NieR Replicant

[Ten10]

I've heard good things too. A reviewer from classic games room named it their game of 2010 which says quite a lot. I think it's going pretty cheap on amazon so I'm likely to pick it up.

[Nolan]

This game can go fuck itself and it's fishing mini-game.

 

I was having fun and quite enjoying the game for the first few hours of play. Then it decided to send me on a main quest to go get a fish...After trying for about 15 minutes I managed to catch some seaweed.

 

The problem is, that after you hook a fish you're suppose to move the rod in the opposite direction of the fish to "decrease it's health" and then you catch it. Well, the vast vast vast majority of the time, the fish gets away before it starts moving, and of the 2 times that didn't happen for me, (once being seaweed) the damn thing got off the hook WHILE I WAS MOVING THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION.

 

I don't know, maybe I'm just dumb as my friend who recommended it didn't mention fishing issues, in fact only Yahtzee did. He appropriately said it sucked.

 

 

The game is fun though if you think you can get past the fishing.

 

Edit:

 

Well....after reading how to fish on gamefaqs, it's a bit easier. No where does the game mention that you should keep the left stick held back at all times. There is also the fact that the ass who gives you the fishing rod tells to you fish at the spot right next to him....according to the guide that spot is too high level for beginners. >.<

 

My catch count is now up to 1, Aquatic Plant and 1. Rusty Bucket...

Edited January 6, 2011 by Nolan

[Mundi]

I spend nearly 2 hours trying to do that fishing quest.

Only to realize that I was at the wrong beach.

 

Apparently, thy guy standing at the beach who told me that I could catch this specific fish at the beach meant that I could catch it on the other beach that was trough a tunnel nearby not the one he was currently at.

 

My frustration could power a sun.

[Magnus]

I didn't have any problems with the fishing quest, since the game marks out where you need to go on your map. But in the back of my mind I remembered watching Joystiq's embarrassing fishing video, so I knew I needed to keep my eyes open. It probably also helped that I'd already explored the town at that point, so I knew there was another beach nearby.

 

Never had much luck fishing again after that, though. Only managed to catch underwater plants and humongous buckets.

 

So, um... only two pages? I didn't get this game when it was released after it received less-than-stellar review scores (to be fair, it was never really on my radar to begin with because how awful it looked the first time they showed it off), but I picked it up cheap a few weeks ago.

 

And I really enjoyed it.

 

Not that it's not flawed, because it definitely is. The graphics are... I guess technically competent, at least? The problem is more that the world is really bland for the most part and the character design (outside of two of the main characters) is painfully uninspired.

 

The sidequests are all uniformly awful and most of them are just given to you by NPCs that lack any real personality, like basically every single NPC in this game. I think I played about three sidequests that were more interesting than "I need [number] of [item] for [reason]", and even then the actual tasks weren't much fun.

 

I don't think the gameplay is as bad as people make it out to be. It's not great, but it's not bad either. Combat is simple - you can use your weapon, dodge and cast magic. There's not a lot of exploration, but you're encouraged to do some of it if you want to find items for sidequests or materials for upgrading your weapons. So it's pretty standard.

 

I did like how the game wasn't afraid of mixing things up, though. There are some shmup-inspired sections, at least one boss ripped off from Zelda, a dungeon that gives you rules you need to follow and even an area that's inspired by text adventures.

 

However, the reason I think people should play the game is the story. It takes a while to get going and doesn't really pick up until you get your second party member. Things get a lot more interesting from that point on, though, and the story gets really good once you get your third party member. The story is pretty dark and... I don't know. It was something different. I really enjoyed it.

 

I really recommend doing a New Game+ to get the most out of the story. It plops you back in two thirds of the way through the game and at that point you're so over-leveled that it only takes three or four hours to finish the game again. When you replay the game, you get some more backstory for one of the main characters (both in prose right at the start and then occasionally through voice-overs throughout the game), as well as several extra scenes that wouldn't have made sense when playing through the game the first time. It also features a different ending that complements the first ending perfectly. Seriously, if you find yourself enjoying the story even a little bit, it's worth the extra effort.

 

(The game also has two more endings that can be reached if you play through the last third of the game a third time, but you need all of the game's thirty weapons to get them, so they're a bit more effort (the endings are also the only things that are different when you play the game a third time). They feel more like alternate endings, but they're good in their own right and are worth checking out on YouTube.)

 

But yeah. Play Nier for the story. It's worth going through an otherwise average-but-decent game for.

 

Also, the music is pretty good.

[Aimless]

I suppose my summation of the game is that it's more interesting than it is good. A bit like Deadly Premonition.

 

I enjoyed it because it was different, but it's a hard game to recommend without good knowledge of another's tastes.

[Magnus]

Yeah, it's... um... it's not a game for people looking for a good game. It's a game for people who are willing to look past the many flaws of an average game because it has one aspect that's really great and different.

 

I realize that not everyone is willing to do that, but for those who are, I thought the story and characters really made up for everything else.

 

It's funny you should mention Deadly Premonition, because that's another game I got for many of the same reasons, but I haven't had time to check it out yet.