"Nier: Automata" Review

In many ways, Nier: Automata brings Undertale to mind: the slightly meta story, elements of bullet hell gameplay, an unnecessary upskirt view every time you jump...actually, that last one isn't much like Undertale at all, but you get the picture. Nier: Automata is quirky, experimental, and while it undoubtably won't have the same staying power as Undertale, it's a fantastic time that is worth every cent you spend on it. From what I understand, Nier: Automata is another entry in a long running saga at one point called Drackengard, but take it from me, you don't need to have played any of the prior titles (not even the original Nier) in order to have a basic understanding of the story. Let us begin.

Nier: Automata follows two androids with the YorHa program; a force of androids tasked with reclaiming the Earth from machines (which were created by aliens) so that the humans (who now live on the moon) can return to their homeworld. Right off the bat you may be scratching your head, especially when it comes to the whole alien aspect. Don't get your hopes up expecting an explanation for that, because you won't get it. Either way, these two androids, 2B (our protagonist, a female combat model whose name I'm afraid to google because lord knows what kind of pervy fan art has been made of her) and 9S (a male scanner model and our sidekick), head to Earth one day to assist the android forces on the surface with their operations, and...stuff....happens...Look, this is another way in which Automata reminds me of Undertale. There really isn't a grand plot to be found beyond "the characters did this and then did that," and if you attempt to view the story in terms of what happens in the moment, you'll be both confused and disappointed. Automata falls in the JRPG trap of not explaining anything and then expecting the player to understand grand story points when they happen. So, whatever you do, don't come into this game looking for a story that'll move you to tears. Like Undertale, the power in the story lies in the ways characters change and in the bits of backstory that are tied to events that rear their heads in the plot. In a way, I guess you could say that while the plot is weak, the narrative is strong. It's a specific (and difficult to pull off) kind of storytelling that relies upon establishing the background well enough that the player can understand the significance when the time comes despite not having actually experienced the history for themselves. If you find yourself compelled to purchase Nier: Automata, get invested in the main characters and the world (even if some aspects of it aren't elaborated on), not the events of the plot.

Now that I've mentioned that the power of the story lies in the ways that characters change, I find myself in the unfortunate position of having to now mention that most characters beyond the main cast aren't very interesting. There are one or two standouts, of course, but as a whole, they're just kind of dull. Thankfully, the main cast more than makes up for this.
While she might initially come off as the kind of female protagonist I tend to rant about, 2B gets a surprising amount of development. Normally, fan service and character development are mutually exclusive. That is to say, if I have to spend half the game seeing a female character's underwear every time she jumps, that usually indicates said underwear was the only thing the developers bothered to develop. In the case of 2B, however, her character is also really well developed, and it's....conflicting. In my Horizon: Zero Dawn review, I mentioned that having a strong female character doesn't mean said character has to be asexual, but I think that the developers sexualizing on our behalf is a little different. It's just difficult to reconcile with this character's strength when it's so obvious that the developers spent as much time designing what's under the outfit as they did the overall look of the character. Maybe that's the point. Maybe the point was to brand people who can't see strength if a character is sexualized as hypocrites. That could be a pretty interesting article to write, but I just can't help but smell blatant fan service here.
Of the two, though, 9S is the better character, and the game spends significantly more time developing his character (and surprise, surprise, we never once see his underwear). I can't really go further into detail on 9S, as most of his development lies in extreme spoiler territory.

Earlier I mentioned that Automata contains elements of bullet hell gameplay, but I should elaborate and say that it isn't entirely a bullet hell game. Then again, it isn't entirely a JRPG, a hack and slash affair, or a visual novel either, and yet it contains elements of all these styles of gameplay. Normally such a game might be considered schizophrenic or wishy-washy, but there's an incredible sense of balance among all the types of gameplay, and it makes for an oddly cohesive hodgepodge that works as its own gameplay style.
In Automata, you wield a light and heavy melee weapon which you use interchangeably. Attack styles vary based on the weapons you choose, the distance from which you attack, and whether or not you attack immediately following a dodge, so there is plenty of attack variety to be found even if you use the same two weapons the entire game. You also have a "pod" at your disposal that acts as a machine gun with one of many secondary fire options. There's less variety here than in the melee attacks, but the machine gun (weak, though it may be) is a vital part of the flow of combat.
When you combine the sheer number of attack options, the constant barrage of gunfire you'll be laying down, the necessity of dodging at regular intervals, and the frankly ludicrous amount of enemies you'll be facing on the ground and in the air, it's not hard to imagine that combat tends to happen at breakneck speed. Thankfully though, this is the good kind of breakneck speed that keeps you on your toes but doesn't completely wear out your fingers or give you a headache. In addition, much like in games like Dark Souls, your success in Automata will depend entirely on your skill, not necessarily the equipment you use. I never made use of the many weapon upgrades to be found in Automata, but I got by with my skill alone. That's the mark of truly excellent gameplay right there. True, the combat does take a little bit of getting used to, especially when it transitions to bullet hell, but its not hard to get into a rhythm that works for you once you've gotten the hang of it.
While the bullet hell parts are also fun and fast-paced, they feel much more restrictive. In these portions, you're typically in a flying suit with its own set of weaponry, and you're typically fighting in a static square of battlefield as the scenery changes in the background to instill the idea that all of this is happening as you fly around. There's really nothing special about these sections if you've ever played a bullet hell game. It's fun, sure, but it lacks the customizable feel of the core gameplay, and I won't be taking off for it, but I do think the game would have been stronger without the static bullet hell sections.
There are also sections that incorporate bullet hell elements in the core gameplay, and these sections, on the other hand, are brilliant. They allow you to keep your personal combat rhythm while at the same time demanding that you account for more frequent and wide spread threats and sometimes odd camera angles. There's not much else to say on those sections.

Another way in which Nier: Automata innovates is in its leveling up system. At least in my own experience, I've never seen a level up style quite like this. You level up by slaying enemies and getting experience, as per the usual, but its the upgrading aspect of leveling up that is truly innovative. Given that our main characters are androids, they get their upgrades in the form of plug-in chips. Each chip takes up a certain amount of memory, with the most beneficial chips taking up the most room. You have a set amount of memory space in which to allocate chips, and you have the option to remove things such as pieces of the HUD (i.e. your experience tracker, radar, various icons, etc) in order to make room if it comes down to it. The upgrade system in Automata truly allows you to choose what is most important to you, and I thought it was fascinating.

You know, chips such as those are examples of technology, and that gives an excellent and not-at-all-forced segway into our next topic, the game's technical performance!
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Automata performs pretty well across the board. The framerate isn't always stable when you're running around the city, but it's never bad enough to cause you to lose your place or get a headache, and surprisingly enough, I don't believe I ever noticed framerate dips in combat no matter how crazy it got. That's an impressive technical feat, especially in the modern game industry. There was a tad bit of texture pop-in in the city area, but let's be honest, the textures in this game aren't fantastic to begin with.
That's an area in which I'm conflicted here, the graphics and overall visual aesthetic. It's pretty much equal parts beautiful and boring, and that might seem difficult to imagine, but Automata manages to be just that. However, boring as the visuals sometimes are, they're never offensive. And as I've made a point of saying a lot lately, I'm a Dragon Age fan, so I'm the last person who gets to penalize a game for subpar graphics.
What the game lacks in graphical quality, however, it makes up for in its soundtrack. This is easily one of the best soundtracks of this year, and it holds its own against soundtracks from previous years as well. Sure, there are times when it's a little overpowering for the situation it's attached to (much like the epic sweeping tracks of Morrowind), but it's just so doggoned good that I can't fault the game for that. Composer Keiichi Okabe brings in a number of vocalists (some with better vocal quality than others, but what can you do?) and exotic instruments to make a score that's truly one of a kind. Not only that, but Okabe occasionally uses pieces of the plot or situation at hand in tracks. For instance, in my personal favorite example of this, Okabe uses a line spoken by a group of machines as a kind of war chant in the background of a track that plays shortly after the line is spoken. On the surface, this might sound corny, but in practice it gave me chills. As if all of this weren't enough, Nier: Automata also has the prestigious honor of being the only game to have a poppy credits song that I actually enjoyed. Any time there's a poppy song with lyrics in the credits of any film or game, I tend to have PTSD flashbacks to the end of Eragon, but the song in the credits of Automata is quite good.

Normally I like to end my reviews with the technical performance section, but unfortunately there are still some things I need to touch on...and I do mean it when I say "unfortunately." They're small things, but I still feel the need to make a note of them.
The first of these things is the game's tendency to repeat itself. This applies to nearly every aspect of the game: the dialogue, the gameplay, even the soundtrack. At some point it feels like the developers don't trust us to figure out that the big complex question of this game is: are machines capable of emotion? As a result, they sort of hammer us over the head with the question over and over again. In addition, do you remember the cool soundtrack gimmick based off of lines spoken by a group of machines? Yeah, they pull that gag a few more times afterwards with the exact same track, just with different lines, and it gets a little less fun each time.
The repetition in the gameplay ties directly into the second thing I wanted to touch on before I conclude. By now, word has spread about the fact that in order to play through the full story, you have to play through the whole game more than once, so I don't feel bad about saying so here. In truth, you have to play 3 times in order to get the full picture. Unfortunately this means that there's plenty of repetition, as the second time through is just playing through the plot once more from a different perspective. It's still fun, but the gameplay from this different perspective is incredibly repetitive. Then, in the third play through, you actually enter new story territory, and it presents a conflicting situation. You see, as you go through these extra playthroughs the game really picks up its storytelling effort, but it drops the gameplay effort a little lower each play through. It all converges in the third playthrough, where you play through part 2 of the plot, where storytelling is at its best, but gameplay basically devolves into just taking on waves of enemies in tower-like structures. I personally found the third play through so dull that I didn't go back to play it a fourth time to see what happened if I made a different choice.

Despite what I literally just finished saying, I don't regret that third play through, and I certainly don't regret spending as much time with Nier: Automata as I did. I'll be frank, dear readers, this is a serious GOTY contender for 2017, and it's going to take an incredibly strong rest of the year to knock Automata out of the top 3. It has one of the best soundtracks I've heard in a while, a truly unique combat system that manages to work despite taking influence from vastly different styles, two strong main characters, and a narrative that gets better and better as the game progresses (even if the events themselves aren't incredibly strong). It manages to be unique without being alienating, it manages to pull off a storytelling style that depends on the player going through the game several times simply by virtue of how fun it is to play, and I believe you should go out and purchase it if you haven't already. Maybe you still aren't convinced. But I'm gonna shout it loud, even if my words seem meaningless.

Let us review:
Repetition: -0.3
Weak Second Part (Third Playthrough) -0.6

So, the final score for Nier: Automata is...

9.1/10 - Fantastic
Excellent work, PlatinumGames, excellent work.