I might need some time to decide which trumps the other OST-wise. Though the music in Automata is well-rounded and familiar I felt more struck by it in 1 probably because of the fact it came out of nowhere. They're both very good, though I actually don't listen to Nier's out of context much these days.
Automata definitely has several new heavy-hitting tracks and the majority are deep tissue massages for the ear. ^^'
Not actually a Yoko Taro game. The gameplay is improved somewhat (it still isn't good though) but the story is uninteresting and flat save for a few ideas (the Black Dragon from Drakengard 1 being a major character, the main villain of Drakengard 1 as a party member, the protagonist of Drakengard 1 being a major enemy). The only real involvement Yoko Taro had was editing some cutscenes late in development.
EDIT: Also cause it's funny: Yoko Taro's original idea for Drakengard 2 was an arcade style shooter about dragons in space, but this was vetoed.
Ehh it exists alright. Honestly, I haven't gotten around to it myself but its place on the timeline means it's not as necessary as 1 or 3, particularly in the context of Nier.
I wish I had time to get more than two hours into Nier before Automata comes out here, but it's just impossible to do that and keep up with my classes. The last time I played it was in December 2015 and I still haven't found time to get around to it (to be clear there have been one or two big releases that I prioritized over Nier and played during my few breaks instead it, but still).
To those who have played Automata, is it necessary to have played the original? I know that they said it wasn't before the game came out, but I want to know in the most spoiler free way possible of they were not being entirely truthful about that.
I wish I had time to get more than two hours into Nier before Automata comes out here, but it's just impossible to do that and keep up with my classes. The last time I played it was in December 2015 and I still haven't found time to get around to it (to be clear there have been one or two big releases that I prioritized over Nier and played during my few breaks instead it, but still).
To those who have played Automata, is it necessary to have played the original? I know that they said it wasn't before the game came out, but I want to know in the most spoiler free way possible of they were not being entirely truthful about that.
Okay, I have returned from the vortex. The discussion that follows is related to a first playthrough.
Contrary to everyone's suggestions (even my friends who were watching me suffer for the last 3 days where I mostly played at their house), I pretty much went ham on this mode.
This playthrough took about
30
hours and I did some side quests, but a bunch of stuff got bodied since I was not aware of where the point of no return was.
If people were not aware, this mode is pretty much a one hit KO mode (which is not necessarily completely accurate since you do take damage in some instances without dying, such as fall damage) and you are at the mercy of where the developer decides to put checkpoints for various sequences. The first hurdle in this mode is the very beginning of the game where it takes at least 25-30 minutes to get a proper save point and it's probably enough to make most people rage quit the difficulty at this point given the amount of unskippable content and the fact that you are booted out to the menu each time you fail.
(I mean, this is assuming you're not doing the sensible thing and just playing on a lower difficulty then turning it up after you get done with this overly long sequence... I finished this and the beginning of Route B on Very Hard and it was completely miserable)
This run was done with a fresh file, blind and the restrictions I had from this playthrough were mostly letting the AI be passive (except for one sidequest, which I didn't wanna do the long way since involved awkwardly trying to hit the AI with your pod for 2-3 dozen minutes because the game apparently does not want you to be able to cause hit stun on these foes that spam combos with fast startup). I used a specialized loadout like 2-3 times, but mostly avoided this not necessarily because I restricted myself (now that I'm playing the game like a normal fucking person, I'm coming to the realization that all the fun combat stuff is in the chip system), but because I was not sure whether or not I would be able to reliably retrieve my gear whenever I had to restart.
(I was also afraid of the double amount of loading screens I would have to experience since you can only continue when you die as opposed to loading a save file, which pretty much removes the threat of losing gear)
So like... I think the main difficulty from this mode really comes from the mandatory sequences where you don't have access to a save point and are forced to repeat a long amount of content every time you get hit. Despite invulnerability frames being pretty generous in this game, it's actually very easy to get hit.
These sequences feel especially long when you consider that some checkpoints are strangely omitted, despite some sequences being checkpointed properly.
A very good example of this strangeness can be seen in the
two Adam fights
. The first one has a checkpoint that sends you back to the beginning of the fight, which is nice since there was a long sequence of stuff you had to do, such as
waiting for an infinite spawn of enemies to flood in
, that you thankfully don't have to do again once you engage the boss. The other fight has a completely abysmal sequence of events that you have to sit through every time before being able to challenge the boss again:
-Loading screen
-Spawn from the checkpoint
-Call the elevator up
-Ride the elevator down
-Forced walk sequence
-1-2 minute speech from Adam
-Fake boss fight sequence
-Cutscene you can skip
The lack of a checkpoint for this thing is actually amazingly inept. Thankfully, I found a consistent way to launch the enemies and do a combo and the actual fights weren't that excruciating, but I imagine that this is probably the point at which most people would just slam the controller into the TV.
On that note, I actually developed a couple of strategies for the bosses, but there came a point where some encounters were essentially
firing the pod until something died... this was pretty much the case for everything after the second giant ball mech fight since I could not really think of a way to approach any of these encounters without getting hit. I was not even sure what the fuck the last boss was throwing at me since it seemed like I was getting hit by air every time he did a windup animation.
(on that note, the rocket pod locks on and is probably mandatory for a very hard playthrough... it's really powerful and can hit stun most enemies)
It was brought up earlier in the OT, but this is the fundamental flaw of Very Hard: it encourages a very boring style of play. My strategy for the
second ball mech encounter, which I feel is probably the hardest fight on Very Hard, maybe,
was really dumb since it involved luring the boss to the edge of where it can move around in the arena and then sniping at it from a trench that hid me away from its bullet spam until it activated its second form, that I had to fight more honestly since it was being a bitch and camped in the center of the arena unless I moved close to it.
(I actually know how to fight this boss properly, but the arena it takes place in is so bad due to the
electrified water (and yes, I know about the item I can use that can nullify this, but I only had seven and was scared that I would have to load my file and see two loading screens if I ran out lol)
and I inadvertently made the encounter even harder because I saved on its second form since I was under the impression that it would save the fight at that point, but all I did was make the mobs it throws at you appear at the beginning of the fight every time you reloaded the file lol)
I feel like, had I been able to take a few hits, I probably would have found more entertaining ways to kill things, but I was stuck doing things the way I did because the penalty for error was too severe.
On the subject of difficulty, after the first checkpoint of Route B, I started playing around on Hard and Normal. Aside from actually being VERY entertaining to play, what I've realized is that it seems like the only difference between the difficulties is primarily the balancing done around damage.
When I really think about it, Normal and Hard are pretty much the same game, but Hard may just drag things out longer: you take more damage on Hard, but you can get an upgrade that
automatically regens your health if you don't get hit after a set amount of time and an upgrade that makes you invinsible for a few seconds after getting hit, effectively breaking an enemy's combos.
What this does is that it adds this extra layer to the meta where you're circling around like an idiot for a few seconds trying to not get hit, but then the regular game resumes after... and it's like: do people actually wanna do that?
And, based on what I've played so far, it doesn't seem like they've really done much to AI behavior either: the
theme park
boss was pretty much the same and my strategy from Very Hard worked on it the same way.
This whole thing makes me think that the most entertainment actually comes from normal difficulty, despite it being ”easy." You take a reasonable amount of hits on this difficulty and you don't have the fear of a loading screen constantly looming over your shoulder all the time, so you can cut loose and experiment with the combos and stuff and killing trash mobs is insanely fun.
(on the topic of combos, the pod switching and skills are actually very interesting and I wouldn't necessarily conclude that this game lacks depth in the combat area... I got so hype when they gave me the
wire skill that allows you to get in an enemy's face: apparently, you get two jumps in the air if you get airborne with this skill, so there's some potential there
)
TL;DR I regretted everything and the game is fine on normal. I feel like the main reason why I even suffered through this was to actively inform people to play on the normal difficulty setting lol
That said, my impressions about Route B so far are that:
hack is insanely powerful: it stops time, causes an AOE and it even makes it so that you can actually take damage on Very Hard since failing, which takes 3 hits to your spaceship thing (actually, I can't remember if you take 1 or 3 hits on Very Hard), is not an instakill: my screen turned white during the end of the beginning sequence (which does have a checkpoint, but they punch you in the balls if you fail the section where you have to defend your body with the pod and you have to do the fucking robot sequence at the beginning all over), which I was not used to seeing because I didn't have that on Very Hard prior.
Hmmmm. Well thanks for the answer. I don't have time to play Automata when it comes out either, so I suppose I could wait a couple months to start back up on Nier and hopefully get to Automata by the summer. 😔
There are some contenders with BotW, Ni no Kuni, Mario Oddysey maybe ME:A, Persona 5 or God of War. Overall should be a great year for video game music. I have not listened to anything from Nier though will wait for when I'll play the game.
Danganronpa V3 OST (Masafumi Takada) is out this year as well. And Gravity Rush 2's OST is phenomenal as well. Even though it wasn't technically out this year, the OST for Yakuza 0 is the best in that series as well. I'm also looking forward to the Mass Effect Andromeda soundtrack. The Zelda soundtrack sounds really good as well, going by the trailers. This is a great year for game soundtracks overall, I think.
Is it usable throught the story or is it like an arena or something? And can you spawn anything? Like bosses? Can you freely switch between all 3 characters in this mode?
Is it usable throught the story or is it like an arena or something? And can you spawn anything? Like bosses? Can you freely switch between all 3 characters in this mode?
I haven't experimented much with it, so i can't tell you about the rest, but it's usable everywhere in the world, tho you get locked out of saving your game if you use it.
Found out I can crash the game in the desert. Was looking for an item and ended up half in the void, being able to see under a mountain and a load of machines spawned in there. Oops.
The wait is unbearable. I've even toyed with the idea of buying cards on play asia multiple times but man I'd spend more than for the disc version. T_T
Beat it on hard mode yesterday, clocked in around 17 hours I think. Really enjoyed what I got out of it, music was phenomenal and the boss fights were tight. One of them that stood out to me was against the
Goliath Spider
, the build up towards the lights going out and song dropping was so hype.
I've decided to wait for the Steam release to delve into the other endings/playthroughs. Give more incentive to that version as I wanted to play it all on PC originally before I caved in and bought it on PSN.
