I noticed a lot of praise for this game recently (which I find odd given the game has been out for a few years now) and so I decided to play the game myself to see what all the fuss is about. All the talk about Yoko Taro and the 'true endings' and the big reveals got me hyped. It sounded like the kind of game I would like.
I finished it yesterday and feel disappointed. The combat was ok I guess, not really a fan of the whole Platinum style combat, I played Metal Gear Rising and I liked that more. Did not mind the shooty segments, the hacking I despised. The leveling seemed pointless. At one point I started to skip a lot of combat. As a result, I was slightly underleveled for some of the fights, which made them not harder, but more tedious. The chip system is nice but manually placing the chips is needlessly awkward. I found the world very bland. Not sure if this is a budget issue, but all the corridors in between large empty spaces made of copy pasted assets in washed out colours didn't do it for me. The amusement park level was the nicest albeit a bit small feeling. That and the frequent invisible walls coupled with shitty loot killed the exploration for me. I read that the side quests flesh out the world, but the ones I completed were too much of a chore for little to no payout so I skipped more than half of them.
All the above made me sprint through the game just to see the story unfold, it was the only saving grace left. Having finished endings A through E, I'm not sure which part I'm supposed to gasp at. I started to read around the net to see if I missed something, but it seems I didn't. I noticed that some stuff isn't even agreed upon, being more speculation than fact. I think that the story and all the sci-fi elements aren't meant to be taken too literally, so I guess what's left is the game's themes and atmosphere? The latter is at points great, I admit, but I think this is in large part due to the great soundtrack. For me this game has the 'Gothic 3 syndrome'; when you hear the soundtrack it evokes good feelings and recalls all the fond memories about the game, even making you want to play it again. But like Gothic 3, the game itself isn't actually fun to play (for me at least, even though I didn't enjoy Automata I realize that comparing the gameplay with that pile of shit is unfair).
To the people who enjoyed the game - what makes NieR: Automata great for you? I would appreciate if you could be specific and not say just 'the story' or 'the music'. I read the previous posts and all I got was "just play the game you'll see bro". Well, I played it, and now I'm trying to see if I can justify the 30 or so hours I spent on it by reading a different take on it.
Something needs to reset the "world" periodically, considering that the entire world seems to consist of nothing more than one city and a single orbital base.
