NieR:Automata Review
For 2025 I wanted to do something I’ve never done before: try to clear out my Steam backlog. I decided I would play one new single-player game per month, and for January my chat voted on NieR:Automata.
Disclaimer: At the time of writing, I have 39.1 hours in this game, and have beat endings A B C D E (the main storyline) along with endings H K T. I played the “Game of the YoRHa Edition” from Steam on Linux. For my fellow Linux gamers, there were some very minor graphical glitches so switch to Proton 8.0. I did not play any of the previous NieR games.
I am, of course, aware of this game through cultural diffusion, and I have heard it was highly regarded as one of the best games ever made. My basic review is this: if you don’t like JRPGs, like me, it’s decent and I would recommend it. If you do like JRPGs, you’ll probably be jumping and down about how this is the best game ever made. That’s basically how my criticism boils down.
Gameplay
The framing gameplay is typical JRPG. Talk to NPCs, do side quests, collect items, shop and trade, craft items, and continue with the main quest when ready. On a lower level it’s a hack-and-slash combat open world type of game. It took me a bit to get good at it but that’s mostly just because I’m not very used to this type of game. There is a lot of focus on learning the attack patterns of the enemies and using your dash with the right timing to dodge their attacks. I’ve seen it described as learning attack combos, but the combos are really just timing your inputs. You really only have like 2 inputs for your swordplay. As a point of comparison, Ocarina of Time from 1998 has like 7 different attacks with only 2 buttons and a control stick.
My only complaint here is the difficulty. I played on Normal, it was a little hard at first but once I got the hang of it and assembled a good auto-heal build it kind of felt a bit easy. There is an Easy difficulty that gives you things like auto-fire so that is right out. Hard difficulty eliminates the ability to lock on with your ranged attack, which really doesn’t bother me since it’s inaccurate anyway. It also increases the damage of the enemies however, and basically every time I tried switching to it (I think 4 times or so throughout my playthrough) I got my shit absolutely wrecked. If there was some difficulty between Normal and Hard it would be perfect, but I am either too much or not enough of a gamer. The Very Hard difficulty adds one hit KO so I never even tried that.
Soundtrack
I have to mention it this early since it’s such a banger. The soundtrack of this game is fantastic, one of the best, it really contributes a lot to the game. It’s been released in several versions and if you’re a real degenerate like me they even have a piano arrangement version of a few of the songs. Some guy has put all the versions into a YouTube playlist here.
Tell me this shit ain’t a banger
World design
There’s a lot of talk about how the level design is great and ‘makes you feel small’. This game has a giant, beautiful world but damned if there isn’t anything in it. It’s the ruins of Earth 10,000 years after humans left or whatever, and it looks great, but there’s nothing in it. If this game is supposed to be story-driven, where are the secret areas revealing the storyline? Where are the hidden little bits of lore? The best you get are some chests tucked in an out of the way area with just generic collectibles. Either have a small, focused world where all the interesting shit is close together, or pack that shit full of secrets and lore. Even with the fast travel mechanic I did get a bit tired of having to walk forever across huge empty deserts.
FWIW for the first half of the game I did try to do as many side-quests as I could, but by the end I realized my month was running out so by about the time you find A2 I was mostly just rushing the main quests. Maybe I missed all the story side quests, I dunno.
Graphics
There seem to be some complaints online about the graphics, some rough low-res textures and things like that with some third party patches to ‘fix’ them. The graphics are fine for me, they put a decent amount of stylistic flair in it. It’s a Japanese game from 2017 so don’t be too harsh on it.
Characters
Plenty of reviews recommend this game as a character-based story-driven game, but like I never felt that. Literally everyone in this game is a robot, either the alien machines or protagonist androids. I realized that I don’t think any 2B boobie cosplayers have actually played the game because you wouldn’t portray her like that. 2B’s character is basically "emotions are prohibited, I am the law", but if all you saw were screenshots you would only think about her ass. It really failed to make me give a shit about any of the characters at all, like they’re all robots so what? They’re literally stored in a warehouse and come off an assembly line. There is a point in the story you can see how many 2Bs they have in storage.
I did like 9S though, he was a very funny character and much better than 2B.
Story
Alright this game gets very good reviews based on the storyline but I thought it was dumb as hell. The storyline is like, classic JRPG in that it goes from mildly interesting to being dumb and edgy as hell.
The starting premise is that aliens invaded the Earth, humans retreated to the moon, and now 10,000 years later you are a part of the elite “YoRHa” android unit to kill the alien’s machines and take back the earth.
OK so off the bat that’s interesting premise, why has it been ten thousand years? The game teases intrigue and bits of the story, I was really invested, only for it to go somewhere comically dumb. In a typical JRPG move it has a twist that’s almost laughably edgy. Every character in this game is literally a machine so why the fuck should I care about what happens to them?
The story is this:
Actually the aliens are dead, but it’s just the machines telling me this so why would I believe them?
Actually the humans are dead too, YoRHa is just fighting the machines on their own accord.
Actually YoRHa is fake, the machines created them to fight them to evolve or whatever.
Actually 2B is fake, she’s actually 2E, an ‘executioner’ unit to kill 9S every time he realizes the truth.
Anyway edgy as hell, like this is the award winning storyline?
Final recommendation
This game is good, you should play it. Even if you don’t like JRPGs it’s decent enough you should give it a shot.
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