NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139...

[Roguey]

So did Fable II. It didn't take 11 hours to begin the story.

The story is the entire game.

[Vergil]

So did Fable II. It didn't take 11 hours to begin the story.

The story is the entire game.

But you just said Nier needed to be aged up for the story Gooko wanted to tell so why not speed up getting to that age is what I'm saying.

I can kind of understand it but it's a fool's errand. It wants to give you time with Yonah to make you connect with the protagonists desire to help/save her. But honestly, that's just never gonna happen at least not fully. Stories are always going to require the audience to buy in a little bit at the start. Yonah is never gonna be my actual sister. I'm never gonna care to the same level of the protagonist. I can accept Nier loves his sister and wants to save her I don't need to have a 12 hour prologue to establish something I can intuit.

[Roguey]

But you just said Nier needed to be aged up for the story Gooko wanted to tell so why not speed up getting to that age is what I'm saying.

I can kind of understand it but it's a fool's errand. It wants to give you time with Yonah to make you connect with the protagonists desire to help/save her. But honestly, that's just never gonna happen at least not fully. Stories are always going to require the audience to buy in a little bit at the start. Yonah is never gonna be my actual sister. I'm never gonna care to the same level of the protagonist. I can accept Nier loves his sister and wants to save her I don't need to have a 12 hour prologue to establish something I can intuit.

There's a very good reason why Nier needs to be a kid in the beginning and an adult for the second half. Yoko says he makes stories by coming up with the ending first and then working his way backawrds.

[Vergil]

But you just said Nier needed to be aged up for the story Gooko wanted to tell so why not speed up getting to that age is what I'm saying.

I can kind of understand it but it's a fool's errand. It wants to give you time with Yonah to make you connect with the protagonists desire to help/save her. But honestly, that's just never gonna happen at least not fully. Stories are always going to require the audience to buy in a little bit at the start. Yonah is never gonna be my actual sister. I'm never gonna care to the same level of the protagonist. I can accept Nier loves his sister and wants to save her I don't need to have a 12 hour prologue to establish something I can intuit.

There's a very good reason why Nier needs to be a kid in the beginning and an adult for the second half. Yoko says he makes stories by coming up with the ending first and then working his way backawrds.

I find that highly unlikely but I suppose I'll find out as I go along. The gameplay is quite good now that I have access to spears, all the spells, and the quick inventory.
Im assuming the shadowlord is the protagonist from the intro and is kidnapping Yonah as a replacement for his own sister. If so I still think the prologue as young Nier could be an hour or two tops like Fable to establish that

[Vergil]

The level re-use and backtracking is beginning to get really tiresome and it's another victim of the overly long Act 1 imo. I've already had to revisit these locations before as is and now I'm having to do it again without any sort of real changes to at least make the passage of time feel significant. The junk heap is brutally boring. It doesn't help that it seems sort of nonsensical. I've already had to jump down this same hole to fight a boss in a previous quest and only now very soon after am I being made to do it again to fight a completely different boss and the characters are commenting on how crazy it is to do so and that we don't know what's at the bottom. Like, yes we do, we did this like an hour ago...

[Vergil]

Lampshading that something you're making the player do is annoying doesn't absolve you from doing it...

[Roguey]

The level re-use and backtracking is beginning to get really tiresome and it's another victim of the overly long Act 1 imo.

Wait till you see what you have to do to unlock all the endings.

It's economical jrpg design, Automata and a lot of others do it too (but its additional endings aren't anywhere near as lazy).

[rusty_shackleford]

the endings are ********, the creator is a ******

[Vergil]

It's economical jrpg design

Is economical being used a synonym for bad here?

[Roguey]

the endings are ********, the creator is a ******

They're necessary to understand the whole story.

► Show Spoiler

Plus they follow the same structure where the first couple of endings only give you a hint of what's happening, the status quo is irretrievably broken and everyone is ****** in the next two endings, but then he pulls back and lets everyone live happily ever after with the fifth one

It's economical jrpg design

Is economical being used a synonym for bad here?

Adding more content while saving money on level creation.

[Vergil]

They're necessary to understand the whole story.

Having to do a bunch of menial tasks you deliberately designed to be unenjoyable to get the TRUE ending is ******** for bug people.

Adding more content while saving money on level creation.

Quantity vs Quality.

[Roguey]

Having to do a bunch of menial tasks you deliberately designed to be unenjoyable to get the TRUE ending is ******** for bug people.

You don't have to do any sidequests to get all the endings. You do have to buy all the weapons, but you don't have to do any sidequests for that.

Quantity vs Quality.

I personally enjoyed all this content but one's mileage will vary.

[Vergil]

You do have to buy all the weapons

This still counts as menial BS to me and I'm pretty sure I'm not locked out of getting the super extreme deluxe TRUE S rank ending then because the Aerie is destroyed and I only bought the spear

This sort of design is very ******** to me. If you have an intended ending to your story that should be the ending. Anything else is a game over. Imagine if at the end of Oblivion Dagon ****** lava onto you and Martin and you got "BAD ENDING" unless you collected sigil stones from all 60 oblivion gates to create the magical sounding rod to unlock the TRUE ending. That's what this **** ******** is like.

[rusty_shackleford]

The ending is your character gets erased from their memory and it also deletes your save because ITS SO META!!! WOW JAPANESE AUTEUR!!!!

you're welcome

[Vergil]

Just found out there are in fact alternate costumes

[Vergil]

skull kid is gay, majora's mask fans btfo

[Roguey]

You do have to buy all the weapons

This still counts as menial BS to me and I'm pretty sure I'm not locked out of getting the super extreme deluxe TRUE S rank ending then because the Aerie is destroyed and I only bought the spear

This sort of design is very ******** to me. If you have an intended ending to your story that should be the ending. Anything else is a game over. Imagine if at the end of Oblivion Dagon ****** lava onto you and Martin and you got "BAD ENDING" unless you collected sigil stones from all 60 oblivion gates to create the magical sounding rod to unlock the TRUE ending. That's what this **** ******** is like.

You can't lock yourself out of the endings. You can buy everything anytime after you complete the game once. There's no gotcha, it tells you what you have to do and gives you the means to do it.

The ending is your character gets erased from their memory and it also deletes your save because ITS SO META!!! WOW JAPANESE AUTEUR!!!!

you're welcome

That's not the final ending. The original game shipped unfinished and they had to provide the true denouement in the Grimoire Nier book. WIth the re-release they were finally able to put that into the game proper.

[Vergil]

You can't lock yourself out of the endings. You can buy everything anytime after you complete the game once. There's no gotcha, it tells you what you have to do and gives you the means to do it.

Yea having to complete the game once and then beat it again is the definition of being locked out.

[Vergil]

[Roguey]

Yea having to complete the game once and then beat it again is the definition of being locked out.

You can only ever get ending A on your first playthrough. Then it makes you play the adult Nier part again to get Endings B, C, and D.

It's not quite as bad as it sounds because there's new things in playthrough B and even more new scenes unlocked in playthrough C. D's just a repeat though, but you can beeline it pretty quickly (or keep an extra near-endgame save so you can choose D after C since that's the only one with a decision fork).

[Vergil]

Then it makes you play the adult Nier part again to get Endings B, C, and D.

It's not quite as bad as it sounds because there's new things in playthrough B and even more new scenes unlocked in playthrough C. D's just a repeat though, but you can beeline it pretty quickly (or keep an extra near-endgame save so you can choose D after C since that's the only one with a decision fork).

I don't know if saying the game wants you to repeat the second half of the game 3 times is supposed to warm me to the design but it really really does the opposite.

[Vergil]

In fact, knowing that I'm going to get some ******** fake ending makes me almost not want to bother finishing the game at all...

[Roguey]

I don't know if saying the game wants you to repeat the second half of the game 3 times is supposed to warm me to the design but it really really does the opposite.

To get to Ending E you have to play the start of Child Nier again up until a certain point where it forks to something completely new.

And they're not fake endings. Ending C is the only one that's non-canon, just a what-if (that fits Papa Nier from the American version).

[Vergil]

I don't know if saying the game wants you to repeat the second half of the game 3 times is supposed to warm me to the design but it really really does the opposite.

To get to Ending E you have to play the start of Child Nier again up until a certain point where it forks to something completely new.

And they're not fake endings. Ending C is the only one that's non-canon, just a what-if (that fits Papa Nier from the American version).

**** that's crazy, anyway after getting ending A or whatever I will be moving on to Dark Souls II

[Vergil]

This ending was fine. I don't really see anything that needs to be wrapped up or added onto this really although I guess I'll find out once I look into the other endings.
I've been pretty harsh on this game but I did quite like it at parts. Enough to stick with it despite my gripes. It definitely feels like there's a lot of potential that wasn't fully capitalized on however. Feel like too much time was spent meandering for little pay off. This very clearly was a budget title as well and I think they really could have leveraged their resources better and not stretched themselves so thin to the point of needing to do such heavy level re-use.
The combat is "fun" but it did feel a little barebones if not because it actually is but because of the poor enemy variety and low difficulty. There's a pretty clear dominant strategy you can fall into that makes combat mostly a forgone conclusion and you're given so many healing/buff items that you can just brute force your way through encounters if you're stubborn.
I liked the main party well enough. Even Kaine for being a pretty detestable character archetype didn't grate on my nerves too much. I liked that the group had a tangible dynamic with each other that made them feel fairly "alive" and fleshed out even if in gameplay they're barely a factor.
The story was perfectly fine for what it is. Nothing really ground breaking but I'm not someone who thinks every story needs to be some high level subversion of expectations. Yonah was never annoying or unlikable which some games (like Fallout 3/4) that have a "you must save this character we're telling you to care about" fail to manage. The "twist" was completely obvious the moment the shadowlord showed up. Even before that something about the shades always seemed a bit off and suspicious.
Ending A is completely satisfactory to me. Everything feels like it was concluded. I actually was a bit concerned/annoyed by the intro skip and did wonder about the intro characters for a while so I'm glad that they got their own little ending even if it was a bittersweet one. I might play a little more just to mess around but the game telling me "Ending B" revolves around Kaine's story isn't exactly making me want to give it a run through since I don't care and I'm not a ****** so I don't play as women or "women" in video games.

[Vergil]

Oh lol this **** wants me to sit here and read pure text about Kaine yea that's not gonna happen

[Vergil]

Now that I've beaten the game I decided to read more into the backstory and anything I've missed. I hate the Japanese.
Talking about writing about a 15 year old boy being repeatedly raped btw

► Show Spoiler

Degenerate filth, I'll never touch anything this **** ****** makes again for the rest of my life.

[rusty_shackleford]

I warned you.

[Vergil]

I warned you.

No you didn't, not about this aspect.

[Roguey]

This ending was fine. I don't really see anything that needs to be wrapped up or added onto this really although I guess I'll find out once I look into the other endings.

You didn't find it particularly odd that the last scene is Yonah and Nier playing as kids?

Now that I've beaten the game I decided to read more into the backstory and anything I've missed. I hate the Japanese.
Talking about writing about a 15 year old boy being repeatedly raped btw

It's my interpretation that Nier being a male prostitute is something that happened to a previous incarnation and the current version simply inherited the headband. Game-Nier is way too optimistic, naive, and pleasant to be a traumatized rape survivor (in the story he lets the guy who sodomized him roughly intentionally get killed by shades on a shade-killing expedition).

Frankly I like the "Kaine feels the overwhelming urge to masturbate every time she kills shades" story better.