Nier.
 

Anyone else grab a copy of this? Phantom's playing, but I'm frankly not impressed. Like, the set pieces all seem good, but unlike other games he's played, it's just failed to grab my attention. Part of it is probably that the music depresses me and another part of it is probably that while there seems to be color, it's only in splashes against a blanched world. Combat also looks rather generic.

On the other hand, the voice acting is pretty damn good and the world is all very detailed.

I dunno, it just seems to suffer from some of the same atmosphere issues as Demon's Souls, as well as possibly some of the "repeat it ad infinitum until you get it right" gameplay, given the difficulty Phantom was having getting a trinket from point A to point B without the damn thing breaking in the midst of combat.

Also, fishing is just plain horrid. Seaweed and old buckets should NOT give you that much of a fight, and he's cursing as I type because he has yet to catch an actual fish.



Anyone else have a different perspective?

This game is cool because the final ending deletes your saves for the game. Cavia got balls.

What?

This intrigues me from a programming perspective. On one hand, it lends a finality to things, but on the other, a lot of players will probably be pissed when it happens with no warning. Also, it means that you have to start over to see the different endings, which Phantom tells me there are some. Lengthens gameplay by a LOT, but I wonder if it's worth the cost of likely pissing off most of the audience, especially after the text adventure portion.

This game seems to take a lot of risks, but I wonder if all of them are entirely necessary. Especially given the ratio to the safer content.

Gonna spoilertag all of this just in case:

There are 4 endings to Nier. After beating the game once, you are giving the option of a New Game+ starting from around the halfway point, where the plot branches off and you get ending B. Playing through again and getting 100% of the weapons opens up endings C and D, D being the one to delete your savefiles. I believe the game does warn you about ending D beforehand. Of course, if you back up your saves on a memory stick beforehand, you can simply transfer them back over after seeing ending D. Also there's an achievement/trophy for getting ending D iirc. It's kind of like Drakengard in how it handles New Game+ with story branching instead of just making you start over. Also, for those of you who want to play as the other Nier (the one in the Japan-only Nier Replicant) the DLC recently released for Nier, Recycled Vessel, allows you to use him for one stage.

Apologies for the doublepost but I also have a copy now, and have played the first hour and a half. One thing I note is that the hero runs hella fucking fast, but his actual animations occasionally look janky, and controlling him has a weightless feel reminiscent of the PS2 era. The writing is good too, with Grimoira Weiss almost worth the price of the game alone.

Plus, the game OPENS with Kaine (hermadrophite character) swearing at Weiss for not helping out, which is awesome.

I don't know if "weightless" is the right word, given he definitely jumps like a white boy. You can't really get anywhere unless you double or even triple jump, if you can manage and the surface is just sloped enough.

Just started playing. Just un-petrified Kaine. I'm not really a big fan of her because her dialogue is just awful and it sounds like her voice actress is trying to hard to make it work. Combat is decent, but nothing more than that.

@Blues: That thing your friend was doing was an irrelevant sidequest that only gives you money that you can easily get much more of just by selling shit.

Weiss, Emil, and the protagonist are all incredibly likable characters. I can't stand Kaine, but everyone else is a pretty damn good person. There was one odd moment where Emil after we'd only really seen him once before is talking about how he'll never forget Weiss, even though he only knew Weiss for like half an hour.

Upgrading's a pain in the bitch, and the sidequests are wholly pointless, but other than that it's not bad. Of course, the first five minutes of the game felt like a jRPG version of The Road, and I really miss that. I do like how the game is constantly changing what game it is. Now I'm a text based adventure! Now I'm Legend of Zelda! Now I'm Touhou! Etc.

I've gotten just past rescuing the prince of Facade. I did like how they gave those guys their own incomprehensible language to add to how oddball the city was.

Just beat the game the first time... Huh. Honestly not sure how I feel about the game. I'm very torn on the matter. Might try and get other endings and see if they give me a better idea of whether or not I actually like it.