Nier

  Nier is a game that you really have to work at in order to enjoy it. As with nearly everything made by Cavia, it’s got numerous kinks and oddities that may make it a bit too unpolished for most people to enjoy. Cavia wasn’t a technically skilled team but what they lacked in skill, they made up for with an interesting plot and some of the most lovable characters in the 7^th generation. Cavia managed to create one of the most gripping, heartwarming and often-times depressing tales to come out of this generation. Games like Deadly Premonition and Hotel Dusk have shown that top-notch gameplay is not required to make a great game and Nier most definitely fits that mold. This is Square Enix and Cavia’s cult hit, Nier.

Less Touhou, more Radiant Silvergun. Not too
overwhelming in any event.

            One could call theoretically Nier greater than the sum of its parts. It mixes in action-adventure gameplay with a Devil May Cry style combo system and bullet hell mechanics. It also pays homage to the survival horror games of yore with a genuinely creepy “explore the mansion” segment and borrows even more from Zelda with a top-down segment. Hell, it even goes so far as to add a part that is reminiscent of Choose Your Own Adventure books although I feel like this is more due to budget constraints than out of love for the books. All of these fit into a nice little package that is guaranteed to be one of the freshest, most furious and most interesting battle systems any game this generation has to offer.

            Like I said, one could “theoretically” call Nier greater than the sum of its parts. The combat itself is both unique and super-fun and the more-or-less invincible AI partners make combat an exciting prospect but it’s the other things about Nier that make it a pain to play. For example, the aforementioned Choose Your Adventure segment is incredibly tedious and the game forces you to repeat this segment several times. The mansion, while creepy, isn’t much to brag about either. It’s a cute homage but it serves little purpose. There are also as slew of sidequests, most of which are fetch-quests that require you to run back and forth throughout the vast, empty overworld which has more in common with SoTC than Legend of Zelda. Fast travel options are opened to you later in the game but any kind of faster travel would have been nice. Hell, even Link gets a horse.

You save via mailbox. Every time you save
you risk an innocent postman's life.

       The side-quests are mostly useless anyway, rarely offering any kind of sufficient reward for your troubles. They are extra time-wasters that serve to lengthen the game. That being said, they serve an important purpose, albeit a somewhat unnecessary one. The  sidequests help drive home just how bleak the world of Nier is. I cannot think of a sidequest that ends on a positive notes, even the lighter sidequests have a depressing plot twist within them. The sidequests help to bring Nier’s somber and gloomy world to life and help to immerse the player into the game. They certainly aren't perfect, far from it in fact, but I recommend that you tackle at least 5 or 6 of the sidequests before you (wisely) blow the rest of them off.

            Nier, much like every other game out there nowadays, incorporates RPG elements and customization in the form of levels and stat-bonuses called “Words”. It’s a small customization feature that adds quite a bit thought to the game as you can personalize the weapon you’re using so it gains an added effect that helps dish out more damage. Cavia went the extra mile and decided to incorporate some weapon customization which is a nice little bonus for people who ask that a game be a bit meatier than your average beat ‘em up. And in case the term “levels” worry you, I can reassure you that grinding was never an issue. Buying new weapons and learning new words were always enough.

This is a major part of the game.
See what happens when you take
a cleaver to a game's budget?

           

            The game’s biggest issue lies in its drive to be long. This game wants nothing more than to be a long, sprawling epic and tries to reach the much coveted 30+ hour mark in the most asinine of ways. And it doesn’t even reach that mark.

            For starters, the game was on a tight budget which explains segments like the Choose Your Adventure book. Making a 30+ hour game on a tight budget is hard so you have to find ways to manipulate your players into playing your game for longer. Fetch-quests are a prime example of this, which, no surprise, Nier has a ton of.  They did this by promising extra cut-scenes that expand on the characters’ motivations in addition to different endings. Thankfully, you don’t need to replay the entire game; you only need to play through the 2^nd half of the game which isn’t too bad. Cavia was merciful but even doing this starts to wear thin after you run through the same empty field dozens and dozens of times. The extra cut-scenes and endings are most definitely worth it but by my 2^nd go-around, my brain was on autopilot and I was having absolutely no fun whatsoever. I can only play through the same game so many times in a week and Nier was starting to test my patience.

            It’s worth noting that despite the fact that I disliked going through the game several times, Nier’s story never got old. The story of a man trying to rescue his daughter was one that immediately grabbed my attention as it’s a “Save the Damsel” story that doesn't really pop up as often as you’d expect. It carries much more emotional weight than most Damsels in Distress stories typically do and it’s really something I’d like to see more of. Now, Nier didn't totally deliver on what I had expected of the story* but it did deliver something entirely different and equally good, if not better.

            Nier’s story enters territory few games, let alone JRPGs go. It tackles issues like death, sacrifice, bigotry and revenge in a way few games do. Now, I’d never say it was profound or anything like that, as it’s not. Much of this game is coated with the saccharine “power of friendship” BS that infects most JRPGs (although it plays this trope better than most JRPGs). However, “Nier” does present a valiant attempt at a mature story and does succeed; just don’t expect a totally pessimistic “Spec Ops: The Line” view by the time the game ends.

            Nier’s characters are ragtag group indeed. You play as loving father, Nier, who wants nothing more than to protect his daughter, Yonah who has been infected with a mysterious disease. Over the course of the game you will meet a foul-mouthed, perpetually angry hermaphrodite named Kaine, a precocious young boy named Emil and a stuffy talking book named Grimoire Weiss. Weiss, in particular, acts as your constant, albeit begrudgingly, companion throughout your travels. These 4 characters bounce wonderfully off of each other. Kaine and Weiss constantly exchange banter while Emil and Nier try to provide some kind of happy medium to Kaine and Weiss polar opposite attitudes. It’s a dynamic that works perfectly. And the writing is top-notch. It’s quick; it’s funny and even occasionally heartwarming. These are characters that will stick, guaranteed.

            And to ease any doubts, these characters aren’t these one note pieces of cardboard that pass for characters in other games. Kaine, Emil and Weiss are all incredibly well fleshed out with their lives being detailed either through exposition or through events in the game. Those three go through some pretty heavy stuff and they are all prone to buckling under pressure. They feel very three-dimensional and they certainly don’t feel like stock characters. And that brings us back to Nier. Nier isn’t nearly as fleshed out, nor does he visibly undergo the hardships that the others suffer through. In fact, he seems pretty dead-set on getting his daughter back much like how other, much duller protagonist want their princess/girlfriend/banana hoard back. In fact, it’s his one-track mind that ends up getting him into trouble most of the time. It’s not a total deconstruction of the “generic protagonist” but it comes close. He’s a refreshingly deep “simple” protagonist.

            Nier isn’t a pretty game. Hell, I’d say the drab color palette and barren landscapes were a conscious design decision if I honestly thought that but I really don’t think they ever had that in mind. Graphically, Nier is incredibly dated. It may have looked good at the 360’s launch, maybe even a good looking late PS2 game but as it stands, it’s in the lower rungs of graphical prowess this generation. Backgrounds are drabs, textures are ugly, characters look “okay” but they certainly aren’t impressive in any way and the world just isn’t that much fun to look at. And you wouldn’t even believe the amount of bloom lighting this game has. Earlier I compared the game’s overworld to Shadow of the Colossus. Well that applies to both its barrenness and both games’ gross overuse of bloom lighting. It worked to an extent in SoTC but here? It’s totally unnecessary and actually makes walking out of a cave potentially retina-killing. The environments are pretty awful looking too. It really reminds me of the Twilight Princess overworld; just drain away any personality that game had. All-in-all, it looks pretty wretched.

            However, the saving grace, the counter-point to the misstep that were the graphics is the masterful soundtrack. Nier’s music is really top-of-the-line work. Much of Nier’s music has a very melancholy feel to it, there are very few upbeat tracks and the few upbeat tracks that do exist still have a somber undercurrent to them. Much of the music has a very otherworldly feel to it, almost as if you’ve stepped into a world on the verge of collapse. It’s an incredibly well-crafted soundtrack that has gone down in video game history as being one of the greats. The voice-acting is also quite well done. Grimoire Weiss in particular has an incredibly mesmerizing accent and every single one of his words is dripping with biting sarcasm. He’s really a joy to listen to.

            Nier is undoubtedly worth checking out if you’re into JRPGs in any capacity. It’s one of the most original titles Square Enix had put out in a long time and a fitting swan song for Cavia. It has several problems ranging from the proverbial gears not fitting like they should, to an insane devotion to the idea that it needed to be as long as it was, to some truly bleak and abhorrent graphics but these should not ruin the game for you. The characters are some of the best Square-Enix has to offer, the plot is one of the most riveting stories you’ll find in a JRPG this generation and the soundtrack is an absolute must. There’s a reason this game became a cult phenomenon and it’s highly recommended to anybody looking for a different kind of JRPG.

Final Score: 7.0

*-Nier was developed in Japan under the names "Nier Gestalt" and "Nier Replicant". Replicant was developed first and focused on a teenage Nier saving his sister. Everything else was exactly the same. Replicant’s plot was re-used in Gestalt (the version Westerners got) except for the detail that you’re saving your daughter instead of your sister. So it’s actually understandable as to why the father-saving-daughter plot wasn’t as deep as I thought it’d be. Because it wasn't originally one.