If I had to recommend Nier, I would definitely say play the game twice without doing any of the sidequests - you'll get the full experience and the variety that the game has.
LIKED:
- Perspective Shifts. Nier is a 3d game with a player-controlled rotating camera. However, when the player walks into certain areas, the camera perspective seamlessly switches to a set angle. Most of the time, it's a switch to a 2d view, reminiscent of old school 2d platformers like Mario or Sonic, but with 3d models. Exactly like Super Smash Brothers Brawl.
There's one specific area in the game where the camera switches to an old-school over the top camera, and the main character becomes really small as he's surrounded by lots of enemies, which was really fun to play.
The problem is that these camera shifts are not used to their full potential. The 2d view is hardly used for anything action related - there were no set platforming sections, no cool 2d boss battles, nothing physics related. Instead we get the hero walking into a bar, talking with a person to get a quest, and then walking out. Huge wasted potential right here in my opinion.
Visually, these 2d sections look really nice with 3d models and are just cleverly thought out. For example - the hero's house has 2 stories, and as you walk in on the bottom and continue going through the house, past the right edge of the screen, the camera shifts up and he emerges on the 2nd story on the left side. Like I said, very clever.
- Combat. Nier's combat is divided into 2 parts - ranged and melee attacks. The ranged attacks are done by shooting bullets out of a flying book companion (don't ask!) and this is where the game takes a cue from bullet hell shooters - blending 3rd person action with large streams of bullets - without a question, an innovation that no other game has tried before.
You can charge up other more powerful ranged attacks, but the steady stream of bullets from your trusty book companion is your go-to weapon.
Enemies in the game exhibit some cool bullet hell shooter patterns, particularly bosses who spew energy balls in a radius, and then specific line patterns. Nothing too crazy like Ikaruga, but you can jump and dodge these attacks. Oddly, you can choose to simply block them without taking any damage which wasn't really thought out well.
The main melee combat felt really nice and responsive. There's multiple types of weapons such as one handed swords, spears, and more massive two-handed weapons. Furthermore, there's a weight differentiation with some weapons being light and quick in combat, and others doing tons of damage, but being swung around incredibly slow by the hero.
The difference is immediately felt too - it's very apparent when the hero has what weapon equipped, which you can change on the fly in the middle of combat. This is a good thing, as I found myself switching between a light weapon for smaller enemies and a giant two-handed sword for the bigger foes.
The dodge button is quick and immediate as it should be, rolling the hero out of danger and there's even a counter maneuver that the hero can pull off if you're quick enough.
For an action game, combat is what the player will be doing most of the time, and I feel that the combat in Nier is satisfying, fun and one of the highlights of the game.
- Variety. Nier offers a lot of surprising variety in small doses. Some of this variety can be huge surprises like "choose your own adventure" quests done entirely via text, including riddles (!!!), limiting player actions in certain rooms (no dodge for you!), and having 4 different endings.
It's true that some of this variety is something you've seen before like fishing mini-games or upgrading weapons, but it's variety none the less. Video games are meant to entertain, and variety goes a long way when it comes to breaking the pace and keeping people playing and excited to discover what comes next.
DISLIKED:
- Side Quests. The side quests in Nier are tedious, boring and serve only to be there as content filler. All the side quests give money as a reward, and one very long one gives you a new weapon. All of the them require you to go from place to place, fetch something or obtain more materials by farming enemies.
Because there's only so many locations in the game, and they're all revealed pretty early on, you're just going back and forth between these same locations, without encountering anything new. Further adding to the injury is that at a half-way point in the game's main storyline, any uncompleted side quests become locked on for the duration of the game. And although there is a new game+, you still can't do them because the game picks off after the half-way point. None of this is told to you either, aside from a tab that contains all the uncompletable quests - if you happen to look through it.
After the half-way point, you get more quests that task you with doing pretty much the same things as you did earlier, going to the EXACT same locations.
I strongly recommend NOT doing the side quests and instead focusing on the main storyline and just running through that.
- Location Revisits. Like I mentioned above, the main storyline in Nier is broken into 2 parts. Exploring and looking at environments is half the fun in 3rd person action games, and that's what you do in the game for the first part. The second part? You revisit the exact same areas and the exact same rooms. Nothing kills the exploration element like knowing you have to go to an area you already visited before.
Combined with the tedious side quests, you really want to stop playing when you have to go back and forth between the same areas multiple times in the game.
- Gameplay Annoyances. The game is full of odd moments where I had to stop and say if the designers looked at this twice, they would have certainly changed it.
For example, climbing ladders in the game is an extremely slow process. You can speed it up by holding a button - but it's still not fast enough. Why even have the slow climbing animation? Why not just have the hero climb at the fast speed on default without the need of holding a button. Things like these, while small are easily noticeable by me, and irk me a lot. Plus, fixing this would have been a snap.
Another moment that I remember is when you first get to a new location - a city in the desert that uses the sand current as a method of transportation. You're made to go on a small raft and slowly taken to different parts of the city, being introduced to each shop owner - one at a time. The reason that this sequence stood out so much is because in all the other towns that you visit, there's nothing resembling this excursion. To add to the annoyance, you can only stop half-way, there's no choice to not go on it at the beginning.
Another thing that was glaringly bad were the tutorial messages. When you need to do something new, or have learned a new technique, a message pops up on the screen that says "new tutorial unlocked!". You must then pause the game, select an option, navigate to the right tab, select tutorials screen, and then wade your way through a huge list of tutorials to find one that has a "new!" marker to it. Yea, all that just to read it.
A simple fix could have been a button prompt alongside the "new tutorial unlocked!" message that would take you to the tutorial. How hard could that have been? Worst of all, there's very many tutorial messages, so if you want to learn as much as you can about them, you have to do this gruesome procedure for each one.
Additionally, some of the tutorial prompts come up way to late in the game. The dodging attacks tutorial popped up on the screen 1/3 of the way through the game for me which is simply unacceptable because I doubt I would have even gotten that far without knowing how to dodge.
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