Nier (And Why You Should Play It)

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I already have some level 3 weapons, which is more than enough to take on any enemies or bosses, so I'm good on upgrades. I just kind of want to see what kinds of effects upgrading my pods will have.

At this point I'm taking a break from the main story to try and clear some more side quests. It's also a good chance for me to explore the world some more since I honestly played 2B's campaign more like a straight-up action game and went directly for the main missions with few diversions.

[Foggle]

Yeah, you just need a few good level 3/4 weapons to finish the entire main story. By the way, if you haven't found him, the guy that can upgrade your weapons to level 4 is hidden behind a moveable box near the Forest Kingdom throne room where you fight A2. I only mention this because I somehow managed to beat the entire game without ever finding him.

Upgrading the pods makes them do slightly more damage and also adds a cool special ability to each one; for instance, Pod A's first bullet fired will always explode. It's neat but not particularly useful or important.

At this point I'm taking a break from the main story to try and clear some more side quests. It's also a good chance for me to explore the world some more since I honestly played 2B's campaign more like a straight-up action game and went directly for the main missions with few diversions.

I think that's probably the best way to enjoy these games. 2B has some exclusive side quests (as does 9S), but all of them should be way easier with your higher level and ability to hack. The side quests in the original Nier are horribly tedious, so aside from the extremely important Boar Hunt one, I skipped almost all of them on my first playthrough, which I would recommend you do as well.

Side quests to avoid in Automata would be Speed Star, Family Squabble, and the parade one. Lost Girl is fine because the NPC you're escorting can't take damage. If you decide to do Heritage of the Past or the one where Pascal asks for data on the old world, definitely use a guide. That shit took me hours. The rest are all pretty simple and either interesting or easy.

Out of curiosity, did you do the side quest where you find a flower for 6O? It's okay if you didn't (I didn't, myself), but it makes one of the upcoming story scenes a little more interesting if you did.

[Foggle]

Uh, so, someone on Twitter just informed me that the hacking mini-games have a lock-on feature. I can't check right now so I'm not sure if it's true, but that could certainly make things a lot easier...

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I found some data from the old world in a chest that I hacked in the desert. I had no idea what it was for, but it makes sense that it would be part of a side-quest. I suppose I'll have to find more, though.

As for lock-on, I heard that the feature is completely removed from the harder difficulties, which completely baffles me since the combat mechanics are clearly designed around lock-on.

As for the side-quests, as I said, I missed a lot of them as 2B, but I did do the Lost Girl one as well as the first Speed Star race.

[Foggle]

Hey E-K, just curious, do you have a favorite song from the game so far? The entire OST is so good but I keep coming back to Memories of Dust (the desert theme) and the Copied City theme most of all. If you're interested, my favorite songs from the original game would probably be Hills of Radiant Wind (when I entered the plains and heard this for the first time I immediately fell in love with the game) and Cold Steel Coffin.

Also, some of the tracks in Automata are actually remixes of ones from the first game:
The Wretched Automatons / Wretched Weaponry
The Dark Colossus Destroys All / Dark Colossus - Kaiju (I got fucking chills during this level ugh)
Grandma / Grandma - Destruction
And Emil's Shop theme is him humming/singing along to his theme song from the first game
(There are two others, but they're spoilers, so I won't post them)

As for lock-on, I heard that the feature is completely removed from the harder difficulties, which completely baffles me since the combat mechanics are clearly designed around lock-on.

I do think playing without lock-on can be fun and adds an interesting extra bit of challenge, but it should be a toggle or something, not inherently part of the Hard mode. It's already overly-difficult as it is.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

This is legit one of my top five favorite video game soundtracks of all time. I can't pick a favorite right now because I still haven't finished the game and there are a fair few that I haven't listened to yet, but the soundtrack that plays in the opening level of the factory as well as the "Live as Gods" rendition of the same theme is what has left the strongest impression with me so far. That said, just about any piece of music from this game puts most modern video game soundtracks to absolute shame.

[Foggle]

For some reason, overlaying BECOME AS GODS over that song makes it way better for me. Great track regardless, though.

The soundtrack was the only part of the first game that was universally praised. Apparently they've sold more copies of the OST than they have of the actual game. The DLC for that one had some really cool new tracks, so I hope the Automata DLC does as well.

[Foggle]

Yoko Taro has finally returned home to Tokyo, but it looks like he's already eager to work with Platinum again.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, we've been having storms all weekend where I'm currently living, and just now as I was in the middle of the final boss fight of 9S's campaign, my power went out, so yeah....that happened. It's not such a big deal since I saved right before it, but I just hope that it didn't cause any damage to my PS4. It was plugged into a surge protector, so it should be fine, but I still can't help but be paranoid about it. I'll just have to wait until my power comes back on in order to test it out.

I was planning to get up to A2's campaign tonight, but that'll just have to wait at this point.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I beat 9S's campaign. Overall it was more interesting than 2B's from a narrative standpoint, but mechanically I prefer her combat over 9S's hacking ability, which definitely has some cool moments in the scripted hacking sequences, but the regular in-combat hacks could get old after a while.

I do think that I'll go ahead and play the rest of the game even though I haven't played the original Nier yet. For one, even if there are spoilers, I doubt that it would ruin my appreciation for that game if the story is as well-executed as people say. Furthermore, if there are aspects of this game that are enhanced through having played the first game, then I can always come back to it after I play the original game. Part of the reason that I don't just buy the original online and play it on my XBOX360 right now is because there is just too big a back-log of stuff for me to get through at the moment, and I already have a busy schedule in my day-to-day life as it is. If possible I would like to get to play the original Nier sometime later this year, but for now I do want to finish my play-through of Nier: Automata since I enjoy the game well enough to want to keep playing it, and I think that I can follow the story well enough as it's own stand-alone piece to still get something of value out of the experience with the final three endings.

[Foggle]

The third campaign is so good. Shit hits the fan almost immediately and the rest of the story is a nightmarish descent into madness that somehow still manages to be poignant and funny. The final hour with its assortment of boss battles is ridiculously epic. Oh yeah, even if you're playing with the online features turned off, if you reach a certain moment (you'll know) that's too difficult and the game asks if you want to connect to the network, say yes. Trust me.

As for enjoying the original Nier, there are actually some pros to playing Automata to completion first. While it does spoil a fair amount of the other game's story, reading certain pieces of lore beforehand (the Project Gestalt Reports in particular) and learning about the future of Devola & Popola can actually enhance the experience. Plus, the first game has a fair amount of gameplay genre shifts that don't appear in the sequel and a truly wonderful main cast of characters.

It's been heavily implied that Square will be funding a Nier remaster since Automata sold far beyond their expectations, so I wouldn't be surprised if we ended up seeing that game (and hopefully the Drakengards) on PS4 sometime late this year or early next year! That might be worth waiting for over buying a copy for the Xbox 360.

[Foggle]

The DLC is pretty disappointing so far, but I love this NPC:

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I'd give it extra points if she actually sold you a "Broken Butterfly" or "Red 9" style pod.

I'm still still in the process of downloading the Nioh "Dragon of the North" DLC (because everything takes 80+ hours to install on my PS4 thanks to my garbage Internet connection), so it'll be a while before I can get to this, but I'm still on my third playthrough of the main game, though, so it's not like I'm lacking for any Nier content to play.

[Foggle]

As the world's biggest Nier fan, I would hold off on this DLC to be honest, at least from what I've played of it. It's way too expensive for the amount of content you get, and the balancing makes absolutely no sense. Why have arena battles that don't give EXP if they won't scale to your level? You basically either have to keep going back to each arena after every 10 level-ups on a new playthrough or grind you way to level 99 and make everything trivial in the end-game. The writing is also not up to par with what I expect from this franchise, and unlike the Nier 1 DLC, it just reuses music from the main game instead of having cool new remixes.

It's not terrible or anything, but it's worth $5 at most. $14 is laughable, even if it gets better.

[Daikun]

New sequel announced.