Malf on 27/3/2017 at 14:12
Fair enough, I long ago became comfortable with it being very much a Marmite movie.
Kroakie on 25/4/2017 at 04:39
Quote Posted by Malf
So, I "completed" the game with 2B over the weekend.
While it's enjoyable enough, I think it's been over-hyped by fans of the original, the creator and the composer.
The combat, while functional, isn't a patch on either Revengeance, Bayonetta or Vanquish. It's incredibly simplified with none of the awesome gimmicks that those games relied upon (well, second play-through gets more interesting in that respect).
The story, which I'd seen numerous people lauding, does some interesting things, but had virtually no emotional impact on me whatsoever. Again, maybe that improves on further replays.
The difficulty spikes wildly, with some side quests while playing as 2B being impossible without an insane amount of grind, yet story missions being simplistic to the point of insulting. That's playing on Normal. I've heard that playing on hard is the polar opposite, with virtually everything being able to one-shot you.
And the open-world is a massive step back, being simplistic, small, lacking variety and full of... nothing. As well as being graphically spartan, there are invisible barriers all over the place. It's telling that one of the most interesting areas to explore is a barren desert.
It also commits the sin of rail-roading you later on in the story. The last 4 or 5 missions don't allow you to go off-piste and complete side quests, and even prevent you from going to certain places.
And enemy variety? there's basically none, just re-skinned versions of the same 6 or so "machines" depending on what area you're in.
Overall, I'd advise against buying this full price and wait for a sale.
Don't get me wrong, it's a good game, solidly a "7/10", but I don't understand the universal adoration it's getting.
I really hope you managed to get back to the game and get the other 4 endings. I think they've made a mistake framing them as endings, which evidently put some people off. Only the B route is a retread, so to say. Route C/D/E is a continuation of the story, and to put it simply, fucking amazing. Like you, I thought after the first ending that it's not really as good as people have hyped it out to be, and I got a little bored with the repeated contents in route B, though there were just enough variations to keep me interested. Then I got to Route C and blazed through the entire thing in a single weekend because I just couldn't put the game down. When I got to the ending after one of the most satisfying boss fights ever, it was 2am in a Monday morning and my hands were cramping, and I probably would have continued if I did not have to wake up for work 3 hours later.
You'll unlock Chapter Select after Ending C, which will make getting Ending D rather easy. I just finished Ending E myself. I won't spoil it for you, let's just say it took me completely by surprise.
Malf on 25/4/2017 at 09:39
Yeah, I've unlocked chapter select, but don't know if I'm invested enough to find other endings. I know there's some interesting ones thanks to the community buzz, but the game itself at that point doesn't indicate that there's anything more major to discover. I could go back and finish the game as 9S, but to be honest, his whining was really beginning to get on my nerves at the end.
The most interesting talking point for me is Pascal's departure from the story. Myself, I chose to walk away and leave him alive. I felt that to do otherwise would be to betray the whole point of the story, that memory, no matter if good or bad, is important in making you who you are. To kill Pascal is to give him the coward's way out, and to erase his memory is to essentially erase who he is. It's the ultimate in self-disrespect. That the game let me do that was incredibly satisfying.
I think the main problem for the game is that I've read a LOT of sci-fi that covers the same ground, and sometimes a lot better. Don't get me wrong, it's still a good story for a game, but it's treading ground I'm very familiar with.
And the combat is unfortunately underwhelming when compared to other Platinum games.
Kroakie on 25/4/2017 at 11:12
Well with chapter select you can get the last 2 endings in around an hour, so you might as well do it :)
Twist on 26/4/2017 at 20:37
Honestly, if you haven't finished 9S's playthrough, you're missing out. There's more to it all than you realize at that stage.
Also, I'd recommend raising the combat level. It makes combat far more tense and tactical. The "one hit kill" bit is a only sort of true. If you're really careful about your chipsets and keeping your health topped off, it isn't always "one hit kill". I found the normal level far too forgiving of random flailing. I won boss fights where I felt I didn't deserve to win because I could tell I was playing terribly (maybe after I hadn't played in a week or two or something). I'm still not blown away by the combat -- too much dazzle and not enough substance -- but the higher difficulty made it more interesting. As I said, it made it much more tense and tactical.
You can swap between difficulty levels mid-game; you don't even have to quit out to the menu or anything. So if a particular fight is frustrating you or you just want to get to the next story beat, you can drop it from hard to easy on the fly.
Malf on 26/4/2017 at 22:59
As mentioned above, I've got Chapter Select, so yeah, I've completed 9S's playthrough ;)
scumble on 30/3/2018 at 12:32
About a year late on this, but got the game in a sale on PSN and I'm happy with how it plays on a PS4 and heard the port was a bit buggy...
I don't play many games like this so I've liked most of it without much for comparison. I'd agree it has story problems but the way it shuffles up game perspectives stops it getting boring. It's also a bit hard to engage with the emotional sides to the story where androids are supposedly wobbling between being cold humanoid robots and more human characters.
If there had just been one playthrough I'd have been disappointed. I think the subsequent plays give enough of a perspective shift to be still engaging although I have just rushed through the bits that are effectively identical with the 9S play. I'm on the third main play this time which continues after the main story.
I realise I'm not actually that good at games due to lack of practice, or maybe my co-ordination is just getting worse as I get older. Or I'm just impatient. However, the easy mode with auto chips on is a little amusing - I was a bit confused to start with as the game seemed to be playing itself and I was just prodding the character in the right direction. That was just silly so I continued on easy. I think it's sometimes too easy even for me, but I'm easily satisfied as long as I don't feel entirely like I've just been mashing buttons. I appreciate others like more of a challenge, but if it gets too much like work and I get stressed it's not worth it.
I did try and go back to Normal but if you go too far through the game on easy the jump is clearly too much for your character's level.
I'm amazed I made a stupid mistake with the hacking minigames however. I got to a section which gets pretty hairy and you have to be able to hack to get through it because robots can use attack to completely mess up 9S's systems so you can't dash, hack or move or your display goes weird and pixellated. After I watched a video of someone else doing the section I realised I HADN'T BEEN AIMING WITH THE RIGHT STICK! So I'd struggled to do the hacking sections without aiming. Maybe a valid challenge if you're masochistic but I had been scratching my head with those the whole time.
So maybe now I'm playing with the actual controls I can get to the next section.
Sulphur on 24/9/2018 at 17:30
I suppose I should note that I finished this a month or two ago because I refused to let myself get comfortable with the ever-so-slightly dodgy frame rate this exhibited with a 970. Maybe it's more pronounced on a non-GSYNC screen with a max refresh rate of 60, I dunno.
Anyway, I found myself distinctly underwhelmed with N:A's narrative around the end of route B, because
9S really isn't a very interesting character. There's some fresh insight into what happens while 2B's off battling stuff and 9S is tripping wires and having some very literally self-exploratory moments, but past the initial 'oh, this is cool' phase, 9S doesn't have enough character to stop it being a retread of route A with some added frills. The new skits that give the machines' perspectives are rather good, but they're not doled out often enough to be the compelling factor to keep playing. But keep playing I did, and it was decent, but nothing I could have lived without.I then proceeded with route C.
Yeah, okay. Holy
fuckballs.
This game needs a warning sign plastered all over it that it does not actually end when you see the credits roll, and they did kinda try with the message at the end of route A, but route C takes everything prior to it and wraps it up with a fucking bow. I don't want to spoil anything from it, I'm just going to say if you've taken the time to get through route B, you owe it to yourself to see the actual ending of the game. This isn't subjective or open to interpretation - it is quite literally the next chapter, and if you haven't played it, you're missing a large chunk of the experience.
Don't get me wrong - niggles about the storytelling and the gameplay being Platinum lite don't magically vanish, but the melancholy, funereal tone of the world starts to make more sense once plot points start getting full stops instead of ellipses. It's fully worth it, because it's around this point that the soundtrack, visuals, and the story synthesise into something greater than sum of its parts, and some of those parts were (
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4crLFmntZTY) very fine to begin with.
Oh, and Malf - route C has the darkest of jokes involving Pascal if you meet him again. I think you should.
Thirith on 24/9/2018 at 17:32
How long do the routes after the first one take? That's one of the things that puts me off buying N:A somewhat - even though I hear it's less like replaying the game and more like playing more of it.
Sulphur on 24/9/2018 at 17:36
Route B can be fairly short if you just run through it - ideally you've done most of the sidequests already so it's just a matter of hitting the critical path and gunning for the finish line (route A's sidequests become available to you if you didn't finish them the first time, while adding a few new ones). I'd say in the vicinity of 5 hours or so, not least because combat gets done a fair bit faster for, uh, reasons. Route C is also about 4-5 hours depending on how fast you slap through it.
Keep in mind that in the broader scheme of things, nuance and subtlety (and, to some extent, characterisation) isn't N:A's strong point; the story's something that's slowly pieced together without many grand revelations, but it does a good job of dropping hints through the world and some NPC asides, and I found it interesting enough when taken together with the score and the slick if somewhat shallow combat.
