Nier Replicant v1.22
PC, PS4, Xbox One
Oppressively bleak. Repetitive. Player-unfriendly. Repetitive. Those criticisms remain as valid now as they did more than a decade ago. While 2010’s Nier might not have been the unlikeliest candidate for cultdom, surely no one could have predicted its trajectory since. Seven years on, a celebrated sequel reinvigorated interest in the series, and now we have this: somewhere between a remake and a remaster, a so-called “version up” that exists by dint of its sequel’s success, which in turn has more to do with the original’s reputation than its sales. Celebrating its tenyear anniversary a year late (and how very Yoko Taro is that?), this is an update of a game many will feel they already know without necessarily having played it.
Most players, we imagine, will appreciate Replicant more for having finished Automata beforehand. That game was a relatively welcoming and refined vehicle for its creative director’s offbeat ideas, whereas this is more fricative. But not as much as it was. It runs more smoothly for starters, though we experience a sporadic issue where the framerate temporarily tanks without rhyme or reason, before returning to a smooth 60fps. The colour palette is less murky, with more visual variety between environments – crucially, without losing that desolate ambience. And even if Toylogic is clearly no PlatinumGames when it comes to action, the combat, for the most part, is markedly improved. Movement and melee attacks are significantly more responsive, while a brisk dodge-roll and a parry makes controlling the crowds of aggressive but simple-minded Shades easier.
The increase in speed makes sense in light of the fact that western players, at least, are getting a new, much younger hero. Over here, we got a story about a craggy warrior seeking a cure for his ailing daughter, but now you’re playing her older sibling, a brother who turns from boy to man at the midway point when the story advances five years. That alone gives the story an appreciably different feel, even if it will be familiar to Japanese players. Otherwise, Replicant has, well, replicated the original faithfully – including its most patience-testing sequences, where you’re asked to drag boxes slowly away from doorways, or partake in mundane fetch quests, or grind your way through a junkyard filled with robots to earn the parts you need to forge more powerful versions of the weapons you own.
Yet to play through it again is to recognise how well Nier makes a virtue of its obvious limitations. It establishes the routines of its protagonist and his sister Yonah, who’s afflicted with the Black Scrawl – effectively a deadly form of runic tattoo – through repetition, finding meaning in the menial. You make trips from your home to a nearby library and the local village, accepting a variety of rudimentary missions that send you outside the hub’s boundaries and into the world beyond for some MacGuffin or other. Simplistic as they are, they’re made to feel important by smart writing. “I don’t think these trips are inane,” our hero insists during that languid first half. “Everyone has it tough around here, but they still manage to give me work.”
In most JRPGs, you set out on a great journey, but few have you return home quite so frequently. That familiarity becomes an asset, not only ensuring places stay longer in the memory, but lending greater emotional weight when circumstances change. As the story progresses, you’ll meet fellow outcasts – Kainé, an intersex woman whose potty mouth and death wish belies her compassion for others, and Emil, a child with a troubled past. So when Popola, mindful of her fellow villagers’ fears of encroaching threats, reluctantly asks these two to sleep outside, the sense of betrayal carries a genuine sting, particularly after you’ve spent so long helping them. And while this is ultimately a tragic tale, there’s more warmth and heart in the interactions between party members alone than in its successor.
It’s fascinating, too, to once again witness the origins of ideas that many critics considered strange and new when reviewing Automata (granted, a few of these stretch back to Taro’s Drakengard games). There’s the narrative twist that reframes everything that went before on a second playthrough. There are the perspective shifts, from top-down to side-on to isometric, each helping disguise some of the repetition in the action. And there are the sudden changes of genre, from a text-adventure labyrinth to a survival-horror-inspired sequence inside a mansion where your movement is limited to a slow walk and the action is viewed from fixed camera angles. These breaks from the norm serve to highlight the value of that early groundwork, disrupting the game’s rhythm just often enough that you’ll happily complete the more mundane tasks in the knowledge that something surprising is usually just around the corner.
That approach worked for Automata, too, but then the combat there had a Platinum-grade edge that’s lacking here. Sure, with a broad range of powerful spells, from a thumping fist to whirling blades (you can equip up to four at once, though you’ll have to forgo your dodge and parry if you do), it’s never simply a matter of swinging away with swords, spears and axes. But it’s not quite enough: even the regular Shades take too long to finish off, while the second half introduces new types sporting thick metal armour. Combined with variants that like to block melee attacks, and others with barriers that won’t yield to magic, they become even more laborious to fight unless you spend a lot of time grinding character and weapon levels. It would be wrong to say there’s never a dull moment in Replicant, then, even if at least some of that dullness is deliberate – a way to emphasise our heroes’ struggles. But at its best, you’ll come to understand why it deserves this second chance.
This is an update of a game many will feel they already know without necessarily having played it