Nier Automata Failed Review (Spoilers)

I've heard many things about Nier Automata. How it is such a beautiful, complex game that deals with hard-posed philosophies around what it means to live when your existence is based on a lie... or something like that. I thought it would be an interesting concept if the game followed the same example as the Ghost in the Shell series. But I had some major... major problems with the game.

One reviewer that I actually enjoy showing off an honest opinion is Zero Punctuation. And one year came long ago back in March 2017 when he did a piece on Nier Automata. The only thing I really remembered from that episode was something to the effect of You need to play the game over a few times. That didn't really make sense to me. Wouldn't that be awful? Well, everyone seemed to like the game.

But you may recall that a lot of people also liked the movie Gravity. So I booted up the game and decided to take a crack at it - 4 hours to be precise. Then I reached the point of my "ending". Maybe I should write this down in bullet form so it would make it easier to read where things went wrong. Or you can always watch Gaming Sins video for why things really didn't make sense to me.

The Bad

1) The introduction is thrown at you to get your adrenaline pumping. I hate this. There is something wrong when you throw me into the frying pan and expect me to know what to do. I must have spent 30 minutes checking out the controls, changing their settings, practicing my swings, trying to figure out how to lock onto targets, and how to move around. This led to...

2) Learning that certain features aren't like the Batman: Arkham series, or Dynasty Warriors saga for that matter. Locking onto a target is a toggle that must be pressed for every target. This wouldn't be so bad if you could see the entire room. This led to...

3) Finding out how horrible the camera is. The camera doesn't actually perform well within closed areas. Enemies will attack you without you knowing it. There was a brief joke on the ship about how an android is feeling motion sick. I didn't think much of it until it was again mentioned at the Refugee Camp down below. Then on cue I started suffering motion sickness. It might have been how the camera pans lower when you are dashing. FOV (Field of View) was an issue for me in Talos Principle and The Witness. It also could be how the camera continues to move while you are stationary. Some camera movements were simply unnecessary. This made me believe that...

4) They intentionally added too much fan service. Honestly as a Japanese game, I was able to look past the questionable (and yet cute) outfit B2 was wearing. I can even look past the fact that a fighting android wears heels. But the camera oddly pans below her in some of the most unusual locations. The game suffers from blurring the line of an android mirroring human personalities and at the same time leading us to believe it is not supposed to. When you install a soundwave chip, you get to hear your fellow androids talk about all sorts of stuff, like keeping up with their figure or impressing another android. If they weren't supposed to show emotion, why were they given emotions to begin with? But they have no form of modesty or reason. Using your self-destruct destroys your outfit but doesn't exactly destroy you. So you continue with... whatever wasn't destroyed in the blast? Things get even weirder later on so I'm just going to stop there. Besides, this make me question...

5) How did we reach to such a tragedy? When you are writing up a disaster, you have to add some believable points to your story. Most zombie films start off with a series of dumb scientist accidents, generally because of humanity's ability for self-preservation. One fine example of this can be seen in the Rise of the Planet of the Apes film. The androids say they can only "exist" while fighting but at the same time they are trying to end it? If the androids are so hard-coded to accept the fact that humans are only using them to fight, wouldn't they "end program" when their mission is complete? If they weren't just mindless robots then they must have realized that the entire mission statement was a complete farce once they started to do the math and figured out no one has actually seen or had an actual conversation with a human. I knew things were off within the first two hours of gameplay at The Bunker but I really knew something was wrong when I didn't see any humans on the surface either. I'm surprised I could keep going seeing that...

6) There really wasn't a reason to keep fighting. They pulled a Spec Ops: The Line on you; Bioshock also attempted this with mixed results. They wanted you to hate playing the game. At a certain point, they "make" you take the immoral choice of destroying innocent robots (whether it is considered right or wrong is another matter) or stop playing. The game I was playing wasn't meant to be enjoyable. This would have been the tipping point I stopped playing the game if it wasn't for...

7) No Auto Saves. Remember when I said I spent some time at the beginning trying to figure out the controls? I died. Sounds silly, I know, but I died at the onset of the game. I had to start all over. There was absolutely no way to save the game at that point. Then I found out you can only save the game at these checkpoints scattered around the zones. I already had a bad feeling from seeing all the locked content and higher leveled enemies within the first two zones. Then after going through an area without a save point, the game crashed. This wasn't like I died at some point and had to go grab my body. I lost the data (which I guess sort of followed the whole android theme they had going for in the game). And that was it. After confirming my suspicions, I quit the game and uninstalled it. I guess that is alright seeing that...

8) A lot of the story comes from previous games. It's sort of a catch-22 but there are elements of the game that aren't fully explained. They sort of spoil themselves by directly admitting that these cameos from the previous series of Drakengard and Nier are entirely true. I think the game shows a bigger mystery when not admitting the link to previous games. Honestly, the saga as a whole is pretty bogged down with mythologies that only complicate things. At least A2's backstory can be read up on a tiny monitor screen. There is just not enough to help explain things in the long run.

The Good

1) The introduction of the game does not give any justice to the overall tone. It isn't until later you can discover an entire memory chip system where you can insert specific items to your cortex to improve your overall experience. I honestly wished they would have developed this a little more. Tron Legacy did this where you could only equip limited programs depending on the allocated space in the environment you are in. One of the first chips you can buy is a Soundwave Chip so you can listen into people's conversations. Imagine if they made it so you only had the most basic chips and you had to obtain things as simple as color spectrum bands to your eyes or logic script to allow you make optional responses in dialogue. Instead, it seems most of that doesn't matter for you will always have enough space to insert the most ridiculously overpowered setup with regeneration chips and instant item usage. Which is cool because...

2) The combat system is phenomenal. Without taking consideration of the bad camera, your combat can vary between light attacks, heavy attacks, range attacks, or auxiliary attacks. It takes some time to become acquainted with the setup. I personally feel close-combat strikes to be the most fun. However, standing back and letting your pod do most of the work is also a valid strategy. But honestly...

3) The game environment looks stupendous. My memory might be a bit skewed for playing 8-bit games but I really do enjoy checking out the scenery. There are multiple avenues you can take to your destination. For example, the one that stuck with me was this run-down building before the Refugee Camp. You could drop down multiple floors that collapsed onto the ground, take the stairs, or climb down the emergency ladder. I just wish the areas weren't so short. You could easily go through each zone in an hour or two. Then those same areas will be reused multiple times from backtracking and repeated playthroughs. At least they put effort into...

4) The boss fights. Every boss fight is a surprise. They really put some creative genius into each of these encounters. From giant oil rig robots to desert centipedes, I don't think there is ever a dull moment. Each boss has multiple phases that make you wonder if you will ever defeat these opponents. But I don't think fighting the bosses mean much unless you take into consideration how...

5) The music blends in with the game so, so well. I could go on and on about the music. Each song that comes up shares the overall theme and yet at the same time, unique to the setting. Check out some songs here and let me know what you think. There was a Kotaku article where the guy gets goosebumps (not sharing the video for extreme language) over combat music cues like this one at the 1:20 mark. And I would have to agree that I too smiled when listening to flawless music transitions from zone to zone.

Summary

There wasn't a way people could simplify the experience of such a complex game to the general public. The game both suffers and excels at being a hodgepodge of gaming concepts most developers wouldn't even attempt at adding to their project. Can a person explain what makes FLCL so interesting? No. You can only judge it once you test the mettle yourself.