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NieR: Automata |OT| "I wouldn't expect too much from this game if I were you."

KDR_11k

Member
Gah, I keep bouncing off this game. Just finished the forest but I just don't want to engage with the game's systems. I don't want to gather materials for upgrades, I don't want to tweak my chip selection, I don't want to bother with sidequests, I just want this to be over... This is completely atypical for me since normally I focus a lot on things like that but something about N:A just keeps me from going into any depth. I just lock on, hold down fire and kite stuff around, load up on dozens of healing items to stay alive...
 
Gah, I keep bouncing off this game. Just finished the forest but I just don't want to engage with the game's systems. I don't want to gather materials for upgrades, I don't want to tweak my chip selection, I don't want to bother with sidequests, I just want this to be over... This is completely atypical for me since normally I focus a lot on things like that but something about N:A just keeps me from going into any depth. I just lock on, hold down fire and kite stuff around, load up on dozens of healing items to stay alive...

Are you still on your first playthrough? I felt that way for about the first seven hours or so, but after that, and then especially on Route B and C I really started to love the game.
 
Been playing this over the past couple days as my first NIER game and I'm on and off with it. There are plenty of endearing characters and the world is pretty fascinating, but the combat doesn't feel nearly as strong as Plat's other titles and the side content in the world is hit or miss, making the exploration feel a little like a chore.

Overall its solid and very unique though. It's world keeps me going.

I think if you treat the game like bayo or rising is where the problems start. It's hard to explain but playing it like a action is not the way.
 
Oh my god, they make you work to get the Engine Blade. There's no actual reason to go back to that area at this point in the game except to open the locked chests and doors you saw earlier, right?

Well, fuck, after taking a look at where I can find it, it pisses me off that
I missed it at the end of route A. Since I have only the save of route B beginning, what are my options to get it now?

EDIT:
Looks like it's locked out in route B. So I'll have to wait until route C. :(
 

LotusHD

Banned
Gah, I keep bouncing off this game. Just finished the forest but I just don't want to engage with the game's systems. I don't want to gather materials for upgrades, I don't want to tweak my chip selection, I don't want to bother with sidequests, I just want this to be over... This is completely atypical for me since normally I focus a lot on things like that but something about N:A just keeps me from going into any depth. I just lock on, hold down fire and kite stuff around, load up on dozens of healing items to stay alive...

Easy mode is there if you just can't be bothered with any of it. No shame in using it. That being said, for Normal, all you really need is Overclock, Deadly/Offensive Heal, and Auto-Heal, and you're good to go. On my first playthrough, I barely bothered with the various pod programs, fusing chips, actually using different chip loadouts, etc., and yet I still thoroughly enjoyed the game.

As for sidequests, well I certainly can't force you to do any of them, but these are the ones I recommend doing: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=235924498&postcount=18814

That being said, if you just focus on the story, that is completely fine. Even me, who loves the sidequests, ironically did very few of them on my first playthrough. It was only after beating the game that I suddenly felt like fully exploring the game's worlds, and doing all the sidequests and such.
 

pelicansurf

Needs a Holiday on Gallifrey
Just got through the first ending. Normal is too easy and hard is just dark souls. Wish there was a better middle ground. I want to take damage and worry about enemies, I just don't want to be 1-2 shot.

Route B so far is super dope. The additional mechanics really spice it up.
 
Just finished Route A on my second playthrough, I was kinda down on the game, after after getting all the main endings, but wanted to give it another chance.

I'm starting to get into it a bit more again. This time I'm actually trying to do all the sidequests. Mechanically they're not the greatest, but they do actually have some neat character- and worldbuilding moments. Now that I already know the main story, I have a lot more patience for them.

The downside to doing all those quests is that now I'm way more overleveled than I already was during my first playthrough. This time I was 10 levels above Route A's final boss when I fought him.

Also, in true Platinum Games fashion I've discovered a couple of moves that I didn't know existed during my first run that make the game a lot more fun.

My feeling towards the game are a lot more positive again, than they were during my last playthrough, but then again, the game didn't fall apart for me until after Route A, so we'll see.
 
I just started Route C last night.

I'm probably repeating sentiment that's already been shared here but I am avoiding most of the thread until I'm done.

Maaan. Taro really outdid himself here; I'm sure most everybody went into this game expecting insanity and the dude purposely kept things (mostly) tame until you finally sort of accepted that you might have built it up too much and then BOOM BLINDSIDED. Masterfully done. The start of Route C made me GIDDY. "Now that I've teased you for thirty hours, the game can begin." waynesworldnotworthy.gif

It's almost painful that I probably won't get to play much more until the end of the month. Argh.
 

LotusHD

Banned
One question, are there many timed or miss-able side quests? Or am I generally safe enough to progress the story just whenever?

Some are timed to expire after the game has you go to the
Flooded
City. Ultimately however, nothing is permanently missable.
 
Man, finally finding
Emil
's house (never would have found it by myself without a hint) is a magical moment. So few games pull off the moment of discovery where you realize you were standing on top of something bigger this whole time.

And then you find that room full of
player bodies
. Putting that room where it was is a stroke of genius.
 

Ventara

Member
So I'm in route A and I feel there's a sudden spike in difficulty. One sidequest requires me to escort someone, and robots come out in swarms to attack that are over twice my level, and another quest I go one-on-one with this robot 3x my level, which wasn't bad if more a slog as he seemed like a damage sponge and I've already upgraded my gear to level 2 and the other to level 3, and there seems to be another step to the quest where I have to fight a stronger version of him.

Should I be grinding or skipping these quests for now? To be more specific on where I am, it's shortly after the
cave-in in the middle of the city
.
 

LotusHD

Banned
So I'm in route A and I feel there's a sudden spike in difficulty. One sidequest requires me to escort someone, and robots come out in swarms to attack that are over twice my level, and another quest I go one-on-one with this robot 3x my level, which wasn't bad if more a slog as he seemed like a damage sponge and I've already upgraded my gear to level 2 and the other to level 3, and there seems to be another step to the quest where I have to fight a stronger version of him.

Should I be grinding or skipping these quests for now? To be more specific on where I am, it's shortly after the
cave-in in the middle of the city
.

Skip them for now, don't ever bother to grind just to complete a sidequest. Father Servo ain't going anywhere.
 
Man, finally finding
Emil
's house (never would have found it by myself without a hint) is a magical moment. So few games pull off the moment of discovery where you realize you were standing on top of something bigger this whole time.

And then you find that room full of
player bodies
. Putting that room where it was is a stroke of genius.

I'm almost to the point where I can tackle this quest. Pretty stoked, actually.
 

ghibli99

Member
Started this a week ago, and after getting a couple of the throwaway endings, I finished Route A last night. Solid stuff, and started my Route B playthrough, which feels like a completely different game (whereas the other playthroughs in the original Nier felt similar but with the added story elements due to who you were playing). What a cool touch, and although I'm just getting started, I have a feeling I'm in for something special.

Really love this game outside of some of the annoying sidequests and back-and-forth nonsense from time to time. Combat feels so good, and the variety of gameplay styles captures and expands upon what made Nier so unique in the first place.
 
Should I be able to complete Reconnaissance Squad as soon as I get it?

Because I also want to see if it's tied to one of the
Soul Box
rewards, so... story's not progressing until I do this, if at all possible.

What if hard mode was intentionally shitty just to make a point about game difficulties? 🤔

As far as I'm concerned, hard mode is so that you can play the shmup sections like an actual shmup.

Which was fun in A and B, but which I definitely no longer wanted to do by the start of route C.
 
I finished Route A on PS4 and I want to continue my playthrough on PC, meaning that I'm looking for a Route B save on PC (I need the entire folder).

If someone here could help me... It would be very much appreciated!

Thanks.

PS: I'm using this tool in order to use another one's savefile : https://steamcommunity.com/app/524220/discussions/0/135512305404232364/?ctp=5

Quest progression, inventory, your level and stats as well as some other stuff gets carried over to your Route B playthrough, so I'm not sure that's a good idea.
 

Greddleok

Member
Ok, route B picked up a little towards the end, but after finishing B, the game really gets going again. Glad I powered through it.
 

Golnei

Member
Can't wait for the arrangement albums - the concert stuff was great, but they have to at least do some official remixes; even if they don't use quite as large a range of artists as were on Nier - Echo. Or at the very least, a piano album.

I wonder what the chances are of Sean Schafianski doing another set of jazz covers for it...
 

Nestunt

Member
Appearances deceive. And even though I consider myself a person that respects that trap, I never expected that beneath the surface of a videogame with high-heels and samurai swords I would come across a narrative built on robust philosophical arguments about consciousness, self-discovery, life and History. This is what happened to me in NieR Automata, the new videogame from Yoko Taro, in collaboration with Platinum Studios: after a few hours, and some plot points revealed, I started to question if I had just witnessed a very well-written conversation about some mainstays of the work of the philosopher Georg Hegel. Couldn’t be; I certainly was mistaken. I could not remember the last time I had experienced a movie or a non-academic book that tackled such subject matters. A few more hours in, I find myself facing a gigantic machine with a centipede-like design with interconnected cores. Its name: Hegel.

NieR Automata’s story and subject matters are not hidden in some kind of esoteric narrative. Yoko Taro and his team have the rare courage to be very direct and descriptive about the topics they want to address. But man, doesn’t this game illustrate its message in an incredibly stylish canvas! In the first 15 minutes, you know what type of a ride this is going to be. The Music (from composer Keiichi Okabe) is immediately front and center. And deservedly so; as past works of the composer, not only it’s filled with substance and variety but also knows how to naturally transition from moment to moment. I really can’t make any justice to this phenomenal soundtrack with words: it’s not just an addition to the experience, it has its own driving power, a great force but very eloquent with amazing intuition. One aspect that caught my ear was how a different track remained “on air” after a big moment, before transitioning to another. That perfectly resonates with players’ mood after experiencing some big revelation.

Then, you start to notice the level of detail of the character models and the machinery that is part of the story. All the world building feels very truthful because of this design work. Even background choices like the color palette are very well implemented, as the focus on a fewer amount of tonalities than the typical Japanese game gives Automata a distinct look, that is in line with the context the characters find themselves in. Yet, this is a deceptive minimalism. They still manage to introduce a lot of contrasts and saturated scenarios. NieR proves that beige and brown can also have style. On a different note, it should be mentioned that the game has some frame-pacing issues on a Standard PS4, but it never compromises the flow of battle encounters and it’s only prevalent in parts of the open-world with more geometry to drawn in.

Speaking of flow, the battle encounters feel impeccably smooth. But you don’t even need to reach your first confrontation to notice how properly weighted the controls are. People who have experience with previous character-action titles from Platinum know what I am talking about. And I would argue that the level of 1-to-1 feedback between motor input on the controller and actions on the screen is so responsive and beautifully choreographed that newcomers to the genre will hardly find a better Platinum game in this regard. The combat is not as varied and challenging as some other games in the portfolio of these developers, but as new weapons and special attacks are discovered through open exploration or story directed roaming, the player finds himself with a significant amount of tools to introduce creativity on how to tackle different characteristics of the enemies. In the end, the combination of beautifully complex animations, the properly weighted pace and the on-screen coolness makes this game one of the best Platinum has ever done and I have to tip my hat to the collaboration between the martial-arts team, the motion-capture team and the animation team.

So, how did they implement all that amazing art into the world and moment to moment progression you find yourself in? I stand by the following answer: NieR Automata is one of the best directed stories I have experienced in all of entertainment.

Once again, first impressions are deceiving. The game starts of by stating a very simple conflict: you are in the far future, and mankind has been pushed out from Earth by machines built by aliens. The only force fighting back is a group of elite androids commissioned by humans – YoRHa. You, the player, control one of these androids: 2B is a cold, efficient and job-first soldier that is tasked to join the frontlines on Earth and to find out the reason for the recent surge in machine activity. She is equipped with two swords and a robot pod that gives advice and some suppressive firepower.

Soon enough, 2B finds herself accompanied by a fellow android named 9S. This boy is quite different from 2B, not only because he asks a lot more questions before acting and also because he is more suited for long-range combat than martial-arts combos. He hacks machine enemies.

What starts of as a very archetypal Anime structuring, with some occasional comments on “feelings vs machines”, gradually becomes a very fulfilling story, centered on meticulously built arguments about the meaning of History, about life not being just a chain of events but a process of self-discovering, what is consciousness and, more importantly, where does it stem from. All these might read has very vague and quasi pseudo-intellectual premises that tons of other entertainment products have built their messages on, but I have read my fair share of Hegel, Nietzsche and Sartre to, at least, be comfortable saying that Yoko Taro and his team did their homework and managed to land very difficult and complex rationales into this game with incredible grace.

The game is divided into 3 playthroughs. You can finish the first one and be perfectly happy with the arch you have just witnessed. And that’s part of the geniality of Automata. The first playthrough would be very strong and meaningful on its own, and it’s amazing how the second one turns the sensations you felt, by the end of the first, against you. What you felt was the result of expectations about traditional storytelling and not what this story is truly bringing to the table. After you finish the 2nd playthrough you know why you have to continue to the 3rd. It won’t disappoint.

I spent around 50 hours with Automata, and they felt like a breeze. The highs and lows of the main missions are so perfectly spaced that you always know that something important is being built up and, most importantly, that it will deliver either in terms of mysteries’ revelation or on the fantastic variety in gameplay direction you are about to experience. And even many of the smaller side-missions I tackled did not feel like a chore. Many of those ended up rewarding the player with items or pieces of information that flushed-out the lore. The world is so grounded in studied ideas that you always want to know more. Oh! Have I mentioned that the combat and general movement of your character is so cool that turns the most boring mission into a super-hero journey?

Another example of well thought implementation is the leveling system. Yes, I’ve mentioned that the gameplay loop is not as deep as other Platinum games, but I found that the way they chose to structure the typical skill unlocking was very conducive to experimentation and build-diversity, either within the same playthrough or for role-playing during the 3 different playthroughs. The designers decided to limit the amount of abilities you can have equipped at the same time. But with an important caveat: you can always pause the game and customize. You have a fixed number of slots for abilities’ assignment and, moreover, the stronger the ability becomes the more slots it occupies. You have 3 of these “profiles” to work with, and you can choose if you want to have 3 different strategies (built from different combinations of abilities) and change between them mid-battle, or if you want to stick with one for that playthrough and then experiment with a completely different focus (attack, defense, etc.) during the other 2 playthroughs. [MILD SPOILER!!]: Leveling and profiles carry on between playthroughs.

By now, you know: I am ecstatic for having had the privilege of experiencing this amazing art work. This analysis would, probably, had been better served with an essay-like format where plot points and premises would be more thoroughly described and challenged, such is the strength this videogame shows on those departments. But the game has not been on the market for a reasonable amount of time and I wanted to write something that everybody could read without spoilers. I really wanted to express a lot of thoughts after finishing Automata because this game made me think a lot about ontology and other realisms. This game is really special and I am still astonished by how it manages to deal with complex philosophical inquiries and maintain a striking sense of style. More! The style is in complete coherence with the transcendental arguments being made. Sci-fi, more often than not, can’t beat that trade-off: it’s either edginess and immense sense of wonder or using machines as metaphors for humanity’s evolution, having the latter serious epistemological problems masked by strong concepts filled with rhetoric.

NieR Automata shows us that you don’t have to deal with the trade-off if you suggest a new, well-articulated, paradigm. If “The Matrix” was praised for teaching Plato’s Allegory of the Cave with a lot of style, Automata should be lauded for threading in much more complex ideas.
 

Ventara

Member
Just finished Route A. What a ride! If this is how good the rest of the game will be, it will be one amazing game.

Route A spoilers
Devola and Popola; are they one and the same from Nier? My memory is really bad, but I thought they died in all endings in the last game? Or am I mixing up Ending E with the other endings? Anyways, it was cool seeing them again, along with Emil.
 
Just finished Route A. What a ride! If this is how good the rest of the game will be, it will be one amazing game.

Route A spoilers
Devola and Popola; are they one and the same from Nier? My memory is really bad, but I thought they died in all endings in the last game? Or am I mixing up Ending E with the other endings? Anyways, it was cool seeing them again, along with Emil.

The answer to your spoiler bits is explained in the story. Those units will have sidequests later that explain it. Of course, if you'd like to know now, I'll let Valkyrie Aurora explain it better: Link
 

LotusHD

Banned
Just finished Route A. What a ride! If this is how good the rest of the game will be, it will be one amazing game.

Route A spoilers
Devola and Popola; are they one and the same from Nier? My memory is really bad, but I thought they died in all endings in the last game? Or am I mixing up Ending E with the other endings? Anyways, it was cool seeing them again, along with Emil.

Don't spoil it for yourself, just keep playing. And feel free to do any sidequests that they give out.

Appearances deceive.

Why yes they do. Nothing better than when you play that game that just makes you want to talk/write up a storm about it. Feel free to go even further in the spoiler thread lol
 

Kvik

Member
So what are the 2-3 mods needed to improve performance/graphical fidelity on the PC version?

The first mod you should get is obviously FAR: https://github.com/Kaldaien/FAR/releases

The second (and optional) mod is the DS4 button prompts: https://community.pcgamingwiki.com/files/file/870-nier-automata-dualshock-4-button-prompts/

As for other performance tips, thanks to JaseC, you'll only need to browse the first post of the NierA PC performance thread: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1353278
 

sanstesy

Member
Ehm. That entire Flooded City segment was bad or what? That "boss fight" may be one of the worst in Platinum Games history.

If it wouldn't know about Yoko Taro & the story appreciation I read on here I would have stopped playing right here. This is underwhelming to down right bad so far.
 

LotusHD

Banned
Ehm. That entire Flooded City segment was bad or what? That "boss fight" may be one of the worst in Platinum Games history.

If it wouldn't know about Yoko Taro & the story appreciation I read on here I would have stopped playing right here. This is underwhelming to down right bad so far.

Underwhelming, sure, don't see what's bad about it though.
 
Ehm. That entire Flooded City segment was bad or what? That "boss fight" may be one of the worst in Platinum Games history.

If it wouldn't know about Yoko Taro & the story appreciation I read on here I would have stopped playing right here. This is underwhelming to down right bad so far.
I'll grant you it was easy and maybe uninteresting.... but even then it was just a set piece. I don't see how it's so bad.
 

sanstesy

Member
It's literally holding R1 and spamming sword attack for more than 30 minutes straight. This is a FFXV level bad set piece boss fight. It goes on for way too long for no reason whatsoever.

The whole game's progression is set up so egregiously bad that 5 hours feel like 20 hours. I read the walking around complaint before but I didn't think it would be this awful.
Even after getting the teleport option they still find a way to disable them and making you walk back to the Resistance Camp and back again to the Flooded City.
To make matters even worse, the story reasons aren't remotely compelling enough featuring a trading sequence that comes off as nothing more but padding.

Combat encounters are weak with some exceptions. They love to spam that flying machine that shoots 1 orb every 5 seconds. I wish this game had no experience system so I wouldn't have to deal with most of these painfully boring fights.

There also some bad camera moments.
 
In theory, Platinum should be good at making on-rails action sections. Yet for some reason they never seem to work out, from Bayonetta to Star Fox.

All these parts really needed in Nier was more than one type of small enemy/big enemy/boss enemy and they could have been much more interesting!

And, yes, you go there and you get unsuspectingly dropped into a 30-minute section where you can't save, can't use the menus, and... can't exit the game unless you alt-F4. First time I did it I really did have to just quit in the middle of that section.

Unrelated: so, since this game mostly doesn't make you grind for materials anymore, somebody had the idea of making you grind for late-game rare enemies that only have a small chance of spawning in a specific place. Yeah, this is a Nier sidequest.
 

LotusHD

Banned
It's literally holding R1 and spamming sword attack for more than 30 minutes straight. This is a FFXV level bad set piece boss fight. It goes on for way too long for no reason whatsoever.

The whole game's progression is set up so egregiously bad that 5 hours feel like 20 hours. I read the walking around complaint before but I didn't think it would be this awful.
Even after getting the teleport option they still find a way to disable them and making you walk back to the Resistance Camp and back again to the Flooded City.
To make matters even worse, the story reasons aren't remotely compelling enough featuring a trading sequence that comes off as nothing more but padding.

Combat encounters are weak with some exceptions. They love to spam that flying machine that shoots 1 orb every 5 seconds. I wish this game had no experience system so I wouldn't have to deal with most of these painfully boring fights.

There also some bad camera moments.

Definitely not a highlight of the game, but it was quite inoffensive at best, boring at worst. Then again, I never really bothered compared this game to Platinum's past works *shrugs

Unrelated: so, since this game mostly doesn't make you grind for materials anymore, somebody had the idea of making you grind for late-game rare enemies that only have a small chance of spawning in a specific place. Yeah, this is a Nier sidequest.

Which one was this

EDIT: Oh that one. I Youtube'd that lol
 

Szadek

Member
Unrelated: so, since this game mostly doesn't make you grind for materials anymore, somebody had the idea of making you grind for late-game rare enemies that only have a small chance of spawning in a specific place. Yeah, this is a Nier sidequest.
For the quest you only need 95% of the unit data and I'm pretty sure the rare spawns are these 5% that you don't actually need.
 

Gbraga

Member
For the quest you only need 95% of the unit data and I'm pretty sure the rare spawns are these 5% that you don't actually need.

Yeah, I was wondering how I would get the remaining few I needed for 95%, and decided to just continue with the main quest, then used chapter select and I had the amount necessary.

It's not supposed to be hard at all, if it feels that way, just continue with the story that you'll probably get the rest that way.
 
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