NIER

A game with split-personality disorder, aiming to please everyone with elements drawn from a raft of sources, but in the process it never excels in any one area.

NIER might not the revolutionary title that it inspired to be, but it has some moments that make the downtime worth the effort. The cast, sorrowful fable, and boss battles are some of these moments that makes NIER stand out from the current crop of role-playing games.

Square Enix' attempt to create a great action-roleplaying experience is a little disappointing. The game's world is big and the characters interesting, despite the lengthy story and lame graphics. Nier wants to be a great game, but it doesn't even get Nier to that.

Nier comes with the best intentions, such as a different, original and attractive proposal, but with certain gaps that can not be ignored. A great argument, a fantastic artwork and an epic soundtrack; all these attributes are conditioned by outdated graphics and imprecise controls. This new Square Enix video game takes elements from various resources, but it never excels in any aspect.

Nier is a twisting, turning journey of erratic quality. It's one of the best, worst, most broken, most perfect games I've ever played.

The ideas that Nier was built on are extremely solid -- the execution just falls short.

Once you remove the shackles of expectation and simply bask in what the game throws at you (keeping a well opened mind of course) you will come out the other side perplexed and captivated.

The other side of this coin is that Nier bites off more than it can chew: It wants to be Final Fantasy, God of War, Zelda, Monster Hunter and FarmVille all at once. And the problem with trying so many things is that every new feature you add is a new opportunity to screw the pooch.

If you're one of the many who've grown tired of spikey blonde protagonists and thirty hour corridors, then maybe it's time you let Nier convince you that there is room for change.

Nier is so burdened with poor design choices and outdated mechanics that some won't be able to see the ingenuity through the fit of technical hiccups. [Issue#96, p.124]

Has enough satisfying moments to warrant a playthrough, but only a patient gamer will make it to the brilliant final hour. [July 2010, p.76]

Nier could have been something if more thought was put into the actual gameplay and leveling system, rather than making it a linear path through mediocrity.

Old-school, awkward and ramshackle - yet still compelling in a weird way. [July 2010, p.92]

A well written story and some good gameplay gimmicks combine with an overall context that lacks coherence. Some issues in the control system and old-gen graphics utterly spoil the fun. A shame, especially for the waste of some good ideas and the well designed supporting characters.

With so many genuinely good action/RPGs that aren't riddled with archaic missions and gameplay, I have trouble recommending Nier solely on the basis of a decent (but unevenly executed) story.

In the time spent playing this, I really wanted to enjoy NIER as an intricate game but it suffers largely from an identity crisis

Nier's jack-of-all-trades approach simply doesn't succeed, making for a strikingly uneven experience. You'll want to love this game for its story and music, but you'll struggle to stomach everything else.

Quite easily the best not-very-good game we've played in a while. [July 2010, p.96]

Nier is just a well done average game unable to live up to action rpg's fans expectations. Its combat system can be fun, but the less than stellar story and the plagued graphics don't help in winning this epic battle.

The story is rich and engaging, but gameplay is little more than a chore.

It feels like if the game was a bit more polished, it could've been special. Instead, it just shows a lot of promise, but ends up spreading itself too thin.

Ultimately, the game just doesn't want to be liked. Like the emo kid at school, it dares to be different yet ultimately craves acceptance, meaning Nier struggles with everything it does, often showing its less than perfect innards to the player.

Nier is very difficult to dislike, even as you curse the quality control that lets the game oscillate wildly between the fiercely inventive and the utterly generic. Yet while it's hard not to admire a game that dementedly throws so much at the player in an attempt to make something stick, Nier's faults are too many and too severe to wholeheartedly recommend.

Thanks to a strong narrative and a relatively good concept, Nier is to be considered a decent addition to the PS3's and 360's RPG catalog. Although its visuals aren't surely breathtaking and its gameplay doesn't excel in terms of depth, the game will in fact manage to guarantee a likable experience to any fan of the genre.

A peculiar game, which should mostly fascinate Drakengard fans and appeal to the most inquiring minds.

Ultimately, Nier is more remarkable for the things it does wrong than for the things it does right.

Nier is potential squandered. It has some great and not so great characters and enemies placed into an inconsistent world where large portions of your time are spent yawning as you travel through an RPG that has stagnated in a pit of ten year old Japanese RPGs and tries nothing new to make it a worthy purchase.

Nier is definitely an ambitious game that tries to break away from Square Enix's traditional style, but it ultimately isn't up to the task. It's an acquired taste that doesn't go down easy.

Nier delivers all of the facets that make up a successful action role-playing game: fun combat, diverse characters, good voice-acting, and addictive quest mechanics. It just doesn't do any of them excellently.

Nier is a nice game, but its flawed design and dated graphics prevent an original idea to shine with its full potential.

You can call it feature creep or over-ambition, but it's the surfeit of content that almost buries the game's achievements. [June 2010, p.100]

Nier is ambitious and delightfully crass but hits too many lows and dull points to climb higher than it has. Definitely worth a look if the more original side of gaming is your thing. [Issue#60, p.99]

Great aural presentation and infrequent genre remixing aren't enough to save the game from mediocrity, though. Only Japanophiles nostalgic for the early aughts need apply.

Overall, Nier has its ups and downs. There are brief moments where you can see the influence from more brilliant games, such as Zelda and Bayonetta, shining through, but the overall experience is lukewarm at its best moments.

Rarely has a game straddled the line between brilliant and dismal as much as Nier has, and rarely has it made for such a difficult review.

This dreary action role-playing game has its worthwhile moments, but they're separated by countless hours of fetch-quest tedium.

Nier has a lot of interesting aspects to it, but none of them come together to make a cohesive experience. It feels like they are all fighting amongst each other and the product as a whole suffers for it.