Nier Replicant hands-on preview: imperfect, but loaded with personality
Nier Replicant easily-on preview: imperfect, but loaded with personality
Afterwards 11 long years, Nier Replicant will soon exist bachelor in the West, this time playable on PS5, Xbox Series Ten and PC. This is excellent news if you were i of the 12 or so people waiting with bated breath for this detail version of Square Enix's oddball action/RPG, a prequel to 2017's splendid NieR: Automata. For anybody else, Nier Replicant is shaping up to be a memorable and heartfelt game, albeit with substantially the aforementioned pros and cons as final time around.
For those who aren't upwardly on the minutiae of Square Enix releases, a game called Nier came out in 2010 for the PS3 and Xbox 360. In the West, this game cast you as a middle-aged human being trying to observe a cure for his sickly daughter, teaming upwardly with a foul-mouthed woman, a talking book and a skeletal young magician to do and so. (Information technology makes slightly more sense in context, but the weirdness is definitely office of Nier'due south amuse.) However, in Japan, the game was called "Nier Replicant," and starred a teenage boy trying to observe a cure for his sis instead. Beyond that, the story and gameplay were just about identical.
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Nier Replicant ver.one.22474487139.... (yeah, that is really the game's full name, and no, I will non be trying to write that out from memory) is a PC, PS4 and Xbox I remaster of the original Japanese game, released in Western territories for the first fourth dimension. Foursquare Enix provided Tom'south Guide with an early on review copy of the game. While we can discuss simply three areas from this much bigger game, these levels help gear up the tone for a strange, mannerly championship.
Junk Heap
The first level we can discuss is the Junk Heap: an abandoned weapons factory where the protagonist (named Nier by default) and i of his companions fight off a small army of robots while searching for a missing woman. This is actually the perfect level to start with, as it highlights some of the joys and frustrations of playing Nier Replicant.
Outset off, Nier Replicant deserves a lot of credit for its affable bandage of characters. Nier's party members don't bring together him right abroad. Every bit such, yous get to know each one intimately before another i joins and changes the group dynamic. At this point in the story, Nier's only companion is Grimoire Weiss: a talking, floating spellbook with an inflated stance of himself, and a soft spot for the brave male child who awakened him.
Nier and Weiss banter constantly as they explore the Junk Heap. Listening to them hash out Nier'southward situation, Weiss's abilities and the original purpose of the mill feels genuinely entertaining. That's a expert thing, as information technology turns out, because exploring the Junk Heap itself is more of a mixed bag. The Junk Heap, like many of the game's dungeons, is a somewhat repetitive experience. You explore a small drove of extremely similar square rooms, each 1 decked out in brown and gray, and occasionally trigger a switch to unlock a afar door. For the most part, Nier Replicant is a game you'll want to play for the characters rather than the level pattern.
The expert news is that while exploring the Junk Heap, yous'll also get enough of fourth dimension with the game'south combat organisation. While Nier Replicant's combat doesn't exactly break new ground in the action/RPG genre, it works well plenty to hold thespian interest for the game's 30-40 hr run time.
Y'all command Nier as he runs around the battlefield, stringing together regular and special attacks with a variety of swords and daggers. (You lot can switch weapons on-the-fly, although early on on in the game, there's not much reason to do so.) You can get behind enemies for more than advantageous attacks, or dodge their blows, or bound upwards to perform aerial combos. Targeting tin get a little wonky (locking onto enemies never feels as seamless or precise as it should), but melee gainsay more often than not works fine.
What'due south more interesting is the game's magic system, which lets you lot assign 2 different spells to two different shoulder buttons. Press a button, and y'all'll launch a basic version of the spell. Hold the button down longer, however, and your spell will accuse upwards, oftentimes with devastating effects. The play a trick on is that more than powerful spells swallow more MP, which takes some time to recharge during boxing. Since you tin can use magic and melee attacks at the aforementioned time, mastering the combat requires a fine balance between the 2. It's a lot to keep track of, but once you become into a groove, combat has an enjoyable rhythm.
The Junk Heap ends with a climactic boss fight against a huge robot called Defense System Geppetto. This is where some of Nier Replicant's influences, such as bullet hell shooters and the Legend of Zelda series, come out in full force. Geppetto is an enormous, floating robot, and as such, Nier tin can't attack it directly. Instead, Nier must either cake, dodge or slice through Geppetto's spherical projectiles, while waiting for infrequent opportunities to hack abroad at the robot'due south easily when they slam downwardly to attack. It bears more than a passing resemblance to Bongo Bongo from Ocarina of Fourth dimension, and feels similarly satisfying to beat out.
The Aerie
The 2nd area of the game we tin can talk over is a remote mountain village called The Aerie. A few hours into the game, Nier and Weiss team up with a spirited woman named Kainé and have downwardly a giant dominate called Hook.
Like the fight against Geppetto, the in-boxing banter is a highlight here. Kainé is ane of the strangest female leads in a Japanese RPG in recent memory. She's neither a demure healer nor a gallant swordswoman, merely rather an angry, battle-crazed berserker, letting loose a string of shocking profanity every time she unsheathes her twin serrated swords. She fights in her underwear (as Nier and Weiss never grow tired of pointing out) and seems to have trivial use for either Nier or his book. She's a hard character to similar — and, as such, it's all the more rewarding that she really starts to grow on you over time.
Hook is one of the more exciting fights in Nier Replicant, pitting Nier, Weiss and Kainé against a gargantuan glowing cadger, as they fight to go on their ground on small-scale platforms, hundreds of feet in the air. During this multi-phase battle, Hook jumps from place to identify in the Aerie, making melee, magic and platforming all keys to victory. This is what Nier Replicant does well: exciting, lengthy battles against impossibly big monsters.
Northern Plains
The final expanse we can hash out is the Northern Plains in the 2nd half of the game. Without spoiling any of Nier Replicant's intriguing story, we can say that later a certain bespeak, the activity jumps ahead five years. When Nier reexplores erstwhile areas, the enemies have gotten a lot tougher — simply then once again, and so has he.
The Northern Plains is ane of Nier's large outdoor areas, and like other elements of the game, it's an imperfect execution of a corking thought. In theory, these huge levels help Nier Replicant's world feel big and interconnected. Just in exercise, the Northern Plains can experience a bit empty, with a lot of time between enemy encounters and only a scattering of side quests to do along the way.
On the other hand, the Northern Plains is also an fantabulous place to try out the total range of Nier's magic and combat abilities, both of which expand a lot afterwards the commencement one-half. Magic is no longer just near hitting distant targets; now, Nier can throw up defensive barriers, create arcane doppelgangers or even summon a giant eldritch manus to pummel his foes.
Melee combat also has much more diverseness in the game's second half, as y'all're no longer restricted to one-handed swords and daggers. At present, you lot can also equip deadening-and-heavy greatswords, or balanced spears. Since each weapon has unlike combos bachelor, information technology's worth experimenting. But on the other manus, specific enemies aren't especially susceptible to one weapon over the other, so it mostly comes down to player preference. It's another area where Nier Replicant offers some depth, just could have taken the thought further.
Nier Replicant outlook
After most 15 hours with Nier Replicant, it'due south easy to see why the game became a cult archetype — merely it's as well easy to see why it never became a mainstream striking. Nier Replicant has some of the most charming and bizarre JRPG characters I've ever encountered, and their banter lone carries the game a long way. At the aforementioned time, the world itself and a lot of the tasks you lot're given, can experience repetitive.
Combat is also good, without always quite crossing the barrier into "keen." There's a lot of diverseness, and finding a playstyle that works for you can feel rewarding. Only and so again, the game's difficulty curve is all over the place. Even rank-and-file enemies tin take a long fourth dimension to pummel into submission, without offering much XP as a reward.
If aught else, Nier Replicant is different, and in a market full of samey games, it deserves some recognition for that. Sure, information technology'southward technically a remaster, but it's a remaster of a game variant we haven't seen on this side of the Pacific. If that sounds similar a good match for you, the game will be out on April 23 and will cost $threescore. We'll take a full review closer to release.
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Source: https://www.tomsguide.com/news/nier-replicant-hands-on-preview-imperfect-but-loaded-with-personality
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