izigame.me

- Everything that lives is designed to end. We are perpetually trapped in a never-ending spiral of life and death. Is this a curse? Or some kind of punishment?
Whoa, why am I starting a review with some random quote? No, it's not random. Those are the words that I was greeted with at the very beginning of Nier: Automata. These words carry more than one meaning within the game. Most of them are revealed well into the game, but I almost immediately discovered the first meaning when I set the game difficulty to maximum (as I normally do) and started getting punished over and over during the 1+ hour prologue that doesn't have any save points. After some time, I lowered the difficulty from Very Hard to Hard and I wouldn't recommend Very Hard to anyone - Dark Souls has nothing on it. Easy should be really easy though.
I think I have to award this game the title of the strangest non-indie game I've played to date. The previous title in the series was already peculiar with all the creative modes of storytelling and quirks with save data. Nier: Automata has all that and some more. One example is a late-game shop where you can buy any achievement with gold (which is not scarce at all) - something I've never seen before. The final boss of the game is an experience I will not forget for the rest of my life (barring dementia and such) - it reinforced my belief in humanity, truly unique.
If you still aren't convinced that you should play it, then I don't know what you are doing reading my reviews. It's a must in my book. Having said that, I do recommend playing Nier: Replicant prior to this, since Replicant is superior in gameplay/music (in my opinion), and adds more depth to the Nier: Automata's story. Gameplay-wise, the two main additions compared to the prequel are a twin-stick shooter minigame and some shoot'em up sequences, both of which I'm not really a fan of. However, the story is better here.
It starts off as an absurd situation that I first thought would just be a copycat version of Star Trek's "Prototype" episode, but it slowly evolved into something much more than that. Many philosophical questions arose in my head throughout the playthrough, and what's interesting is that the game almost always gives them in a very subtle way.
I absolutely recommend going in blind and not giving up too soon. It gets better and better. You don't need to worry about missable things until very late in the game, and there are only two of them (ending Y related to a level 99 boss fight, and a Powerup Part S that drops from a beefy golden mob). Achievements can't be missed at all, because, as mentioned before, they can be purchased from the shop.
The only warning I have is that I'm not sure whether the game plays well with mouse and keyboard. I played it with an Xbox-type controller. I assume the twin-stick shooter mini-games might be challenging without it.