You know that point in the breakup process where you don’t miss the other person anymore but can’t help but regret losing the entire world of possibilities you created for the two of you inside of your head? My time with Nier: Automata has led me to a remarkably similar feeling. My first playthrough was a little rough toward the beginning (mainly because of an early, lingering uncertainty about how things worked), but eventually evened out into what was easily a recommendable 8/10 game—one that possibly even leaned into 9/10, legendary-status territory. My second playthrough was exhausting because despite Nier: Automata outright explaining that the game requires multiple playthroughs to “finish,” very little changed, and those changes made the gameplay and pacing worse. The third playthrough is when you finally access the second half of the story, and this point in the game is filled with character-destroying stupidity that drops the ball so hard that it creates a black hole in place of entertainment.
It isn’t that the story is nihilistic or sad. It isn’t that the second and third playthroughs see the gameplay lean heavily into a hacking minigame that’s not interesting enough to justify its ubiquity. It’s the intersection of poor pacing, info dumps, pretentiousness, frustrating character development, and countless other issues that drags down Nier: Automata and drowns all of its potential in a lake. All for nothing—I don’t feel sad, or empty, or moved. If anything, I feel angry at having wasted 38 hours on a story that teases questions of existence but makes a hard left turn away from those interesting topics into forced angsty-teenager drama. Nier: Automata could have been a brilliant game on so many levels, and I truly loved it for 10-20 hours. Then I watched it eat crayons while basking in unearned self-indulgence and realized that it’s not the modern classic I thought.
(Here, have an Amazon affiliate link for the PS4 version of Nier: Automata. Most people seem to enjoy it for some reason. Plus, if you buy it using that link, I get a little kickback that makes all that time I spent playing seem like less of a waste. There are no Xbox One or PC versions available on there.)
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Some of Nier: Automata‘s writing is brilliant. They ran out of brilliance before the end.
You play as 2B, a combat-centric android model who’s part of YoRHa, an elite group of androids who exist to fight the robots who malevolent aliens unleashed upon humanity in the distant past. Some of humanity fled to the moon and the aliens haven’t been seen in quite a while, so the struggle is centered squarely on the human-loyal androids and the more enigmatic robots whose motivations and abilities are largely shrouded in mystery.
Before long, 2B ends up paired with 9S, a scanner YoRHa model that provides support and serves as a constant companion throughout much of the story. Being joined by a companion allows for the kinds of story moments that many classics have leveraged over the years. For example, traveling through Half-Life 2‘s Ravenholm section isn’t uncomfortable because things jump out at you, but because things jump out at you right after you and your companion Alyx are separated. The same goes for Elizabeth in Bioshock Infinite; games that give you a regular companion know that they can use them to offer up different perspectives and create a sense of anxiety and dread by separating you from them at certain story junctures.
There are plenty of other highlights, too. When I went through the menus after the tutorial mission as part of a mandatory booting-up sequence, I was told that it would be recorded. In most games, that would be meaningless flavor text. Imagine my surprise when my second playthrough (which is the same story with 9S as the playable character) resulted in the game replaying my refusal to accept turning 2B’s self-destruct on. The timing and everything played exactly how it happened during my first playthrough. It was actually recording that.
There’s also a sidequest that requires sitting through a flawed robot interpretation of Romeo and Juliet that’s hilariously homicidal while also making an interesting point about perspective when interpreting intent when it comes to cultures that we may only barely understand.
I diligently sat through all of the same cutscenes during my second playthrough, recognizing after the first new addition that extra content and context could be inserted at any point. In hindsight, it hardly matters—the new cutscenes add a tiny bit of clarity to the villains’ motivations and make some of them more sympathetic, but they could have (and very much should have) been included in the first playthrough. Many games throughout history have rewound time in order to recontextualize events through the eyes of another character. Requiring you to replay the entire game to experience these minor alterations instead of just cutting out the sections unique to 9S causes the mid-game pacing to grind to a screeching halt.
Then there’s the third playthrough, which picks up where the previous two left off, giving you control of 9S and a mysterious side character named A2 at different points. That’s right—2B, the breakout character who even managed to find her way into SoulCalibur VI, is only playable for something like a third of Nier: Automata. And while A2 is a suitable replacement, most of that third playthrough is still 9S, whose character becomes utterly grating for no reason. Everyone in the entire world becomes stupid during the third playthrough. A2 saves a friendly robot named Pascal who appears throughout the game and watches Pascal fly off to safety, only to later see him flying again and exclaim, “wait, he can fly?” In another example, 9S is infected by a virus and hacks himself to remove it, with his success confirmed by his assistant. Shortly afterward, he’s infected again for no reason.
A reasonable person might conclude that the story revelations are at least worth the frustrating dropoff in writing quality. No such luck, I’m afraid; most of your third playthrough will consist of fetch quests, and some of the few that advance the story in a meaningful way managed to trigger a cutscene that canceled all of my remaining sidequests.
Even half an hour away from one of the actual endings (C and D—there are technically 20-something endings, but most of them are joke endings and the more substantive A and B endings correspond to the first two playthroughs and therefore don’t count as endings), characters are gasp-reacting to documents that aren’t as much of a twist as I expected. And then things end with a whimper and you’re given the option to play a terrible bullet hell hacking-style minigame to get the “good” ending, which is basically pitting you against the developers as you fight for an ending that’s not actively horrible. Listen—I love the Deception games, and those tend to end with the devil possessing the main character or everyone they love being killed. Dark and depressing can be great, but many of Nier: Automata‘s villains don’t show up for real until the very end. There’s not enough time spent fleshing out the relevant parties to justify the terrible endings where everyone acts like idiots.
Nier: Automata is just bad writing. Imagine if Hamlet had ended with a guy named Chuck showing up and setting everyone on fire for no reason, only for Shakespeare to saunter out on stage and go, “Tragedy! See? Life is pointless! The end!” As I said before, it’s unearned. The tragedy is cheapened.
Themes of perseverance in the face of impossible odds fall flat when everyone’s struggles arise from a diabolus ex machina instead of being a logical result of the overarching conflict built up throughout the game. A frustrating amount of Nier: Automata‘s storytelling consists of red herrings.
The more interesting themes and concepts here are quickly brushed aside for this crap
You begin the game with a short tutorial mission that results in 9S and 2B destroying themselves to take out some opponents, only to be regenerated back at their base (something androids are capable of). However, 9S doesn’t have enough time to back up his memories and prioritizes those of 2B, so the version of 9S that 2B came to know during that early gameplay is permanently gone, replaced with a version of him that doesn’t already know her. This is deeply interesting SOMA territory. Do memories dictate what an android is? Would those rules apply to their robot opponents? These are interesting issues that are briefly touched on, only to disappear almost completely toward the end, replaced with poorly explained anime nonsense that pits emotional teen androids against emotional teen robots. Side characters die or lose their memories, but Nier: Automata is too preoccupied with its screaming, homicidal characters to bother with more than a surprised ellipsis at a familiar face disappearing.
Early on, this looks to be headed into interesting Ghost in the Shell-esque directions. Then it gets distracted by far more generic plot developments and throws many of its most intriguing characters away before bothering to explore any deeper questions of meaning and existence. Plot holes open up, characters become detestable, and nothing is accomplished but making me regret spending so much time finishing 89% of the sidequests. It’s so bad that I left the remaining 11% unfinished, sold most of my items, and purchased achievement unlocks, with that simulacrum of accomplishment serving as a satisfyingly hollow parallel to a story that squandered its truly interesting elements by treating them as seasoning instead of the meal.
No, I’m not done rambling about how much I hate Nier: Automata‘s storytelling yet
As I said before, I felt nothing after finishing the game’s supposedly “good” E ending. Nothing, that is, but puzzlement; who was this game for, I wondered? On a hunch, I looked up other negative coverage of Nier: Automata and read through the comments. It was just as I suspected—broken English and flawed arguments accusing those who’d dare to criticize the “best game ever” of not “getting it” and claiming that so many people enjoying something must be a sign of its innate quality. Internally, I chuckled and responded that this logic would render The Big Bang Theory a stellar show. This is when everything clicked into place. Nier: Automata‘s second half has all of the traits that made that show so insufferable. Pretending that its surface-level approach to topics is actually deep, allowing stupid people to feel smarter than they are. Terrible characters who exist solely to ram hackneyed storytelling down everyone’s throats rather than being allowed to exist and develop organically in the world. A constant self-congratulatory vibe that reverberates throughout the writing like a neverending “you’re welcome for this now existing thanks to me.”
Nier: Automata‘s final third transforms it from a potentially deep and interesting experience into The Big Bang Theory of games. Popular but very bad.
I don’t have as much venom for the gameplay, though it can be a buggy slog at times
Nier: Automata‘s gameplay is fine for the most part. Toward the end of my first playthrough, I was even enjoying hacking up groups of robots quite a bit. Robots sometimes drop plugin chips (which can also be purchased from stores) that can be equipped for passive bonuses, so stacking plugins that increase your attack damage with those that heal you after damaging/defeating enemies or simply avoiding damage for a certain amount of time can effectively make you immortal. There’s very little as satisfying as taking down a late-game boss in 10-20 seconds. Nier: Automata also does a lot of interesting things to switch up the gameplay. There are block-pushing puzzles. There are several different types of shooter sections. 3D areas sometimes turn into side-scrolling 2D sections. And much of the game involves slow-moving bullets that fill the screen in a way that’s not quite bullet hell so much its interesting and more flexible cousin. All of this helps to keep the gameplay fresh during your first 10-20 hours.
It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows at first. I managed to die to a tutorial boss after realizing that dodges give you invincibility frames, but counterattacks launched immediately after successfully dodging attacks don’t. I managed to teleport on top of two buzzsaws and take a ton of damage, not realizing that I could potentially air dodge to safety or manually use healing items. I also finished several quests before realizing that there was a run button. Moving around becomes faster still when you unlock fast travel, but that only unlocks a quarter or so into your first and second playthroughs, which can be a bit of a drag.
Most of my early gameplay complaints were eventually addressed. Slow movement speed? Equip a speed-boosting plugin chip. Not fast enough? Fuse several together to make a more powerful one. Not comfortable with the default sword’s attack pattern? Find and equip one of the many other ones you can use. Do bosses have odd hit detection and camera angles that make it unclear where the hitboxes are? You’ll eventually become powerful enough to tear through them like tissue paper. Tanky sidequest enemies who take forever to defeat due to being a higher level than you? Hold off on those sidequests until you’re playing as 9S, whose hacking abilities can trivialize even high-level enemies.
Hacking is enjoyable early on, with 9S lacking 2B’s heavy attack, instead having the ability to hack into most opponents and finish a frenetic top-down shooter minigame to damage/stun them, control them (only when hacking an enemy who hasn’t yet seen you), or read their thoughts (only during certain events). It’s a simplistic minigame, though, and you’ll be tired of it long before Nier: Automata mandates its repeated usage.
The sidequests also become incredibly repetitive and pointless as you near the end
While I enjoyed the overall gameplay, the sidequests did admittedly begin to wear on me. I was determined to finish them all during my first playthrough so that any additional ones were free of clutter (and also because I was in love with Nier: Automata before the second and third playthroughs dropped the ball and wore me down), only for one sidequest that required saving up 50,000 units of currency—can’t remember the specific name of it, not that it matters—to disappear entirely once I had saved up enough money because it occurred in the same area as the next main quest. This happened to me multiple times and may have been a small mercy. There are three fighting arenas. Many sidequests are boring fetch quests or tedious hidden object hunts. There are gems in there like that Romeo and Juliet play, but there are also protect-an-NPC missions.
I feel like those are called “Natalya missions” in common parlance, named after the suicidal Natalya NPC in awful N64 Goldeneye missions, but I may be wrong about that. The end result is pretty much the same, though. High-level enemies overwhelmed the NPCs when I tried this mission during my first playthrough. During my second, I defeated them all easily, only for the physics to glitch and strand me out of the mission area, resulting in an automatic failure. Physics complicating even the easiest tasks is a bit of a recurring theme in Nier: Automata.
For example, sand physics. No one on earth can convince me that whoever designed the sand physics to function like noncommittal ice has ever seen sand in real life. Slopes can drop you at speeds faster than your characters can normally move, or outright glitch out and leave you oscillating between two fixed points. None of this is ideal considering that one of Nier: Automata‘s sidequests requires winning races against an opponent who flies straight to the goal, forcing you to find a way to carefully navigate to the finish line on the ground. Usually, you only have a split-second to beat him. It’s terrible. The racing minigames are awful, and doubly so when you realize that plugin chips max out bonuses like extra movement speed at arbitrary points that seem to exist solely to frustrate you during sidequests like this. Then there are the context-sensitivity issues. And how dashing to the left whenever you leave an elevator in the bunker hub area causes the camera to bug out every time. I don’t know what happened with the quality assurance, but Nier: Automata is rough.
Unlike the story, however, the mechanics here do enough interesting things to make up for the problems. Being hit by certain attacks or doing the android equivalent of drugs can cause the world to be rendered a blocky red or green. With the exception of hacking, the 2D and top-down shooter sequences are rare enough to be a treat rather than a punishment. And at the end of the day, controlling 2B and A2 is a fast-paced dance of hacking and slashing and dodging that I genuinely enjoyed. It’s just too bad that 9S and his boring hacking and drama eat into their time so much.
Nier: Automata‘s soundtrack is its strongest point, though the structure doesn’t benefit it
First, I want to start with the visuals. There are highlights such as being able to disable plugin chips that display HUD elements in order to make cleaner screenshots, which was unusual but enjoyable to discover, and there’s no denying that the character designs here are next-level good. It’s no wonder that 2B became so prevalent in gaming culture given how striking the many contrasts of her design is, and there’s an entire cast of memorably designed characters here. Toward the end, though, I realized that I was just running around empty areas as 9S, taking the wrong elevator because the artsy black and white filter was being overused again and making it difficult to tell which elevators go up. There are also a bunch of pre-rendered cutscenes that trigger throughout the game. I read somewhere that these are rendered at 900p, which looks about right. And finally, there’s Nier: Automata‘s antialiasing on PC. It kills your performance and doesn’t look any better than forcing a less taxing AA through your GPU.
Nier: Automata‘s soundtrack is rightly praised. It’s downright excellent, and many of the techniques it uses—multiple song versions that fade in and out based on what you’re doing at the time, tracks tied to certain areas to emphasize their significance and emotion, and a strong emphasis on melodies—are things that I’ve lobbied hard for over the past 9 or so years. However, some of the tracks started to wear on me toward the end because of how often I’d heard them, due in no small part to having to replay the entire game a second time with only minor changes. Still, I can’t bring myself to give this any less than a 2/2. There were even points where the instrumentation and style reminded me of Chrono Cross, to the point where I came to believe that one of the tracks was an homage. I don’t know if that’s accurate, but it’s very good company to be in music-wise.
Story: 1/3 Gameplay: 2/3 Visuals: 1/2 Music: 2/2 ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆ – 6/10
*Click here and scroll to the bottom for a detailed explanation of what these numbers mean
A super late NieR: Automata review (BECOME AS GODS Edition) first appeared on Killa Penguin
