NieR: AutomataOn my second playthrough. Unlocked all 5 main endings in the first playthrough and about a dozen of the joke endings.
Sacrificed my save file to appease the gods. Taking my time to 100% the game this time, and there are some nice touches I'd missed the first time through.
I love this game so much. Critics like Jim Sterling weren't exaggerating when they said this game is
historically significant, and that it's an important milestone in gaming, because the game marries a fusion of mechanics and storytelling that transcends its component parts, and leads the player to ask deep existential questions of themselves without ever coming right out and spelling it for them. All stamped with Yoko Taro's signature
autership (and yes, weirdness. Very, very weirdness).
The game itself is ridiculously fun, with a fluid combat system that is the best that Platinum has ever done. It's very accessible, yet I'm still learning nuances 60 hrs later. The game world is charming, bleak, and, for lack of a better word, desolate. This is a world whose time has gone; it's a vision of the future both more and less bombastic than the typical post-apocalyptic wastelands of gaming. In a world where androids and alien robots wage an endless war, this is a world whose quiet places speak of the insignificance of the works of man. It reminds me of Hyper Light Drifter, of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Jack Vance's Tales of Dying Earth, Gene Wolfe's Solar series, Nausicaa, and there's even one ending of the game that is very Arthur C. Clarke.
TLDR; NieR: Automata is a third-person open world action/rpg, brawler, platformer, shmup, bullet hell, twin-stick shooter sadness simulator. I'm glad I came, I'll stay a while.
Wind, Sand and Stars.