Nier Review

"I'm just a big guy who kills things."

This is one of the phrases uttered by Nier's hero, and nothing could be more true. You'll spend 90% of your time in Nier simply killing things, whether for quests, or hunting for items. If this appeals to you, you may find something to like in this otherwise rather lacklustre offering from Cavia.

Nier is a strange game to comment on. At it's heart, it's a JRPG as you would expect considering the publishers, Square Enix. On the other hand, it mashes together styles from different games, ranging from platformers to hack 'n' slash.  The game sees you in control of the protagonist, Nier (who's name you can change) as you search for a cure to an illness known as the Black Scrawl, which your daughter Yonah is infected with. During your quest, you will be joined by a rather strange array of party members, but you are only ever in direct control of Nier himself.

The beginning of the game see's you protecting Yonah from the games main enemies, Shades, both inside and outside a wrecked shop. This serves as the games tutorial in both melee combat and magic. Using a standard hack 'n' slash system for combat, you need only mash the X button to beat most creatures, but should the need arise, you can use the Y button to perform a stronger, armor breaking attack. Other than that, you have your block button and that's the extent of the combat. Simple and to the point. Magic on the other hand is much more fun to use. Each spell can be mapped to any of the four left and right bumpers - but two of these should always be assigned to block and evade. This leaves you generally with two magic spells at your command at any given time. The spells include ushering spikes up from the ground to impale your enemies, large lances you can hurl at enemies at a distance, and our personal favorite, a gigantic fist that can punch your enemies.

You'll come to rely on these spells more than you know when facing bosses and large hordes of smaller Shades, as they are a much faster means of disposing enemies than your sword. This is where the combat system's problem lies. If you use a sword, no matter how powerful, you'll always take longer to kill things than if you use magic; yet on the other hand, magic kills things too quickly, making the game very easy. This is a problem as there's either no challenge using magic, or virtually unbeatable bosses using melee. For a game that is centred around killing things, this shouldn't be the case, especially as you progress in levels and your magic gets even more powerful.

Helping you on your quest are numerous party members that are, as mentioned, a bit odd. Your first companion is a floating book, named Grimoire Weiss. He sounds like Alan Rickman, is as sarcastic as they come and is actually one of the best characters in the game; next up is the games most contreversial aspect, Kaine, a hermaphrodite who swears at least four times per sentence.  This woman has the most insane use of bad language I've ever heard in a Japanese RPG, and while it's funny at first, it begins to wear a bit thin after a while. The other characters that join you are somewhat later on in the story so I'll leave you to discover them yourself. The problem with the supporting cast is that they're all more intersting than Nier himself. They all have some form of backstory which makes them more interesting to learn about, rather than Nier who is nothing more than his quest to save his daughter. Noble as that may be, it doesn't provide a very entertaining reason to kill everything in your path.

Graphically, the game is merely acceptable, at a push. The textures are bland, the character design, while interesting, is just typical Japanese design (Nier is wearing shoulder armor and has long white hair, Kaine wears barely anything, Weiss is a... book).  The best thing the game has going for its boss design. There are some fantastic looking bosses, but they aren't given enough time to shine, considering how quickly you can kill them with your trusty gigantic fist.

The bland environments wouldn't be so bad if you were constantly going from one place to the next, but unfortunately - and this is Nier's biggest problem - the game is littered with fetch quests, designed to lengthen the games time and let you grind out certain weapons and raw materials which are used to upgrade weapons.  Your home village is the main hub for a good ten or so hours in the beginning, with trips to other towns required only to buy, find or kill something required for a side-quest. If your a bit of an achievement/trophy addict, this will be even more infuriating as you are also required to play at gardener to grow certain plants, and fish for different species of fish to unlock them. This is yet another dull addition that adds nothing to the game except some extra hours.

The second half of the game picks things up a bit, but as with the recent Final Fantasy outing, it's a bit unfair to ask gamers paying their hard earned to play a game that's rather dull for a good length of time before they get to the good bits. You'll have to sit through about twelve hours or so before things pick up, but by this point players may already be bored of fetching different fruits to keep Yonah happy, or finding ingredients to make a drink to keep the village's librarian happy.

Nier has an outstanding musical score, which shines as one of the game's best aspects. Although the song that loops when you're out in one of the games main fields can get grating, the other pieces that play during key events or enemy attacks more than make up for this. The voice acting is also surprisingly strong, with particular mention of Alan Rickman-alike, Weiss and the swear happy Kaine in particular. Nier himself has the voice to match his look, but his dialogue is filled with "I need to save Yonah" so much you'll get tired of it.

One of the things Nier does very right, however, is the New Game+ option.  When loading a completed save, you are started midway through the game, where all the good stuff starts, retaining all items, powers and weapons from your previous save. Along with this though, is extra story elements added to each playthrough - totalling at four different endings. Be aware though, that after the fourth ending your save game will be wiped from your hard drive in a somewhat evil move by Cavia.

Nier passed by many players this side of the world, while in Japan it got released as Nier Gestalt on the Xbox, and Nier Replicant on the Playstation, with the only difference being the relationship between Nier and Yonah. We get the version based on Nier Gestalt, where Yonah is the daughter (in Replicant, she is Nier's sister). Everything else is the same here, and unless you enjoy running back and forward collecting things, it's probably best avoided. While it has it's moments, they're too few and far between with too many fetch quests to get to those moments. There is something which never seems to get old though, and that's take guilty pleasure from using the gigantic demonic magic fist to endlessly punch sheep.