Nier is an amazing game with average gameplay, an amazing sound track, and a spectacular cast of characters.
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As you learn very early on, Nier has you controlling a father figure attempting to sustain a living through odd-jobs, while trying to find a way to cure his daughter of a seemingly incurable disease. It's a very touching storyline. Though not the strongest story you'll ever find, it does hold it's own well enough to keep you interested throughout the game. With a small cast of awesome characters who have very entertaining, and at times touching, interactions.
The game truly starts when you meet your talking book buddy, Grimoire Weiss.
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Gameplay
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Nier is an action RPG, and it does fairly well. The combat starts out somewhat slow, and boring (like most RPGs), but you eventually learn quite a few pieces of magic to keep combat quite fun. Whether you're poking a bunch of holes in your enemy, or just plain splattering them all over the floor, it doesn't seem to get old.
Difficulty wise the game isn't brutally difficult, which is somewhat of a shame. Boss fights can get fairly challenging at times, but after a few deaths you're usually able to figure out a pattern and exploit it well enough to win.
The weapon selection is a little slack, especially at first. Your only weapon choice at first are 1h swords. But the variety is enough to keep you satisfied for a while. Once you are decently far into the game, you'll unlock 2h swords, and spears. Which spice up the variety a bit, all 3 weapons have their place in a fight.
The "enhancement" system Nier uses is in the form of 'words'. You find the words randomly from monsters around the world. Words can do many, many thing. Such as +2% damage, -2% blood cost (magic costs blood). Some words can only be used for specific things. Some may be used on weapons, magic abilities, or your basic abilities (block and dodge), or any mix of those things. Each category has room for two different word categories. An example for weapons would be your first category word improving damage by 6%, and your second category word enchanting your weapon with poison property.
Such a system gives quite a variety to weapons and magic.
Puzzles are used throughout the game. Most are fairly easy to solve, but fun at times nonetheless.
Another quirk is that the game likes to use multiple camera angles. You'll find yourself in many different camera angles for various reason. It keeps things fresh, and is very well implemented in most cases.
Nier has many, many sidequests to complete. As I stated in the intro, Nier does odd-jobs for a living. Some are a pain, but they do have pretty good cash rewards. Quests given by Yonah sent me on a rampage to get whatever she requested, just because she's so darn cute.
The side-quests are nothing new or exciting, but they are fun to do when you're bored and don't want to progress the story just yet.
One unique side-quest line i'd like to mention however, is the "fragile delivery" quest. This quest chain is pretty brutal at times. Each quest involves you getting some fragile, and needing to deliver it to some far off place. Getting hit by enemies, jumping, and dodging will break the item and you'll need to restart it. The quests are quite frustrating, but very fun all the same.
Lastly i'd like to add there is an inventory system. You can use healing items and buff items. You can also gather items on field, from monsters, from fishing, and from farming. Generally most items are used for quests, or sold for cash. Some are also used to upgrade weaponry.
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Graphics
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The graphics for Nier are nothing to write home about. They wont shock and amaze you, until you get a body shot of Kaine anyways. Despite the somewhat dated graphics, they are in no way bad, or damaging to the game. Things still look quite cool at times, especially the bigger shades (monsters).
There aren't many graphical glitches either, but that's probably, again, due to the graphics not being top-of-the-line.
Not much else to say here. Don't expect to be blown away by the graphics (excluding Kaine), but don't expect to be turned off by them either (especially Kaine).
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Sound
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One of the best parts of Nier is the soundtrack. It is absolutely spectacular. Most songs are sung, with a nice tune played in the background. Any song with lyrics is a made-up 'futuristic' take on a real language. Emi Evans is an amazing song writer and singer, and she deserves god-status for the soundtrack. No official lyrics are provided with the game, which is kind of annoying not knowing what the songs are about...but you'll soon stop caring and just be entranced by the sound of the music. You won't need to KNOW what it's about, because you will FEEL what it's about.
General sounds, such as slashing, monsters, and all that are decent. Not annoying, they don't stick out or sound out of place.
Voice acting is great in my opinion. The voices really fit the characters. Tales fans will hear a LOT of familiar voices as well. A quick list
Nier -> Largo, Duke
Yonah -> Colette
Grimoire Weiss -> Dist, Cumore
Kaine -> Gauche, Marta
Emil -> Droite (ironically, Kaine and Emil act like brother and sister. So the voice actors fit well together)
Yes indeed, the entire main cast of Nier was done by a random Tales cast of VA.
Really though, in terms of looks and personality, the voices completely fit the characters. I was very happy with that.
No voice acting is devoid of emotion, or sounds weird. If anyone ever talks bad about Nier's voice acting, it's because they're probably weeaboos who literally hate hearing any English voices in a jRPG.
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Replayability
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There are huge incentives to replaying. There are, as I recall, 4 ending. The first is nice, but it leaves a lot of questions, the next playthroughs fill in various holes as you play, and the end changes. It's amazing, and well worth plaything over and over to get the endings. However simply replaying to listen to the player interactions, beat the hell out of some shades and listen to some great music, are all great reasons to keep the game around for a rainy day looking for something to do.
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Overall
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Nier is a spectacular game, that at least deserves a rent from any RPG fan. The humor, the decent gameplay, the amazing soundtrack, and Kaine's hot body all add up to a very fun game. There really isn't much to say at this point that hasn't been said several times previously.
I can easily give this a:
Gameplay: 7/10
Characters: 9.5/10
Sounds: 10/10
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Overall: 9.3/10
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