An under appreciated action RPG.

User Rating: 8 | NIER X360
Nier is a action roleplaying game set in the future after an apocalypse has vastly reduced the human population which now live simpler lives than their ancestors and are plagued by monsters called Shades.

The main character's goal in the game is to find a cure for his daughter called Yonah who is infected with a disease called 'the black scrawl' which gradually kills its victims. A simple enough premise you quickly meet up with a talking book and a memorable character at that called 'Grimoire Weiss' who informs you that he can perhaps cure yonah if they collect more magic known as 'sealed verses' and from there you fight more shades and meet up with other characters including the foul mouthed badass 'Kaine' and the slightly irritating child like Emil.

Graphically, Nier is a definite mix bag, environments look, pretty darn good especially the town's themselves (fascade especially), however the out door environments (excluding north plains) look rather drab - eg the desert, I noticed when running around in the village that characters popped into existence which was a little jarring at first and speaking of the human characters they look fairly undetailed but to my eyes sufficient enough - Nier does have some nice visual touches though, the camera transitions to certain areas was done very well, I also liked the minimalistic looking shades who are mainly in a humanoid form with coloured yellow/black appearances also when you cast magic the actual words appear on the screen, and I have to say the boss battles honestly look impressive to me.

Special mention should be made about the sounds and music in Nier they are fantastic, especially the soundtrack, the only voice that was even remotely annoying was the young 'Emil' character but certainly more bearable than Vanille!
The soundtrack is beautiful, its not trite and generic sounding EPIC ORCHESTRA'S all the time which you might hear in some more fantasy RPG's or RTS themed games, in Nier although it has alot of orchestral music its varied enough to keep it from getting boring utilising choirs, solemn chants and shrill chants, the suits the events in the game extremely well - from the soft tranquil 'seafront' town music to the faster paced exciting boss battle music such as 'blu bird' or 'deep crimson foe'.

The gameplay for Nier is quite simplistic, two attack buttons and can use the shoulder buttons to cast magic or perform martial moves (eg dodge roll) but its enough for the game, what lets Nier down in terms of gameplay however are the tedious side quests if you should choose to do them , furthermore there is alot of backtracking in the game just following the main story itself as you only have a few hubs to visit so overall you can be forgiven for thinking the game is repetitive at times, also theres a fishing mini game whihc i cant really say is much fun and you can plant a few plants on your little farm, however its not implemented very well at all, you have to walk to each plot and choose a seed to plant instead of a much simpler and straight forward solutuion of perhaps going to a seperate screen or birds eye view of the field nad just choosing to plant what and were instead of walking to each plot waiting through the planting/watering animations, however like any good RPG, the story is off paramount importance and for me, given how good Niers story was i think it makes up for Niers so and so gameplay as ill try to explain.

The reason i think it makes up for niers so and so gameplay and graphics is that in combination with the superb job the soundtrack does in creating the atmosphere of the game and the setting itself, you have some pretty interesting characters who are important to the main plot and their own interactions with each other can be a source of amusement (hussy!) and you have a rather sad plot which develop's and if you do commit your time to some of the side quests which not only help enrich the story alittle more but theres a few morale issues that might crop up eg . the lighthouse quest , also the main plot of the game becomes much more... morally ambiguous and poignant if you decide to replay from a completed save game which makes helps to expand the story and offcourse offers great replay value to the game when you consider theres 4 different endings.

Now , i think it was a interesting setting and premise to provide enough motivation to keep on playing the game - heck if its post apocalyptical im interested, and quickly enough I found myself quite engrossed in the game world, as simple as it might seem, theres only a few locations in the game within a few minutes distance from each other but theyre visually quite unique from one another , unfortunately what dominates your time in these places are rather repetitive side quests usually amounting to 'find x amount of item' which can take quite sometime or kill this shade/monster, not original or much fun at times, and the combat itself is fairly basic with normal moves, and a special move maybe mix up with some magic or a special attack, but the real strength of Nier isnt so much in its gameplay mechanics but rather its setting, the atmosphere it creates in part due to the absolutely fantastic soundtrack , the characters and the story itself with its multiple endings, I cant help but feel that Nier deserves a much better score than it got in most gaming websites.

Pros:
Good story
Brilliant soundtrack
solid voice acting
Interesting setting
Memorable characters
Good replay value

Average:
Graphics

Bad:
Repetitive sidequests
Small'ish gameworld
combat is abit too simple
farming is too time consuming.