NieR: Automata - The First Three Hours (Hint: I Suck)

As a reward for finishing up my AP tests, I bought myself NieR: Automata as a You're Free present. My only previous exposure to NieR was bits of soundtrack that I found online and subsequently fell in love with. Knowing that any game with the name NieR in it would sound amazing, I quickly consulted my friends and the internet for reviews. Hearing that it was a keystone game of its time, a masterpiece, and "not for me, but give it a shot" by my friend, I decided to take the leap, and...oh my gosh, I think I'm in love.


Day 1: 5.13.17

via Youtube

So, first day went well. What really sells NieR to me besides what I bought it for (soundtrack) is the battle mechanisms. How it switches between sidescroller, top-down, and 3d gotta-move-the-damn-camera combat always changes up the game and makes things really deliciously complicated. You'll get a room where you're surrounded, but you're in top-down, so it's not that bad, but then it happens again and you're back in 3D and you kind of want to punch your computer. I love it. Writing is nice so far, the character dynamic between 2B and 9S is juicy. I died in the bulletproof-shield room, though. Heard there was something weird about saving, I'll play tomorrow and look into that.

Day 2: 5.14.17

from Square Enix official website

Re: Saving - What a surprise, there's no save until after the first boss. So...I have the opening sequence memorized. I guess I'm just really bad at it for having died three or four times on Normal, but at the very least, I'm getting better at playing and exposing a lot of new tactics for staying alive. I'm figuring out how to rely mostly on my ranged buddy and stay in the air via jumps, only slashing when I really need to. I'm also memorizing more enemy patterns and training up a reflex for avoiding the big hits. I died most recently on the last boss, and I think I'll watch a video to memorize the movement pattern. I got pretty good at it but forgot to focus my ranged and ran into a snag. Oh, well. More for tomorrow.

I feel like the controller is a little bit janky, and that the direction of fire is a little too sensitive. Also, it's difficult to see certain enemy patterns from top-down. That being said, I'm still enjoying the range of battle scenarios offered to me. It makes up for "Spam the shooter and dodge like heck" repetition quite a lot. I'll have to see how things change. I both like and dislike the autoheals - like because I don't have to think about them, and dislike because I don't have a very accurate measurement of how much of a hit I can take when things get dicey. Hopefully, as I get better, I won't even have to worry. With how many times I'm replaying these opening levels, I'm sure that I'll worry less and less.

Thoughts - 5.19.17

Re; Endings - when I opened up my save today, I saw that listed under 'endings' I had a [W]. When I died for the nth time, I saw that the end text was Broken [W]ings. Is that the ending I get for failing the beginning? I think so. Go me. I bet I suck so much at this that I'm part of some strange, twisted minority for having that ending...

Re: Difficulty - I've noticed that one can change difficulty pretty much whenever they want, and I've been informed that I might want to change my difficulty settings to breeze by this section. I'm leaning in the direction of toughing it out and (as the cool kids say) Git Gud, but it occurred to me that a variable difficulty scale says a lot about why NieR was brought to the people. It was introduced to tell a story and to make it enjoyable. Giving a sliding scale of difficulty gives people opportunities to play in ways that make it better, or challenging, or difficult, or easier - whatever they want. I just thought that was cool.

Anyways, more later.