Please note that the above is not representative of the gameplay; you DON’T need to ride on a boar to fight these enemies. XD This is also not related to the main story so it’s not a spoiler.

I ended up doing this since I was looking for new ways to amuse myself. After all, I already completed all story endings and nabbed a ton of other endings by this time. 😀

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My experience with the Drakengard-NieR series consists of all but the first Drakengard game. However, I didn’t complete every ending for any of them. Here’s what happened:

Drakengard 2: Fucking egg boss. The camera controls and flight mechanics already sucked and this bloody battle relied on those two things. -__-

Drakengard 3: Fucking unforgiving rhythm game. This was a troll battle.

NIER: I could have completed the last ending but I didn’t want to go through with it since I had an emotional attachment to the game at the time. 😛

Truthfully, I don’t remember many story-related things in details; just bits and pieces here and there as well as some characters and their motives. I went through NieR: Automata wondering about a lot of things that were covered in NIER, but didn’t look them up until I finished the last ending so I wouldn’t spoil myself.

Anyway, I wanted to establish that I’m somewhat familiar with the universe and didn’t go into Automata blind. Although it’s not necessary, I would suggest people play through NIER first since all the references will have that much  more impact.

The Positive Things

• Great soundtrack. It’s totally got the style of the NIER soundtrack. Same composer so it’s not a surprise (but he also did Drakengard 3 and I can’t recall a single track from that game …) There are also 8-bit variants of some tunes!
• Fun combat. I appreciated that the window for perfect evades was huge. I’m usually pretty terrible at timing them. ^^ Couldn’t pull them off for the life of me in Bayonetta, for example.
• Creative and fun boss fights.
• There are quite a few quests that, if you missed them the first time around, you can get them again once you unlock the option to select chapters.
• Some of the non-story endings are amusing like the bunker one. ^^
• Bullet hell. Or more specifically, the fun hacking mini games. ^^~

The Negative Things

• The game is short if you don’t do side quests. I clocked in over 60 hours, but that’s from completing 55 out of 60 side quests, all endings except one, lots of exploring and killing, and getting lost a few times in a dungeon AND in the machine village. 9__9 I’m certain many players can do all that under 60 hours though. ^^; Oh, there’s this site that has some data from a handful of players: https://howlongtobeat.com/game.php?id=38029
• Not entirely a negative thing but I didn’t really like how we could access side quests with enemies that were about 30 levels above. The battle was doable but it would take eons to finish and one false move would mean death. ^^ (I died by a 2-hit combo. ^^;) I’m not even talking about the optional/secret boss fights. Of course, there are players that like that sort of challenge. I just feel it should be locked out until later on. 😡 Also, I fought almost everything in my path so it’s not like I was underlevelled story-wise.
• Inaccessible areas. 😛 People are hypothesizing that they’ll be available in future DLC, but I also read that Yoko Taro just likes to troll players so who knows?
• The marker for the side quest “Machine Examination”. It’s on the fucking machine itself but the actual trigger is on the broken block of concrete in front of it. I suppose it should have been obvious since 9S says something if you stand on the edge of the thing. I just didn’t figure we’d have to hit the interaction button to start the quest. 😐
• Marking this as a negative since resetting the ENTIRE set of actions is kind of stupid: If you have ever jumped to another chapter at any point — this option is unlocked after a subsequent playthrough —  you will be locked out of the doors leading to the optional boss’ home. In order to open them, you have to speak to the character again. If you want to fight him, you’ll have to steal his belongings once more. The game will state that the quantity for the items have been exceeded, but it’ll still count as successfully taking them.

Now it’s time for spoilers! 😀

Continue reading “NieR: Automata Post-Game Reflections” →