[PS4/PC] NieR: Automata

[mark1246]

OK so I started the game for the first time (newbie here) played on "hard" mode after reading all the negative comments people said about it before doing NG+ (which u have to beat 3 time to get it). Tried it......oh man 3 hits and you die ... yeah. So gonna play on "normal" until i get the first ending and change the difficulty setting in the second run if it a challenge after getting all the upgrades.

my question is, do your second run of the game you keep all your upgrade cause then there no point in changing the difficulty if im gonna die 3 hits and go all the way to the beginning

[Klashikari]

You keep basically everything for any run past the first one, so chips lvl etc.
My usual recommendation is that you stay on normal for the prologue and few chapters after it.

Hard is too frustrating for an early run because you barely have any defense or chips, so any single mistake is nearly as punishing as super hard.

[Shadow5YA]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

You keep basically everything for any run past the first one, so chips lvl etc.
My usual recommendation is that you stay on normal for the prologue and few chapters after it.

Hard is too frustrating for an early run because you barely have any defense or chips, so any single mistake is nearly as punishing as super hard.

Almost everything. If you had incomplete quests, their progress will be entirely reset.

For example, I did the first part of The Wandering Couple at Pascal's village on the A route where they later moved to the Flooded City, but on the B route they were back at Pascal's village again.

Also Very Hard isn't so bad after you get past the prologue because the mission is long and you are forced to go through it without any chips or save points. After I got some weapon upgrades and Shock Wave the game got a whole lot easier

[shmaster]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

Got a bit more detailed for a spoiler free review although it is basically the same as I posted earlier. Here is a full spoiler one though.

Got the platinum trophy yesterday. I can finally put that game to rest until I feel like doing a full hard/super hard run, but the latter doesn't particularly feel appealing considering a lot of sequences feel like pure masochism with that "difficulty".

I read the review, but it seems you didn't collect all the Gestalt project docs in game.
Or else some of your question will be answered.

And I noticed you mention that you learn the series lore by video... bad move.
If you want to learn about the series lore from the others, you only ask the person who had done ALL the following:
1.Played all games in the series.
2.Read all managa/other publication of the series.
3.Read all material in the DoD3 SE sore only limited box.
4.Actually read all the interview with Taro and his team out there so you don't get fooled by the misleading info that Taro purposely tries to feed you.
5.Knows the content, or actually attend to Taro's lecture on his game design philosophy.(THIS PART IS VERY IMPORTANT, it changed how I viewed his works completely.)

If you don't, you ought to get something wrong down the way.
Because even players who did all of the above is not sure if they get everything right.
And Taro's own co-writer is being driven mad by Taro constantly because Taro is intentionally trying not make sense from time to time.
so what I am trying to say is. Instead of trying to understand the story, it is more important to understand is Taro toying with us with the things he presented to us.

[Klashikari]

I got 100% of the documents, and none actually addressed the questions I posted. That said, some were clarified after checking some more timeline and novella.
Also...

Spoiler for Gestalt project, NieR 1 and Automata route B spoiler:

The death of Gestalt NieR as the Shadowlord doomed the Gestalt due to relapse, and the Replicants by extention due to the black scrawl. However, there were mentions that mergers actually happened but rarely, and this timeline states some humans still survived after 800 years (in fact, even a certain document in Automata confirms it happened around 4200), hence why I was wondering what happened to those humans.

[felix]

Finished the game 3 times, got all the main endings. Kind of itching to restart in hard but I'll leave that for another time. Great game. Soundtrack is on a whole 'nother level though... worth playing just for soundtrack alone.

[Kismet-chan]

I played it all day yesterday and I adore it so far!

Spoiler for PC Performance:

I know some people are having major problems with the PC port (everything from white screens to odd stuttering to mega FPS drops to the game actually working better in windowed mode...), but I'm one of the lucky ones who's had little issues. The game's only crashed for me once and that's when I was rapidly messing around with the resolution while switching between fullscreen and windowed. My system isn't quite powerful enough to handle high settings (the game was chugging when I tried that), so I set it to medium and everything looks and performs just fine.

Spoiler for Gameplay/Music:

The gameplay is excellent. Every move, weapon, and pod program feels super satisfying to use. Soundtrack is obviously magnificent, but I've been spam-listening to that ever since the PS4 ver. dropped already. My only real critiques at this point are really tiny things -- I'm not a huge fan of how the world map was handled (although it is fitting for the tone/theme of the game) and not having quick travel at the start of the game saddened the lazy person in me. But those aren't deal breakers by any means.

Spoiler for Voice Acting:

And the voice acting in both versions is great. Even the side characters are decent, which is kind of rare. I use English because I actually prefer 9S's English rendition. He did a fantastic job. (Some of 2B's lines are handled a little better in Japanese, but I REALLY do NOT want to hear Mikasa's voice when I'm running around in this game. Nor do I want to hear that stupid "zei" combat grunt noise she does. It just kind of pisses me off. That being said, I have no idea what so many people on Reddit think she sounds terrible. My guess is that they either know nothing about the story/her personality or they know nothing of proper voice acting.) That and I don't really want to compromise what I'm doing in the game by distracting myself with reading subtitles half the time. Personal preference.

And I'll save my commentary on the plot for when I get most of the endings (or at least all of the major ones).

[Sacredus]

Originally Posted by felix

Finished the game 3 times, got all the main endings. Kind of itching to restart in hard but I'll leave that for another time. Great game. Soundtrack is on a whole 'nother level though... worth playing just for soundtrack alone.

How you could finish game 3 times and got all main endings when there's 5 main endings...? Last of them are choices near end boss and you have something to choose there to get last ones?

I will jump into PC ver. next year maybe... My potato PC would't probably even be able to run this game

[Klashikari]

Originally Posted by Kismet-chan

Spoiler for Voice Acting:

And the voice acting in both versions is great. Even the side characters are decent, which is kind of rare. I use English because I actually prefer 9S's English rendition. He did a fantastic job. (Some of 2B's lines are handled a little better in Japanese, but I REALLY do NOT want to hear Mikasa's voice when I'm running around in this game. Nor do I want to hear that stupid "zei" combat grunt noise she does. It just kind of pisses me off. That being said, I have no idea what so many people on Reddit think she sounds terrible. My guess is that they either know nothing about the story/her personality or they know nothing of proper voice acting.) That and I don't really want to compromise what I'm doing in the game by distracting myself with reading subtitles half the time. Personal preference.

And I'll save my commentary on the plot for when I get most of the endings (or at least all of the major ones).

Spoiler for voice acting:

I think you should really disconnect that impression because 2B has absolutely nothing similar to Mikasa aside of being battle hardened girl at the start.
Ishikawa really managed to give a lot of nuances to 2B voice to the point you can actually pinpoint foreshadowing elements with her voice alone if you listen closely to her voice and the words she use.

2B in japanese is vastly superior because the english voice actress doesn't have a 1:1 english script, which alter 2B dialogues, sometimes dramatically.
For instance, in the prologue, when 9S offers data of the sector for the minimap, the english text has 2B says 'Do it', even though the japanese script has 2B says "got it". This part is minor, yet the difference is already present.

This trend is present nearly everywhere when it comes to 2B in general, and having done the game in both languages, I can't help but state that 2B is a complete different character depending of her voice. In japanese, 2B sounds like a quiet girl who is aloof but is actually caring but repress her feelings. In English however, she sounds like a stuck up solider with a very strict code with hardly any conflict within her.

That is not to say the english dubs is bad, but there are differences that really hurt at some points, esp with some key scenes and subquests.

Originally Posted by Sacredus

How you could finish game 3 times and got all main endings when there's 5 main endings...? Last of them are choices near end boss and you have something to choose there to get last ones?

I will jump into PC ver. next year maybe... My potato PC would't probably even be able to run this game

That's because you don't exactly play the game completely 5 times. You only need 3 full playthroughs.

[felix]

After finishing the game a 3rd time you get access to chapter select so you don't need to worry about having saves ready either. If you're going achievement hunting that helps too. Maybe it's different on PC but on PS4 you only have 3 save slots (unless I've been missing some obvious way to scroll in that) so it's kind of a pain for people like me who like to throw in an extra permanent save now and then just in case I missed something and passed some irreversible checkpoint.

[Shadow5YA]

Spoiler for ending C question:

Can anyone explain to me how and why A2 died saving 9S? I get that she disconnected 9S from the machine network, but how would that cost her life? Did she just die of exhaustion or something?

[Klashikari]

^

Spoiler for Ending C:

This subject is heavily tied to her character back from the stage play.
Initially, A2 is hell-bent on revenge after what happened back during the Pearl Harbor mission. She accepted 2B's request out of respect for the latter and being more or less the "same".

At the end of the ending C, she fulfilled her task, but it isn't like she can do anything else after all the shit happened with N2. She discovered the purpose of YoRHa as a whole (she initially only thought only her squadron was the lab rats, but the information found in the tower explicitely state that all the YoRHa units were tools for androids) and YoRHa itself is basically dead until the next generation is created by the topbrass androids.

So she basically fulfilled her other promise as in reuniting with A4 and the other androids and YoRHa from Pearl Harbor mission. She deliberately let herself killed in the collapse of the tower after saving 9S.

[Kismet-chan]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

Spoiler for voice acting:

I think you should really disconnect that impression because 2B has absolutely nothing similar to Mikasa aside of being battle hardened girl at the start.
Ishikawa really managed to give a lot of nuances to 2B voice to the point you can actually pinpoint foreshadowing elements with her voice alone if you listen closely to her voice and the words she use.

2B in japanese is vastly superior because the english voice actress doesn't have a 1:1 english script, which alter 2B dialogues, sometimes dramatically.
For instance, in the prologue, when 9S offers data of the sector for the minimap, the english text has 2B says 'Do it', even though the japanese script has 2B says "got it". This part is minor, yet the difference is already present.

This trend is present nearly everywhere when it comes to 2B in general, and having done the game in both languages, I can't help but state that 2B is a complete different character depending of her voice. In japanese, 2B sounds like a quiet girl who is aloof but is actually caring but repress her feelings. In English however, she sounds like a stuck up solider with a very strict code with hardly any conflict within her.

That is not to say the english dubs is bad, but there are differences that really hurt at some points, esp with some key scenes and subquests.

My commentary actually had nothing to do with 2B's characteristics/personality at all. I was ONLY commenting on the vocal rendition. I've watched of the several cutscenes (including endings) in Japanese, and for ME personally, I hear Mikasa in the tone and enunciation of that performance. Sorry.

As for most of your other commentary, we'll just have to politely agree to disagree there.


On a separate note, I did find some additional performance issues while I was playing today.

• Forest Zone has some really bad stuttering in a very small handful of areas. Will need to pay more attention next time I go there.
• Sometimes messing with your cursor while in map mode will cause the game to stop recognizing your controller's joysticks while in that mode, forcing you to only be able to rotate the map using your mouse. Things went back to normal after restarting the client.
• Before heading into the "City Ruins Cavern" area, I got a glitch that caused 2B to get frozen mid-running animation every time I tried to sprint. It started while I was in the Resistance Camp right after I got done testing out a new spear. Simply reloading my last save fixed this.

[Klashikari]

I mentioned that exactly because it is tied to the character as a whole, hence why I took the liberty of pointing points on the character itself because voice rendition has a huge part of it.
I didn't imply you mistook her character. Rather, I brought points regarding her characteristics that fall within voice rendition main points.

And sincerely, that's probably just my opinion, but merely few cutscenes doesn't really cut it regarding the impression of a given voice, where the range spans over a whole game, subquests included.


In any case, it seems the PC port isn't exactly fantastic by any means and require a lot of tinkering instead of expecting it to work with a cutting edge PC.
To those who are still hesitating but own both PS4 and PC, I honestly think going with the PS4 is far less a hassle, unless they (or someone like Durante) release a patch.

[LoweGear]

I really hate that this game is not available on Steam for SEA players.

[Shadow5YA]

By the way, does anyone know how to access the elevators in the Flood City, Desert, and Forest area guarded by the Apologetic Machine that self destructs after you talk to it?

[Klashikari]

You cannot access them at all legitimately. There is also a japanese player who managed to reach the flooded city elevator from the resistance camp by exploiting a bug and found out the elevator is completely empty and inactive.

Either it is a dlc teaser, some cut content or a joke. Incidentally, Yoko stated that we shouldn't expect any meaningful DLC and it is up to SE to provide funds for them.

[Key Board]

the previous Nier had DLCs, and that sold far less than this one

there is hope, I guess.

[Shadow5YA]

Anyone know how to complete the Wise Machine's suicide quest? I thought I had it completed when I hacked into three of them, saw one of them jump to their deaths, and visited the spot where one jumped, but there is nothing there.

When I went back to a route B chapter, the sidequest progress was reset.

[Sides]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

In any case, it seems the PC port isn't exactly fantastic by any means and require a lot of tinkering instead of expecting it to work with a cutting edge PC.
To those who are still hesitating but own both PS4 and PC, I honestly think going with the PS4 is far less a hassle, unless they (or someone like Durante) release a patch.

Actually it is pretty good port. The game support real MSAA, no post processing stuff, but it is really taxing. I got it everything on high or maxed out, MSAA disabled and have 59-60fps all the time at 2560x1080, using borderless window. This is on a medicore system, i5-4670k with 980ti.
However the game is capped at 60fps, v-sync or not, and unfortunately, like the ps4 version, all cutscences are not rendered in game, meaning they are actually 30fps movie files, hence the drop to 30fps when the game runs the movie files. Honestly the pc version is a really good 1:1 port, it would have been better if they actually added things to the PC version.