Nier Replicant Review
Written by: Vic Brubacher III aka MrNeverChillin
Introduction
Spoiler Alert! Is there one genre of games that you just do not play or have much interest? If the answer is yes then you are in the same boat as me. Japanese role play games is the genre I typically do not play. But my cousin and co host of The Press Start Podcast, Roger, talked me into playing through and beating Nier Replicant for our next game in review. Being developed by Toylogic and Square Enix, at least I knew it was made by a developer with some great talent. Released on April 23, 2021 and published by Square Enix, Nier Replicant was a hit before it truly became one. You get thrown right into the mix. During the prolog, you are playing as the main character, Nier, in an old grocery store set in the summer of 2049. You are defending you and your sister, Yonah, from the eternal monsters called shades. The battle is long and intense until finally it’s over. You run back to Yonah to find her coughing very badly. The game then fast forwards about 1000 years. You and your still sick sister live in a village within old ruins. The main plot is to find a cure and heal Yonah from the Black Scrawl. You team up with Gremiore Weiss, a talking book that is powerful, along with other characters who help you along your way.
Gameplay
Nier Replicant is a game that is not too difficult but provides enough challenge to you so you do not feel like you are overpowered. You can traverse the world of Nier on foot until you learn how to ride the large boars, which for a while I could not figure out. While playing though, you are joined by Gremoire Weiss and later on Kaine. A bad ass who is dressed in some oddly worn and out of place, lingerie. She was very useful in battles and was nice to have another human keeping you company. You are then joined by a young boy Emil who must stay blindfolded most of the time due to him petrifying anyone who he looks at. As you travel the world with your friends, you complete main story missions along with meaningless side quests which left me scratching my head a few times. The enemies in Nier Replicant varied quite a bit at least. Just depends on what region of the world you are in. You could be fighting boars, robots, spiders, wolves or even scorpions. But the one enemy that was everywhere, were the shades. Creepy, shadow-like creatures that made you wonder what they truly are. But to find out, you must play the game. While battling these different enemies, you would use one of the many different melee weapons that you found throughout the world along with the magical abilities that Gremiore Weiss uses that you control. One main negative I had with the gameplay was the sudden abruption of all the unnecessary loading screens when you went to different areas.
Mechanics/Controls
During the intense intro of Nier Replicant where you are deafening yourself and Yonah, you get acquainted with what the game has to offer over the course of the game by power leveling you from 1–30, learning all of the powers and abilities until you are fast forwarded in the game and restart back to level 1 and slowly progress. But the intro does a great job of letting you learn all the controls and abilities. The combat could be challenging but never overwhelming. It was really about timing, knowing the weaknesses, and using the right attacks. Traversing the world whether it was on foot or by mount, was easy for the most part except for when you wanted to “sprint” with the mount. It felt like it had limited ability to turn or maneuver and felt clunky. Also, when moving the camera, it was very slow and was frustrating with no option to speed it up. A few other things that had been scratching my head were opening doors aggressively, not being able to swim, and having to manualing save. All these seemed out of place. You did not need to open every door aggressively. There is a time and a place for that. A lot of games make the main character not able to swim. But Nier Replicant felt like it was a missed opportunity from allowing Nier to swim. And the manual saves is an old and outdated feature and can be frustrating if there was ever a time that you forgot to save and lost all of your progress.
Graphics/Sound/Replay Value
Nier Replicant looked like an early 8th generation game. It still looked good but you can tell it was looking dated to titles that we get today both on the 8th and 9th generation of gaming. The music and sound was were Nier Replicant really shined. The music always felt perfect. Every mood could be felt from the music that was playing throughout the game whether it was up tempo and intense gameplay to the slow and sad times of the game. The sounds during each fight seemed precisely done. Overall, Nier Replincant to say the least, had an interesting art style being more of the dull grays and white, washed out style. And when it comes to replay ability. Not much to it. You can collect all of the melee weapons, do the side missions and beat all 5 endings.
Verdict
In the end, I only played through and beat ending A. It was a game that I thought I would never play but really glad I picked this up and beat it. Nier Replicant was a really enjoyable, emotional and intense game to play with its hooking story where there were times I did not want to put down the controller except when I was playing either the slow parts of the meaningless side missions. One of the worst parts of the game was during the Death Dream where you spent most of the time just reading text. With all of that being said, I recommend Nier Replicant to all JRPG fans and anyone who does not think they would enjoy them because this was a solid game from Square Enix, receiving a 7 out of 10 from me.
Have you played Nier Replicant or has this review made you want to check it out? Let us know by tweeting us @Shoot2Win_
Review On: Xbox Series X
