Got NieR: Automata for myself despite resolving to buy no new games this year. And I sincerely do not regret it. My two-hour impressions are already overwhelmingly positive on both the big and little things.
Plot: From what hints I've picked up on and the small bits of spoilers I encountered, it's a solid predictable twist, quite well executed. Characters are pretty good, though the English VAs aren't the best. Might switch to JP voices since everything is subtitled.
Sound: Music is fucking fantastic, general sound quality is good, especially the environmental stuff.
Gameplay: Hoo boy. Okay, so think a mixture of bullet hell and more acrobatic high-mobility Souls-style combat. When you're on the ground it's that rhythmic attack-dodge-attack sort of deal, reading attacks and timing your dodges so that you can transition back into combos. Looks to be ~100 different melee weapons. You also get a little floating gunpod that you control, for shooting and special skills. There are flashy execution moves you can (always optionally) trigger. When you attack in midair, you go through your whole combo at that elevation, sorta like MGR. There's also a flightsuit sort of gameplay which comes up occasionally, which varies between vertical, horizontal, and top-down omnidirectional bullet hell gameplay.
Speaking of the camera angles, the camera is amazing. It transitions to often radically different perspectives based on the environment you're in, and almost always does so smoothly and naturally. Feelsgoodman.
Then there's the little things. When you run through shallow water, 2B's legs and skirt will get wet, but her upper body will stay dry.
You can jump up ladders. When you descend, 2B swings around to go down the side like a firepole instead of taking that same stupid "hump the ladder" pose that's pretty much universal for fast descents.
When you hold the jump button to slow-fall suspended from your gunpod, this is how it looks.
When you start to auto-run, 2B works up to real Six Million Dollar (Wo)Man speed. Instead of having weapons clipping all over while holstered, they designed the game so that all of your equipment is supposed to hover above you. Just... everything about this game feels so meaty, beautiful, and above all well thought out. Even the ruined city area manages to be interconnected, vertical, and visually interesting.
Butt of course there's also the big reason that a lot of people initially bought it.
Why does a gynoid build for combat have thighs that don't quit?
Japan sez: Why not?
Definitely play with a controller though. I tried M&K, it's too awkward to manage, especially because the rebinding is limited so you're basically stuck tapping movement buttons to dodge, which sucks donkey dong. Just plug a 360 controller into a USB port or whatever.
Author
Topic: [MILK] There were 12 eggs here what did you do with them? (Happy thread?!) (Read 16201805 times)