The game was released in 2010 as a renewed version of the action adventure game called Nier, which has been overlooked by most players, published by Square Enix. Nier, which had two different versions named Gestalt and Replicant in 2010, came to the west with the Gestalt version, where we could only manage the older main character. So Nier Replicant ver.1.2247… not only appeals to players who entered the series with Automata, but also to players who have not officially played Replicant before.
NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139… it's not a simple remaster or a comprehensive remake version. As someone who has played both the Drakengard series and the Nier games before, I was waiting for this release with great excitement. Apart from the lack of opportunity to play the Replicant other than fan-made translations, it seems like a big plus that some aspects of the game, which were troublesome even for the time of the game, have been improved with the new version. Let's start our review for answers to questions such as what has been added to the game, what differences compared to previous versions, and why you should play NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139
Pros
+ Great Soundtracks
+ Impressive Story
+ Improved gameplay
+ Atmosphere
+ Newly added sections
+ Grimoire Weiss
Cons
- Pc version has meaningless port problems
- Section designs
-Boring side missions
- Not player friendly enough
-Graphics could be better
-The price should have been a little lower
-The Story of the Big Brother Who Takes All For His Sister
NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139… comes up with a very extraordinary story. (From now on I will refer to the game directly as Nier Replicant, Copy and paste to a point.) In 2049, we start a snowy summer season with our main character hiding in the ruins of the market with his brother. While our character, who tries to protect his brother from dangers, repels the attack of the monsters named Shade, which we can subject as shadow monsters, time fastens and we go to 1312 years later.
The year is 3361 and the world as we know it is completely forgotten. Our main character Nier (or whichever name you choose) pursues various missions to obtain the medicines of his recently ill sister. Performing various tasks for people living in small and relatively primitive communities, Nier has to contend not only with wild animals, but also with the Shades, shadow beings of unknown origin.
Soon our sister goes to an old temple in search of a medicinal plant, gets into trouble, while trying to help, we meet a talking book called Grimoire Weiss. We discover that our sister has gotten a magical disease with no cure called Black Scrawl, and we start looking for a cure with Weiss, who is also a magical being. The aggressive and abusive warrior Kainé, who has his own secrets, and Emil, who keeps away from people because of his unfortunate situation, join us in our adventure.
This is the summary of the story, but as you progress you will see that the subject goes to very different places. The story begins in a very ordinary way, with a child trying to help the villagers and find medicine, but as it progresses, it turns into the nature of the people, the hostile and cruel attitudes towards the stranger and the desperate adventure our team gave in such a world. Those who watched the introductory videos of the game have more or less guessed that the story does not always follow the same line. I do not want to spoil the fun of the game by telling the story, which is one of the strengths of both the original game and the Nier Replicant. You have to experience for yourself the unusual characters and the story that gets a little more detailed at each stage. Once you finish the game, the narrative style that rewinds the story a little bit and starts it up again, asking you to finish it like this one more time seems bad in theory, but I can say that it does not bother you much while playing. Somewhat different things happen every time we go back to the beginning.
It's quite natural to expect the side missions to be just as good while the main story and the quests around it are as good, so commendable. This expectation is unfortunately disappointing. I want to say that extending the game time with unnecessary side missions was somewhat acceptable in 2010, but I was bored with these missions in the original game. Some of them lead to very pleasant dialogues or scenes that can be impressive, but we do so much legwork, there is so much unnecessary hustle and bustle. We run for 10 minutes, hear the words "Oh, he went somewhere else" and run back for 10 minutes. When we give the news, we make a little more road by saying "okay, run for 10 more minutes and come grab something else". Not even counting the fish missions. They're a little more revealing than the original, but no, it's still not the ordeal to suffer. They do not contribute as a story, either.
3D Action Game Becomes An Isometric Shooter in Instant
The better the story of Nier, published in 2010, the more cumbersome and frustrating its gameplay. The bad gameplay is one of the biggest reasons why the original Nier was ignored by many people. Nier Replicant has managed to take the weakest point of the game and bring it closer to Nier Automata, which made this version possible by reaching millions. Sword fights have become very fluid and enjoyable with the Nier Replicant. The spell system that used to stop the flow of combat, which you have to stop to use, has been successfully incorporated into the combat system. On the one hand, we fight enemies in the vicinity, on the other hand, we can gather strength to unleash enemies at the appropriate time. They made Nier's cumbersome combat system, which became a burden after a while, close to Automata.
We start the game with a one-handed sword and use only this weapon for a long time. There are many different types of swords, but the move sets do not change with swords. Different swords offer different values in terms of weight, damage and magic power. Also, as we kill enemies, we can add the words we collect to our weapons and spells. Spears and two-handed swords are also added after a certain part of the game, and we can switch to different attacks by changing our weapon during the fight.
One of my favorite things about Nier Replicant is the places where we feel like playing a different kind of game with suddenly changing camera angles. These changes are much more than in the original Nier, and thanks to the renewed combat system, you can adapt quickly and feel like you are playing a different type of game. The game even switches to the text-based "MUD" genre that was popular many years ago. It is a part that will not be liked by everyone, but it amused me a lot.
We said that the fights in the game are more enjoyable than the original, but I cannot pass without mentioning a point. While playing at the hardest level, opponents' health bar and damage increase significantly. We suffer a considerable loss of life even when the sheep kills. In boss fights, we have to break the seals that appear after inflicting a certain amount of damage, and if the difficulty is high, this process takes a long time. Then we see that some bosses do the same movement all the time, it is a very annoying fight to fight a boss who is constantly kicking his feet and trying to throw us down. If you play it easy, the game can fight for you, which is another option. At times I played it in normal difficulty (where I was bored with the damage sponge enemies) in general hard. I would recommend most players to play on normal difficulty.
Get lost in the music
Nier Replicant isn't exactly a remake, it's actually not even a remaster according to its producer. While radical changes are made in some areas, other parts can be easily overhauled. One of the parts that has been improved but not rebuilt is graphics. Nier, which had acceptable graphics in 2010, received the graphics update it needed. But how much was it enough?
The skins of the game have been completely renewed. They are not at the level of the next generation, but they look more pleasing to the eye. There are wonderful views where you can see the world after the disaster. Seafront, which I am sure is an Aegean town, Aerie, which is located on the edge of the mountain, and Lost Shrine, which I guess was a hotel, look quite good. The designs of the maps show that the game is old, but visually it has a graphic quality close to the early 7th generation.
The character models are more advanced, the animations are better, and the lighting is much better. If Nier Replicant was released as a remaster, I would have been seriously praised in terms of graphics. They did a very good job, no matter what, you can see the difference between the original game and the original game. I invite those who say there is no big change to play the versions on the Playstation 3 or Xbox 360 consoles again. Once you see the difference, you realize how much the change is.
One of the two strongest aspects of the Nier series is the story, while the other is unquestionably their soundtrack. The soundtrack by Keiichi Okabe, who previously worked on the soundtrack of Drakengard 3, original Nier games and Nier Automata, is amazing. They reworked Nier's already great music and re-recorded most of it.
Dynamic music constantly adjusts the music according to the situation if you enter a fight or move to a different part of the map, normally when you go to Devola, who sings when there is only music, the lyrics also come into play. Emi Evans' terrific voice permeates you with his words written as a language that can be used for thousands of years in the future. The story starts out weak and gets stronger as it progresses, but the music keeps its magnificence from the beginning to the end, without breaking the line.
The most happy part of the game was the voice acting. Preserving the original voiceover team, Nier Replicant made a nice choice to voice all the dialogues in the game. It is very annoying for me that the characters speak two or three sentences and continue the rest in writing. Okay, it might not have been possible due to money and technology on time, but we are in 2021, don't do it anymore. Nier Replicant has not only voiced the main characters' dialogues, but even simple NPC characters, it is especially fun to listen to the strange language of the Facade people out loud.
There are some games, no matter how good the English voiceover is, I prefer to play in Japanese, because the Japanese voiceover adapts more to that game. I can cite Final Fantasy XV as an example in this regard. It was the first time I had a dilemma in a game and I also played the English voiceover saying "I play different endings in a different language". The biggest influence on this was Laura Bailey (The Last of Us 2, Catherine, Avengers) and Liam OBrien (Warcraft, Darksider, League of Legends), who voiced Kainé. Liam OBrien gave the full Illidan Stormrage vibe in the character of Grimoire Weiss, and the successful performance was even better than his Japanese voice.
The Wrinkled Pages of Grimoire Weiss
From the beginning of the article, I praised the game, and although I pointed out their minor troubles at times, I did not emphasize it too much. It's time for the annoying parts of the game.
I played Nier Replicant with a good PC, almost smoothly. Nier: I was a bit cautious about this game too, due to Automata's badly published PC port. But I had no problem when I first opened it. I get 60 FPS constantly, the graphics are nice as I mentioned, I went through the first parts by playing with the keyboard and mouse. I think they did it properly this time, and I decided that playing with the keyboard and mouse was not that enjoyable. The keyboard-mouse duo is adapted to the game, but the mouse works just like a controller, so you can't make sharp camera turns.
The game is already out for the console, saying that it would be much more logical to play with the controller, I switched to the Xbox One controller and the uproar started. The game started to stretch meaninglessly, and the stable FPS suddenly started to oscillate between 5-10. There is no such problem when wearing the Playstation 4 controller or playing with the keyboard. In order to solve the problem, it is necessary to download the mod (SpecialK) made by the team that previously fixed Automata and select the "Cancel Playstation interface" option in the game. You don't expect to have such a ridiculous error with a controller that almost all PC gamers use. This issue was still unresolved at the time of writing, considering we are waiting for the Xbox port release for Nier: Automata, I don't think it will be resolved anytime soon.
The performance of the game is good, we said it can give 60 FPS steadily, but it can also go higher, but this is not a good thing. Animations accelerate significantly over 70 FPS and we suddenly have a character who is teleported left and right. Not only us, but also the enemies are speeding up, we can be beaten by a small Shade before we even realize we are being attacked. There is a solution, of course, you can get a lower FPS monitor, if you have an NVDIA card, you can fix the game's frame rate or with the mode I mentioned above, you can fix the frame rate supported by the game at the rate you want. Having to break points just because of these two problems really makes me a little sad, but there is nothing to do.
The performance problems of the game are specific to the PC version, there are no such problems on consoles. Console players are faced with the difficulties found in each version, such as boring episode designs from 2010, grind that needs to be done in boring designed places to develop weapons, boring side missions that progress in a complete legwork logic, and the first 6 hours of the game to open. Some side missions and missing mechanics in the game attract so much attention that even Grimoire Weiss, who is always with us, can complain about this issue. The lack of a system that allows us to move quickly is explained by Weiss as "everyone who tried this spell was shattered by obstacles on the road." So the game is also aware of some shortcomings.
Some players are uncomfortable with replaying the same story after a certain episode to reach the true end of the game and see this as a minus, but I disagree. Every time you return to the beginning, you learn a different side of the story and get new pieces accordingly. In some sections, you have the option to move fast, and you have the chance to quickly skip the conversations you have heard before. It could have been a different route, but Yoko Taro is an interesting producer, and his game also suffers from quirks that are debatable at times.
Finally, Nier Replicant sometimes leaves the player in the middle. In the time of Nier Gestalt, there were even those who quit the game because he could not pass the fishing game. This time they talked about how to fish, but they left all the rest of the information in the air. Or they are given very little information on the side missions, waiting for the player to solve the rest. If you do not open and check the book once in a while, you may miss the side missions. There is a checkpoint in boss fights, but the health items you use do not come back, you can suffer in the face of the enormous enemy. Better than before but still not quite a player-friendly game.
Result
NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139… definitely a successful game. They wonderfully brought Nier Gestalt / Replicant games, which were released in 2010 and which very few people deserve due to its shortcomings, to the next generation. In its name, "ver.1.22474487139…" is actually the square root of the number "1.5" and the game deserves its name as an intermediate version. The ideal name for a game that has been developed too much to be a remaster, which would not be exactly right if it was called a remaster, was chosen.
The game, which includes a huge newly added episode and 15 Nightmares DLC packs added to the main game, offers a brand new DLC pack for free, which also adds costumes and music from the Nier Automata game. They finally smoothed the original Nier’s fishing mini game. I wish the PC version was a little better port and the problems were quickly resolved by the producers, not the users. The truth is, I wish the version of Gestalt, which tells the story of the father trying to save his daughter, was also playable, but this is a personal idea.
Nice explanation