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Nier: Automata

Started by lazarou, March 10, 2017, 05:57:00 PM

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Shay Chaise

I really want to keep playing this to get to the supposedly wonderful moments it offers but I am so bored of the basic gameplay and world now. The endless running through that broken down city to reach such and such place, hold down R2 to kill everything from distance. The fetch quests. The repetitive weapons. I am so bored of this, despite loving the music and some of the writing. If I've just been to some castle in the forest, how far in am I?

Thursday

Finished Ending E last night.

Glad I got to that point, but I wish I found it more fun to play.

The thing is mechanically, it's a pretty good game, it's quite fun to move around and dodge, but it's feels like it should be implemented in a game where you're taking down lots of enemies with relative ease, very quickly. Not slowly grinding them down through these long, long battles of attrition. I just don't get why everything has such a big fucking health bar.

Admittedly it is partly a problem compounded by me perhaps not being very good at it, maybe not getting the best stuff, not doing a huge amount of sidequests. Although I do feel like did a fair amount, and put in some token gestures towards getting better chips and upgrading equipment. But even if I was doing twice as much damage, I'd have the same complaint.




brat-sampson

Super Bunnyhop analysis of the game's themes. Spoilers for the Entire Bloody Thing.

Thursday

Yeah that's good and I wish I'd had the patience to do more of those sidequests myself.

It's at least a sign of something good, that I'm still thinking about it a couple of days after I played it.

brat-sampson

I mean, (regarding path B) a lot of people seem to initially dismiss it as just being forced to replay the game, but while that's true to an extent, it does a disservice to all the ways in which it's not. You're getting a new perspective on multiple events, like replaying a scenario as Luigi and getting very different interactions with the characters. You're also seeing some entirely new stuff (see: the opening section and final, like, 20% of the game), the gameplay style's very different (and hacking is stupidly OP, meaning it can make light work of what would've been some incredibly tricky side-quests in the A route). Compared to other Yoko Taro games it's vastly superior in terms of gameplay, even if in comparison to other Platinum games it's pretty minimalist. So it falls somewhere in the middle ground, but isn't really the point, as the jumping and slashing and shooting is all really just a conduit for the ideas and the story and the philosophy and the occasional wacky meta hi-jinks. The side-quests can be a bit fetchy, and I tired of them during the first run as there really seemed to be a *lot* but I was still a bit annoyed when I lost access to them later in the route and on the B run I think I finished almost all of them (racebot can get to fuck).

Thursday

Also while all these analysis of the games themes are well and good, I just want someone to do a long video talking about how the resistance camp music is really, really lovely.

Shay Chaise

I've literally just finished this now. Although Route B and Route C made me gasp and smile a couple of times with narrative development, it's going back after completing Route C and also getting endings D and then E, most importantly, which have made the previous twenty hours of intermittent enjoyment absolutely worth it. Ending E, to completion, is one of the best things I've seen in any game and one of the highlights of this year, up there with the big Mario Odyssey moments. I was in tears.

Even an hour before the end of Route C, I was a bit 'depressed robots yeah' but this has totally blown me away.

Can I forgive it for twenty hours of holding R1 and pressing Square? I'd rank it alongside The Last Guardian as something which often wasted my time but I'm now glad of every second I put in.

brat-sampson

Yassss. *high-five* Now go check out the Bunnyhop video above and some of my other comments.

Shay Chaise

Nice one. Will do. Cheers.

The only downer really is that I bought the DLC which you can only access after ending C, I believe, and...you know the rest.

Shay Chaise

As a criticism, I'd also say that I spent about half of the four hours or so it took me to finish this off today jogging on the spot and doing squats. I just held down R1 and kept tapping square and was completely at liberty to do some exercises instead of concentrate on it. I sat down for every cut scene and bit of text but the gameplay sections were entirely thoughtless and repetitive. I think it could have got to the good stuff Muchelney more quickly and I don't see any argument against that. It's telling that even at the end of the game with a couple of maxed out weapons, around level 55, I couldn't one shot anything. On the other hand, the was very useful because I'm unfit and getting fat so more of this plea, designers.

popcorn

Played the demo, found it boring. A few weeks later I played it again, really wanted to like it, but even more boring this time. Am I doomed to not like the full game?

Shay Chaise

The demo doesn't give almost any sense of what's great about the game but rest assured, you've got about fifteen hours of that kind of stuff and five hours of brilliance. Well worth it for me, one of the best endings I can remember in a game, but there is a good deal of hack and slash and shoot.

Thursday

You're doomed not to like it Popcorn, you'll like the good parts, but I don't personally think it's quite worth it.

popcorn

But I really want to look at her arse.

falafel

This game is suddenly all over the end of year lists. Worth it? Not clear from what you lot have been saying. Tens of hours of repetition with a spectacular payoff? Would it have been better without the grinding or was that part of the experience?

It sounds like it's for me - i can forgive a lot if there's a decent story and a bit of thought gone into the subtext.

Thursday

I mean I saw huge praise for it at the time, which is partly why I was so disappointed. So I dunno, you might really like it, you might not. Sorry that that's not helpful at all.

popcorn

Is it the huge praise is mainly for the arse?

Shay Chaise

Having watched the Super Bunnyhop video (thanks, brat), I can see how I missed loads to enrich and expand on the themes through not doing any side quests, but I don't think that's what affected me ultimately.

Falafel, I honestly couldn't tell you (like Thursday) whether or not you'd find it worth your time. It's like a Kojima game, a great one at that, where there's so much of the individual creator's personality and sense of humour and thoughts and feelings and whims, but it's also so thematically and tonally considered and consistent, it's the work of an auteur. For me, it was worth it but for a good chunk of my three play throughs, I found the gameplay quite grindy and boring. I ended up putting it on Easy so I seldom died or had to repeat anything. I don't really know why it's so repetitive, it seems so unnecessary and without making any apology, that nevertheless also fits the themes of the game.

It's an amazing mix of stunningly beautiful music, desolate gorgeous locations, Absurdism, arses and button bashing.

Bhazor

#48
Quote from: popcorn on December 30, 2017, 09:32:16 AM
Is it the huge praise is mainly for the arse?

About 60/40

Nier Automata is a game you need to know you can play for about 30 hours. It's a game you need to be willing to invest in. If you only play for a couple hours and then wander off to play something else and not come back then you'll never see what made the game a GOTY contender. As an aside 30 hours isn't the length of the game 30 hours was just the point the game went from pretty good to being my game of the year.

That being said I have no intention of replaying it. It really doesn't stand up to Platinum's previous action games and it could have definitely been edited down without losing what made it so great.

brat-sampson

Ironically, I *have* been wanting to replay it recently, to repeat the story with a fuller knowledge, to read more into the lore of the weapons and side-quests and to really dig out everything I can. Part of that's down to it showing up on all these GOTYs, and part of it's probably the arse.

falafel

Will pick it up when it's less than £40... That's pretty steep considering it's steam sale time. Got my Switch backlog to get through first. Might dig up the LA Noire thread...

Thursday

That's weird just noticed it's only available from 3rd party amazon sellers at the moment, and the cheapest PS4 copy is £59.90.

I'm sure it's been on sale before though.

Bhazor

#52
I got it for 32euros on Green Man Gaming a month week after release. Its been on sale almost constantly for the last year and I guess now it's gone from cult favourite to mainstream GOTY contender they've put the price back to 60 to rope in all the plebs. Fair play to them, I hope Platinum and Taro get enough money from this to keep them in videogame development for the next 5 years.

Thursday

True but if Yoko Taro got too rich from it he'd just retire and spend it all on booze and women probably, and you wouldn't get anymore of his games.

Moribunderast

Finally got properly stuck into this over the past week. Love it, love it, love it. There's issues with the gameplay feeling repetitive (especially by the 2nd run) and the difficulty being waaay too easy on Medium - and yet my complete inability to play Bayonetta had me scared to up the difficulty for fear I'd get destroyed when I was having a fun time progressing through the story. With those flaws out of the way, everything else about this game is magic. I've just finished Route B and am gonna get cracking on the third playthrough tomorrow. I was very skeptical over the idea of having to replay chunks of the game but for the most part it's well streamlined and there's plenty of differences in Route B, even if they rely a little too much on the hacking mini-games. It's worth it for just how much the story opens up and perspective changes. Rarely do videogame stories engage me but this story and the world in which it takes place is utterly compelling, despite being occasionally silly and on-the-nose. And obviously everyone bangs on about the music but, Christ, it's beautiful. Some of the songs that accompany the endings of various missions create an incredible mood. I always remember the moment in Red Dead when you cross the border and the music starts... Nier: Automata has about 5 of those moments (so far). That Emil story and music. Man.

This wasn't on my Games Of The Year list in that thread as I was too early into it but it's clearly in the Top 5 I've played this year. For pure scope and surprising moments and joy, it could be the top. It's just chock-full of moments I feel will endure in my memory for ages. Discovering the Amusement Park, Emil's home, the 2nd run-through of the Amusement Park boss... It's rare that I put 30 hours into a game but moments like that sustain where the gameplay can lack, to the extent that I'm barely even taking a break before jumping in to try for endings C, D and E, whatever the fuck they are.

Bhazor

Quote from: Thursday on December 30, 2017, 10:36:21 PM
True but if Yoko Taro got too rich from it he'd just retire and spend it all on booze and women probably, and you wouldn't get anymore of his games.

Given that his current ambition is to make a porn film (with a proper story and everything) I'd say let him wallow in arses.

Quote from: Moribunderast on December 31, 2017, 12:18:17 PM
I've just finished Route B and am gonna get cracking on the third playthrough tomorrow.

Heads up Chapter C is the point I talked about where the game goes from pretty good to game of the year. Enjoy.

brat-sampson

You're in for a treat. After finishing Route B is when things really start to get Bonkers.

Thursday

Quote from: Bhazor on December 31, 2017, 12:28:58 PM
Given that his current ambition is to make a porn film (with a proper story and everything) I'd say let him wallow in arses.

Heads up Chapter C is the point I talked about where the game goes from pretty good to game of the year. Enjoy.

Hmm okay, I'd definitely up for a Yoko Taro porn film, it might mean the bits between the story are good as well.

Paul Calf

Help! I'm playing this and all I'm doing is running around an almost-empty factory having no clue where to go.

Paul Calf

I should add that I'd never heard of it until a friend enthusiastically recommended it to me.