Nier Automata -- Yoko Taro

My experience:

Nier Automata has been such an unique experience in terms of gameplay for me. Both because I had never played a game which shifts perspectives and characters mid-boss battles and that this was my first game on a handheld, my Steam Deck. The game off of itself has at least 5-6 different game styles which keeps the game engaging and not boring till the end. Fighting the mobs is fun and the abilities are over-powered (at least on normal mode) which lets you focus on the dialogue mid-boss battle too. The game looks beautiful visually and has a great soundtrack which makes the gameplay even better of an experience.

Coming to story and the characters, this is where the praise ends. The characters are bland and one-dimensional. Apart from A2, all others, 2B, 9S and especially the main antagonists, Adam and Eve are horribly one-dimensional. The story wants to take itself way more profoundly than it actually is. Distinction between Androids and Machines is never made explicitly clear which broke my immersion. The concept of multiple endings which make you play through the same stuff twice felt tedious but the pay-off was somewhat worth it.

The themes:

Nier Automata deals with the concepts of following orders and finding meaning in your life since inception itself. Different characters represent different philosophers in real-life. Additionally, moral ambiguity is baked into the story-telling however I found it to be implemented rather poorly. Aliens, Humans, Machines, Androids all make the story needlessly complicated.

Machines evolve to the point where they have gained consciousness which isn’t very apparent at the beginning of the story but becomes quite obvious before it is stated. The game makes you want to empatise with the robots but I couldn’t bring myself to do so as the game also tries not to do it too. All in all I found it much more confusing than the internet it seems.

Reflections After Completion:

I have mixed feelings slightly towards negative after completing. On one hand, the gameplay was so good in many aspects, however the story and the characters were disappointing. It hurts the game even more considering the potential it had. There was a good story to be told, great even, but the end-product ended up being all over the place and the endings didn’t feel satisfactory. Characters were left under-developed and story incomplete. That said, I still enjoyed playing the game. In fact I got one of the best highs right at the beginning of route C when the difficulty was suddenly ramped up, aptly as the story. 2B’s death completely caught me off-guard and the twist was really worth it. Nier Automata, however, is far from the perfect piece of media in my opinion.

Ratings: 7/10

Favorite moment : Beginning of route C when the ally androids are hacked and need to defeat all of them and then the eventual death of 2B sequence was amazing.