To all the (many) Nier:Automata fans out there, I come to you with some questions

To all the (many) Nier:Automata fans out there, I come to you with some questions.

First, some preface. I have never played s single Drakengard game. I have never actually played Nier, but I have watched an entire playthrough of the game (twice), and I have watched a complete plot analysis/breakdown. So, as for the Nier story, I'm fairly versed. Yes I know these 2 aren't requirements for N:A, per se (especially Drakengards), but I wanted to put this out there.

Second, I'm a fan of Platinum games, for sure. I love the combat, the customization and leveling, and the flashy awesomeness you come to expect from Platinum games.

Third, I'm not a huge fan of "muh interpretation" stories. Guess I'm just a dumbass, but I prefer my stories to be fairly straight forward, slightly fed to me, and easy to understand/digest. I do enjoy robotics and androids and the huge potential for moral quandaries that robotics present, but again I prefer those plots to be easy to comprehend. To give a shit example, I'd love for an "ah-ha!!" moment to be "because J5 was building evil robots all along" and not "the statues inside the robot factory had grafiti sprayed on them and the grafiti was of horrific signs and that combined with the somber music and the 16 boosk you randomly read throughout the factory led to the possibility that the resident of the mansion, J5, downloaded too many books on violence and this tainted his blah blah blah"..... if any of that makes sense....

I'm saying all this to ask this huge question. I'm 13+hrs into N:A (last main story quest ended with me meeting Adam and Eve for the first time), and given all the hype and praise I hear about this game, I genuinely have to wonder.... when does this game pick up? When will I get to some "OH HELL YES!!!" moment(s)? By all accounts, I feel I should be overly enjoying this game by now, but aside from the pretty cool combat, the game as a whole isn't WOW'ing me. Story seems kinda "meh" so far. When will this game ramp up??

>I have never played *
>but I have watched an entire playthrough*
>I come to you with questions

Just kill yourself.

It probably won't pick up for you, if you felt strong enough to start a thread like this. I personally think Automata is OG Nier but even better. No clue which bits of Nier clicked with you that aren't clicking with automata especially since you're actually playing this one, but you might just not like the game.

In any case, just finish route A and see if your opinion changes at all.

>when does this game pick up?
When you start route C. You even get a second opening credits roll.

It took you 13 hours to reach the end of Ending A? Jesus christ

cool thread but check this 7

lul.webm

It's hard to pin-point the hits of Nier 1 for me. There were moments that stuck out, like Emil transforming, all the scenes with Kaine, several quips from Weiss, and others. Nier 1 wasn't a 10/10 story, but I definitely enjoyed it.

From what I'm seeing and from what everyone has said, N:A is standalone. So I'm taking this story as-is. And I mean, I get most of it. I do have lots of questions that I'm hoping will be answered down the road (again, I'm only 13hrs in). But.... I dunno. Hard to articulate why, but this story isn't blowing my mind and, subsequently, the game is backsliding into a "cool / meh" feel.

Fuck off already, secondary.

I think I'm just looking for some... comfort encouragement, if that makes sense? Again I have quite a few questions about what's going on in this story, and I'm hoping they all get answered as the story progresses. I kinda wanna know that it's normal at this point in the game to simultaneously have a general grasp on the story but also kinda feel like I'm either not getting it, or that some of it's not making sense. wanna know if I'm feeling dumb because I am dumb, or just that I'm ignorant of what's about to happen/become explained.

Just play the game, you're not even close to any of the actual endings.

>I have never played s single Drakengard game.
check
>I have watched an entire playthrough of the game (twice)
check
>I have watched a complete plot analysis/breakdown.
check

go back to persona

Have never played a Persona/SMT. I'm horrible, I know.

just keep pressing forward, honestly

Well if you're looking for encouragement, some people say the game gets really great on route C, but imo the game is already pretty fantastic by the time you hit the Adam boss fight. So I think you should probably just watch a lets play, it seems like that would be more up your alley.

Nah, I spent money on this, and I'm trying to keep hope that shit will start to click and/or come together and/or make more sense and/or be less interpretation down the road. Gotta hope there are some stellar moments in this game. The combat is alright so far, and it has enough side content to keep me occupied. It's just... this game is touted as Best of 2017, and I'm wanting what makes people say that to happen. I know, it's possible it won't, but if it doesn't I wanna know what it is I'm missing.

It's ok, the series is a niche and you don't fit in.

i am like you, in a way. first nier and by where you were was enjoying it but wasn't sure if i was into it or not really. beautiful music does wonders imo, but by the time i had actually beaten the C scenario i went back to platinum it, then i went to my secondary account and platinumed it again. then i bought the OST, the artbook and a 2b statue. easily in my top 5 ever and I've been gaming seriously since the 80s. i do see how most people don't see what i see, but what i see is a fucking masterpiece

So I'm taking it that if I'm deciding to muscle through it, I should at LEAST hold judgement until I play/beat the C arc? If so I can do that.

at the very least, it really does open up in a way. like peeling an onion. if by the actual credits you think it's shit, then in your opinion it's shit. it still has great trade value

Nigger you haven't even gotten ending A.
Do you have ADD or why is it so hard for you to just play the game?

i should point out that B route can feel samey, don't get discouraged, the latter half isn't samey and C is new altogether.

Like I said, I know this seems like I'm jumping the gun, but 13hrs (and quite a few main quests) in is a decent enough time for someone who hasn't had the game * click * into "FUCK YEAH!!!" territory yet to question when/if it will (in my opinion). I love a great story, and love great action, and so far I'm getting solid action and a "um.... alright..?" story. When people like and many, many, many more tout this game as a masterpiece and I'm kinda scratching my head, I want to ask when it'll click for me OR try to understand what I'm missing that I haven't seen by this point in the game.

so you have seen a fair amount and the B scenario is essentially route A with a different last half, but C is shit you haven't seen or done yet at all. honestly forget the idea of "different endings" it's confusing since you're thinking that you will just replay this game 3 times and glean a tiny bit each time, which is what i had thought originally myself. think of it this way A+B are the same with slight variations like you would imagine a multiple ending game to be like. but C is new, new, new. get through that and you'll know if you care to keep going or not really

That's what I'll do then . Thanks user (and others here). I was teetering on that edge of "maybe I'll just let this game slide into a backlog and stop playing it.... just finish it later...". I'll keep on. Mind you I'm not trudging through it or UGH forcing myself. The gameplay itself is fun enough. Now that I know it'll get better on, I can keep going easier.

> what I'm missing that I haven't seen by this point
cliche as it sounds, i think it's one of that "it's the journey and not the destination that counts". for me it was a mix of the gameplay, visuals and amazing sound design. it also helped that the game goes out of its way to explain the vast majority of mechanics in a way that makes sense in game( like saving being uploading your data and chips being on your corpse, etc etc. ) which made it a rather immersive experience for me.

if the crazy set pieces and pseudo-intellectualism aren't doing it for you so far i don't think they will, at any point. in any case i'd urge you to at least play until a couple of hours into Route C. if you're not hooked by then, the game's not for you

np user.
at any point past beating it, you can go to any period of any scenario to wrap things up, if that expedites things for you as far as playstyle. nothing is missable and you can easily pinpoint any moment you want to either replay or just sweeping up lingering trophies, just be cautious when you are asked questions in the credits (fair warning)

>this game is touted as Best of 2017, and I'm wanting what makes people say that to happen.
Guy, everything is touted as best of *current year*, It means literally nothing nowadays. It's basically just a phrase that's thrown around for the sake of it.

I reckon the game's great, but it's only average outside of the great moments. It's like a slow burning fuse as it hits little bits of fireworks along the way up until the final explosion, sorry for my lack of skill at analogy's.
If you're willing to read all of the plot analysis stuff and presumably enjoy doing it, it's pretty likely that you'll end up loving Automata.
Not that I've read all that stuff for Nier.

>just be cautious when you are asked questions in the credits (fair warning)
you need to go through the trouble to get all of the 3 different variations of Route C's ending to go into ending E anyways, so he's safe the first time through

that's actually a pretty good analogy for the game user

speaking of overleveling, that's a real problem in Automata. by the time i'd gotten to Route C, i was 7-10 levels above everything and there was 0 challenge.

and Hard difficulty is too stupidly hard without a perfect leveling curve.
might as well play Very Hard at that point. (which is 1HKO 100% of the time)

Well it fits, but it's hardly got any flair and it's not particularly well written or connected to a proper situation.
If I'm rating myself fairly, I'd give it a 3 solely because it still works.

I was 30 levels under the enemies in Route C.

You've already ruined some of the potential of this game by coming here and making a stupid thread like this. You need to learn to finish games before you start making threads about them. Don't ask anything, don't look up anything, that's the only way to get a pure experience of a game like it was designed and intended to be. Ask yourself, just how amazing did NieR seem before the timeskip? It was pretty fucking bland until then as storytelling goes, even if the setting was a strange one. Now here you are not even halfway through NieR: Automata and wondering why it hasn't impressed you yet and have gotten people to tell you exactly when you're supposed to start thinking it's getting better. It probably won't even have the same effect now though because you'll see it coming. NieR Automata is really a game that should be played as blindly as possible (all games should of course, but it's even more important for a game like this), you've basically ensured that you'll never get to enjoy it quite like those of us who bought it at launch did and had no idea what to expect.

Autistic ranting aside though, I can tell you that I felt somewhat the same way as you did when I played it. I was extremely excited for the game but both the demo and the early parts of the game had me very underwhelmed. Luckily when I told my friends that they just told me to keep playing without giving me any details about what would happen. That's what I did, and in the end I felt that it was one of the most special gaming experiences I'd had in the decade so far, and I still feel that way today.

>Third, I'm not a huge fan of "muh interpretation" stories. Guess I'm just a dumbass, but I prefer my stories to be fairly straight forward, slightly fed to me, and easy to understand/digest.

So the game isn't for you then, what was this thread about again?

>30 levels under
is that even manageable? i know for a fact that if you're 5 levels under something on Hard, it'll take you 10 mins to kill simple mobs and you'll get 2 shot at best.

is it that different from normal?

also, how the fuck do you manage to be only lvl ~30 by the time you're on route C. did you skip all side quests?

Never listen to Sup Forums when they gush over a game. As for my opinion, it was mediocre. The combat system is what I wanted the most, and it's not nearly as good as platinums other titles. The story will have some moments when it thinks that it totally twisted the plot on you at the final hours (took me about 50 hours to finish it), but the story overall was not very engaging. The soundtrack is top notch tho

It is manageable on any difficulty, it just takes awhile and you can't get hit at all. Oh, but the bit with the status effect robots and the Yorha Malfunctions was pretty damn hard.
It's really odd because if I was levelled up to 50-60 like the game apparently assumed that I should be at that point, then all of Route B including the last fight would've been easier than regular robot encounters. Such odd balance choices

>also, how the fuck do you manage to be only lvl ~30 by the time you're on route C.
I just played normally and never grinded/farmed, doing side quests here and there while I progressed in the main story. Had just under 1/4% done by the end of it all.

I never go out of my way to do side quests unless I'm still hooked at the end. and as per my usual style I avoid random encounters (In this case most robots just placed around the map) 70% of the time.
You've never wanted to fight the bosses at the bare minimum level you can manage? It's lots of fun.

>You've never wanted to fight the bosses at the bare minimum level you can manage? It's lots of fun.
I have, in other games and in this one. But here here it just felt more a grind than anything. I mean, I know I can just dodge around infinitely and never get hit but when i need to do that for 10 mins to dispatch a crowd of mobs on Hard, the game loses it's appeal for me.

Personally i went out of my way to do each and every side quest first time through. I think, for the most part, it was worth it.

See I'm just as baffled as you are here, I honestly have no idea how you'd be that high levelled at that point. I didn't think the side quests gave out that much XP.
I mean, 30ish is about the same level as the enemies at the end of Route B, anything more than that and it'd be easier than a cakewalk.
Even without many weapon/pod upgrades, you're still more than powerful enough to dispatch everything you'd encounter up till there, 50-60 just seems like excessive overkill to me.

a lot of side quests are on higher levels before C. i remember the one down in the canyon being at around 32 and there's a couple others that go up to ~40-ish iirc.

on the start of route C i was ~40 and by its end ~60. my current save is on 74(farmed quite a lot for materials to fully upgrade everything to +4 tho).

i've honestly never played on Normal while being underleveled so i have no idea how it is. i only know that on Hard, being even slightly underleveled feels unfair instead of a good challenge. you just don't have the damage to kill things in a reasonable amount of time.

>(last main story quest ended with me meeting Adam and Eve for the first time)

You're not even done with Route A yet you have the gall to complain you double nigger. Did you learn nothing from watching Nier?

Your level will be fine as long as you do sidequests, which you should be doing anyway since they add to the story most of the time.

(5) POST (5) BEST (5) NUMBER (5) RIGHT (5) NOW (5)

2>1>4>3>5

I can't speak for Route A/B Hard, but A/B on Normal was a great balance for them. They were hard enough to warrant a challenge (for someone who isn't excellent at games like this), but not unfair fights or damage sponges. Moved up to hard on Route C, because why not? Final boss of B was pretty easy, and now I've got Hackerman.
I eventually just maxed the difficulty because I was getting too OP from running around finishing odds and ends after Route C though.

Oh well to each his own, I suppose. different strokes for different folks and all that.

I can only see 5's in there

Route B is way easier than route A because you're controlling a stronger character.
Trying to make it through the parade escort quest on route A made me want to kill myself, on B it was a stroll because hackerman just kills everything with a single spear throw crit. I ended up unequipping my weapons and using his black hole fists against bosses so they could actually finish their speeches instead of getting spammed into the ground.

I've completed the original Nier and found it far better in every department, except graphics. The characters first start to develop after you are forced through the entire game once. The gameplay is either just shoot em up or the most swallow plat combat, so once again the original nier is superior. I first began enjoying automata after getting to route C, everything before that was pretty meh.