Chris Kavan's Game Review of NieR

NieR - Run, Kill, Repeat
Chris Kavan - wrote on 10/28/12

Square Enix has long been associated with the RPG genre. From Final Fantasy to Dragon Quest, their influence on the history of gaming in undeniable. Yet this generation has been hampered by a lack of generally good RPGs. There are games like Fallout 3, Borderlands and Mass Effect that combine RPG elements into their games, but traditional RPGs have been hard to come by. Nier is an action RPG, which mainly means you'll be doing a lot of running around and killing things with your weapon of choice or magic. However, it's all spectacularly average in every way.

Presentation: If you're looking for something that takes advantage of next-gen graphics, this is not the game to impress with. The colors are muted and while the cut-scenes look good, they are in no way the top-of-the-line quality as seen in other games. Voice acting is adequate, but not outstanding. Enemies kind of run together, though there are a few great massive bosses that are quite fun to take down. Normal enemies are just blah and get repetitive way too quickly. Also, when you get too many enemies on the screen, the game gets really jaggy. The music is the real treat - while sometimes it can sound like Enya or recycled from another game - the music always seems to fit the surroundings - moody and somber - even emotional at times. While I don't think I would rush out and buy the soundtrack, at least the music always seems to fit the situation.

Story: The intro introduces you to a world in ruin. Elements of our world are there - cars, buildings falling apart. You are a man protecting his daughter when suddenly they are attacked by an army of what are to be known as "shades". Luckily, at this point, you are a badass and easily dispatch the creatures. Flash forward to some time far in the future and a man is once again protecting his daughter (and, they look quite similar to the two in the intro - that is the man is incredibly hideous and the daughter cute as a button but a terrible cook). The daughter comes down with the Black Scrawl - a seemingly incurable disease that has taken much of the population at this time. Speaking of this time, the only indication of what has happened to the world is that a great calamity fell, the oceans rose and most of the old world now is in ruin.

The man, wanting to save his daughter, goes after the only thing that might save her: the Sealed Verses. But he must track down every one if he is to succeed. The game is split into two halves. The first half is all about going after these verses. Early on, you come across Grimoire Weiss, a sentient book who gives you access to magic you can use to combat shades and bosses. It all sounds good, but I really only used to spells throughout the entire game - Dark Lance and Dark Hand (mostly Dark Lance). Weiss has some of the best dialogue in the game - often sarcastic or perturbed. You also pick up an outcast by the name of Kaine - who dresses like a whore, but has magic and swords too. And finally Emil - a young boy who is great with magic. Early on in the game, the two are useful, but in the second half their powers are negligible. As you level up they become more of an annoyance than anything else. There are only a handful of areas in the game: your village, the fishing village, the Aerie (a suspended village of really unhelpful people), the forest of myth, the scrapyard, desert village (governed by a set of esoteric rules) the Lost Shrine (a dungeon key to the second half of the game) and the vast plain connecting the places together. You meet quite a few characters along the way, but none have too much or an impact.

The second half of the game has you looking for your daughter, who has been kidnapped by a shade controlling Grimoire Noir - another sentient book. The shades have grown much stronger, the world much more imperiled. Now, instead of going after the verses, you're looking for the keys to unlock the Shadowlord's Castle and save your daughter (again). When you first start off this part of the game, it's tough. The armored enemies are much stronger and until you level up yourself and your weapons, they are a tough nut to crack. The game features multiple endings - on the next few playthroughs the enemies are much easier - to the point of absurdity. There are a bunch of trophies for beating bosses in a certain amount of time that I thought would be a pain to get, but by the second time through the enemies are so underpowered it was a cake walk.

What starts off as some post-apocalyptic "save-my-daughter" quest does take an interesting turn in the second half of the game. They throw in a twist that really puts the game into a whole different perspective, but it's not altogether a big revelation. All in all, while interesting, the story is just another twist on standard RPG fare.

Gameplay: As I said earlier - you'll be doing an awful lot of running around and killing things. If you find this kind of combat a bore, don't even bother. The core game is really easy to get through, but, if you're like me, you'll want to do the myriad of side quests as well. There are A LOT to get through. Fishing, delivering things across the map without jumping or attacking (or getting attacked), collecting various items, gardening (yes, you can garden - even though it's incredibly annoying and you have to manipulate the game to get anywhere) - or just talking to a bunch of different people - it's all there. Oh, by the way, you don't get money for killing anything, so the only way to get cash is to either A) complete these side quests or B) sell things you get by killing shades, animals or finding at certain points on the map. You also have the ability to upgrade weapons - but this is the most tedious part of the game, as many components are only occasionally dropped by the biggest enemies or found at only one or two drop points in the entire game. I only used a few weapons in the game anyway, so I skipped most of this.

The game claims you have a lot of weapons and magic to choose from, but in the end you will only wind up using a few powers and probably only a handful of weapons. There are two-handed swords and spears available in the second half as well, but I found them pretty useless compared to an upgraded one-handed sword. The RPG element is that you do gain levels and you can also upgrade your magic, weapon and defense stats by collecting words that randomly come from defeating enemies. These give you various bonuses to strength, defense, item drop rate, experience, magic power and magic recovery. While this bonus starts off rather small, it can grow by 30%-40% as you unlock stronger words as you level up (this is also why the game becomes much easier).

Overall: I think Nier is really about the illusion of choice - you think there's a lot of options and the world is wide open - but in the end the story is pretty straight-forward and you find yourself using the same style of weapon and magic over and over and over again. It's not terrible but it's completely average.

Presentation: 3/5
Story: 3/5
Gameplay: 3/5
Overall (not an average): 3/5