In a world where gaming often feels uninspired and repetitive, NieR: Automata comes and breaks the rules and delivers an experience that feels entirely new in all areas. The story and plot is incredibly captivating and connected with me like few games have. The genre-mashing combat is insanely fun with a smooth hack and slash backbone combined with authentic feeling bullet hell moments. The overall graphics style is breath taking in parts and combined with an amazing soundtrack the presentation is endearing. This is easily one of the best games I've played in recent years and possibly one of the greatest games of all time.


NieR: Automata follows the story of androids 2B and 9S, who are part of Operation YoRHa that seeks to reclaim the world from machines. The story develops through understanding the greater context of the world and empathising with different perspectives. There are many different meanings, endings, tales and emotions explored throughout the game and most of them connected with me in a way that is incredibly rare in the industry. Only a handful of games have had such a powerful emotional and cognitive connection, but none have done it so regularly with most story elements.

The relationship between the main characters has a great level of development, especially considering the amount of direct dialogue between them is not that large. What results is an almost unspoken synergy that develops naturally and feels very organic. Dialogue with supporting characters is great as well, with a mixture of very funny and incredibly sad moments. Something that NieR: Automata does very well is expanding character's history without overloading the player, this results in the player gradually learning about these characters and keeps the plot/quests very interesting.

Just as an aside, I have not played the original Nier. Before starting the game I watched a summary of the original, in saying that the connection between the games is minimal with only a couple of references here and there. I would still recommend watching a summary of the original game, though not entirely necessary.


Taro's games have not typically had great gameplay, which is why I was so excited to hear that Taro and Platinum have worked together to make this game. With Platinum in charge of the gameplay I knew it would be in good hands. The gameplay of NieR: Automata is a mix of many genres, and surprisingly they are all a joy to play. The three main styles are 3rd person hack and slash action in true Platinum style, twin stick shooter and shoot 'em up/bullet hell with several other styles sprinkled throughout.

The hack and slash combat is an absolute blast as would be expected. Throughout the game I never once got tired of the combat and executing seemingly infinite combos with perfect dodge counters is incredibly rewarding. The different weapon types change the combat styles and combining these weapons makes for an enjoyable and visceral experience. The shoot 'em up moments are surprisingly very great. I was a little hesitant when I knew the game had these moments and feared it would be a lame gimmick, I am very glad I was wrong. The gameplay during these parts feels very traditional which is great.

The only thing that I didn't really like was the difficulty settings. There are 4 settings: Easy, Normal, Hard and Very Hard. Easy is very customisable with optional auto controls (such as dodge) this setting is for people who don't particularly care for the gameplay and is a cool addition. I played on Normal, and I found it to be too easy mostly because I always seemed to be overleveled, I only died a few times. Hard however was a really large step up above Normal, and when I tried it I got pretty stomped even by lowly robots. Very Hard says that you die in one shot, I didn't test it, but I assume it actually means that which would make the game almost impossible (not my taste but glad it exists). I think the game could've really done with an enemy level scaling option and my qualms about the difficulty would've been basically invalid, my next playthrough will definitely be on Hard.


It's very hard to talk about the graphics of this game. On one hand the overall detail and quality is quite low, particularly in some environments mostly due to poor textures. On the other hand the style of the game is great and reminds me a lot of Shadow of the Colossus, there are many beautiful zones and moments in the game and overall I love the graphics of this game. Whilst the level of detail might not be the greatest the style is definitely king. The combat and movement animations are incredibly smooth despite the 60fps cap, the facial animations were slightly above average I'd say. Cutscenes are unfortunately rendered in low resolution (900p@30fps I believe) and this did detract from these moments and I would've preferred to see them rendered in native resolution.

The soundtrack is incredible, and as soon as it is released I will be buying it. The most notable tracks feature an incredible choir that are an absolute joy to listen to. Battles are generally done with instrumentals only except in key moments and boss battles, the music added a lot to the game especially in boss battles and exploration.

"I see a bunch of games on the shelf, but I don't get as excited as I used to. I gave it some thought why am I not excited? The number of well made games has increased, but at the same time the number of games that make my heart beat and give the feeling of "I have no idea what to expect" that excitement has gone down. [...] I want to strongly believe there is still a huge potential for games."

-Yoko Taro, 2014

EDIT: The game never received an official patch from Square Enix, so I would recommend downloading the FAR mod which can help with some of the technical issues.