NieR Replicant Review: Ambitious Storytelling Excellence Marred by Underwhelming, Frustrating Design
NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139... has been marketed as a “version upgrade” by Square Enix. This is fitting, as the game is clearly more than your typical remaster of an 11-year-old game. With inclusions of new story content, updated combat, and rerecorded voice acting and music, the presentation of NieR Replicant and its story has never been better. Yet, there are still fundamental flaws with the game’s design that holds it back from true greatness. // Image: Square Enix
Note: This review will discuss story spoilers, though there will be indications for where spoiler discussions begin and end. Please keep this in mind if you wish to read with being spoiled on the story of NieR Replicant. Thank you and enjoy!
I remember when Automata was first revealed at E3 2015, the general consensus at the game’s reveal was “Really? Square Enix could be making any kind of game and they choose to make a sequel to NieR?!” The original NieR (known in Japan as NieR Gestalt and NieR Replicant, as the game received two versions in the territory) is perhaps the epitome of a cult hit. It received relatively mixed critical reception when it launched, as the game was littered with dated, repetitive combat and game design, while also being praised for its mashup of genres, and incredible music and voice acting.
Being a spin-off of the Drakengard series - a franchise itself often critiqued for having rough, repetitive game design despite having intriguing story ideas -, NieR very much followed in its predecessor’s footsteps in delivering an ambitious story while underdelivering on its gameplay and overall game design.
NieR came and went. It sold well enough to garner a dedicated following of players that adored and defended the game’s wacky yet inspired ideas. While the general public was surprised that NieR of all games was getting a sequel, PlatinumGames’ involvement in Automata insured that the game’s gameplay and design would be a significant improvement over the original NieR. Sure enough, the game received immediate critical and commercial praise in 2017, even being partially responsible for keeping PlatinumGames’ doors open. The game delivered a frenetic, well-paced gameplay experience, while still telling an erudite story set in an apocalyptic, dismal, hopeless world. More importantly, it sold well. Very well.
The NieR franchise (and, by proxy, the Drakengard franchise) had become more well-known and admired in the overall gaming landscape. After the doubtless success that Automata proved to be, many looked back to the original NieR, many believing that the game had aged well - some even claiming it to tell one of the greatest, most ambitious stories in any game. Retrospectives popped up during this period and gave me a greater perspective on the game. Upon learning more about the original game beyond being passively aware of its lukewarm reception at launch, I was among the many people curious to play through the original NieR after being beyond impressed by Automata.
Fast forward to 2020. People around the globe are in quarantine during a pandemic, hoping for good news to come about. COVID-19 vaccines were still a bit of a ways off from being publicly accessible, so people were looking for new entertainment experiences to bide their time with until the pandemic could be over. And Square Enix delivers with one of their many game announcements throughout the year being a “version upgrade” of the original NieR, dubbed NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139..., being scheduled to release in April of 2021.
The term “version upgrade” was used to indicate that this release was more than a typical remaster of an 11-year-old game. While this new release would indeed pretty-up the graphics and art style, it was also adding new story content (including an additional ending), a reworked combat system intended to be a hybrid of the original NieR and Automata’s combat designs, a revised translation and localization from the ever-talented folks at 8-4, rerecorded English and Japanese voice acting, in addition to new recordings and arrangements for the game’s soundtracks, with most tracks now being longer than they were in the original release. Not only were all of the voice actors of the original release returning to reprise their roles, but the game was now being entirely voice acting, meaning even NPCs and minor dialogue exchanges were to be all fully voiced when they previously were not. Lastly, this release would be based on the Japanese-exclusive version of NieR Replicant, meaning that the older, father protagonist of Nier Gestalt, AKA “papa Nier”, was out and a younger-looking, brother protagonist was in.
Indeed, this “version upgrade” moniker was aptly given - the amount of new features and inclusions would give any competent remaster a case of imposter syndrome. A contrast to the game’s original release, Replicant was immediately highly anticipated by the gaming landscape, myself included. I could finally experience the original game for myself, and see why the game’s cult following adores the game so much, fully believing that I would become one of the game’s many fans as well.
And now I sit here, typing this review, fully aware of my complex, likely unpopular opinions of NieR Replicant, unsure exactly how readers will react to them. I wanted and even expected to like NieR Replicant, and I’m not fully convinced that I don’t. There are certainly aspects of the game that I ended up enjoying, but when my experience with NieR Replicant came to a close (meaning when I saw the credits a fifth time with the conclusion of Ending E), I couldn’t help but feel viciously conflicted. The game had enjoyable highs with its storytelling and presentation. It kept me thinking about its story, world, and characters long after I finished my time with the game. But the game also had agonizing, baffling lows with its abysmal quest design, excessive backtracking, and stale combat.
Even after sitting on the game for about a week, I’m still struggling to definitively assess NieR Replicant. Suffice to say, this is a complex game that elicits complex opinions and feelings. I’m absolutely not in the camp of people that considers this game a masterpiece - I take issue with way too many aspects of this game to make anything near that claim -, yet I can’t entirely discredit why people would think that. There’s a lot of opinions to discuss, so without further ado, let’s take a dive into my complex experience with NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139.…
NieR Replicant has garnered a dedicated following of people that truly appreciate the ambition of the game’s storytelling and overall direction. Unfortunately, this game serves as an example of ambitious ideas coming at the cost of a cohesive, well-rounded experience. There are multiple aspects of Replicant that are horrifically flawed to the point that ambitious storytelling can’t shield a repetitive, sometimes boring gameplay experience. // Image: Square Enix
NieR Replicant can best be described as a game that wants you to think that it’s going to conform to genre conventions and expectations. Players begin their journey with a teenage boy and his younger sister, as a snowstorm isolates them in a destroyed, abandoned convenience store. The boy begins protecting his sister by fighting enemies, later revealed to be “Shades”. This is where the game’s basic combat mechanics are introduced the player, which works fine enough as an early tutorial. Following this introductory battle, the brother and sister join with each other, as we pan away and reveal a ruined, frozen city. This intro does a remarkable job at setting up intrigue, introducing the player to combat mechanics, with combat serving as the main gameplay feature of Replicant, and setting up Replicant’s somber tone and post-apocalyptic setting.
With not much time to identify what’s going on with this introduction, we jump forward over a thousand years into the future and see an identical teenage boy and his younger, sickly sister. While these are surely the same people that we saw in the introductory scene, that first scene and the implication that these characters are either over a thousand years old or are one-for-one replicas of the characters we were introduced to in the first scene continues in building player intrigue and wonder about what this story and world is going to offer. With a bit of a dialogue exchange, we learn that the main character’s younger sister, Yonah, has some kind of illness that is preventing her from living freely in the nearby small village. Yonah’s brother, the protagonist that the player can name, though is canonically named Nier, goes to see Devola and Popola, the two primary quest givers for Nier’s Village to see if he can help around town and help combat Yonah’s mysterious illness.
So what’s the first thing that the player is tasked to do? A low-stakes fetch quest - acquiring three pieces of mutton and three medicinal herbs. This isn’t a very uncommon trope in RPG design - having the first objective for a player to complete be a tutorial quest that teaches players how to engage with the game’s basic systems is a bit commonplace. Fetch quests aren’t inherently bad despite the negative associations many have given to the term, though we’ll be revisiting the topic of these types of quests later on. What matters with this individual fetch quest is that we need to purchase medicinal herbs from a store in Nier’s Village and acquire mutton from killing sheep in the nearby Northern Plains. Requiring the player to purchase medicinal herbs is a solid if slightly forced way to introduce the concept of buying items to players in addition to generally interacting with NPCs to acquire items and information. Acquiring mutton from killing sheep introduces the player to the game’s “item drop” system. Like with many other games, killing enemies results in them dropping items with a range of different rarities that may be needed for quests or for selling. This introductory quest is a fine if unremarkable quest for a tutorial quest that teaches the player the basic features of the game. We now know to talk to NPCs to gather information, how to shop, and that killing enemies results in drops that can be helpful to the player.
Giving a tutorial quest that teaches this type of basic information does a fine enough job at teaching mechanical information to the player, and is somewhat typical for the genre. Replicant immediately identifies itself to the player as a game that is generally going to conform to genre conventions, despite its mysterious introduction sequence. As the days progress, Nier is tasked with going to other locations to fight larger Shades that serve as boss fights, navigate through dungeons in new locations, and even partake in a fishing minigame that is primarily optional, though the player must catch one particular fish for story progression. Boss encounters, dungeons, towns, and open areas to explore, and a fishing minigame (that, while initially serviceable, loses its luster very fast once you partake in the minigame’s associated quests) - all of these are relatively common tropes undertaken in JRPGs.
In addition, not far in the game, we’re introduced to Grimoire Weiss, who primarily serves as a companion character to Nier throughout the game. Grimoire Weiss is a particularly high quality companion character, as he serves great purpose in gameplay and story. Once the player meets Grimoire Weiss, they’ll have access to magic and more detailed information on quests, status, etc. More significantly, though, the camaraderie between Nier and Weiss is a genuine highlight throughout the entire game. Nier and Weiss’ characters bounce off of each other extremely well, and their relationship develops at a believable pace, with their consistent banter with each other throughout the story events serving as a remarkable means of character development between the two characters.
Not long after acquiring Weiss, Nier learns of the Sealed Verses, glorified MacGuffins, that teach the player new spells in addition to being possible leads to help cure Yonah of her Black Scrawl disease, widely believed to be a fatal condition. Along the way, Nier and Weiss meet Kaine and Emil who are both characters that we don’t get to learn too much about until far later into the narrative, but these characters ultimately serve as support characters that round out the main party of the game.
A companion character that banters and grows with the main character, collectable items usually acquired after defeating a strong enemies that gives the player new abilities and story progression, and characters that make up a party of three to take on a dangerous, relatively unknown threat. Once again, all of these traits are fairly typical for JRPGs. So how does NieR Replicant necessarily stand out from the typical JRPG crowd? Simply put, most of the tropes that NieR Replicant incorporates are flipped on their head at some point in the narrative. The player progresses, fighting what the game classifies as enemies and boss encounters, collecting Sealed Verses along the way with a character that’s perhaps too eager to help others with their problems, even when characters like Kaine specifically ask not to be helped.
Through accepting side quests and helping other characters no matter what, if feels as if Nier often inserts himself as a noble hero-type character that is willing to help with something, no matter the cost. Once Nier finishes collecting the Sealed Verses, the game’s first section concludes with characters having to make dire sacrifices that finally begin revealing how different NieR Replicant’s story is.
Throughout the first half of the story, and especially during the second half of the story that takes place after a time skip, NieR’s story, world, and nearly all of its characters are permeated with a somber, hopeless tone. Nier, once a character eager to help others for the sake of altruism and saving his sister, becomes a character defined by hatred, primarily willing to help others as a means of inching closer towards revenge. Especially as the narrative progresses further and character backgrounds are revealed, NieR Replicant’s story reveals itself to be one that is anything but trope-y. The game takes its time in the first part establishing conventional JRPG gameplay and storytelling tropes only to subvert these very tropes in the second half of the story and beyond.
Occasionally, NieR Replicant will switch to alternate gameplay styles and/or camera angles to elicit the mood of other game genres. From survival horror games with fixed camera angles, to 2D Metroidvanias, twin stick shooters, and RPGs with isometric camera perspectives like Diablo, Replicant dabbles in other genre styles for the sake of adding diversity, and it’s done at such a pace to be refreshing without ever feeling intrusive. Among these are the game’s stellar “novel” sections, where the game becomes entirely text, reading like prose uncommon to see in video games that deliver some of the game’s best writing. These diversions into other genres are a genuine highlight of NieR Replicant’s runtime. // Image Captured on PlayStation 5
While NieR Replicant’s story shows a lot of strengths in terms of subverting expectations and crafting genuinely unique, thoughtful story beats that are unlike anything else in the entire medium of video games, Replicant’s storytelling often comes at a cost of creating an well-rounded experience. Simply put, NieR Replicant’s story structure will regularly necessitate the player to backtrack between areas. One instance of the game that exemplifies this perfectly is, funnily enough, content that was added for this version of the game - that being the “Mermaid” story sequence that occurs during the events of the second half of the story.
At the beginning of this sequence, Nier is informed by Popola that the “Red Bag Man” that serves as a ferryman that allows the player to use the game’s fast-travel system (more on that later) has not been attending work. Since this character had a previous story sequence with his wife in Seafront, a town to the south of Nier’s Village, the player is familiar with where the Red Bag Man is from, making the directive to go from Nier’s Village to Seafront immediately understood by the player. So the player leaves Nier’s Village, goes through the Southern Plains, and arrives at Seafront. Here, the player talks to the Red Bag Man’s wife, confirming that he’s gone missing. The player will then have to go to the nearby tavern, and learn that the Red Bag Man’s brother, a soldier in Nier’s Village, may know where he is. So, the player has to leave Seafront, go through the Southern Plains, and arrive at Nier’s Village. Right at where the player will enter Nier’s Village, the Red Bag Man’s brother will inform Nier that he doesn’t know where the Red Bag Man is, but the Postman in Seafront may have a lead. To progress further, the player must leave Nier’s Village, go through the Southern Plains, and arrive at Seafront, where the rest of the “Mermaid” story sequence plays out.
Do you see the problem here?
The player has quite literally had to run back and forth between two locations for small crumbs of information that progress this story sequence (which, mind you, is mandatory to progress along the main story). Grimoire Weiss even comments when you talk to the brother soldier in Nier’s Village, questioning why the required tasks can’t be in the same location. At a glance, this seems like a tongue-in-cheek reference to the player that the game is having them run back and forth between areas for continuing a relatively minor plot beat - something that may be seen as a stereotype in video game quest design. At this point, NieR Replicant thinks its joking about how video games require players to effectively waste their time by running back and forth between areas. The flaw in this attempt at humor is that Grimoire Weiss’ line is, in actuality, just lampshading.
Through Weiss wondering how great it would be if they didn’t have to backtrack through the same area, Replicant is acknowledging that the game is requiring the player to backtrack through the same area. However, there’s no punchline - there’s no development on this bit. Weiss’ line in this instance is NieR Replicant acknowledging that it’s participating in the trope of shameless backtracking through an area, but simply proceeds in necessitating the backtracking that’s been brought to attention by the game’s script. Replicant thinks it’s been witty, insightful, and clever in this instance by referencing that video games can indulge players in backtracking through areas, but this reference means nothing when Replicant’s portrayal of the trope/stereotype of backtracking through areas is…having backtracking through areas. Acknowledging the presence of the trope, then proceeding along with said trope is an instance of the game attempting to be clever with its writing, but in actuality, the game is truthfully being pretentious. At least, that’s how it feels in my eyes.
This is NieR Replicant at its absolute worst - when the game references/acknowledges the presence of established tropes in Role Playing Games with poorly-designed quests that require backtracking, only to continue on with implementing established tropes in Role Playing Games while having poorly-designed quests that require backtracking. There are numerous instances of the game’s story feeling like it wants to be clever. Oftentimes, this cleverness works, but other times, the game falls flat on its face and doesn’t work well at all.
But when that cleverness does work, Replicant truly shines. A staple that will be seen throughout Replicant, and one that even carried on in some capacity to Automata, is the implementation of dabbling into other genre styles. While navigating through the Mines in the Junk Heap, there will be a section where the game will briefly adopt a top-down camera angle and play like a top-down, twin-stick shooter, albeit a very simple, slow-paced one. In the mansion, players will experience a story sequence with fixed camera angles, slow movement speed, and creepy moans and shutters in the distance - evocative of classic survival-horror games. Another sequence will see Nier navigate a dungeon with an isometric camera angle a la Diablo. Sequences like these mostly serve as a means to spice up gameplay more than serving an actual story purpose, and yet its charm and ambition works quite well.
With that said, I have to give special mention to the most impressive of these genre switches - that being when NieR Replicant becomes a novel - almost literally. There will be numerous instances throughout the game’s runtime where the player will see nothing but white text on a black screen for minutes at a time, with the longest of these sections taking about 40-60 minutes to read through in its entirety. Somewhat evocative of visual novels and old-school text adventures, these sections exemplify the very best of the game’s writing, and genuinely offer some of the most intriguing sequences in the game’s entire plot. With that said, though, these sequences, as great as they are, aren’t entirely a slam dunk because they’re used to give Kaine and Emil their backstories very late in the game’s narrative. While giving character backstories through lengthy and inspired “novel sequences” is a clever idea, this cleverness comes at the cost of the game and the narrative’s overall quality. By the time the player sees the novel sequences that vividly describe Kaine and Emil’s backstories, a very significant portion of the game’s narrative has already passed. While it could be argued that these sequences are introduced very late in the game’s story as a means recontextualizing their motivations throughout the story, I feel that these backstories are introduced far too late in the game’s narrative to be fully effective.
For a large chunk of the game’s runtime, I didn’t find myself that attached to Kaine and Emil’s characters because I simply didn’t get to learn much about them. Nier and Grimoire Weiss proved to have great chemistry with each other throughout the game’s narrative, and the player is able to appreciate and believe their relationship because of their consistent exchanges with each other, in addition to us getting to see more of their personality and background shine through in the game’s writing. Meanwhile, this isn’t done with Kaine and Emil’s characters to nearly the same extent as Nier and Weiss until Kaine and Emil’s respective “novel sequences” are shown to the player. This is an extreme example of stylistic authorial decisions in relation to how and when information is revealed to the audience that did not resonate with me well at all.
In fact, that’s a statement that can be applied to the totality of NieR Replicant. This is a game that will simply not resonate with a lot of people, simply due to the extreme authorial and stylistic decisions made in the game design and story. Even with the quality-of-life and presentation improvements that have been made in this “version upgrade”, there are still quirks with the way the game goes about revealing information in its story that I take issue with too much to ignore or forgive. NieR has a lot of ambitious ideas in its story, characters, structure, and gameplay that some people will admire and appreciate. Other people will only be able to see the numerous flaws and imperfections inherent in many of NieR’s ambitious endeavors. NieR Replicant’s overall quality is very much dependent on how you feel about some of its more ambitious undertakings. If you appreciate ambitious, experimental storytelling, than you’ll likely love what NieR has to offer, but if the game’s ambition seems as if it gets in the way of the game meeting its best possible quality, you’ll likely be underwhelmed by it.
I’m awkwardly caught in the middle of these extremes, slightly leaning towards the underwhelmed end of the spectrum. The writer side of me really appreciates a story that is willing to take such experimental risks, such as through recontextualizing plot elements in subsequent playthroughs. Simultaneously, though, the story consumer in me can’t help but feel that many of these experimental risks don’t land very well at all. This contributes to NieR Replicant being an exceptionally difficult game to recommend, as, by its very nature, it’s not going to resonate with a lot of people, but it will absolutely resonate with others, and whether you enjoy the overall game and its story is dependent on how you view its more ambitious, experimental ideas.
Combat in NieR Replicant was retooled from the original release of NieR, intended to be something of a hybrid of original NieR and Automata’s pace of combat. While it’s clear to see Replicant’s combat as an improvement, the enemy types and bosses will rarely ever test players’ understanding of the game’s combat. Add on that most weapons feel same-y and the fact that enemy AI and behavior was not adjusted to accommodate the new combat style, and Replicant’s combat quickly grows brainless. It’s arguable that this brainlessness is intentional, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that combat, the game’s primary gameplay mechanic, just isn’t that fun to engage in. // Image Captured on PlayStation 5
I can’t delve too much farther in discussions about NieR’s ambitious ideas in relation to story without going into story spoilers, so before I do that, it’s best to discuss everything else about the game. While I’m conflicted on my feelings about NieR Replicant as a whole, those conflicting feelings do not exist at all for the game’s stellar visual and auditory presentation. To say that the level of effort that went into this “version upgrade” is impressive would be selling it short. Put bluntly, I’m hard-pressed to think of many examples of rereleases of games with this level of detail and passion towards improving the game’s presentation. This new release has clearly been crafted with a lot of love - from the developers at Toylogic to the localization team and everything in between, it’s clear to see that the folks behind this “version upgrade” wanted to make NieR be presented as best it can be while still representing the integrity of the spirit of the original game.
Firstly, the game’s masterful soundtrack has been entirely rerecorded - something this rerelease could easily have gotten away with without doing. The 2010 original had one of the most stellar, hauntingly beautiful soundtracks every made and no one would have complained if the soundtrack hadn’t been touched for this rerelease. And yet, Square Enix didn’t settle for that. The entire soundtrack has been given fresh arrangements, expanded sections, and an overall sound that feels more full. Replicant implements a lot of stems throughout its entirety - that being altered arrangements of the song that play when the player is under different circumstances. For example, the player will hear an alternate version of any given song depending on whether or not they are nearby enemies or in certain sections of an area, with each stem seamlessly transitioning between each other - it feels remarkably well-realized considering this is a game originally released in 2010. My only complaint regarding the soundtrack is that players cannot switch between the original soundtrack and newly recorded soundtrack, which is a bit of a shame. Though, a neat inclusion is that players can unlock access to implement Automata’s soundtrack into the game. This admittedly made quite eager to hear which songs from Automata play in which areas of this game. It’s a pleasant novelty that feels like a decent consolation for not having the option to play with the original NieR’s soundtrack.
Additionally, the Japanese and English voice acting has been entirely rerecorded, with all of the game’s original voice actors reprising their roles. Since the playable character is now a younger Nier that wasn’t in the original English release, Ray Chase has been added as the voice actor for Nier, and he fits like a glove among the rest of the cast. The quality of the voice acting is incredible, with Laura Bailey as Kaine, Liam O’Brien as Grimoire Weiss, and Eden Riegel as Devola/Popola offering some standout performances. The quality of the voice acting is top notch, and the quantity of voice acting has actually been upped from the original release. All lines of dialogue in the game, no matter how minor, are fully voice acted, and there’s really no weak points at all. Having all NPCs voice-acted with such high quality is truly impressive - especially considering much of it was not present in the original release. NieR Replicant can be critiqued for a lot of things, but the production value for this rerelease is certainly not one of them.
Overall, this remaster looks quite good, with an overall visual aesthetic now being more consistent with that of NieR:Automata. While fans of the original fans can certainly argue that this “version upgrade” looks a bit too clean, this rerelease fixes a personal issue I had with the aesthetic of the original game (mainly with some character models that looked flat-out ugly). With the visual and auditory improvements being so well-implemented, another change to this rerelease that I would argue was less successful is the tweaking to combat.
Toylogic developed this rerelease of the game with the intent to preserve how people remembered the original NieR, while making refinements to the clunkier aspects of the original NieR. In essence, Toylogic aimed to maintain the creative and stylistic integrity of the original game while injecting it with some functional improvements to enhance the overall experience. I can respect the dedication to retain what so many people loved about the original NieR, however I feel that Toylogic didn’t go far enough with changes to make combat, the main aspect of NieR Replicant’s gameplay, as engaging as it could have been.
To put it bluntly, NieR Replicant’s combat doesn’t feel finished. For this rerelease, Toylogic added the ability to cast spells and attack simultaneously, making combat have an overall better flow to it. The player is able to assign spells, a dodge, and a guard to each bumper and trigger button, giving the player access to four abilities beyond their basic light and heavy attacks. The inclusion of a lock-on is much appreciated and makes combat encounters feel much smoother. The player has essentially been given more options in regard to mobility and combat prowess, and it generally feels good - however, NieR: Replicant’s fatal flaw is that most enemies in the game haven’t been designed with Nier’s improved moveset in mind.
The basic and strong variants of Shades that the player will encounter hundreds of times throughout their journey will rarely ever test the player’s knowledge of the combat mechanics - this is primarily due to the fact that enemy AI, attacks, and patterns have been practically untouched from the original release. So with that in mind, we have a playable character with an expanded, more fluid moveset, yet the enemies haven’t been retooled to necessitate thoughtful use of that expanded, fluid moveset. Because of this, I often found myself resorting to a dominant strategy, using a basic combo string with a spear in which I did one light attack, then held the light attack button to perform a strong attack where Nier swirls his spear around him, and repeated this process - and it carried me through nearly the entire game. It’s a shame that Toylogic went to such lengths to make Nier’s mobility fall more in line with Automata’s frenetic pace, only to have the game’s enemies not necessitate using such mobility.
This is especially a shame since NieR Replicant does have fights that test the player’s mobility and overall understanding of its combat mechanics. The boss encounters throughout Replicant are mostly quite good, often requiring the player to mix their use of magic and physical attacks and dodging bullet-hell-esque magic attacks. Boss fights thoroughly test the player’s knowledge of how to get the most movement and damage output out of Nier’s mobility and fluidity to his actions - and it does this successfully in my mind. It’s just unfortunate that this level of testing the player’s knowledge of movement and combat mechanics are isolated to boss encounters alone.
The boss battles give the game’s combat a moment to shine, but in conjunction with how the game never tests players outside of boss encounters, it’s hard to say that NieR Replicant’s combat is anything better than average at best. It gets the job done, but it feels like Toylogic needed to go a few steps further in regard to tweaking the main enemies that the player fights throughout the game in order to feel like the more fluid, involved combat justifies its existence.
NieR Replicant will often require the player to navigate dungeons, which are a mixed bag. Since most of them are filled with enemies that the player must dispose of in order to proceed, these dungeons often highlight the flaws with how enemies are too simply designed for how complex the player’s combat capabilities are. Some areas help mask this with unique gimmicks - with the Barren Temple being the best example in my experience. This dungeon requires the player to navigate through various rooms and hit a switch at the end to proceed, but the player is only allowed to use certain action which increases the challenge of getting through each room. It’s relatively bare bones, and yet it’s enough to be a memorable set piece for the game.
On the other end of the spectrum is the Junk Heap. In this location, players can upgrade their weapons (which feature Weapon Stories upon being fully upgraded - another feature new to this version of the game, and a feature returning from the Drakengard series and NieR:Automata) through exchanging parts acquired in the Junk Heap’s dungeon. Levelling up weapons increases attack power and increases or decreases the weight of the weapon - though, a weapon’s weight rarely ever felt relevant to me. Most weapons of the same type felt the exact same from my experience, so I opted to only ever use the weapon with the highest attack stat, and never deviated from that.
To upgrade weapons and to make story progress, the player is going to have to navigate through the Junk Heap dungeon multiple times, which once again highlights the issue of repetition in NieR Replicant. The player will have to stop-and-go at various points in the dungeon thanks to having to defeat all enemies in rooms to progress, in addition to there being an automated mine cart section that moves slower than it needs to. This makes the dungeon feel sluggish, made only worse by the player having to go through this dungeon at least seven times throughout the entirety of the main story, with more visits possibly being needed for upgrading weapons or completing side quests.
This area represents some of the worst of NieR Replicant’s repetition, though the main culprit of the cause of a lot of NieR Replicant’s repetition and frustration derives from its quest system, which was a particular point of contention for me.
The quest “The Runaway Son” represents the very worst of NieR Replicant’s dated, repetitive design. The quest is effectively a giant waste of time - a long quest that gives no reward or satisfying payoff to the player. This is seemingly handled as a joke about expecting quests to offer rewards in video games, and yet NieR Replicant doesn’t do anything with this “joke” beyond simple lampshading. // Image: The Gamer
NieR Replicant has some of the worst quest design out of any game I’ve ever played. Mind you, I regularly play RPGs of all kinds, new and old, and have accordingly encountered many quest design systems. Even with the amount of games with quests that I’ve played through, I genuinely feel that NieR Replicant very well may offer one of the most needlessly repetitive and poorly designed quest systems to date.
Let’s back up a bit. What exactly makes me say such a thing about NieR Replicant’s side quests? In order to see all of NieR Replicant’s story content, players have to acquire all 33 weapons in the game. Many of these weapons can be found in the environment, others can be bought from stores, but there a few weapons that can only be acquired through completing certain side quests. Normally, if a game has bad quest design, criticism can somewhat be negated by saying “well, it’s optional content, so if you don’t like it, just don’t do it”. Generally speaking, there’s truth to that sentiment; if side content is poorly designed, it can at least be ignored if such poorly designed content is purely optional. Problem is, that isn’t entirely the case with NieR Replicant.
If some quests offer weapons as a reward, which ultimately allow the player to see the entire story of NieR Replicant, then the quests that reward player weapons are not side content - they are content that the player is required to partake in order to see the entirety of the game’s main content. In that case, maybe the player can simply only complete the quests that reward weapons and ignore everything else - what’s the issue with that?
The primary issue here is that there is no in-game way of knowing what you’ll be rewarded with upon completing a quest. Unless the player refers to information and resources outside of the game, the player will have no way of knowing which quests reward weapons and help the player gain access to the game’s entire story content and which quests don’t. So, unless the player specifically knows which quests reward the player with new weapons, they will likely attempt to do as many side quests as possible. Since the player is felt pressured to do as many side quests as they can to ensure that they don’t miss out on acquiring weapons to unlock all of the game’s main story content, they’ll be forced to deal with some of the most repetitive, clunky, poorly designed quests I’ve come across in a long time.
Most quests will require the player the find X amount of materials, then give such resources to the quest giver. A few require defeating local animals or enemies, and some are as simple as locating special items and NPCs that ultimately serve as even more backtracking between areas that the player has to put up with. As someone that plays many RPGs and enjoys quest systems, I was fine with NieR Replicant’s quest system at first. It’s seemingly unremarkable, but doesn’t require anything too crazy at first. Slaying sheep to get X amount of mutton, or walking back and forth through a city to deliver letters isn’t going to win any awards for innovative or even fun quest design, but the player is competently rewarded with money and other resources that make buying items and weapons more manageable. However, there came a point when quests began requiring a lot of items to be delivered - there will eventually regularly be quests where the player has to deliver three resources, with ten of each resource, to the quest giver, some of which may be rare drops from enemies. It gradually gets very tiring, and the more quests that I undertook throughout the game, the more it felt like the philosophy of the quest design’s implementation was simply “later quests force the player to collect more items and rarer items” without any consideration for the overall quality of the quest.
My enjoyment of the quest system, which wasn’t much to begin with, was quickly deflating, but I tried to continue to persevere for the sake of ensuring that I had every weapon in my possession to see the entire story of NieR Replicant through. Then I came across the quest “The Runaway Son”, which is far and away the worst quest in the game, and perfectly exemplifies everything wrong with Replicant’s quest system.
This quest starts with asking the player to go from Nier’s Village to Seafront to find a runaway son, and once the player heads through the Southern Plains and gets to Seafront, finding the character in question is fairly straightforward. After talking with the son, you’re tasked with acquiring five pieces of mutton and three pieces of goat meat to give to the local tavern. While mutton is an easy, common resource to get from killing sheep, goat meat is a rarer resource that will likely take the player a longer amount of time to acquire than the mutton. Once the player has acquired the materials, they give the resources to the tavern, only to find that the runaway son has fled town. The player must then backtrack to Nier’s Village to the original quest giver, where Nier will be told to return to Seafront to gather information. So the player must turn around and backtrack through the Southern Plains again to get to Seafront, then has to talk to various characters to find out where the son has headed. Nier will eventually find out that the son has headed towards Facade, a city in the desert on the other side of the game’s map. And so, the player has to backtrack through the Southern Plains, Nier’s Village, the Eastern Plains, and the Desert areas to get to Facade to find the son. After finding the son in Facade, Nier has to give chase to the son throughout the Desert, followed by a brief battle sequence. The player must now finally head back to the original quest giver in Nier’s Village to claim their reward. After finally backtracking so much, the player arrives at the quest giver’s location in Nier’s Village only to find that the quest giver has now also fled, and the quest officially concludes with the player receiving nothing.
After so much resource collecting and needless backtracking across most of the game’s map in a quest that has likely taken quite a bit of time for the player to complete, the reward for the player is absolutely nothing, effectively making the quest a wild goose chase that ultimately serves as a complete waste of time. Adding insult to injury, Grimoire Weiss even comments about how disappointed that he is that Nier and Weiss did so much work only to be rewarded with nothing in return. This returns to the lampshading issue from earlier - just because the game has acknowledged exactly what the game has just done to the player, that doesn’t mean that that acknowledgement is clever, justified, or makes the situation any better. This quest blatantly disrespects the player’s time through providing a completely pointless quest, and then the game tries to joke about it?
This was the point where I got very irritated by the game’s quest system, and began to prioritize quests that rewarded weapons through referencing an online guide. “The Runaway Son” is a quest that exemplifies not only the flawed quest system, but just how much player’s have to backtrack throughout all of NieR Replicant. Throughout the first half of the game, the player has no access to any kind of fast travel, forcing the player to have to walk between every single location. Backtracking through the game’s various area bloats the game’s overall runtime and is an inherently unfun process that occurs very frequently throughout the entire game. The player does gain access to a fast travel system in the second half of the game’s story, but this only allows the player to travel to a few designated areas - they will still have to backtrack through areas to some extent. The worst case of this is a fast travel point in the Desert, which is on the opposite end of the Desert as the city of Facade, which the player will have to travel to very frequently for quests and for the main story, forcing the player to have to backtrack across the Desert area numerous times throughout their playthrough. While fast travel does help the monotony of backtracking a bit, it’s ultimately a band-aid solution that only covers half of the wound.
There are a few other side quests that involve some side modes, including a quest chain involving a fishing minigame and one quest that requires using the game’s gardening feature. While I initially enjoyed the fishing minigame (what can I say? I love a good fishing minigame when I see one), the quest chain involving fishing really overstayed its welcome. The player will consistently have to revisit the quest chain throughout the entire game, with the player being tasked to catch fish of increasingly tougher and rarer varieties that will improve Nier’s fishing prowess. The problems with this quest chain are that it goes on way too long. I gradually grew to loathe the fishing minigame because of just how much fishing the player has to do to complete this quest chain. Additionally, the game does not inform the player where they can find the required fish to catch for each part of the quest chain. I quickly started referencing online guides to find these fishing locations immediately to save time, but the game really should have informed at least what area the required fish can be found in to save some of the player’s time. This once again serves as an example of how little NieR Replicant respects the player’s time.
There is one quest requiring the player to take advantage of the garden by Nier’s house, however gardening requires a slow, tedious process of planting seeds, watering, and waiting in real time to reap the rewards. The animations of Nier planting and watering are far too long and slow. Thankfully, the gardening and its associated quest can be easily ignored, which is what I ended up doing. Fishing can similarly be ignored if the player doesn’t want to deal with it, though fishing is required for a brief section in the story.
Overall, NieR Replicant’s quest system starts off painfully average, and only degrades over time through many quests being backtrack-heavy, slow-paced, and at worst, absolutely pointless. And yet, the player will still have to do a fair number of side quests to ensure that they see all of NieR Replicant’s main story, hence why I’ve made a point to talk about it at such length. It pains me that I feel so negatively about Replicant’s quest system, because there are small moments of excellence in some of the quests. One of my favorite quests in the game occurs at the beginning of the second half of the game. In the first half, there are kids gleefully running around the fountain at the center of Nier’s village, with an elderly woman watching them play. In the second half, the kids are gone but the woman is still sitting there. Nier is given a quest to give medicine to the elderly woman who is revealed to still think the children are playing when, in actuality, those kids once playing by the fountain have been dead for years. Seeing the quest’s completion serves as an excellent piece of somber worldbuilding that gives a greater sense of the hopelessness that fills Replicant’s world.
This one quest shows the best of what quests can do - elaborate on the characters and world to provide more detail and context about the state of the world, characters, and even mechanics that the player interacts with. Mechanically speaking, this quest doesn’t do anything particularly special, but it doesn’t need to - it provides a unique, smaller story that gives the player a greater idea for the game’s overall world and the people that populate it. This smaller story is one that feels remarkably human - and yet it’s a type of quest that’s very rare to come across in NieR Replicant. I can see pockets of greatness in some of the game’s quests, but many quests fail to realize their own potential, which makes the overall quest design so disappointing in Nier Replicant.
NieR Replicant tells a story only possible to be told through a video game, incorporating multiple endings and subversions of gaming tropes. However, some storytelling decisions feel heavy-handed and result in the player replaying significant portions of the game for little to no purpose all for the sake of making a point. Is it genius, innovative storytelling? Or is it pretention masquerading as cleverness? // Image: DualShockers
Note: The following section discusses story spoilers for NieR: Replicant. Scroll to the next noted section to avoid story spoilers if you wish to do so.
NieR Replicant has a lot of flaws in regard to its gameplay and quest design - even some of the game’s devout fans will be willing to agree with such, however what’s generally considered to be NieR Replicant’s strongest aspect is its story. This is something I’m inclined to agree with. With over a week having passed since I saw Ending E, the newly-introduced final ending of NieR Replicant, I still find myself thinking about the story.
I’ve discussed this in older pieces, but one of my personal criteria for determining the overall quality of a story within any piece of media is in consideration of how much that story stays in the consumer’s mind after they’ve finished playing/watching/reading through it. I played NieR:Automata almost three years ago now and I still find myself thinking about the ways in which that game pulls off its storytelling and how wonderfully that game combines gameplay and storytelling to deliver something truly special and memorable. While not as much time has passed between now and my playthrough of NieR Replicant, I can already tell that the story told with Replicant is one that I’ll still be thinking about for a long time to come. Though, this isn’t to say that I don’t take issue with some of the game’s storytelling decisions.
The greatest issue I take with NieR Replicant’s narrative is just how much content the player is expected to replay through. NieR Replicant contains five endings, one being added for this specific rerelease. Ending A will require players to play through the story. Upon seeing the credits roll after Ending A, the player will now have to replay through the second half of the game to acquire Ending B. The point of doing this is that it recontextualizes just what exactly the player has been doing. Clearing the game with Ending A reveals that the Shades - Gestalts, as they’re revealed to truly be known as - are what’s actually left of humanity, whereas the humans in the world of NieR (revealed to be Replicants) are actually just vessels created for the purpose of housing the souls contained within Gestalts whenever the Black Scrawl ended. In essence, Gestalts/Shades are souls without bodies and the Replicants/people of the world of NieR are bodies without souls - two incomplete existences that only misunderstand each other.
The second half particularly focuses on Nier’s growing hatred for Shades, with him vocalizing his willingness to do whatever it takes to kill Shades. Contrasting with the first half in which Nier mostly wanted to help others for the sake of helping, Nier becomes a man consumed by hatred, only wanting to kill what he doesn’t understand. Ending B allows the player to now have the context that these Shades are more human than Nier or any other character that appears as a person in this world. Playing through the second half of the game to reach Ending B sees new cutscenes being consistently added that give more context to scenes that take place, specifically scenes that have dialogue exchanges that humanize each of the boss encounters that the player fights against throughout the second half of the game.
Every single major character for each area is consumed by their own hatred towards what they don’t understand to some extent. The King of Facade grows an insatiable hatred for the wolves who killed his newlywed, but during the route to Ending B, we learn that the Desert used to be a forest - the wolves’ home was changed because of the environmental damage caused by humans. Moreover, many of the remaining wolves are hunted down by humans, causing the wolves to hate the humans. When Kaine’s backstory is revealed, we learn that the townspeople of The Aerie consistently harassed her for being intersex, with additional tragedies causing Kaine to turn resentful towards other people and especially towards Shades - yet another instance of hatred permeating throughout NieR’s world.
The route to Ending B does a good job at highlighting just how nearly all major characters in NieR Replicant are motivated by hatred and how that ultimately leads to further tragedies. The route to Ending B introduces a lot of new cutscenes and novel sequences that give a lot of new context to the story - yet the main gameplay is the same. Players have no choice but continue to fight enemies and bosses, perpetuating the violence brought about from the hatred in many characters’ hearts. It’s a profound, well-realized idea that does a decent job of using gameplay to reinforce themes in the plot.
That said, the player is still playing through the second half and mostly going through the very same motions that they have done before, and while there is a narrative rationale for this being done, it only further highlights and exacerbates the issues with backtracking and repetition inherent in so much of Replicant’s design. If you got tired of having to walk through the game’s wide areas just to travel between cities, having to do such backtracking again for Endings B and C will make you completely exhausted. While I want to like the game’s mostly successful attempt at adding new context that makes the player feel far more conflicted about the characters’ actions, the core issues with NieR Replicant’s design and structure hold the storytelling method back from its true potential.
This gets even worse for Ending C, which doesn’t have much new content for the route to the new ending. The player must have all 33 weapons in their possession to see Endings C, D, and E - the only actual new content for Endings C and D are in the actual endings themselves which introduce a new boss fight at the end of the game. This means that for Ending C (and for Ending D if players don’t make an extra save file before going past the point of no return at the ending of their Ending C playthrough), players will have no new content - making them have to essentially speed run through the game. Skipping cutscenes, dialogue, and trying to get through areas as fast as I could defined my experience to get Ending C.
It could possibly argued that this could have another narrative meaning - perhaps to indicate the players grow an indifference to the violence and hatred of this world that they don’t even feel the need to think about it or even look at it exemplified through skipping cutscenes that the player has already seen -, but I’m not convinced that the storytelling is that facetious. The route to Ending C mainly just feels like a large chunk of the game that doesn’t respect the player’s time. The actual Endings of C, D, and especially E are quite worth seeing, but I’m conflicted say if it’s worth going through practically having to speed run half the game. I can’t really say that I enjoyed myself at all when trying to get Ending C, but I’m glad I trudged through just to see Ending E, perhaps the most narratively satisfying ending.
While I understand the story’s stylistic desire to present the plot again but with additional context, I felt like there could have been a myriad of ways to cut down how much the player had to replay. In this instance, I feel like a “less is more” philosophy would have significantly paid off. Cutting down on exactly how much content the player has to replay seems like it would have significantly improved the end user experience. As is, I felt like I ended up spending far too much having to replay content, especially when I had to essentially speed run the game for Ending C.
With all of this in mind, I think the story of NieR Replicant is quite captivating and interesting, and while it eventually got me to like most of the game’s cast, I still feel like character backstories were introduced to the player far too late in the game’s runtime. Kaine’s backstory is revealed during the route to Ending B, and while we see a bit of Emil’s backstory in the first half of the game’s story, we see even more of it towards the end of the route to Ending C. While I gradually started to like each character, I felt like the game could have done a better job at establishing backstories and relationships between characters. Nier and Grimoire Weiss were easily my favorite characters primarily because the player regularly sees them interacting with each other. Through the route to Ending B, we see some slivers of a similar relationship between Kaine and Emil - and these quieter moments between these two characters, while small, were just what I needed to care more about these characters. While I do think that the main story recontextualizing events in the plot works out mostly well, I don’t think that the approach of waiting to reveal more about important characters like Kaine and Emil until the additional endings worked out. The game tries a very ambitious approach to telling its story, but I feel like the characters of NieR Replicant don’t get to make as much of an impact because of this story’s ambitious structure and what’s chosen to be revealed in subsequent playthroughs.
Note: This concludes the story spoiler section for NieR: Replicant
As the length of this piece has indicated, I have a lot of feelings about NieR Replicant, both positive and negative. While I think the world and overall story of NieR is very strong, I also detested the game’s abysmal quest design, excessive backtracking, and instances of conceited lampshading after the game has clearly disrespected the player’s time. The combat isn’t too engaging, and the style of the game’s storytelling often comes at the cost of the game withholding information about characters that prevents players from learning much at all about characters in a timely fashion.
There’s a lot of things that irritated me about NieR Replicant and it’s arguably one of the most flawed games I’ve ever played. And yet, the game’s ambition and experimentation with so many ideas is what keeps it in your head. While I can’t say that I entirely liked this game, I can’t help but admit that I’m left frequently thinking about its story, world, and characters. While there are many flaws with the game, I still vividly recall my entire experience with the game, and that phenomenon is a very rare occurrence. For that reason, I hesitantly recommend NieR Replicant to anyone who wants to story that really takes advantage of the video game medium, and portrays unique ideas only possible through a game experience.
Many people love NieR Replicant because of its ambition, unconventional approach to gameplay and storytelling, and such ambition is admittedly alluring. While it doesn’t shield my eyes from the clear issues that hold the game back from true greatness, I still feel that NieR Replicant is a game that deserves to be experienced, if only to get more people thinking about how games can continue to telling captivating stories only capable through the medium of video games.
Final Grade: C- (but ya know, it’s complicated. This is a hard game to definitively assess)
Thank you very much for reading! What are your thoughts on NieR Replicant? Do you think the game’s repetition works in favor of the game’s narrative themes? As always, feel free to join the conversation and let me know what you think in the comments or on Twitter @DerekExMachina!
