Made it through Route C, Yoko, buddy, guy, pal, please send me my money back in the mail for this huge goose chase waste of time recycled nonsense that has me replaying the same game five times just to see "dur wheal nding." Give me a break. There are people comparing this amalgamation of philosophy 101 to Shakespeare. How emphatically humorous! Has nobody heard that brevity is the soul of wit? The best part of this game is watching a bunch of robots re-enact scenes from "Romeo & Juliet" by spouting a couple famous lines before blowing themselves up. That about sums up the collective intelligence behind the person who creates these games. If Yoko could've tried not to waste my time and snuck in a way to change the story to something more interesting than petty existential ethical quandaries that go nowhere (maybe half-way through the first route instead of the last 2 minutes of the second route), rather than having them in every other pointless side-quest or placing all the answers nearly 15-20 hours into the story later. They take so much time actually telling you something you probably predicted coming hours ago that somehow when (or if) it comes, it's supposed to be like, "whoa that's so crazy and makes the big think!" It's treated like you're supposed to react to this masterstroke of storytelling as if it was a totally logical revelation even when it's told in the least clear or concise way. Hey Ma, did you hear? We got the next Kubrick right here! That's right, and he lives in Japan, and.. Kurosawa? No, no, not Kojima! He made those Drakengard games that contain nothing but subversive storytelling tropes. What? Never heard of him you say? Not a good way to tell a story? I mean, if I'm really supposed to play all the Drakengard games, and Nier circa 2010 just to get the full "story" then I think there's already a problem with your ability to tell a story. Stories and narratives work best in a self-contained fashion. You don't tell your story by saying, "I left a lot stuff out on purpose, but you can read about it if you buy the accompanying book for 19.99 USD." That's not typically a great way to explore themes, or subject matter, or chiefly to tell a good story. I really just didn't get what the deal was with Nier Automata. I don't outright think it's a bad game, it has some intriguing ideas, but not well executed ones. I almost wonder if people sort of spent too much time reading into things rather than taking them at face value or how they were presented to the player. The pacing is glacial, the "open world" is recycled, the characters are very shallow and mostly uninteresting even after you learn more about them. The problem is that it suffers from not having a good narrative hook. There is nothing to be invested in when it comes to the plot or the characters in the plot. In most cases, you are just playing to get the part where more of the story is finally (graciously) given to you, so you can get some context for what is going on. Sure, there are some great set-pieces, and I thought the first opening is fantastic, much better than any of the other openings. The weird blending of SCHMUP and 3rd person action mechanics is interesting, but very flawed, I also didn't enjoy the camera being extremely bothersome for most of my play through or the jarring 2.5D transitions that don't need to exist at all. It seems to do these things just to be more unique, or to change up the game play, but the problem is that the game play actually gets quite old after about 20 hours of doing the same thing no matter what it is. I think Yoko Taro needs a good EDITOR. Someone who could help focus his ideas down so they would be maybe less.. schizophrenic? I just didn't really understand or like my time being wasted with a bunch of nothing-burger explanations, predictable science-fiction plot twists, and what could be an interesting story given to you in breadcrumb form as opposed to one whole slice of bread at a time. Speaking of bread, how about 2B's buns? I'm not super upset, it's a great butt, but she's wearing heels and there are no strong male characters in this game, which is extremely annoying for me. I would've like to have seen a good male protagonist next time Yoko Taro makes a convoluted story about cyber waifu's in space fighting robots. I really don't need 30+ hours to get the gist of your story. If you're just going to fake out the audience every time they start becoming interested, then maybe you'd do better with short stories or some other medium, because this is dog water content that some high school student could've written back in 2002 and I wouldn't have known the difference. Special mention to "Adam & Eve," who were so forgettable and lame as antagonists that even the game memory-holed them later on in Route C. What a total waste of voice acting. Maybe less K-pop boy band, and more "villains with some actual motivations or reasons to be villains."

Amazing story, amazing world building, legendary OST, a true masterpiece. What an experience

I’m sorry, but I don't see the hype, this game hasn't aged well at all, the replayability is okay, I guessss(?), but the map is ****. It’s not the masterpiece otakus make it out to be—the philosophy bits are just pure fluff with no depth, It’s basically bait for evangelion fans who think nihilism equals deep, but the delivery is just mid and oversimplified. 9s gameplay is literal torture, and a2 is a nothing burger of a character, It tries to be a hack and slash and an rpg at the same time but fails at both.