Nier Replicant Ver.1.22474487139... - Review

 

I was eagerly awaiting the release of Nier Replicant Ver.1.22474487139... for a year. A decade ago I played the Western version of Nier, a story about a father trying to find the cure for a mysterious sickness known as the Black Scrawl for his daughter Yonah. The game was very much a hidden gem for me, I had not heard of it, but Square Enix was behind it and it was on special offer so thought why not give it a go? I played it and was blown away by it, the story, the characters, the world, everything about it. Naturally, a visually updated version of the game excited me, the only thing putting me off was this time you played as her brother not her father, and was unsure as to how this would translate and affect the story. 

It's easy to forget about Twix bars, two biscuity sticks topped with caramel and covered in chocolate (none of those one-finger versions for me). It ticks all the boxes for me, is great with tea, is great by itself, and has great chocolate to biscuit ratio, one Marvel villain might say it is perfectly balanced. Playing Nier Replicant Ver.1.224744877139... I found myself asking did this have the perfect amount of chocolate, biscuit, and caramel combined in the perfect way?

Story

The game has you play as the brother of Yonah, the character is never mentioned by name during the story. It is hard to be spoiler-free but will do my best. Early into the game, you find a magical book called Grimoire Weiss who potentially has the ability to save your sister from a disease known as the Black Scrawl. 

Similar to Sega's Yakuza series a lot of the fun or enjoyment of the game comes from the side quests. The game features over seventy and if you are like me you will want to complete them all. The side quests not only bring you to those who inhabit the world but also provide you with experience points, weapons, and materials.

The game has five endings which you can play in order. The new ending is called Ending E and while it takes a while to get there I felt was well worth it. 

Overall a fantastic journey and one that pulled on my heartstrings on more than a few occasions.

Visuals

The visuals in the original release on the XBOX 360 and PlayStation 3 were amazing, clear, crisp, and beautiful. Some of the lands have been reclaimed by nature and remnants of the old world are still visible. The desert area of the games shows how some areas faired worse than others. The lands you explore don't give you the full story of what happened but certainly make you ask questions. I really liked when you entered a building the front of it was cut off and became like a 2D sidescroller.

The remastered and up-to-date version improves on what was already very good. The visuals look really good on the PlayStation 4 Pro and have no doubt they would look even better on the PlayStation 5. The colours are more vibrant but still stay true to the aesthetic of the original release and make the world feel even deeper. With the addition of Ending E, there are new sequences never seen before which was really cool.

Overall the visuals are fantastic, take something with a solid foundation, refine it, throw in a little more colour and you have Nier Replicant Ver.1.22474487139... 

Music

The soundtrack is deeply emotional and touching, every piece of music has its place, the use of strings and piano is very poignant. Lead composer Keiichi Okabe described it best in an interview. " I always conveyed the tragic fates that the protagonist and characters are burdened with". The soundtrack is composed by Japanese Composers Keiichi Okabe (Drakengard 3, Tekken Series and Final Fantasy IV Gladiolus Episode), Kakeru Ishihama (Drakengard 3, Tekken 6), and Keigo Hoashi (Drakengard 3, Nier Automata), along with the original release of Nier in 2010.

The soundtrack has been remastered and some tracks are slightly different from the original release back in 2010. The new versions of the soundtrack are really good and rather than rewrite the original soundtracks instead just brings it to the next level. 

The soundtrack is over two hours in length, listening to it I never felt it was just backing for the game but an integral part of it. It is hard to choose my favorite pieces of music from the game as they all carry so much importance. Here are the pieces I like putting on repeat:

Snow In Summer

Cold Steel Coffin

Gods Bound By Rules

Ultimate Weapon

Yonah (Piano Version)

The Dark Colossus Destroys All 

Kaine (Escape)

Shadowlord's Castle

Emil (Karma)

Ashes Of Dreams

Overall the soundtrack is brilliant, without flaws, and similarly to Nier Automata, I will listen to it again and again.

Gameplay

There is a lot to get in with the gameplay so let's take it away. The more enemies you kill, the more experience you get and the stronger you get. Essentially you can pass the game on Easy and Normal without too much struggle but for some enemies in the game, it certainly helps to be strong.

There are two types of weapons (kind of) in the game - first there is Weiss, your magic and wisdom spewing book. While it drains magic points it regenerates by itself so as long as you are careful you will never find yourself too stuck. As the game progress, you unlock new types of magic which makes combat a lot of fun. In the first half of the game, you can handle one-handed weapons, later you can handle spears and two-handed weapons. Each weapon can be upgraded and will take a lot of materials especially if you want to upgrade them all. Outside of these, you get drops in the forms of powerful words, these can increase your magic and melee weapons. Some help gets you more gold from enemies; better drops, more experience points, more magic damage, and more.

There are a lot of side quests and while you could do none of them they really add to everything. Outside of these, you can fish, which is a lot of fun, and feel improves over the original. Growing flowers, veggies and fruit is another fun pastime. 

Overall the gameplay is very solid, camera angles work well and the change in perspective during exploration and battles is really cool. 

Final Thoughts

So, after nearly eighty hours, how did I feel? Awesome. The story was amazing and perhaps even better than I remember, the new ending really helped round things out nicer and added more to the lore of the universe. The visuals were amazing and while the Nier Replicant world may not be the largest I never get bored of traversing it. The music is fantastic and easily stands out on its own and is one I will listen to many more times. The gameplay is improved and more solid than ever before and is a lot of fun. This one easily gets a 5 out of 5

Nier Automata - Review

There are a number of reasons I wanted to own a Playstation 4 & one of those was to play Nier Automata.  The original game, Nier was released back in 2010 & is a spin-off of the Drakengard Series.  I remember seeing it & thinking 'this looks interesting', I wasn't wrong.  I fell in love with the game; the story, characters, gameplay & music were all so good.  Naturally, when Nier Automata was announced I got very very excited, I may have even wet myself a little.


You know what's great?  Roast dinners.  There are different views as to what makes up a good roast dinner, for me, it has to have; meat, carrots, peas, stuffing made with sausages, potatoes (mashed & roasted if I really want to spoil myself), a generous serving of gravy & some red wine.  In my eyes you can't go too wrong with a roast; classic, filling, tasty & masquerading as something healthy but it knows it's not & it doesn't really care.  On occasion though, a roast can loose thread of itself, a good example of this would be fig & pancetta stuffing or triple nut & apple stuffing.  I have no problem with someone being a little creative with their recipe but apples, figs, nuts, pancetta?  Nope, that's a bridge too far for me.  Playing Nier Automata I had to ask myself was I eating a classic roast with a little creativeness thrown in or was eating something that should have been tasty but ended up just confusing my taste buds?


The picture below is of a Christmas challenge roast made at The Gravity (Hinkley, UK), it comes with a jug of gravy & contains 3000 calories.  Challenge excepted - skip the sprouts though.

The game is set many, many years in the future, 11945AD to be exact.  Aliens have invaded & all the humans have been forced to live on the moon.  Naturally, humanity wants it's planet back but how can they do this?  Well, the answer is simple - YoRHa, a small army of specially created androids with superior abilities, their sole purpose - reclaim Earth.


There are three main characters you can play as; 2B, 9S & A2. 2B is the central protagonist; combat unit, killer instinct, no time for small talk, has a nice dress.  There is 9S, a scanner used for recon, somewhat happy go lucky, very chatty & likes wearing shorts.  A2, rogue combat unit, catty, not very friendly, has lost her dress & doesn't seem to have noticed.  Playing as each character helps better understand their motivations & their role in the main story.


The game is full of genuine emotion & heart, this is most notable with the robots in the world. There are very real subjects tackled in the game, most notably; science, religion & philosophy.  The game manages to do all this without coming across as preachy which I really respected.

The good & bad thing about the story was the multiple endings, some of them were interesting & a lot of fun, others were - meh & overly convoluted.  While I like the concept of multiple endings 26 is far, far too many for any game to have.

The visuals were not what I was expecting from a triple A title, that being said they were far from poor.  The colour scheme & details used in the world are subtle & understated, a good example of this would be the City Ruins.  At first glance it looks like a dull dead city but then you notice how nature has taken over the area, the old buildings now have water flowing through them to create waterfalls & under the old freeways are rivers of fish.  The combination of these two elements work really well together.  Overall though one of my favorites areas is the Amusement Park, the visuals are impressive, fun & it made me smile just being there.


The designs of the main characters were not very inspiring with the exception of 2B, I am unsure if this was purposefully done as to not detract from the story itself.  The robots on the other hand looked interesting & had a lot of character.  The game may not be the most visually stunning but it some ways it was quite beautiful & I enjoyed traversing it, apart from the desert area because lets be honest deserts suck.


The soundtrack for the game is fantastic, epic & above all beautiful.  It is difficult for me to say it had one distinct sound that stuck out in my mind but it did remind me of the music used in the original Nier game, but this is no surprise due to a lot of the same artists working on both games. There were some pieces that reminded me of different anime I had watched over the years which I really liked. The artists that helped create this masterpiece were:


Keiichi Okabe;  who worked on the original Nier Game, Tekken 6/7 & the anime series Hourou Musuko.

Keigo Hoashi; who worked on Happy Wars (XBOX 360) & multiple anime series including; Money No Tenshi & Nanana's Buried Treasure.

Marina Kawano; who performs the vocals in Nier Automata & multiple anime series including; A-Channel, Natsume Yuujinchou & Nekomonogatari: Kuro

Nami Nakagawa; who also performs the vocals in both Nier Automata & original Nier along with other games such as; God Eater 2, Drakengard 3 & Tekken Tag Tournament.

It is worth noting both Okabe & Hoashi are part of the musical group Monaca along with; Satoru Kosaki, Keiichi Hirokawa, Hidekazu Tanaka, Kakeru Ishihama,Kuniyuki Takahashi & Kazuhiro Nakamura who compose & work on anime music.


There are so many great pieces of music some of my favorites are; 'Alien Manifestation', 'Song of the Ancients', 'Goliath', 'City Ruins', 'Resistance Camp', 'Amusement Park', 'Beauvoir' & 'Weight of the World'.  It is hard for me to truly do justice when writing about the soundtrack due to it shear size & epicness, the soundtrack itself is spread over 3 CD's & is over 5 & half hours long.  I still think overall I prefer the original Nier score, but only marginally.

The gameplay was very interesting, I was expecting it just to be an open world hack & slash but ended up being a lot more.  I was really surprised when the prologue ended up being an old school side scrolling shooter.  When I was inside buildings the angle often changed from 3rd person view to a side scroller to a top down view & this was all done seamlessly.


The combat for the most part worked well & the weapons feel great, my favorites were the; Virtuous Treaty sword & POD C which basically fires out missiles.  There were some small things that were done in the game that I really liked.  If you are connected online you will come across players who have been killed, you can then retrieve their bodies, repair them & have them fight along side you or ignore them. Respawn areas called access points look like old vending machines.  I noticed that when 2B slides down ladders she hangs from the side when doing so,  I know it's only a small thing but it looks cool & it is the little things in life.  Then there is the cool mini game used when 9S is hacking that looks really good & makes up for him not being as nimble as 2B & A2.  The menus are easy going on the eyes due to the colour scheme, I will say initially I found them difficult to navigate. There is also little explanation given on how exactly the chips work & how they are set up.


The side quests on offer were really good & a lot better than many open world games, I really felt they were not just a distraction from the main story but instead added to it & the world around you.  I thought the Game Dev side quests were a nice touch & an interpretation of Romeo & Juliet performed by robots was priceless.  There were a lot of interesting side characters, two of my favorites were Pascal & Father Servo.  Pascal was great not only because of his old looking design but also I just really liked the character.  Father Servo is a warrior monk that simply wants to be the best fighter & needs your help to achieve it.


The more you play the game the more you are rewarded with story & insight into other characters including the robots themselves.  The gameplay as whole was pretty solid with exception of a few minor bugs it was very enjoyable.




So after 40 hours & getting 6 of the 26 endings how did I feel?  Pretty good, it was an enjoyable experience with very little to complain about.  Will I go back & play the other 20 endings?  Probably not but after checking some of the others out on YouTube I don't think I have lost out massively. Overall I would give this one a big monkey thumbs up.