NIER (PS3) Review

 NIER (PS3) 6.5/10

Hello everyone and welcome to another game review. Today, I’ll be going over a little game by famous game director Yoko Taro. Nier is a dual release game in Japan (Nier Gestalt for the Xbox 360 and Nier Replicant for the PS3). When the game was brought over to the West, they only brought over Nier Gestalt and changed the name to just “NIER”. NIER was released on April 27, 2010 for both Xbox 360 and PS3. The game was developed by Cavia Inc and published by Square Enix. Upon release, the game received mixed reviews, but that didn’t stop it from being a commercial success.

As a huge fan of NieR:Automata, I was super stoked to play this. I was expecting the game to play similarly to Automata, and that’s where my disappointment began. NIER isn’t necessarily a bad game, but it just felt clunky in a lot of ways. I was engrossed with the story, but that can only take you so far if the gameplay is both monotonous and requires a lot from the player. Let’s begin.

NIER is a sequel to Drakengard for the PS2, specifically its fifth ending where the world gets ruined (I haven’t played Drakengard so I don’t know all of the details). The game starts in the year 2049 with a combat tutorial. After this, the story jumps ahead 1,300 years later. Our story follows our MC (who I named Nier). Nier is a mercenary that’s willing to take any job he can get. His daughter Yonah is sick with a deadly disease called The Black Scrawl. One day, Nier tells Yonah a story about Lunar Tears (a flower) and how if you find one, it can grant any wish you want. Yonah then goes off to the Lost Shrine to find one, hoping it can cure her of her awful disease. Chasing after her, Nier meets a magical talking book named Grimoire Weiss. Weiss joins Nier’s party and helps rescue Yonah from creatures called Shades. Returning back to the village, Nier consults Popula the librarian if there is any cure for it. She says no. While out and about, he hears about a song called The Song of the Ancients from Popula’s twin sister Devola. After hearing what the song entails, Nier sets off on a quest to find all of The Sealed Verses, which is said to hold the cure to the Black Scrawl, and another book called Grimoire Noir. Along the way, two more people will join his party: Kaine and Emil. Together, they will fight hordes of Shades, robots, rabid animals, and other mystical things. As their journey continues, they will unravel a dark secret about the Shades origins.

The story for this is actually decent. However, I am leaving out the second half of the story because there is another time skip. I don’t want to spoil it because this story is 95% exactly the same as NieR: Replicant. Anyway, I love that this is a deep, personal story about a father wanting to save his daughter, willing to do whatever it takes to do so. However, I found that Nier was the only decently developed character. The game tries to develop Weiss, Kaine, and Emil, but falls short. Especially for Emil. I feel like Emil was only here so that you can get another party member. The game does go further in depth with Weiss and Kaine, but I found that they fell short of greatness. And there’s a reason for this: I felt that the game's overall story was rushed. The cast doesn’t feel like they’re close friends. They are just a group of people that tag along with Nier on his quest. They constantly say “you’re my friend” and whatnot, but I never actually FELT that chemistry between the group. This is why it’s always important to have the cast actually bond, even doing stupid shit together would be great.

The game’s story is split into different playthroughs. The first playthrough is the entire story. The second playthrough starts after the 5 year time skip and gives more detail into Kaine’s backstory and the bosses that you’ll be fighting. After this, the game will ask you to collect ALL OF THE WEAPONS IN THE GAME to unlock the third ending, in which that ending splits into another ending. It’s weird, but there are four endings in total. I gotta say, this didn’t work too well. Unless you know beforehand what you need to do, you will not be able to get the endings in a timely manner. Getting all the weapons requires a lot of real time to accomplish, and you have to be dutiful on this, otherwise it’s not going to happen. I wasn’t able to do this this time around, but this is just a lot of any casual player. And even if you are super into this, this is still a lot that the game requires. It’s insane. It’s because of this outrageous game design is the reason why I didn’t get to see the whole story.

There is one scene I want to go over and it’s in the second half. So when you return to the Junk Heap, you’ll get a cutscene of the brothers exploring the mountain. The younger brother is going on ahead and trips over a pipe. This pipe was holding up a bunch of shit. The kid was about to be killed by fallen debris when the older brother pushed him out of the way and the older brother got killed instead.. As he dies, the younger brother sees a huge robot with a Shade with it. The kid then clicks it in his head that this robot was the cause of his brother’s death. Like seriously? You’re the one that wasn’t looking where you were stepping. You’re the one that tripped and forced your brother to save your sorry ass and you blame the stupid robot that was a solid 20 feet away from the incident. This whole thing was dumb as fuck and I couldn’t take the section seriously.

Graphically, the game hasn’t aged that well. The entire game looks like early PS3 (I mean, it kinda is, but still. It can look better). The character models are weird too and their designs are just as weird. The only cool design here was Nier after the time skip (with the eye patch). Kaine dresses like a slut (there is an in-game reason, but still) and I wasn’t expecting Emil’s full body to look like that. The environment looked cool though, but it could’ve looked better. I did like the design for the Shades and even some of the bosses. I also liked the design of Facade and the Mask People. Speaking of these guys, the Masked People are dope af. They live by all of these atrocious rules and they have a labyrinthian designed city. The king and Fyra are my favorite side characters of the game.

Sound design is great. The music for the game is great too. My favorite songs have to be the Southern Plains theme, Song of the Ancients, all of the desert themes, Junk Heap, and the many boss themes. Some of the songs did overstay their welcome (such as Northern Plains theme, The Aerie theme, and Lost Shrine theme).

Voice acting is really good too. Nier is voiced by Jamieson Price, Kaine is voiced by Laura Bailey, Weiss is voiced by Liam O’Brien, and Emil is voiced by Julie Ann Taylor. The voice acting here is top notch and is easily one of the game’s highlights. A very solid cast as I recognize all of these people from other works.

Now onto gameplay. NIER is an open world action adventure game. You’ll be traveling across the map to collect the Sealed Verses, do side missions, fight Shades, and even go fishing. The combat is a bit weird. It’s hack n slash, but there’s no heavy attack like in many other games like this. Instead, you can mix up your combos by holding down the attack button and using your magic abilities in conjunction with your attacks. Weiss acts like the pod from NieR: Automata, with you being able to change which attacks he can use on a whim as well as being able to change your weapon on a whim too. Weiss will have a lot of attacks for you to use once you collect all of the Sealed Verses. My favorite being the Dark Lance. Also, enemies will sometimes drop items after you kill them, Sometimes they’ll drop words. You can attach these words to your weapons and physical abilities (dodge and guard). These words upgrade Nier to be stronger and more resilient in battle. This was a very interesting mechanic and I liked it.

The side missions suck major ass. 90% of them are shitty fetch quests that’s way too demanding. There was one that did interest me a lot. So in the second half, one of the guards will ask you to kill this massive Shade that spawns randomly at the wooden bridge in the Northern Plains. Problem is, this thing only popped up once throughout my playthroughs. And when I did fight it, I was blindsided by it because I was focusing on its reinforcements. After it murdered me, it never showed up again, which pissed me off more. I tried to do as many of the side quests as I could, but I couldn’t bring myself to endlessly travel for materials that hardly spawned. Sure I could’ve just bought the materials at other shops on the map, but I didn’t have enough money to buy them, but in order for me to get money I need to finish the side quests. It’s an endless cycle of stupidity. Some of the materials will spawn at random in the wilds, but this shit was way too tedious for me to deal with. With that said, there was only one side mission that I actually enjoyed: The old lady at the lighthouse in Seaport. She’s a whiny bitch that guilt trips people into doing stuff for her. This time, all she wanted was her mail. Can’t be too hard right? Well the post office was all fucked up and I had to help organize it lmao.

You can upgrade your weapons. The thing is, you’ll be grinding for those materials in Junk Heap. I upgraded my Faith sword to the max and I was good for the rest of the game. Even on the second playthrough. Speaking of which, the difficulty scaling for the second playthrough was awful. I was expecting the game to scale to my level, but that wasn’t the case. I was destroying “difficult” bosses because the game didn’t scale to NG+.

So on the map is a haunted mansion, which is where Emil lived. Once you enter this place, the game goes into black and white and the music goes all ominous. This place is only used twice. The first time you are exploring the mansion and the second time is when you explore its secret bunker and fight Emil’s sister. Honestly, I wish the game used this set piece more. It was such a nice change of pace and even the underground bunker was cool too.

Overall, this is a decent game with a good story, but certain design choices hold it back from true greatness. Honestly, you can skip this because I’m hoping Replicant’s western release will fix a lot of these issues. Unless you are a huge fan of the series, then go for it. This game is outdated and a product of the past and it should stay in the past. I am grateful that this was made because then we got NieR: Automata, but I guess I just had my hopes too high for this game. I was expecting it to be on the same level as Automata, but sadly that is not the case. Anyway, I might play something short and dumb before I go onto my next big conquest. Until then, see ya.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.

This is Zorgak, signing off.