NIER: AUTOMATA
Complex combat will stretch more than your fingers
Like the after-effects of an earthquake in a genetics lab, it can be hard to tell what DNA Nier: Automata can call its own. By which I mean that while nominally it’s an open-world RPG about androids reclaiming Earth from the robot forces of invading aliens, that’s only when it’s not finding time to be a scrolling shooter, a platformer, or an arcade game. Heck, there are even sokoban puzzles and fishing, if you want them. Automata’s not even content to lay these influences end to end. Take the 3D combat, which splices the bullet-curtain avoidance of cabinet shooters with Platinum Games’ renowned Balletic Dodge Combat™. Then layer on some simple third-person shooting, a little Z-targeting, a dash of cooldown supers and the intricacies of light-heavy weapon sets. It could easily be a mess (and naturally, at first, getting your fingers to dance across the pad to deal with all that is like trying to wrestle an octopus in zero-G) but it soon coalesces into a beautifully taxing fusion of familiar bits.
BACK OF THE ‘NETTA
Here, you can sense Platinum’s hand at work. Even in a flurry of katanas and post-apocalyptic dust, you’ll hear the telltale chime and see the red gleam of an enemy homing in for an attack. So you’ll squeeze the right trigger on pure instinct, buying a few frames of invincibility headspace to pick a suitable riposte. You might come smashing to earth, dirty 2B’s china doll knees and rise up charging a special ability, ready to manage the crowds with a gravity bomb or punch a hole in them with your Pod’s laser. It’s fluid, well-animated, heartpounding stuff, though the depth is found more in juggling ranged and melee combat than each individual part.
It’s the most successful of the game’s many experiments, yet by no means the only one that comes off. Several fights will see you hopping into a flight suit mecha and flipping between scrolling shooter and twin-stick blasting styles, aided by that right-trigger dodge, in sequences that can be no less intense than the on-foot combat. Short forays into platforming or on-rails battles also help to break up the intensity curve.
You knew a ‘but’ was coming, right? But there is a price for all this stretching – and occasionally it’s at the expense of the world’s cohesiveness. The story is a rich gumbo of shock twists and oddities, which I’ll spoil no further than to say that the machines have set their gaze on humanity in a way their creators never intended, toying in adorably flawed ways with the concept of being human. It’s a nod to agency that’s undercut when 2B
“GETTING YOUR FINGERS TO DANCE ACROSS THE PAD IS LIKE WRESTLING AN OCTOPUS.”
can’t even explore welcoming arches in the rubble of generic egg-crate homes because of invisible walls.
AFTER EARTH
The landscape, meanwhile, is sparse, even for a ruined planet. Fast travel is introduced way too late, and running from point A to B gets dull in a landscape that often mistakes loot for secrets. Which isn’t to say there aren’t standout side-quests (I’d recommend sticking it out till the end of the stamp-collecting one in the old fun fair), but a tighter focus and more story layered into the landscape would be preferable to wide open plains and rote ‘go here, fetch/kill these’ filler.
What the side activities lack, though, the main game more than makes up for in reactivity and its willingness to subvert expectation. At critical points, epic battles will leave cataclysmic scars on the map and you’re given no warning these are coming, or that all those loose ends might suddenly tie themselves. Elsewhere, this might irk, but Automata is absolutely made to be played again, with new perspectives, new enemies, and new powers all unlocked after you’ve seen the credits once, and a slew of endings to see.
This, then, is the identity Automata finds: a deep, twisting, profoundly different and adventurous game that cobbles together a lot of disparate parts to construct something all its own. It may be clunky in places, but is spotwelded together surprisingly well, and what lies beneath its shell is well worth the seeing.
VERDICT
Automata is a genre-pinching RPG that marries Platinum’s combat to an overblown plot that could fuel a standalone anime. A few rough edges conceal a lot of synthetic heart. Matt Clapham