NieR [Gestalt Version for PS3]
Before playing the acclaimed NieR: Automata, I decided to play its precursor. Most people would probably choose to play the 2021 remaster of it, NieR: Replicant ver.1.22474487139 (yes, real name), which has updated graphics, more satisfying combat (reportedly), and some extra content. However, I chose the PS3 version because I'm annoyed that the remaster is still full price 4 years after its release, and I also feel like the original game seemed long enough (boy was I right). Furthermore, in this version (also called Gestalt) you get to play as "the father", whereas it's "the brother" in the Japanese version and in the remaster. I thought it would be nice to experience some character variety in a series known for being repetitive, and I think I made a good choice. The father's voice actor, Jamieson Price, does a great job with the gruff and overly serious character.
So, NieR. It's a narrative-driven action adventure in the vein of the God of War series with the addition of RPG-like "quests" (actually they are missions) and random encounters. And on the face of it it has all the ingredients necessary to make the beloved action-adventure formula work. NieR takes place in a cool post-apocalyptic world. The characters are cool, too, if cartoonish and shallow. And, yes, one of them is a woman with huge breasts who fights monsters while dressed in skimpy lingerie—profoundly gratuitous, sure, but she is ... also cool. The story won't amaze you but it does the work of moving the game along. And it does have a few nifty splashes, both small and big.
And yet NieR is almost a perfect example of how to make a game without understanding what makes games great. On the one hand, I can't call this game "bad". Its systems are technically OK, both individually and as a coherent whole, but they are all applied so ... thoughtlessly methodically. And inconsequentially.
The two glaring examples are the world and quest design. It's profoundly boring: Just a handful of locations with empty space between them. The lack of detail is confusing until you get into the areas themselves and see the level design, and then realize that the designers are just unfamiliar with geometric shapes that are not flat rectangles. If someone told me that this world was just a placeholder used during development to test the game engine, I would believe them.
Almost as boring as the world are the quests. They usually involve acquiring items in one place and taking them to another place because, at it's heart of hearts, NieR is about backtracking. Even the main story milestones put you in the same handful of places again and again. And again. Note that many of the items you need are random drops from monsters you kill, and some are quite rare indeed. Because not only will you have to backtrack a million times, you will also have to fight the same enemies again and again. And again. I purposely finished the game with unfinished quests, which is something I never do.
It gets even worse, if you can believe it. The "end" of the game does not conclude all the content. You have to repeat the second part of the game twice more (thrice more in the remaster!!!) to see the rest of it. Needless to say, I watched the rest on YouTube instead.
Filling an empty world with a truly astonishing amount of backtracking and repetition in and of this boring content points to such a fundamental design failure that I'm left baffled. I just can't believe that the development leads actually like video games. They've seen these games. They know how to make them, technically. But they don't really understand why people play them.
Some of the other systems are not as bad as they are pointless. There's farming, but why? Most of what you can grow is never used in the game. Actually, farming is used for one especially awful quest. Speaking of which, there's fishing, too. When I said that the game's systems "are technically OK", well, fishing is an exception. It is an extremely frustrating, confusing, and—again—pointless activity.
The presentation isn't half bad. NieR's soundtrack showcases the best of the game's craft and is often excellent (by the way, the remaster has a brand new soundtrack, another baffling decision). The animation is also quite good for its time and there are changes in scene perspective that are executed so delightfully smoothly, real "wow" moments. Unfortunately, the graphic presentation on the whole is disappointing, hampered by a game engine that could only handle ridiculously short draw distances. The color scheme is washed out and the lighting is brutally simplistic. I've never seen bloom so abused.
OK. To be clear, despite my harsh criticisms NieR provides an experience that is not, on the whole, bad. If you like these kinds of games then it will stir that part in you ... but that might just be reflex; going through the motions. You'll like the idea of NieR. But you'll wish you were playing a different interpretation of it.