Review of NieR Replicant ver. 1.22474487139

Years before the premiere of NieR: Automata , the finest hour of clumsy rusty robots, stylish YoRHa androids and the idolatry of alienated steel girl 2B, the world first met a completely different NieR . That game consisted of a whole variety of polar and in all respects ambiguous elements: a bizarre structure was hidden behind the external untidiness, and the seemingly obvious deconstruction of many traditional cliches of Japanese role-playing games was systematically filled with new meanings.

Today, 2010 NieR can often be found on the lists of the most underrated seventh generation games on console systems. Someone will happily mark it with the hackneyed marking of “hidden pearl”, while others, in the wake of the success of NieR: Automata, will publicly talk about the genius of Yoko Taro, who hides his face .

And if a small, albeit very active group of fans of the original NieR is able to tell you about the intricacies of the world’s greatest magical grimoire, while giving a lecture on the role of dragons in the Drakengard universe , then for a significant part of the audience until now the game has remained an intangible mirage. The reasons for this are extremely commonplace.

First, the classic NieR is forever trapped in the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 . Even if you consider yourself a console retrograde and keep old hardware on your shelf, an attempt to acquire the coveted game turns into an additional headache – it has never received a digital release, which means you need to hunt for a physical copy.

Secondly, the above-mentioned technical unpretentiousness of the old NieR can certainly knock down the degree of motivation to get acquainted with the game. All the more so if you are interested in it after the beautiful, endearing and responsive Automata.

Of course, the management of Square Enix was well aware of the situation. Motivated by the success of NieR: Automata and resorting to forbidden magic, as well as the help of the Toylogic team, the world was shown NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 … – a reissue of the old NieR, timed to coincide with the tenth anniversary of the original release.

For context, it is important to note that the classic NieR Replicant “about the brother” is a former exclusive of the Japanese market. Western audiences remember the NieR Gestalt game “about dad”. In essence, having omitted the very idea of ​​such atypical regional differences, both versions of the game almost mirrored each other in content. However, a number of plot details and general context could greatly influence the perception of the whole story.

The basis for the NieR Replicant ver. 1.22474487139 …, as the subtitle suggests, was precisely NieR Replicant – that edition of the game where the role of the central protagonist was played by a young man who takes care of his sick sister, and not a Neanderthal dad, clad in skin, trying his last bit brighten up everyday life of a rapidly weakening daughter.

NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139…, perhaps, occupies an unexpected position in the infinitely more complicated coordinate system for the characteristics of modern re-issues and updated versions. In terms of content, the new version of NieR carefully takes over all the content of the original release, while managing to present many surprises. First, you can focus on the most obvious – the restored visual part.

For NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 … the Toylogic team has literally collected thousands of new assets from scratch. The attention of artists came to both fundamentally important components of the graphic form, such as character models, environments and animation systems, and invisibly setting the tone nuances, including lighting and color correction of individual segments of the game world.

 

The revised characters, including the protagonist, Emil and Kaine, retained their identity, staying true to the original artistic vision, but sharply added to the details – on the costumes you can now see the abundance of decorative elements and patterns hidden in the textures. The same applies to faces – yes, their general stylization somewhat deviates from the previous models, but against the background of the rest of the graphics, the appearance of the characters does not at all lose organicity.

Even more changes in NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 … have undergone locations. The developers did not touch the topography of the levels in any way, having paid all attention to the exterior decoration. The results of their labors were transformed landscapes, which are now filled with previously absent geometry – mountains and hills have acquired expressive outlines, giving the environment a natural authenticity and mood. The redesigned game space, among other things, also better helps the game to broadcast its setting – in the previously abstract stone spiers, quite understandable and familiar architectural solutions suddenly began to be seen, which is great for the multi-layered local world order.

But the connecting link of the whole set of visual upgrade NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 …, of course, can be called an animation system written from scratch. The catchy, hypertrophied, and even somewhat comical, extremely limited frame moves in the original NieR have been replaced by soft and graceful alternatives. The main character performs all actions with the proper smoothness and seamless transitions, which is why you can both enter a controlled skid on a large black boar and enjoy the dance of blades, inflicting dozens of blows to discouraged opponents with the same pleasure.

Unlike the reassembled models and geometry, the new animation in ver.1.22474487139 … ennobles the entire gameplay in many ways. The reduced response time multiplied by the high frame rate greatly increases the overall dynamics of the action sequences. Small but pleasant changes to key gameplay systems are also helpful here. For example, in the new edition of NieR, the ability to move freely while activating spells has appeared, which adds an element of tactical positioning to battles. In addition, enemies can be focused, reducing the risk of tapping on the controller for an impressive combo to nowhere. And if you want to take a break from the fights, or you even prefer to devote your time to gardening and fishing, then you can turn on the auto battle mode – in it NieR starts to play itself.

And yet, despite the titanic amount of efforts that Toylogic specialists spent to breathe new life into NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 …, the odes to the outer screen of the cult creation of game designer Yoko Taro only divert attention from its deliberately unformatted insides.

The starting point for the drama NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 … is the story of a 16-year-old protagonist who takes care of his little sister. The girl is very sick, and in order to feed himself, the hero takes on all sorts of work, along the way trying to find at least some clues that will help him cope with his sister’s illness.

It doesn’t take too long before fate brings the protagonist to Grimoire Weiss, an ancient and incredibly powerful sentient tome of ancient scriptures and magic. The arrogant book agrees to help the hero on his wanderings, thus launching a whole chain of events that will shed light on a mystery far more catastrophic than the illness of one child.

The best prospect for getting to know NieR is as blind as possible. In the absence of pre-formed expectations and prejudices, the provocatively changing structure and tone of the game turns into a rare emotional attraction. The seemingly overly standard archetypes inherent in many classic jRPGs are first wittily ridiculed, and then deliberately smashed to smithereens, just to frame them in a new context. But as soon as you start looking at the game as a comic genre deconstruction, it turns everything upside down again, moving on to melancholic and even tragic moods, revealing itself from other sides.

Playing with form and with form in NieR Replicant ver. 1.22474487139 … is like a separate kind of entertainment: a virtual operator changes camera plans, citing different genre trends, plotting relies on unfamiliar sources, and sometimes the whole action is literally paused, to immerse the player in the colors of his own imagination for half an hour.

Visual overview

Atmosphere – it envelops and absorbs

Cool bosses

Girls

Pumping

Fireballs and curses

I want to hear this soundtrack to the holes

Dirty perverts

Giant robots, again

Twisted plot – impossible to come off

Violence and blood

The visual overview is based on the main features of the game and is in addition to the main overview.

Even music in NieR is transformed into a separate unique language, a bridge between the game and the player who plays it. The legendary duo of composer Keiichi Okabe and vocalist Amy Evans has produced a whole album of soulful compositions, woven from a combination of many artistic directions and styles, where gentle lyrics in a non-existent language are combined with a cold melody collected from a library of industrial sounds.

For example, the famous “Song of the Ancients,” which Devola sings while sitting by the fountain in the village, has a diegetic sound that is an integral part of the game world. Such a simple yet effective technique instantly gives the simplest scene a tangible depth and mood.

It is noteworthy that for NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 … the composer Okabe completely re-recorded all his works, and also gave life to new works. The melody and progression of classical tracks, with rare exceptions, remained intact, but even in the absence of good hearing in fresh arrangements, new instruments and in some places shifted accents are easily guessed.

Another important detail is the ability to play the new version of NieR in Japanese or English dubbing. In the case of the second, Square Enix has almost fully reclaimed the cast of the original 2010 release, with characters speaking in familiar voices, voicing barely altered script lines. At the same time, some of the scenes were re-recorded from scratch, while some were preserved in their original form. Considering that in the original edition of the game, a lot of dialogues remained completely “dumb”, the voice acting ver.1.22474487139 … automatically endows them with previously absent shades.

In addition to the experimental presentation and magical sound, from the original release in NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 … more and more traditional aspects of game design have stepped over as a whole. So, in between major narrative chapters, you are free to devote your time to a string of optional tasks.

Among these, for example, an avalanche of secondary missions, where almost all of them are traditional quests to find items, characters and other missing items of dubious importance. Ignoring them completely, however, is still not worth it – sometimes the game can present an unexpected (and unpleasant surprise), or please with a useful gift, such as replenishing the available arsenal of weapons.

Two other “household” activities in NieR are fishing and gardening. Catching fish is the most straightforward process that requires exceptional patience from the player. And with activities in the garden it is still easier – you just need to plant the necessary seeds and not forget to return to them in time, so as not to lose a valuable crop.

You can refuse unnecessary excursions and follow a strictly plot narration in NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 … without any problems, nevertheless, in order to fully embrace the developers’ plans, you still have to spend several monotonous hours on third-party entertainment.

The overall perception of NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 … is highly dependent on your previous exposure to this franchise. Fans of the original NieR will clap their hands at the beautifully adapted graphics (scolding the new faces a little) and will be stuck for a long time in a cyclical delight caused by the crazy surprises that Yoko Taro has prepared for them and which has been silent about until the last moment.

Fans of android 2B in NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 … will be able to see a whole kaleidoscope of bright ideas and concepts that later found their development in NieR: Automata. Not to mention the “backlinks”. Collecting the chronology of events in such a sequence on your own is extremely entertaining.

And for those who generally have little idea of ​​the NieR universe, ver.1.22474487139 … runs the risk of turning into an unexpected revelation. The proverbial informal nature of the project can easily scare away, but those who find it attractive will certainly fall in love with the game.

In 2010, NieR garnered attention despite its gaping flaws. Against the background of gray colors, a strange game about a flying book and a magic skeleton boy settled in the hearts of caring fans for ten years.

And today NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 … appears on the scene, which is almost completely devoid of what the original release was criticized for. Behind the gloss of new graphics hides the whole same game. And this is great, because it has not lost at all in its relevance over the past years.

 

by Abdullah Sam
I’m a teacher, researcher and writer. I write about study subjects to improve the learning of college and university students. I write top Quality study notes Mostly, Tech, Games, Education, And Solutions/Tips and Tricks. I am a person who helps students to acquire knowledge, competence or virtue.

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