nier: automata update (2) [spoiler world]
so i just finished route b—
hey uh, just an fyi, if you're reading this and would like to get into “nier: automata”, i'm now in spoiler territory. i wrote “[spoiler world]” up there, that was your indicator. but just in case you were like “the subtitle of this game sounds weird” or “is this a new series for the blog posts” or “i don't want to be spoiled here, but this is not explicitly clear—do i now inhabit a world of spoilers? or am i here to spoil myself with good content?”, i just wanted to be clear.
so.. i just finished route b, titled, “or not to [B]e” (image here of me throwing a rock at the localization team for this pun.. lovingly). very.. very good. i've mentioned before (maybe not here.. ah well) that i've known that this game was going to be up my alley. i didn't realize it'd be tapping directly into concepts i'd written about for fun throughout the last 10~ years of my fiction writing. the sections about “project gestalt” and “mission(?) replicant” were absolutely things i'd tinkered with in my own personal fictions. it was very cool to be seen and also affirming to see similar ideas out there—i.e. human consciousness being relocated to bypass death, creating psuedo-spiritualities to justify said transfers and structures of government to contain them. ahh.. very very good stuff.
i'll keep it vague, even if we're in spoiler territory. i would hate to rob you of some of the cool stuff going on here. while not the most mind-bending things in the world, i like to think of them as rudimentary thought-exercises. “what if.. we were faced with a global pandemic and we found that we couldn't contain/cure said virus?” i'd wager that hits just a little differently in 2020 from 2017.
notes
- i needed to take more advantage of 9s's hacking!!!!! i found out right before the missiles quest (where the game hits end-game state) that you could control enemy units if they were hacked unawares—what!!!!! you get to do a fair bit of it towards the end, and i was very pleased with it... although it made me wonder what it would have been like to sneak up on more interesting/convoluted characters? each enemy type had some very weird/good move-sets.
- the hacking itself was a bit of a back-and-forth for me. as 9s, you forego your “strong” attack that you had with 2b (light attack, strong attack.. up up, down down, left, right left, right,,,) for a “hack” function that allows you to detonate, befriend, or control enemy units. those are cool results! but the hacking itself takes the form of a shmup-lite mini-game, where you are trying to destroy an enemy's core by wiping out the little enemy “ships” inside it. very cool concept, and a nice way to spice up the combat. often times it was repetitive, and when i toggled difficulties to see if i could raise the bar, i found it didn't necessarily change the challenge, just bloated the hit-points for the units. which.. i'm not sure how i feel about that. but they were so zippy that i couldn't really hold it to fault.
- the “rope” function for the pods absolutely, wait for it.. whips! i set my light weapon to the cypress stick (a reference to the famed “dragon quest” series, which has a bunch of great stuff going for it, but most critically changes chests to look like “dragon quest” chests and the numerical values for damage to a font-style similar to that of the same series—very, very good content value), which was very nifty, except 9s's range was somewhat limited in a lot of ways—this rope power allowed me to grapple onto my targeted enemy (be they high or low) and do some serious damage.
- the difficulty in this game is odd. i've done about 40% of the side-quests at this point at normal difficulty and feel that i might have over-leveled myself. the battles became much quicker and i found there was less strategy in my maneuvering. after raising the bar to hard, i found that all it did was raise damage i received and dealt by 400% and made enemies hesitant to jump into battle, which really.. didn't make things too interesting? in hacking, this just bloated the hit-points, and there wasn't a change to the formula (from what i could see). i wonder what could be an interesting way to change the difficulty of an action-heavy game like this..
- i fished a lot in this route (i keep saying route.. there's a bunch of them that stitch together the entire game's story, so it's not really like a second play-through since the mechanics and story are altered) and it made me sit and wonder perhaps my most profound thought throughout this experience: when are we going to get a really good, and i mean really good, fishing video game? not the “bass hunter” games. not natsume's boring swill (i love the look of “the legend of the river king” for gameboy.. but lord, that game, you cannot play it). i want an honest-to-god fishing game. something that truly replicates the experience of fishing, not this alleged pro-level stuff that the industry things people want to play. i want the “i got up early to go fishing with my dad somewhat begrudgingly, and after an hour or two on the water i catch some small-fry and feel the thrill of the chase, start to consider the tacklebox, what's helped and hindered me on my short journey, and become more vulnerable in my pursuit and end up having a short but meaningful conversation with my normally reserved father” experience. who will give that to me..
- i love 9s.
- i'm ready for more.
