Regrettably, Ver 1.22 hasn’t been balanced to adjust for these improvements at all, especially since the block command still makes you impervious to basically any attack. There are also a few quality of life improvements, such as the inclusion of a lock-on and a more responsive dodge, so even if the combat is slightly above average at best, it’s still vastly better than the original game’s. The improved framerate, now locked at 60 FPS, also plays a huge role in making combat feel better. Quite a few cues have been taken from Platinum’s work on Automata, and your protagonist now feels much faster and animates much more smoothly in battle. The combat has received the biggest change. This was Ver 1.22’s chance to shine to bring Nier’s story into the modern age while addressing some of the gameplay problems.
KAINE BLACK SCRAWL SERIES
Outside of the repetition and reuse of areas, Nier had some extremely clunky combat, a largely pointless and ultimately boring series of weapon/spell upgrades, a bizarre insistence on making the player wall all the way back to the starting town area to try and guilt them into gardening or some other menial side quest, an absolutely pitiful difficulty curve, and much more. Having said that, there is a limit to how far uniqueness can excuse a game’s annoyances, and the original Nier certainly overstepped that in the gameplay department. I'd personally argue that there's no one who grapples with dark story themes as well as he does. The themes that Taro tackles as well, ones of existentialism, identity, and purpose, are also very much a breath of fresh air in the game industry. Nier is an utterly unique experience with a group of well-written characters and a fresh perspective on storytelling that, even when a bit unwieldy, is never afraid to go out and upset conventions. Perhaps that’s what makes it worth celebrating and bringing into the spotlight as a remake. I don’t necessarily say this as a critique, just to note that Nier is very much doing its own thing, like Automata, Drakengard, and the rest of Taro’s works. Whether the reward is worth some of the grind for you is likely a matter of personal taste. For instance, to get the emotional payoff for the aforementioned Kaine, you'll have to essentially play the entire second half of the game twice.
Later parts of the game also involve a lot of backtracking and repeating previous segments with slight variations for narrative purposes. To get to these moments, however, you’ll have to adjust to some rather unconventional storytelling practices. Kaine, the foul mouthed outcast, is perhaps the most engaging character, with an incredibly sympathetic backstory that gets some solid pay-off later on. The game’s cast of characters are a compelling bunch, and their various personalities play off each other well, from the aforementioned refined and well spoken book titled Grimoire Weiss, to the nervous boy Emile, to the protagonist himself everyone is well written and fairly complex. The story of Nier, and Ver 1.22 by extension, is a classic Yoko Taro affair: simultaneously absolutely bizarre and weirdly compelling. Outside of this, however, the story remains almost identical, and the plot unfurls in much the same way too, so you needn’t worry about having missed out on a substantially different experience. Replicant features a much younger protagonist, whose relationship with the diseased girl is that of sibling rather than father. Ver 1.22 is a remake of the Japanese version of Nier ( Replicant), which contains one notable difference from the Western version ( Gestalt). If you happened to play the original Nier and find yourself thinking that the protagonist is much younger than you remember, don’t worry, you’re not going crazy. After a chance encounter with a talking magical amnesiac book provides hope for how the girl might be saved, the protagonist sets off on a quest to help restore the book’s memory and retrieve the necessary power. You play as a teenage boy living in a post-apocalyptic world with his sister, who has contracted a terminal illness called the Black Scrawl. If you’re not familiar with the original Nier, it was a third person action game with a Zelda-esque world, featuring a handful of dungeons with some light puzzle solving and boss fights.
KAINE BLACK SCRAWL FULL
(henceforth “Ver 1.22”) is selling itself for full price, I’m treating it as a remake for review purposes. There’s some ambiguity about whether this qualifies as a remake, a remastering, or something else, especially after Yoko Taro insisted on calling it a “version upgrade,” rather than giving it a common sensical title, but given that there are some noteworthy gameplay changes, and that Nier Replicant Ver 1.22.
KAINE BLACK SCRAWL UPDATE
Such is the case with Nier Replicant: Ver 1.22474487139, an update of 2010’s Nier.
In this age of remakes and remasterings, it seems that just about cult classic is getting a chance at escaping cult fandom status.
By Paul Broussard, posted on / 2,618 Views
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