Nier

Box art for Nier

Release Date: April 22, 2010 (North America)

Console: PS3 and Xbox 360

Publisher: Square Enix

Creator: Cavia

ESRB Rating: M

Nier is a great game, but unfortunately it’s a game not very many people know about, and this is part of the reason why I am writing this review. Nier really deserves to be more than just an obscure title no one knows about. Nier is a JRPG (Japanese Role Playing Games) made by a Japanese studio called Cavia and published by Square Enix, for the PS3 and Xbox 360.

The game opens with a…“colourful” opening monologue and a striking opening cinematic, which almost serves as a trailer for the entire game. It got me pretty excited for playing the game and it was fun connecting moments in the game to moments I saw in the opening cinematic. The game starts with a prologue. Here we are introduced to a middle aged man with a young daughter named “Yonah”, and a mysterious dark book that this character seems to be wary of. He warns his daughter never to touch this book. At this point mysterious enemies appear and the game introduces you to the controls, which I quite liked. How controls were introduced was very natural, fitting into gameplay versus some sort of specific “training” in a tutorial like a lot of games have nowadays. You defeat these enemies, including a giant boss monster, using the magic powers of the book the man has with him, the game skips 1300 years into the future and thus begins the game. You are asked to put in a custom name and a sweeping camera shot accompanied by expository dialogue brings us to a house. This new protagonist, who isn't at all related to the man we are introduced to at the beginning, is introduced as whatever you chose his name to be. The only real similarities between these two is that they look similar. You find out this new hero’s daughter is sick with a disease known as “the black scrawl”. This sets the rest of our story in place.

The game play is a typical beat em up style, with combos and special moves in the form of magic. It’s fairly basic for a while, but weapon styles and how to attack picks up a bit more about midway through the game. This happens when later on you gain the ability to equip weapons like two handed giant swords and spears. It adds a nice mix up to the typical one handed sword deal in the first part of the game. Like a typical JRPG style, each weapon has its ups and downs. Giant swords are super slow but good at hitting practically everything around you, and spears are quick but can really only attack in one direction. One-handed swords are of course a mix of both but super low in damage when you get to the middle of the game when new weapon types are introduced. I ended up not even using them once I had passed that point.

The dialogue turned out to be a hit and miss for me. During some sections the voice acting was impressive, but other times it just sounded off. For the most part though, the main voice actors do a stand up job and sound convincing, so its nothing to get your panties in a twist over.

Moving to the soundtrack, it is easily the best part of the game in my opinion. It is phenomenal and I'm actually listening to it right now as I write this review. In a lot of games, the soundtrack always has the generic combat song that always play when you fight, and then idle songs of villages and town hubs. These are nothing special, just something to sound nice in the background when going through theses normal parts of a game. Usually when people want to go and listen to a games soundtrack they want to hear the boss music, the song playing during the opening, a crucial moment in the game such as a character's death, or when a battle is won. Well at least that’s what I like to go listen to with most games. Nier on the other hand is possibly the only game that has a soundtrack I have listened to in its entirety. Each area of the game has a unique song playing and often there’s a catchy small battle layer added onto it when you get into a fight with shades or other monsters. It all sounds wonderful, fits in seamlessly, and brings you into the game even more. The boss fight music then steps it up a notch, taking the already great soundtrack and multiplying it’s awesomeness by two. I believe the final boss' song is, without a doubt, the best track in the game.

The world of Nier is a very is something so intriguing that if nothing of what I’ve said so far has drawn you into playing this game, this will. The world goes through an apocalyptic event and the game is set 1300 years after, in an almost neo medieval times. It's very interesting how each character perceive the old world. The concept is very similar  to Fallout’s, but the characters in Nier don’t know anything about the old world. This is different from Fallout where that knowledge is retained because of the existence of vaults. This adds an almost fantastical aspect to the robots and machines that you fight in some of the sections of the game. They are as mysterious to your character as they are to any other monster like an ogre or troll is to us, and its something that I thoroughly enjoyed about the game. Part of the fun I find is also trying to figure out how these villages and peoples developed from a modern era, unintentionally bringing things from the old world back to life in the new one. One village in the game speaks what sounds a lot like Japanese, and one character sings a song that sounds a bit like Russian. When asked about the meaning of it she says its in a long lost language so she doesn’t know what it means. The villagers also have their superstitions about places from the old world and they bring on an almost sacred meaning.

All-in-all Nier is an awesome game, certainly one that deserves to be played by all, and did I mention you can have alternate endings. With that, a sweet soundtrack and a lot of mystery within the games world, it’s sure to keep your attention for quite some time, as still is keeping mine.

Final Rating - 10/10

-Mr. Cool

Gameplay of Nier