot picks up steam. Almost every part of the story leaves you indifferent, inevitably bringing us closer to the bloody and cruel ending.