While I never played the original Nier or the Drakengard games they spawned from, I've actually been interested in them for a while. Mostly due to Nier's interesting combination of hack-and-slash gameplay with bullet hell projectiles. That, and the series is known to have some really bizarre plots (the first game involved a little girl with a deep man's voice and a legion of titanic fanged babies trying to destroy the world). Automata pulled me in by the fact that it was made by PlatinumGames. The company has shown to be excellent at creating character action games, so it seemed like a really good fit. Within the first hour of the game, you'll be flying mech suits, slicing adorable spring bots to pieces, and gunning down machines with your DC Douglas voiced Pod. It's over the top and surreal: and I absolutely love it. In fact, Nier Automata is one of Platinum's best games to date.
Automata takes place in the year 11,945 A.D., on an earth dominated by deadly (albeit precious) robots. Thousands of years prior, a race of mysterious aliens attacked earth using a seemingly infinite army of machines, forcing mankind to retreat into space. The aliens later vanished, although their machines still remained, forcing the remains of mankind to live on the moon. In order to combat the machines, humanity establishes YoRHa, a military organization focused on combating the machines using androids built in mankind's likeness. You play as a combat android named 2B, who travels the remains of Earth with her partner 9S in order to find a way to defeat the machines and allow the humans to return to home. Thankfully, you don't need to know anything about the stories of the original Nier or Drakengard games in order to understand the plot of Automata. While they're are a couple minor references and appearances of past Nier characters, their established enough so newcomers to the series aren't out of the loop. There are a lot of really well done plot twists and dark moments done later in the story, which makes you massively invested in the fate of the characters: it can even be philosophical at times. The game also carries on the tradition of its predecessors by being reeeeeeaaaaally weird. Not only are their several meta moments that'll make you go "wait what?" but their are many, many bizarre, even somewhat dark moments in both the main story and the side stories. However, it's weird moments are actually very well done and honestly add to the game's charm. I honestly don't want to spoil moments since the games still pretty new, but trust me they're pretty freaking entertaining.
The game has a lot of style in it's main characters and enemies. 2B and 9S both have very cool designs that make them stand out from the denizens of Earth and have a lot of movement in their attack animations. 2B's combat movements are both fast paced and graceful, as the two floating weapons on her back materialize back and forth into her hand as she alternates between light and heavy attacks. I also really like the interaction between the two and their Pods, from commanding special weapons like the laser cannon to holding onto the pods to glide around the terrain. A lot of the games charm comes from the machines. Not only do these cuddly-wuddly rust buckets look adorable, but even their fighting is adorable. The little ones cartoonishly flail their fists at you, some of them ride little UFOs, and some of them even wear outfits and ride each other: their all so goofy and bizarre, but strangely enough it makes fighting them that much more fun.
Fitting the empty and somber atmosphere of Automata, the soundtrack makes use of beautiful orchestral music that often compliment how strangely calm the city is. The instrumental work is beautiful and the soundtrack does a great job of transitioning music from area to area. Getting closer to areas with story objectives often results in the soundtrack adding instruments and vocals, giving the tracks more depth. There are even 8-bit versions of nearly all the tracks in game! The sound effects are also awesome, giving each sword you swing and bullet you fire so much more weight and impact.
The highlight of this game is the combat, which is ridiculously satisfying. 2B is armed with two weapons for light and heavy attacks, as well as Pods, which are armed with ranged weapons and multiple special weapons to choose from. You can also collect a large amount of different melee weapons, such as swords, great swords, spears, and gauntlets. This gives you a massive amount of customization with 2B's fighting style, as well as how you deal with enemies. The bullet hell elements are also really well done, allowing you to break red bullets and shoot through purple bullets. The game also doesn't make use of a ranking system like the past Platinum games for fights: instead your just allowed to fight however you choose with the only way to fail is die. Dying still has consequence, however, as you'll drop items and equipped chips when you die. You can retrieve them by finding your destroyed body, provided you don't die on the way there, keeping the player on their toes. There is so much potential for how you can fight and how you prep to fight. Top that off with a chip equipment system with dozens upon dozens of collectible passive boosts as well as ridiculously tight and smooth movement controls, and you have a beautiful combat system.
Automata's world gives you a vast amount of space to explore. There's a huge amount of variety in the amount of areas you have to travel through, from the YoRHa base called the Bunker, to destroyed cities, to abandoned factories, to deserts, and so much more. The detail in the environment is very well detailed, and the pale color palette used for the city helps emphasize just how dead yet peaceful it all feels, while at the same time helping the enemy machines' brightly colored projectiles pop out.
These cities and wastelands are also filled with many collectibles and rewards to find, with a lot of cool stuff hidden around. You can find side quests, hidden weapons, extra Pods, fishing spots, crafting materials and rare robots all around the map. Not only that, but the game has access to a ton of re-playable content, including several endings and a couple of unlockable characters. You actually get the ability to play as 9S later on, who trades the ability to carry a second weapon or use heavy attacks in exchange for hacking. In combat, hacking can be used on machines to either damage them, turn them to your side, or manually control them, provided you complete a little minigame. 9S can also hack certain locks in the world to open chests and doors that 2B couldn't get into. It's so satisfying when you get your first ending and proceed to continue on with so much more to discover.
I do have a couple of gripes with the game however, both mainly to do with some of the side content. First of all, the fast travel only unlocks after you get to a certain point in the story. This means that you've essentially got to do a bit of running around until then, and while you have the ability to ride some of the animals to increase your speed, they have no air maneuverability or decent attacks. Not to mention you need to find one that's already docile or use a bait item, so it's not really something you'll use often. This proves to be a bit annoying, especially if you want to do some side quests before getting to that point in the main story. Not to mention that when you unlock 9S' story mode, you have to progress in his story to unlock it for him, which is kinda annoying since you just had it beforehand. Secondly, some of the side quests in this game are just filler. You know, the quests that are less "quests" and more so "go talk to five people and then talk to me" or "get me five apples that are just lying around everywhere". Seriously, there's one side quest where you talk to an NPC, talk to three NPCs in THREE DIFFERENT CORNERS OF THE MAP, talk to the first NPC AGAIN, talk to each of the three other NPCs AGAIN, and than go to talk to the first NPC ONE MORE TIME..... ugh. This is one of the worse ones for sure, but there are a few other bad ones. A good few of them are just going around and gathering crafting materials for people. I still recommend doing them because some of them are actually pretty creative and lead to some charming or morbid little side stories, just don't be surprised when a tenth person is asking for a pristine screw. While these two issues are fairly annoying, they still don't ruin this awesome game.
One of my favorite parts of this game (enough that I needed to give it it's own paragraph) is how easily it transitions in both camera views and gameplay segments. Automata often mixes up the gameplay by placing you into side scroller sections or top down sections, and the axis your pod can shoot in changes accordingly. There are also the flight unit sections where you ride a mech in the air to fight larger enemies, or 9S' hacking abilities which let you play a little space shooter. These sections all help spice up the level, but keep the gameplay between them similar enough that you can easily transition between them at a moments notice. It transitions so gracefully that you can switch from regular 3D environment view to a 2.5D side view and back again and have no problem adapting to it whenever it comes up. The hacking sections are also so simple and short that they never break the fast pace of battles. These are honestly some of the smoothest camera transitions I've ever seen in a video game period.
All in all, Nier Automata is an amazing game, I absolutely love it, and is easily one of my favorite games by PlatinumGames (which given their past works is a HUGE statement). The combat is fast-paced, engaging, and gives you so much choice in how you fight and customize your play style. The characters are both memorable and charming. The lore and side stories of the world are actually pretty engrossing. The visuals are a pleasure to look at and the animations have a ton of style to them, with both perfectly complimented by an absolutely gorgeous sound track. In a world full of post-apocalyptic media, Automata actually feels like a breath of fresh air. While it knows how to be grim and somber, it also knows how to take itself lightly from time to time and be genuinely charming and heartwarming. After all, whose to say a world built upon the deaths of billions of humans can't have cute robots dressed as clowns? If your a fan of character action games or action RPGs, I can't recommend this game enough. It's a dead world you won't regret living in.
The Good
-Intense, Fast-Paced Combat
-Dark, Yet Charming and Surreal Storyline
-Beautiful and Epic Soundtrack
-Deep, Memorable Characters with Great Designs
-Tons of Side Quests, World Map Secrets, and
Replayable Content
-Machines are Adorable Enough to be a Plushes
The Bad
-Some Mediocre Side Quests Here and There
-Fast Travel Comes in a Bit Late and Animal Mounts
aren't Very Good
-Machine Plush DOES NOT EXIST