Nier: Gestalt - Nier and yet so far

[twmac]

So I got this game as part of the 'What makes a metacritic score' challenge I set myself this year (I just finished a Red Dead Week last month) and I don't really know what to make of it.

Nier is a basic hack and slasher with series of fetch quests and RPG clothing wrapped around it. The two things that stand out are the Music Direction and the mood of the game as a whole.

The music direction has some Monkey Island-esque moments whereby, as you move between different areas, the music weaves new instruments into the song or changes them entirely but keeps with the same style or even possible the same song with a different mood. It is a pleasure just to switch between the different areas.

The mood of the game is outright depressing but in a very different way to most JRPGs. Everyone seems to be dying, getting sick or getting-sick-then-dying. I've made it seem quite trite, so I'll elaborate on an example: when out on an average-seeming fetch quest to collect and old man's errant dog, you find the dog dead with a herb in its mouth. Turns out, the dog never ran away and was actually trying to collect the herb that helped his master's heart condition. On returning to the old man you find his son, who tells you that the old man passed away in his sleep due to his heart giving out.

It is just so surprising to catch games doing that once, but this game does it every other side quest and story mission.

I don't think refreshing is the right word, but it is definitely unique from that perspective.

Anyone else played it?

[syntheticgerbil]

I'm not planning to play these ever but I did like the screenshots I saw of a lot of the art direction and the character designs of the side characters. Very interesting stuff you don't often see, especially from Japan.

So I can only guess the way you talk about the atmosphereor mood seems very spot on to me.

[Sno]

Oh hey, there was a topic for this too.

So i just played this, i'll just pull my comments out of the "recently completed" thread.

For no particular reason, I just played through Nier. Really a bad, dated game in a lot of ways.

Amazing bosses though, and i dug the story. That game also has an incredible soundtrack.

So i guess i'm feeling about it overall.

Haven't played it, but from spoilers I've read, did you make sure to

replay the game after beating it? New game+ actually changes the story significantly.

Yeah, i know about all that, and i could probably motor through new game+ pretty quickly if i really wanted to, but there are parts of that game i did not like at all. So i did the lazy, awful thing; i read a story faq and looked up the alternate endings on youtube. Still, those alternate endings are tied to a lot of achievement points, so I might end up doing it anyways. Heh.

I was really down on Nier at first though, i kind of stuck with it because it seemed to be such a cult favorite with some people, and I gradually warmed up to it. I like it, but i don't think i'd recommend it, is kind of where i ended up with it. It's a really terribly ugly game with a lot of really archaic and awful quest design. (Outside of a few fairly brilliant moments.) The combat has a really cool feel to it though, and the story was well above the average JRPG.

Thing is, i actually did go and run it again just to see all the extra stuff added to the NG+ mode, and there is quite a bit. If you hadn't already figured out what the story was trying to tell you the first time around, the NG+ lays it out with almost comical clarity. (

Your character is a violent, single-minded, thuggish asshole.

) Anyways, i think i'm done with the game now. I don't feel compelled to run it again only to see the other alternate endings, but as i said, i did still go and at least youtube those.

I really enjoyed the story though. As expected with a Japanese RPG it can get a little too far up its ass, just shifting wildly into melodrama without having earned it, or trying to convey important character moments in scenes that shift unevenly between text and spoken dialogue. There's a lot there to remind you that it's a Video game, and that Video game story-telling still has a long way to go. I still appreciate what they tried to do, it's an interesting narrative.

It kind of does the Shadow of the Colossus thing; maybe your hero isn't really such a paragon, maybe the enemies aren't that evil. Nier, however, doesn't just suggest and imply it, it actually explores it. There's that slow shift from it being a straight up heroic adventure, to ultimately realizing that both sides are justified in their actions and guilty of transgressions. There are no happy endings in the game, it is depressingly nihilistic.

It certainly doesn't always work, it's not amazing, but the story is leagues beyond "angsty teen fighting against his evil mentor" or whatever the plot is for most JRPG's.

It also apparently has some loose story hooks to an earlier Cavia game that i don't think i would have even noticed had i not read about it online, it's largely immaterial to the game. (Also, Nier was Cavia's last game, they were absorbed into their parent company or some such.)

So gameplay... It's a straightforward action RPG, the combat system has nuance without much depth, but that stuff still all works great. The bosses are especially incredible, some of the most impressive and thrilling boss battles I've seen in a long time. The game also does a lot of interesting things with perspective, shifting on the fly from side-scrolling to top-down to fully-3d gameplay. There's even one dungeon that takes on an honest-to-god isometric perspective. Those dungeons are all really short though, and there's surprisingly few of them, and the game has you revisit each one multiple times seemingly just to pad out the game.

The sidequests are just totally abhorrent, incredibly simple scenarios that are in the basest sense just grinding for random drops and fetch-questing. A lot of the quest design just in general feels really, really old. Outside of a few flashes of brilliance,

like the Forest of Myth

, it's the weakest part of the game. You spend a lot of time running back and forth between static, lifeless NPC's.

I liked Nier, but it's not a game i think i could easily recommend.

Also, that soundtrack is

. (The "lyrics" are an invented language!)

[Raff]

I played this over christmas. Really liked it overall. It acknowledged some of my biggest annoyances that makes JRPGs (because it's a JRPG at heart) such a chore for me to play (but may seem frivolous to others).

For example, just that you can move around like in a proper action game. Being fast and agile and having a jump button makes wandering back and forth through towns and landscapes so much less laborious. Best of all is that they didn't do the usual attrocity of carving everything up with invisible walls. You can jump over pretty much everything you'd expect to be able to jump over to take a shortcut. Fences, walls, ledges. It was such a relief and made everything feel so much more solid and convincing.

I also liked the overall 'spoke' design of the world with the village at the centre. The scope of it is spot on. It's not a true open world but it feels more open than the usual.

I liked the 2D shooter-esque bits, and the zelda-like bosses (and when both those things combine).

I honestly don't remember much about the story or the ending but I think I liked it enough. Some of the characterisation is needlessly garish.

The MMO sidequests were shit, like everyone says.

I find it odd that the soundtrack is so popular. It's above average JRPG music but incredibly repetitive in the game and not particularly unique in its style. Sometimes I suspect that some people confuse 'epicness' with quality... Composers seem to score a lot of points by including a lot of dramatic chanting.

[Sno]

Nier's gameplay structure isn't actually all that novel. If you liked it that much, i'd recommend checking out some other japanese action RPG's like the Ys series. (Ys Seven, in particular, for a very similar kind of game. That's a PSP game though.)

I find it odd that the soundtrack is so popular. It's above average JRPG music but incredibly repetitive in the game and not particularly unique in its style. Sometimes I suspect that some people confuse 'epicness' with quality... Composers seem to score a lot of points by including a lot of dramatic chanting.

I would disagree with your assessment here, but concede that it is misused in the game. (Like in the Aerie, which sits empty for most of the game, but never loses it's incredibly over-dramatic and highly repetitive chanting chorus.)

[coaxmetal]

Going to bring this great back from the dead.

 

I am just playing this game now, and I really like it. It is ugly (visually, it looks bad, there is no other way to put it) and the gameplay isn't amazing, but the game's structure and story and some of the really weird things it does (Forest of Myth, or Emil's Mansion are examples) make me really like it

 

I think I am a bit over halfway through my first playthrough, i'm collecting some stone tablet fragments. From what i've heard, there are multiple endings for repeated playthroughs. It has been suggested that I play it twice, and then watch the remaining endings on youtube.

[TheLastBaron]

I actually just started playing this a couple weeks ago. I played it one weekend and haven't played since so I'm not very far, but I like it, or at least parts of it. The music is good and I like some of the things they do with it like when you're in town the music is always playing, but the vocal track fades in and out when you go near the girl singing.

[tegan]

Oh man, Nier. I fucking love this game. I'd go so far as to say it was one of my favourite games of the last generation, in fact. It's really a shame that its biggest claim to fame was probably that one reviewer who couldn't figure out the fishing bit.

 

I think I am a bit over halfway through my first playthrough, i'm collecting some stone tablet fragments. From what i've heard, there are multiple endings for repeated playthroughs. It has been suggested that I play it twice, and then watch the remaining endings on youtube.

 

Definitely play it at least twice. NG+ is really generous and starts you off halfway through the game with all your stuff instead of back at the beginning again.

 

One of the endings does something really divisive that I personally love (warning: tremendous spoiler):

Your character is given the option of trading your own existence for Kainé's, to warp reality so that she can have a normal life. If you agree to it, your save files are deleted. I know this is a controversial thing, but I love it when a game is willing to break the fourth wall and do something really mean to the player like that.

[SuperBiasedMan]

This game sounds weird in the ways I like, maybe I should pick it... PS3/360 only? Damn, been a while since that was actually a limiter.

[twmac]

I eventually reviewed this, it just took me about 3 years to release the article:

 

http://www.arcadianrhythms.com/2013/05/nyr-companion-nier-review/

[coaxmetal]

Oh man, Nier. I fucking love this game. I'd go so far as to say it was one of my favourite games of the last generation, in fact. It's really a shame that its biggest claim to fame was probably that one reviewer who couldn't figure out the fishing bit.

 

It took me a while to figure out the fishing bit too, and then I never fished again. But I do really love it, except im doing something right now that I probably shouldn't, which is trying to farm a random item spawn to upgrade a weapon, when I could just finish the game with my current weapon just fine. I want to upgrade the phoenix dagger because it seems like the best 1 handed sword, and I don't like the 2h swords or spears.

 

I really like the way the game though. 

[tegan]

It's important to learn how to use spears, because the speed they afford is pretty much required for one (admittedly total bullshit) segment near the very end of the game. You also get handed the best spear in the game immediately prior. Either way you should be fine without having to upgrade anything. I don't think I used the upgrade system at all.

[coaxmetal]

It's important to learn how to use spears, because the speed they afford is pretty much required for one (admittedly total bullshit) segment near the very end of the game. You also get handed the best spear in the game immediately prior. Either way you should be fine without having to upgrade anything. I don't think I used the upgrade system at all.

 

yeah I used them for a bit because they are the best, statwise, weapons I have, but I much prefer the 1h moveset. I know I don't have to upgrade anything, It's just my tendency to min/max and upgrade anything and everything I can in any game, which isn't always the best way to play.

[coaxmetal]

I just finished my 2nd playthrough (ending . I enjoyed it the first time through, but the way they change NG+ was very impressive. They do explicitly tell you it will be different after you bet it for the first time, which is good, because you wouldn't want to miss that content. It recontextualizes a lot of the game, and just adds some additional narrative that is mostly quite good. I don't think i've seen another game do anything like that. Dark Souls 2 has some very limited additional narrative in NG+, but not in the way Nier did it.

 

I'm still enjoying it, so I may go as far as to get ending C/D, after collecting all the weapons.

[Bjorn]

 I don't think i've seen another game do anything like that. Dark Souls 2 has some very limited additional narrative in NG+, but not in the way Nier did it.

 

 

Probably one of the most interesting changes I've seen in an NG+ mode was in a little indie game called Defender's Quest.  If I remember right, there are a few more missions, but the biggest thing is that the protagonist keeps a journal in NG+ and she provides running commentary on all the things going on, which is both hilarious and insightful.  It adds a lot to the experience and it feels appropriate to NG+.  It might have been info overload if available in the first playthrough. 

[Twig]

I don't think i've seen another game do anything like that.

Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter sort of does that. I'm a little fuzzy on the details, it's been a long time (PS2 game!), but there's a dragon meter attached to the common BoF mechanic of being able to turn into a dragon. Every second you're in dragon form during battle fills up that meter. If it's completely full, you lose the game and are forced to restart. (Well, you could load from the last save, but it's likely you'll end up needing it anyway, so it's better to restart.)

 

You can also choose to restart any time you want to, I think.

 

When that happens, you're ranked based on how... far you make it, I think? Maybe also on how well you do? As you do this over and over, and get a higher and higher rank, more cutscenes are "unlocked" that explain more of the story, show more of the other characters' points of view. It's really bizarre and totally off-putting to most people. Personally, I loved the idea. I also liked the battle system quite a bit (turn-based tactics with analog movement (as opposed to grid-based), unlike every other BoF, which are much more traditional JRPGs (albeit with some really neat meta-stuff attached to the battle system, esp. in 2 and 3 (never played 4, 1 is VERY standard JRPG))). But being forced to start a JRPG over and over again did eventually wear me down and I never finished it.

 

Shit now I've got that itch to play Breath of Fire again. ):

 

((((pare()ns))(