Video Gamers Podcast - Nier: Automata - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: June 27, 2022

Gaming Androids Paul, Michael and Josh are back and and we’re joining 2B, 9S and others in deep diving Nier: Automata. Picked by Legendary supporter Blackrock, we dive into the incredible gaming universe of Nier: Automata and break down our thoughts on this very unique entry into what is a crazy blend of various gaming genres. This is one you don’t want to miss! Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Sir, the protocol says in the event of alien invasion to press this red button and to make sure to go to MultiplayerSquad.com to help save humanity in their time of need. Alright, Private, press that button and let's see what happens. Boop! Glory to mankind! Welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. Today is a Deep Dive Monday, and we are going to be breaking down all things Nier Automata. We've had some internal debating on the actual pronunciation of the game.

I think that is correct, but I don't really know exactly for sure. But please take a moment to rate our podcast five stars and leave us a written review if your podcast app allows. And also, if you love the show and want more content, you can support us on Patreon. And at any tier of support, you will get access to the Squadcast, which are bonus episodes that release the first and third Tuesday of every month. I am your host, Paul, the 2B of this episode. I'm joined here by two other YorHa soldiers. First up, we have our 9S, the loyal and faithful friend who will help you in any way you need. And no, I will never call you nines. It's Michael.

Oh, I thought we were going to intro Josh's beard that time as the loyal and faithful friend that never leaves our side or our chin. But thank you. I wish you would call me nines because let's face it, you know, I'm not quite a 10 myself, but nines pretty close. That's me. One of the cringiest parts in this game. So when are you going to call me nines?

And it's just crickets. Yeah. To be what's nothing to do with it yep all right and then joining us we have our a2 obviously this has to be him the rogue android on the run refusing to conform to the expectations and the orders from his superiors it's josh i never realized the similarities there. But you are absolutely correct, man. The mysterious, you know? Yeah. Rule breaker?

Absolutely. Rogue? Yeah, I like all of it. This one seemed pretty easy to me. I don't know that I'm 2B in any way, shape, or form. You're Pascal, Paul. But at least 9S and A2. Yeah, I'm Pascal.

There you go. That probably would be more fitting. You're like this super nice, just I love you instantly. Robotic. You know what I mean? Like smart, kind. Instantly not questioning my friend to, my choice to befriend you. And I don't know, I can't see anywhere as I'm wearing a freaking blindfold.

So whatever. Oh, wait, does that mean something? Very nice. I don't know. All right. So guys, we are covering covering near automata and we are doing this because of black star dq who is one of our legendary supporters if anyone out there does not know if you support us on patreon there are different perks for different tiers and one of

the coolest ones is at legendary so obviously it comes at a high price tag it's a hundred dollars but as long as you do that for one month, you get to pick any game. And Josh, Michael, and I will all buy it, and we will play it, and we will talk about it on the show. And so we do want to give another thank you to BlackstarDQ for picking this one for us to play. Heck yeah. Also, thank you to Blackstar for subsequently becoming an epic supporter of the show. Because as a lot of people do, they join Legendary so that they can pick a game and they get those perks. And a lot of those perks stay permanent. But then they went to the epic tier to continue

to support the show after that. So huge shout out. Thank you, BlackstarDQ. We are glad to have you. Heck yeah. And hey, we're not complaining. Anyone that wants to go Legendary Supporter and just cut off forever, we still love you, but it's really cool to see BlackstarDQ a special thank you to you. Yeah, Blackstar and Ace of Shame, Legendary and

Epic. That's right, Ace of Shame. Yeah, so Blackstar had said that he randomly picked this game up one day at a GameStop, just saw it, thought, why don't I try this game with this weird title, and fell in love with it. And I think all three of us kind of said, I don't know that this necessarily was on any of our radars to buy.

We solely played this only because of Blackstar, and I think it's going to be a ton of fun to talk about. Yes, he was clearly blown away by the cover art. Yes. And before we hop into near here, Josh, will you tell the people a little bit about our upcoming community night? We've got trivia! Yeah!

We've got, so we have we found a great way to do trivia in our Discord server. We are going to have a trivia night on July 1st, which is coming up, man. That's this week. If you're listening to this episode, that's this Friday at 6 p.m. Pacific Standard Time. That's 9 p.m. Eastern. And then it's going to take place on our Discord server. It's all going to be in the Tech Space channel. We know that we have a lot of lurkers. We have

mad love for our lurkers. So you are more than welcome. You'll feel right at home. But the trivia is going to be based on video game knowledge. And we've tried to kind of spread that around to just different genres and questions. Some of the questions will be about the show and things like that. But it should be an absolute ton of fun. Great community event.

And then we are giving away a pretty awesome prize, if I do say so myself. and things like that, but it should be an absolute ton of fun, great community events. Um, and then we are giving away a pretty awesome prize. If I do say so myself, we are giving away a brand spanking new steel series, Stratus XL wireless controller. This thing is amazing. It's awesome. Steel series makes wonderful gear.

Uh, and so this thing's going to be a phenomenal prize. That's going to go to the winner of the trivia as well. Yeah. And so this thing's going to be a phenomenal prize that's going to go to the winner of the trivia as well. Yeah. And listen, everyone out there listening to us, listeners, I'm talking to you right now. I know you think that you have something better to do on a Friday night than get together with a bunch of nerds and take a multiple choice test. But listen, we're going to give you something for free if you win. So just show up anyways.

Yeah. And Josh, Michael, and I will be in a voice channel. And if you want to hop in there and just listen to us, we're going to talk a little bit about the trivia and the answers. Some of the podcast history as we hit some of those questions should be a lot of fun for everybody. Yeah. So yeah, put that on your calendar.

July 1st. We hope to see you all there. If you're not already in the Discord discord there is a link in the episode description it's totally free to join you don't have to put in credit card info or anything totally free for anybody and we hope that lots of you are able to make it there okay we've got our orders from yorha to deepier Automata, let's do it. Okay, Nier Automata released in 2017. It is the sequel to Nier, which released in 2010.

Automata currently goes for $40 on Steam, and it has sold over 6 million copies worldwide. And here is the description according to Steam. Nier Automata tells the story of androids 2B, 9S, and A2 and their battle to reclaim the machine-driven dystopia overrun by powerful machines. All right, now I will say here at the onset that we are going to be keeping things virtually spoiler-free here in the beginning. We are going to talk a little bit about the first hour or two as far as the setup of the story. We're definitely going to talk about the combat and some of that. If it does get to a point that we're going to share story spoilers,

we'll definitely make sure to let you guys know. That way we won't spoil things for you. Now, I know for me, this was my first experience with anything related to Nier. I think that's the same for you guys. Yeah, for sure. I've heard of this series. I've heard of Nier Replicant. I forget what the very first one was called. I've heard of this series. I know nothing about it. So I was actually really excited when Blackstar was like, hey, I'm going to pick Nier Automata for you guys. And I was like, dude, this is great because I have zero idea what to expect on this game.

I've not seen any gameplay on any of these. All I know is that this is a series that a lot of people really enjoy and they've had a fairly newer release to PC for Nier Automata. And so I was actually very interested to check this out fairly new or release to PC for, you know, near automata. And so I was actually very interested to check this out because it's like never seen this series,

heard a lot about it. Am I going to love it? Am I going to hate it? What's it all about? And, uh, I love that kind of, I love going in blind like that when somebody picks a game for us and it's

like, dude, this is great. Cause I never would have played this game otherwise. Yeah. I, uh, absolutely have never heard of the series.

Had never heard of this game. Name sounded cool. Cover art, like people with swords and stuff. All right, I'll give it a shot. Also, I had to because we had a legendary supporter. But yeah, I'd never heard of this game. And I honestly probably... I might not ever have heard of it.

I mean, because there's... Let's say there's tens of thousands of games out there anyways. But really, really interesting. I'll tell you, I like to try new things, especially when it comes to food. And so I was like, cool, something different. I would never try it myself. So I love it when people pick games and I get to try something different. Unless it's fruit, because as we learned this week, Michael hates fruit.

No fruit, no good. He hates all of them he hates fruit pie he hates snacking on fruit a lot of people think michael's very weird yeah people were like i didn't realize i was gonna get trolled a little bit people were in discord like what's wrong with him i need more explanation i'm like what more explanation do you need i don't like any fruit i like all vegetables vegetables weird though because most people? I don't like any fruit. I like all vegetables. Which is so weird, though, because most people say I don't like vegetables, but I like fruit. I've just never had a sweet tooth,

and I think most fruit is sweet except for grapefruit. People say grapefruit is sweet. Grapefruit is sour and disgusting. It's very sour. Which is weird because I love all fruit juices for the most part, except for grapefruit juice, because also still sour and disgusting in juice form. But yeah, no fruit. New games, though? Yes. Games are not new games games are like vegetables yeah you know near is one of those

things where i had heard about it i never played it never saw any footage i did not know that near was an offshoot of a whole nother series called dracon draken guard dracon guard i i still to this day don't know anything about that series either, other than the fact that it spawned Nier. I guess Nier is like an alternate timeline from the end of Drakengard, something like that. So yeah, this was the first time that we actually played something related to Nier. So let's go ahead and set the stage a little bit about what this game is, or at least how the game presents itself in the beginning. Michael, you're kind of like the story lover of the group. Can you

describe a little bit of the overall story as to how it's presented early on in this game? Yeah. So essentially, I mean, humans are gone or are mostly gone. I still didn't figure out if humans exist at all in this world or not, if we're all replicants but essentially all that's left is really these replicant robots that have this consciousness that is upon death transferred to another identical replicant body which is a cool way to get past like dying in a video game it's like a part of the story um essentially you play as one of these replicants and uh there's something crazy going on, right? Like, hundreds of years ago, aliens have taken over the Earth, and humanity's been basically forced to take refuge on the moon in a place called the Bunker. And these aliens have created these evil robots who live on the Earth.

And essentially... Yeah, so, so evil. Like, red eyes and everything. They look like little Humpty Dumpty... Rocking babies. Yeah, Humpty Dumpty robots. They do look like Humpty Dumpty's. That's the best.

Little Humpty Dumpty's. It's like an egg in a cardboard tube. But it's all made of metal. I know because my sword clanks it and it makes a clank sound. So it's not cardboard. It's metal. But essentially, to take back the Earth, humans created these replicants years ago, decades ago, hundreds of years ago to fight on the surface. And to go not too far into the game, quickly we find out that things aren't necessarily as simple as originally presented.

But we are there to clear the Earth of these evil, humpty-dumpty, cardboard tube-wearing alien robots. I think that's a pretty good description. The only thing I'd add on top of that is that the game is supposed to take place in the year 12,000 AD. So this is very far into the future, which I thought was kind of interesting. And, you know, there's multiple ways that you can enjoy this game. You can just take it at surface level, where it's just a sci-fi robot alien adventure that has an interesting story. It also has an awful lot to say about God, philosophy, religion, life and death, anger and frustration at what has created you. Whether or not you're willing to sacrifice things for a complete stranger. I mean, there's literally a point in this game where a robot reads from Nietzsche and also

comments on that. So this game really dives especially into a lot of philosophy. That side of things is probably a little too deep for our show, probably a little bit beyond kind of what we wanted to discuss. Maybe we'll touch on it a little bit. But I will say that I did find some elements of this game very thought-provoking, maybe even inspirational at times. I didn't always agree with the worldview of the game, which is fine, but you can enjoy it both ways. If you want to just have a fun surface-level adventure, it's great. If you're also curious to see what it has to say about life, then it also kind of dives into that side of things as well. Yeah, this game gets very deep and it doesn't get deep until you play it for a little while,

which is very interesting to me because I know when we first started playing and we'll get into some of the gameplay stuff here in a little bit, but I was caught off guard by a lot of the gameplay stuff. I was like, oh, this is an interesting mix of stuff. But then as you play the game, you get these little snippets of some of the worldview and what they're starting to kind of poke at a little bit. And then as you get further and further along

and into subsequent playthroughs, it starts getting real deep. Yeah, with it hard yeah and like and that's a like that's a big surprise and i think that's where a lot of people that are massive fans of this series really start to find their footing because that's when it goes beyond just being like hey this is a neat game and game and has fun gameplay and stuff like that, into like, whoa. If you get into that, I think that's where a lot of people start calling this game a masterpiece and stuff like that. Because there is a ton of depth in that that's under the surface that you don't necessarily see right away. Yeah. Myself being someone who really thrives on wanting story, wanting to think about a game.

I say it too many times on this show that I like to cry at video games. This one did not make me cry. Spoiler, maybe a second playthrough with a different perspective or whatever. But the whole thing is, I got to be straight up. When I first started playing this game, the first couple hours, it felt like work. I'm like, I do not want to play this game. It was not my type of game i'm not an action game player and then we started getting hit with these hints of like little extra here and there and then slowly as the game goes you just all of a sudden get dumped on with like philosophy story um and like there's religion in the game but it's not like preaching religion it's that the like there's characters in the game that are following these things, and it all kind

of goes into how you think as a replicant and how you think... I'm trying to get too far into it, but when I said that things aren't as simple as originally presented, very quickly, I was like, I am now intrigued by this game that seems like it's a straight up button mash fest to think. And I really appreciated that to be like, hey, now I started to actually want to play the game, which all came from this philosophy and the religion and the story in the game, which I was not at surface level expecting at all. Yeah, I know when I first started playing, I thought I knew exactly where the game was going, because they send you out, go kill these evil robots, right? This is literally your first mission. And you start

running around, and the robots say that they're scared, and they're running away from you, and they're crying. And the whole time, 9S is really hitting you over the head, being like, wow, these evil aliens, these evil machines, they really know how to sound like humans and i'm like okay yeah we get it right where do you draw the line where you know are robots with ai are they actually people are they alive and i thought the game was gonna look at that because that's like so many other video games right but this game goes way deeper into that where it has a lot to say about human existence even though the entire game you're playing as androids who are fighting against machines but it still goes into an awful lot

about humanity and existence and you know there's a lot to chew on in this game it is weird that you might not actually uh encounter an actual human in this entire game. And you introspectively think about humanity the entire time you're playing the game. Just interesting. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. All right, so that tells you a little bit about the base story. Let's talk about gameplay. All right, now let's start at the very beginning of the game. All right, Josh, talk about the intro. Yeah, Josh, did you know we would be playing asteroids for the first 20 minutes of this game? Dude,

I will say the beginning of this game caught me 100% off guard because I told you I hadn't seen footage. I had heard of the title of the series and I knew that it existed. And I felt like for some reason I knew that there was fighting. Maybe it's like Michael said, the cover art and seeing swords or something. So I was like, I thought this was like a game with like action combat or something. But you feel like you're in a shoot-em-up.

And I was like, this is great. I haven't played a shoot-em-up game in forever. Is that what this game is? And it is definitely not a shoot-em-up game or a space game. Isn't that a shmup? I can't remember. What do you call those? Side-scrollers. Yeah. Or or galaga that's the first 20 minutes but no so you're thrust into

this intro prologue kind of sequence where you know the game's kind of introducing itself it's introducing the characters and some of that stuff and what i found hilarious was that this prologue was hard man you fight a big boss thing in the beginning. And I didn't have a grasp of the controls. I didn't have a grasp of the fighting style. I didn't have a grasp of dodging and anything that was important in this game. The shooting sequences where you're flying around in a spaceship just blasting hundreds of little flying robot robot things was great i was like but what is this game i think was my initial question within like the first 20 minutes of playing it it was funny because legitimately i i bought the game on my ps4

and uh josh and paul played on on their computers on the pc and in discord on their computers, on the PC. And in Discord, I was... Because on the PS4, you can't buy the base game anymore. I had to buy the Game of the Year edition or some special edition. It was like $30. And I messaged Paul and Josh in Discord and was like, does this game start out like Asteroids? Am I playing the right game? Did I buy the right game?

Because this doesn't at all seem like what you guys are talking about. Because they had a weekend start on it. because i had family in town and stuff like that so i started a little bit later but it was hilarious i was like is this the game i was totally taken taken aback a little bit by it yeah it's almost a little bit like star wars where instead of being like red leader to gold leader it's like you know 9s to 2b to o2 to you know whatever the other you know character names are and much like star wars they all die yeah there's a lot of death in the beginning so yeah the my biggest issue with the prologue is that there's no save point oh so you cannot save this game whenever you want

now i died not to the giant colossal thing that you fight in your ship but i did die to the like saw blade boss at the very that's the hard part and i died on that once so i was like oh my gosh i've got to play this whole thing okay but now i know where to go and i'm gonna you can actually like jump past enemies you don't have to fight everybody if you don't want i raced all the way to the end my character got stuck in the ground and i couldn't move so the saw blade just goes right over me and killed me again and i think i even messaged josh when i was like please tell me i can save right after this fight because i have to do it a third time this is where paul dms me this is what i love man is paul messages

me and he's like i might not play this game it was like a whole hour lost because of a bug and it was the only time I ever had that. The whole rest of the game was smooth sails. And I did. It's funny because the prologue is long, and there is no save point at all. And it's like a straight hour of gameplay where if you die at any point, you have to start all over again. Yes, you realize you can just run past enemies. But I felt bad for you, Paul, because I was like, oh, no, like I didn't die, but I came close a few times.

And then right after the prologue, you can save and then saving is not an issue pretty much for the rest of the game. But it was just funny to see Paul's like anger at dying once and then dying again and then being like, I hate this game. No, no joke when i when i went through that part i died to the saw blade guy as well and i'm like i already don't want to play this game before i started i literally went into the settings and said sweet i'm going from hard mode past normal mode down to easy mode to get through this hour again i'm like i'm flying i do not want to do this right now i went right into easy mode and flew past all of it and then put it right back to the second most difficult.

Because I default always on the second most difficult mode. I never go hardest because I think hardest is I don't want to hate myself. I've played Elden Ring. I don't want to hate myself by playing something too hard. But I'm like, I am not above saying that I've already gotten through this. I'm going easy mode. I do not want to waste another hour to this part again i'm going right past it and i did and then i got to the save point and put it right back to second most hard very nice so once you get past the initial mech flying which they do return to later in the game so

this does come back every once in a while but for a majority of the game that's where you do get to use your weapons uh josh you want to talk a little bit about how a majority of the game, that's where you do get to use your weapons. Josh, do you want to talk a little bit about how the rest of the gameplay works as far as combat? Yeah. So the rest of the game is your standard third person, run around the world, come across monsters. It is action-based combat. So you've got your light attack, your heavy attack, your jumps, your dashes, all fairly standard fare there. There's nothing in the combat in this game that stood out to me as necessarily unique in that regard, with the exception of you have your pod. And your pod is basically this little hovering robot that follows

you around the entire game. You can hang from it if you jump off a building that's way too tall, so you don't take fall damage. But the pod has a little machine gun built into it. And so what's really neat about the combat in this game is that you can do all of your melee combat with your different weapons and your combos and stuff like that. And there's definitely button combos where you can do different things. And based on the weapon that you have, your move sets are different and stuff like that. But the pod can actually shoot bullets. And what's neat is you can do both at the same time. So if you're just squeezing the trigger nonstop,

your little pod guy is just machine gunning everything. You're wailing around with your weapons and stuff like that. And, you know, it's kind of chaotic almost in a way. It's crazy chaotic. Yeah. The pod also, you can equip it with um different like an ultimate yeah they're kind of like all special ability i can't remember the name of it now it's um i forget what the the anyway they have a term for it right where it's

like you know it has like a giant charge up laser it can put a shield around you it can give you a giant hammer so i have all these different like ultimate type things that are on like a longer cooldown but that's the gist of like the combat in this game um i did get some different weapons i thought it was very cool that depending on the weapon sets that you have and you can freely change between two of the sets um i got a big giant axe at one point where she would swing the axe and then throw it kind of in a circle and it would kind of boomerang around and hit people. But then I got a spear at one point. And then it was cool because she would kind of plant the spear in the ground and then kick everybody in a circle around the spear. So there was actually some

pretty cool animations, some pretty cool fighting styles that were involved in the game the only downside is you kind of just wind up mashing buttons like the combat is not a little bit the combat's not so strategic that you really need to like put together combos and time your dashes really really well and stuff like that because it's very easy to just use healing items it's a neat combat system but it's not like the standout in this game by any means yeah i mean i would say the only time that i really had to get strategic was there was a lot of boss fights where i had to time a lot of things differently and i kind of had to put together some combos um i did like though that you could easily switch between weapon sets.

So I was running around with four completely different weapons because my main set was always like the katana starter that I got to level three real fast. And then I had the big broadsword. And then I used the spear and an axe in the other set because you could do all those things and then just quickly push the up button on the D-pad and swap it, which was kind of cool.

Did you guys ever get the the random pod that was in the middle of the desert that gave you two special abilities no i fished one up okay i fished up a second pod i found a second pod in the middle of the desert and it had two special abilities one of them was like it would just target all these things on the screen and put boxes around them and it would send out like this tony stark-esque like like these missiles at him yeah it was so cool and then it had the big hammer by default that was fun um i thought that kind of breathed a little bit of extra life into the combat was i had to change weapons often because the combat like you said it's a button mash extraordinaire there's really

nothing special to it i found myself more wanting to jump and dash in the air to make the game seem more fun to play with the combat, to get more artsy with it and make it look cooler than the actual necessity to actually have to jump and dodge and dash. Well, the funny thing about the combat in this game is that it intentionally starts off relatively easy and it ramps up. And we're going to talk about how this game requires multiple playthroughs it intentionally ramps up to the point that it is impossible at the end of the game and that is by design it's built into the story it's built into the message of the game but in the beginning i was kind of worried because you can press a button

to focus on a singular enemy and i would hold the button for my pod to shoot it and you can just run circles around any enemy and they'll die and in the beginning i was like am i accidentally cheesing all of these fights because nothing is hitting me but then soon you get you know harder boss battles and then subsequent playthroughs and and things do ramp up a lot so it is kind of funny how the combat works um similarly to you guys i thought it was it was fun i thought the combat was fine i i don't know that it necessarily had anything crazy unique but what i did really love is the chip system and we gotta spend a little bit of time talking about this before you go into that though i have

to say that i completely missed something that you said, and I have to comment on it. Of course, of course, Paul fished up a new pod. Listen, if you're new to this podcast, if this is your first episode, Paul will find a way to fish. I guarantee if there's a game out there that has a mod that is not supposed to be a fishing game, Paul will mod it just to be able to fish in the game the fact that i found my extra pot of the desert somewhere and you fished one up does not surprise me at all it's hilarious i did not fish one time in this game because i'm like fishing at all i couldn't figure it out and i'm like i'm out of here it'll make me fish if it makes me want to fish it didn't so i didn't fish but that's hilarious now we can talk about the chips, but I thought it was funny.

Any game that will let me fish, farm, and cook, I'm 100% in, and I'll do it every time. I'm totally into it. This game, and I know that we're not really talking about the fishing. You can fish up sharks, which is wild. So I would throw out my pod, because you send the pod into, like, if you go to the ocean, you can fish in the ocean. And sometimes it would literally pull up what i can only imagine would be like a 700 pound shark and then it just disappears into your inventory which always makes me chuckle it's like how am i carrying these eight sharks that are now in my inventory paul where are your pockets to be where are you keeping those

pockets i was only disappointed that i couldn't cook all these fish that's what i really wanted to do but they they don't let you do that. All right. So, yeah, let's talk about the chip system. Basically, long story short, instead of having like classes or a skill tree, what you end up finding out in the world are computer chips. And since you are an Android, it only makes sense that you can swap out your hardware. So the game gives you a certain capacity of like chip space, and then you can start to plug in or unplug various chips to give you different bonuses. So what's really clever is that even things that are very basic to the UI,

like being able to see the enemy health bar, that is a chip that is installed into your hardware. Now it's only one space. It's very cheap. I always left it in there. Similarly, how much damage you do for every swing or for every hit of your gun, that's another chip. But then they start to get much more advanced. Were there any chips that you guys thought were kind of neat? It's interesting, too, with this chip system, because the stronger the ability, the more space the chip takes up. So they definitely do a really neat job of balancing out how good this ability or perk is versus how much space it takes up. And it's like you said, even the UI elements, they take up chip space.

And so if you don't want to see your damage numbers, you can remove that chip if you want to. It even has an OS chip, and it says, hey, if you remove this, you'll die because this is your operating system as the Android. And so it gives you full control over your character and how you want to do this. Some of the chips that I found, and I think what helped me out a lot in the combat, was you get healed from damage that you do, and you get healed from damage that you do and you get healed from enemies that you kill. And I made sure I slotted those because I, I am an, an aggressive like combat person. I don't really want to focus a ton on defense. And so for me,

just wailing into these robots or this boss fit my play style and allowed me to heal up and things like that. There's, I mean, there's a plethora of different chips though. I mean mean you get run speed chips a crit chance chips uh there's a fishing a fishing spot chip like 2500 gold it'll show you where all the fishing spots are on the map sure there was one of those

oh dude my my favorite chip was where it would automatically use your heal items threshold yep dude healing in this game was not terribly easy on controller because it was always at minimum two buttons. You'd have to cycle with the D-pad and then press, I think it was B, in order to activate it. Mine was Circle on PlayStation. It's hard to be dodging boss battles while trying to heal. Now, it took up a lot of space, but I loved... By the way, I spent all of my early money on increasing my chip size

so I could equalize all these things. Yeah, it was 100% what I spent my money on. I think I bought one weapon. No, I started early on by buying a second weapon because I realized I had like $25,000 money and I was like flying through it. And then I bought like 100 medium heels and i didn't yeah i i legit no it's 99 you can carry 99 of them so i spent all my money and then after that

i went over to the other vendor and i was like oh shoot this guy has this is my skill tree essentially is the chips and so everything after that was chips and i think maybe i bought another weapon later on when i had like a hundred thousand because i you know you give me an open world you give me side quests i'm doing the side quests and i did a lot of side quests and that was a lot of money but you know it's yeah mostly chips after that so michael just went with like the diablo model of just mashing the potions give me potions and that's exactly how i play diablo that's exactly how i do it oh yeah i thought the

chip stuff was very cool and it seemed like a precursor to cyberpunk cyberpunk has a somewhat similar system where you get a certain number of mem chips and you can use you know more powerful abilities um but i thought that was really clever and and pretty neat yeah it's all based off john mnemonic exactly what a good move and uh i don't know if you guys ever tested it i did for a little bit just to see how it works but you collect a ton of chips that you can only equip if you are on easy mode and this includes auto dodging yeah auto attack auto weapon swap and if you put them all on like you're just watching the the world's most amazing player ever take over your character all you can do is walk around and it will automatically dodge everything

and kill everything in your path so what is it just story mode at that point yeah it's literally basically story mode gotcha for sure um one of the things about the chip system that's cool too is you get because you wind up getting duplicate, you get these chips that have like plus marks next to them. And so you can combine them to make them better, but they take up more space. And so the higher quality chip that you find, you can combine them. But if you find a really high quality chip, it doesn't take up as much space. So if you find two high quality chips and you combine them, you get like double the effects, but not double the space requirements, which i thought was a really neat system and then you can actually have two different chip sets so you can build your character for like traversal which i actually used um to

where i put all like movement enhancing chips and like the dash you know reducing chips and stuff like that on one chip set and then i I had a combat chipset because it's so easy to switch between them on the fly. So I thought that upgrade system and the ability to swap between the two was a really neat built-in perk to the game as well. Yeah. Funny thing is, here's Michael's stupid hour again for a little bit. Yeah, I just called myself dumb. So the world is not enormous but it becomes significantly smaller about a quarter or a third of the way through the game when you're able to teleport the first chips that i ever upgraded because i didn't know you could teleport

later on was to max out my run speed so because i'm like ah back and forth back at pascal's village again oh my goodness. And then I realized that I had spent way too much space. And so then I kind of accidentally did the same thing that you did, Josh, where I'm like, this is my run chipset and this is my combat chipset. Yeah. Oh, nice. And if that sounds overwhelming, the game will also automatically put in sets for you. You just say, I want it to be combat focused or defensive focused, and it'll just auto plug in what the game says is the best and you can tell 9s to do the same thing too which is great because we haven't even hit on that you have a companion the whole time

you're playing you have a partner you have a second robot that plays with your replicant whatever it's called and you can also hold down i think it's b button for you guys it was circle for me and tell him hey i want you want you to go more defensive, more balanced, more aggressive, whatever you want, just like your own chipset. And by the way, I did pretty much most of the time because I didn't want to deal with the chipset. Towards the end of the game, I pretty much just told it to pick for

me because you also have that option where it basically just says optimize my chipset for me based on balance. So that's what I did, especially at that point where you've got, you know, dozens and dozens of chips.'s hard to sort through now did we i don't i mean we kind of jumped right into gameplay and combat and stuff like that but did we even talk about like this is an action rpg with like you know quests and worlds and and and you know side quests and that kind of stuff because i don't know that i think it's an open world action RPG button masher.

Yeah. And so this is, I mean, honestly, this is an RPG. Now, it's action based, but you do have a hub. There's a camp that you wind up finding, and that's kind of your hub for most of the world that you're in. The world has different zones. So you start off in this kind of abandoned cityscape. You'll go to the desert. You'll go to the forest and some other areas and stuff

like that that unlock as you play. Dude, that amusement park is weird, man. It really is. You can ride roller coasters in this game. And so you do wind up talking to characters that give you quests and you can get side quests and they'll say, hey, you got to go over here and rescue this

scientist. We got a distress signal from somewhere over there. You need to go do that. So there is a lot of running from one place to another. Like Michael said, you can teleport using these vending machines, which is weird. And it literally is a vending machine. It's got little circles, the stacks in it. But it makes sense as an Android, right? Like you're uploading your consciousness into the cloud, and then it's pumping into another body coming out of another vending machine. So it's a clever way to do fast travel. That makes sense.

So this is a fully-fledged RPG. It's just as action-based combat. But yeah, you got weapons, and you don't really get armor do you i don't remember armor no no it's just a skirt and a kind of once you count the chips some of the chips yeah exactly um so yeah i mean so i can't remember if we mentioned that or i don't think we did but just to kind of give you an idea so like a holistic view of what this game actually is combat is a huge part of it um and you know we already kind of mentioned that some of the combat is is as a spaceship it's just like space invaders shoot them up tight combat as well but yeah and it

is also i mean it's open world i mean you you don't have to at some point you can just go do your own thing if you want to you know and uh go run around and go explore areas. The only exception I have with that is I did not find anything off the beaten path. I found my second pod. There's some optional bosses. There's nothing that's really worth going out of your way for. It's kind of a desolate world, though. I guess it's not. And maybe I think it's

that way intentionally because we're talking about like, you know, it's Earth at 12,000 AD and robots have killed everything, you know, so I think it's earth at 12 000 ad and robots have killed everything you know so i think it's intentional but it does it definitely feels barren this is not like skyrim where if you just wander around you're gonna find tons of stuff to do but the game does do a very good job of guiding you to your next objectives like none of your side quests are really far away and you always know where you're supposed to go on your main storyline which is something that i do complain about sometimes in other quote-unquote air quotes open world games where it's like which one of

these is my main story where am i supposed to be going you're very clearly driven to do the things that you do in the main story and it's very clearly even marked on your map as one dot means side quest four dots means main quest and you just know where to go which is kind of nice but yeah they're right there's not a lot of off-the-beaten-path stuff. You can go wander off, but it's mostly just to kill more monsters or more alien Humpty Dumpties and get more experience to level your character up. That's about it. Can we talk about how terrible the map is?

The map is not great, and it doesn't zoom out terribly well. I got lost a couple times by not being able to see where the quest was i don't know if it was just a bug because it was if this is a pc port or what but there was a couple times where i had no idea where to go and i had to actually wander around a little bit and then went you know i haven't explored over here let me go over there and then lo and behold that's where the quest was and it was like oh okay you. I didn't like how on your main map, it would show you your objectives. But then when you go into the teleport map, it wouldn't. And so I'd have to hop back and forth a lot.

Like teleport map, shoot. Which camp was it? Okay, back to the main map. Let me back out by pushing the back button four times and then go look at that. Yeah, the map was not great. And it was very... I don't know. It looked like a Windows 3.5 video game map.

Did you guys ever talk to the character that's in the refugee camp where you can ask them questions about the game itself? Yes. Yes. And one of the questions is, which is very clever. And it talks about like, Hey, how come I can't save whenever I want? And Hey, the map is hard to read. And I actually asked him that and he goes, well, that's want and hey the map is hard to read and i actually asked him

that and he goes well that's as good as the map gets yep yeah i was like wait a minute like you guys know people are complaining about this you put a character in the game for me to complain about the map and then you basically say this is as good as the map you're gonna get like that part made me chuckle man i only had one really frustrated part in the map but it was near the end where i was supposed to go to a subterranean area, and I didn't know that. And I'm standing, I'm like, I'm here. I am here.

What am I supposed to do? It doesn't show you caves. It doesn't show you entrances. You're just supposed to figure it out. And I'm like, but I am standing here. Yeah. But again, I knew, okay, I'm just going to wander over here. And then all of a sudden the little pod a a

one steak sauce what's his name the little pod guy with you oh uh josh what's josh's name again i don't remember pot they're all pod numbers aren't they like yeah i think it's pod well anyways the pod's like oh we're in the area where we let where this person was last seen i'm like okay cool i think i'm in the right spot now let me just keep going down this area and sure enough there was a cave down there all right uh there are still a lot of things to talk about here but we do have to mention the fact that the game has a whopping 26 endings now there are five five real endings right a b c d and e and then there are 21 additional endings that are more or less game over screens that you can hit in this game.

Now, now setting aside the main endings. All right. Were there any of the novel side endings that you found during the game or any that you thought were pretty funny? Cause I had one that hit me by surprise. The removing the operating system chip that says, dude,

if you remove this you'll die is it was pretty hilarious because it's like and it's true it's 100 true like you pull the chip out you're like i don't believe this like and then you pull the chip out and it's like hey game over you're dead yeah for me i i hit a really funny one where you go to pascal's village and then he tells you to go to the next area. Now, one thing about this game that's very confusing is, and I love the fact that it does it, but it makes direction hard to know, is that the game will randomly put you into a 2D side-scroller view, and then all of a sudden it goes back to three-dimensional running around wherever you want.

I loved it. I do actually love what they do with the camera in this game. Yeah. Very, very cool. But I thought i was going the correct direction when pascal says go to this next village and i went the wrong way and i got a game i got a game over screen it popped up and said to be decided i don't remember verbatim but it's like to be decided that she was no longer going to look into this next village and decided to walk off into the horizon and then like i unlocked ending t or something like that and it was like oh i didn't even do that on purpose like sometimes if you just go in the wrong direction you might accidentally get a game over screen yeah i go

ahead michael i didn't see any it's funny because i knew the game had multiple endings we talked about it without going into details because we didn't want any spoilers i finished the game and i was like i don't see any place where you could have a different ending in this game it's the one ending and then sure enough it's stuff like what paul was talking about where you just accidentally walk off or you're given a self-destruct and i never tried it i almost i accidentally almost did one time and i like well if i self-destructed my dad or pull the chip out but i never found anything else and then later on you figure out that like okay it's it's all based on replayability if you play through the second time you get a different play through all this

stuff but i didn't i didn't find anything and so we're like what ones did you find i'm like nothing i played i got ending a yeah so let's let's talk about that so when you play the first time the game ends kind of suddenly i mean not really it wraps up certain elements but there are still dangling plot devices that aren't resolved and i wasn't expecting that to be the end yet no yeah yeah so so the game kind of hits you all of a sudden. You realize you, quote, beat it. But then the game pops up and says, Square Enix has an announcement. The story doesn't end here. Please play through multiple times. It will unlock new parts of the story. And so in the game, you do have to do multiple playthroughs in order to finish the game. If you only play through the game once and get ending A, you've really only played through,

I don't know, maybe 35, 40% of the game. You have to play through multiple times. And this is how you're going to forward the story. Now, I think that's a really cool idea in theory. I think where they really kind of messed this up is that almost the entire first playthrough, 2B and 9S are together and fighting together. There are times that the characters are separated. And the second playthrough is from the perspective of 9S. So you're going through a lot of the exact same areas, fighting the exact same bosses. The combat's a little different because 9S can hack into things, and he only equips one weapon instead of two. But I think for a lot of people, they start playing playthrough two, realize that a lot of it coincides with playthrough one, and then they give up.

Because really, it's playthrough three when the game then really hits you with all the reveals and the furthering of the story. I thought it was very interesting because it's like you said, when your first playthrough, you kind of know you're getting close to the end of the game or what you think is the end of the game. And then you beat it and you kind of go, oh, I beat it. Like, okay. And then it straight up tells you, hey, you have not seen everything there is to see. This is only a part of the game. Please play through again. It will change. It'll be worth it. So then it's like you play through as 9S. And for me, that was a little off-putting, man,

because it's like you said, Paul, I feel like a solid 60% of that was just rehashing everything I had already done. The only times it was different was the parts in the game where you're separated from 2B. And then, so yes, you do absolutely get that different perspective because now you're playing as 9S. And so,

you know, the combats, but the combat's not as good. The hacking sequences are like an old school 80s arcade shooter. I did not like the hacking. You know what I mean? So it's interesting that they added yet another gameplay element on top of this action RPG spaceship side shoot-em-up type game. Now they've got a centipede old school asteroids type game built into it.

So it's like, yes. Shoot the bubbles. They tried to mix it up a little bit, but I'm like, dude, I just spent 12 hours doing all of this. This is not interesting enough to make me want to put in another 10 hours. But to its discredit, once you beat the second playthrough, that's where things really start to take off when we talk about this game being a masterpiece and getting into a lot of that existentialism, you know, crisis, you know, philosophy type stuff. And that's where the game really starts to get really deep.

And it's like, why did you do that? You know what I mean? Like, just be a 30-hour game. If you would just put it all together, I would have been hooked from the beginning. But when you tell me like, Hey, you beat, but now you got to play it again, but it's going to be a little bit different.

Like it really puts me off in that regard. But then it's like the cake's not a lie in this game, because if you're willing to put in the time and do three or four or five, or even see the very last playthrough, you know what I mean? That's where the payoff is. And I know that you can chapter select. And so once you get to that third and fourth and fifth playthrough, you don't have to put in 10 hours every time. But it's like, dude, why did you put this barrier in front of me like this? Get groceries delivered across the GTA from from real canadian superstore with pc express

shop online for super prices and super savings try it today and get up to 75 in pc optimum points visit superstore.ca to get started yeah i i don't know i i i think it's interesting yeah it's kind of like that i read i read a book series kind of the same way where you know it's called old man's war first book's amazing second book's amazing third book is the second book from a different person's perspective and i got halfway through it and was like i'm done and that's kind of how this is except in that case there was really no fourth or fifth book or anything like that i think there's enough in this game for me to say I'm willing to get through it, but as me, Michael, who likes

story, to get through this again and it's not a long game, so I could do it again. Maybe I go on Easy Mode and put in those chips that let me do everything on my own and just go to sleep with the wheel and just run around and let it just blaze through it. But to see the story, for me, it'd be

worth it, but I think for a lot of people, like Josh especially, you don't care as much about the story. You certainly aren't looking to cry as much as I am. Maybe your beard is. I don't know why I have to make a beard reference every show. That's too this show. But again, same thing that what you're talking about, though, is is it enough for me to really want to go through

to see the third playthrough if I know the second one's going to be painful right yeah well at this point of the show i think we can just kind of open it up to anything else you guys might want to talk about in the game you know i don't know if you guys maybe want to talk about the music we have to mention the music you want to talk about that dude the music there's certain things in this game that really tell me like this is this is a very well done extremely artistic game number one the music is so good and so out of place sometimes you know not a traditional stoke score no but it's amazing but you'll just be running around this old barren, desolate city, and then this angelic soundtrack kicks in. A band.

Yeah, like, what is happening? What is this? But then it's so good at the same time. I want to download this and listen to it on my AirPods. You know what I mean? Just hear it in the background or something it almost felt like if you're doing homework or something like that or you're doing work and you put your ipod you're gonna put your earbuds in and you're just listening to random music while you're doing something else like that's kind of how it felt and was

am i wrong on this but was there not music playing a hundred percent of the time you're playing this game was there always music if there was don't remember. And I think it kicks in at certain parts. I thought there was always music. I could be wrong. Maybe I just didn't notice it. So yeah, the original soundtrack on this is phenomenal, in my opinion. It really adds something to the game, even though it's very odd when it happens or where it happens. But it just... I don't know. It kind of does something for me. And then we kind of touched on this, but the camera angles, this game did some phenomenal stuff with different camera angles and just making the game feel different at times. Paul, you mentioned it. This is an open world,

third person action RPG where you're dashing and running around and jumping up on buildings and floating down. But then all of a sudden, it'll go to like a 2D side scroller where you're running around a giant factory tower, you know, and then doing it like that. Or a sequence where you're in an amusement park and it's open world and you're running around and then it's this weird 2D sequence where the camera's super zoomed out

and your character's like a half inch tall on the screen and you can just see this massive factory in the background or something you know or you're you're flying around in a like a mech suit like a gundam wing you know and then it's like so then there's that perspective it's just it does some very neat things it was almost a little jarring at first because i'm like wait what like what why am i 2d all of a? But then as you play the game, you start to kind of put it all together. And then you go, dude, somebody had a very artistic touch when they were making this game.

And it makes it wholly unique, in my opinion, in that regard. Yeah, I very early on was enthralled by the way the cameras moved. At first, it was frustrating. Because when I, you know, remember the first hour I talked about where I didn't want to play the game? I'm like'm so confused why i want to go that way i can't go

that way i gotta go side to side now um but then later on i realized that it was just it was part of how they changed the combat and made things a little more fresh because like we said the combat does not very much it's not very complex uh but the camera angles made it so you're almost playing a different game inside the same game every once in a while um which i liked uh something i wanted to mention about uh what i noticed is there's some pretty good hilarious side quest action i won't spoil a whole lot but you know pascal's village there's a uh there's a robot who wants you to pass love notes around uh which is funny um the philosopher guy uh there's a character named donkey who's in the desert that's not really the character's name but i can't say the character's name that's the g word yeah yeah that's

the right very random that a character has that name by right right and she's very condescending and she almost reminded me of glados from uh from uh portals because she really just wants to see you fail she keeps making you try to do things things which was interesting but i don't know i wanted to ask you guys this did you notice because i i the good thing about this game is the side quests are not long it's not like you're going to go off and do something for six hours that's a side quest you pretty much if you pick up a side quest it's run out and find these things you're going to probably find them as you go out anyways and then come back and just pass them to the quest giver but did you guys notice there was an event that happens

like two-thirds of the way through the game where you fail all of your side quests? And I was really disappointed about that because I had at one point like 26 side quests going. Something happens, and they don't give you a warning. All of your side quests are failed. And I'm like, oh, that's a bummer. I guess I'm just going to do main storyline now.

I don't know if you guys ran across that or not. I did not. No. I did like, oh, that's a bummer. I guess I'm just going to do main storyline now. I don't know if you guys ran across that or not. I did not. No, I didn't. I did some side quests, but you're much more of a side quest person than I am. I think I did a handful of them, but I didn't get 26 by any means. Yeah, I'm usually Mr. Side Quest, and I only did one because I was like, I don't know how long this game is. Yeah, I want to make sure I can finish it. And so I did just I think one or two of the very early side quests they didn't really seem to give you anything

crazy important and i kind of just ignored them from that point on no i learned early on that i was doing it just for the story and that's it because there was some funny things that happened in the side quests but then you i mean you're getting a thousand gold here and there which you kill a couple of robot aliens uh Humpty Dumpty's in the desert. You get that anyways. Yeah. Yeah. The one thing I was going to bring up since Michael did mention the self-destruct option,

the game does let you press both your thumbsticks and self-destruct. I assumed that that would kill me. I never used it once during the entire game. I thought you'd have to at some point. After I was done playing well yeah you do technically self-destruct in the story but it's not when you're controlling characters it's during a cut scene early on that's not a late game spoiler by any means so then when i finish the game i do what i always do i start reading reviews i start watching videos

on youtube to see what other people think about these games, because I try to avoid as much as I can. And I immediately notice that there's hundreds of videos of 2B self-destructing. And I'm like, oh, I must have missed something really cool in this game. And without getting too terribly graphic here, let's just say that 2B's skirt is apparently laced with C4. She can blow it up at any point. And it's a little revealing. Let's just say that.

And there's a lot of creeps on YouTube. She looks like an aerobics instructor in a leotard after that. That's going to be the friendly way of saying that. Wow. It's true. the steel that's gonna be the friendly way of saying that wow it's true yeah yeah it's true um there's there's a there's an interesting following for this game that's for sure for some people yeah there's a lot of climbing on ladders as well um do we want to get into end game spoilers do we want to talk about that at all or do we we want to get into end game spoilers? Do we want to talk about that at all? Or do we just want to leave that on the side?

I maybe let's not completely spoil it for people that might play it, but we can talk about how this game gets a little deep. Sometimes some of the themes at the very end, like, you know, as you do this, as you do the playthroughs, you have, they call them routes. You have route a that's their A. That's your first playthrough. Then you have Route B. You play as 9S. And we've kind of talked about that's really the same as Route A with just a couple exceptions.

Then you get into Route C, D, and E. And that's where the game really starts to get deep. You do meet another android. Man, this is going to be really hard without big spoilers, but I don't want to spoil stuff. Don't spoil it for me either, because I want to keep playing. Yeah. And so you do meet other androids. There is some back history. You get these discoveries as you play the game. But the whole time, these routes are giving you glimpses into certain things that are happening. And the story that you feel like is

unfolding doesn't completely unfold until you get to route E, which is the actual true final ending of the game. And so that is where you get the payoff. You get the reveal, you get the twist, you get all that stuff. It's very, very cool. You can read tons of stuff on the internet about it. This has created a ton of discussion. But this is where you get into some of these choices that you have to make. And your choices actually matter. And there is a part where the game actually asks you to make a choice? Are you willing to do this? And if you do, I don't think it's a spoiler to say that it deletes everything in the game. Well, yes.

You know? And I think without being overtly spoilerish, but to where people out there who have played it understand what happens in the end of the game, they do a very good job earlier in the game where they tell you if you're connected to the internet, you can see where other players have died, and you can loot those bodies, and they will give you items, or you can attempt to repair it, and it will run around and fight on your side. And so as you continue down these routes, the game really hits on certain themes like suffering. To exist means

a cycle of life and death. And you're fighting against that. The game talks about, is that a curse? Why would that be put on us? And not being happy about it. And then it does start to dive into certain themes about how you can work together as a team. And so there are certain things that you can do that will actually impact the game for other people, which is very clever. And this game really does something very unique with the end credits at the very end of the game in Route E, where it continues to advance the story because there's still a playable element as the credits roll, which is kind of neat because normally you hit the credits and you just want to skip them. Some games will

let you do things like Smash Brothers. I remember you can fight the end credits and there's some goofy stuff like that. But this game really builds on that idea in a very neat way. And it also builds a sense of connection and community with other near-automata players that I'm not sure any other game has ever really tapped into. Yeah. If you want a fun action RPG with a very neat artistic style, play the game once or twice. If you want that, like, I really want that deep thought, I want the payoff of the twist and the big reveal. And I want to cry a little bit, maybe like Michael would want to. That's where you want to play through route E, you know, and it's going to take some effort. Don't get me wrong, but that's where the big payoff is.

And like I kind of said in the beginning, I think that's where people go from. This was a fun game to wow. This game really touched me. It's memorable. You know, some people call it a masterpiece in that regard. So it's kind of like, what do you want? And what are you willing to put in to get to that point? Well, and it's almost even more than that. It's almost like as I look online, there's almost an entire school of philosophy behind Nier Automata. People have really in-depth

discussions as though this is a real thing. But it kind of is because it hits on a lot of humanity, even though there's no humans in the game, which is really interesting to me. Yeah, it's very clever. If you only play it once for Route A, you're probably leaving the game saying, it's pretty good. And you're probably wondering what all the fuss is about the game. If you get all the way through Route E, that's where you can kind of see, oh, this game's actually striving to do a lot. And it'll certainly be a lot to chew on, a lot to think about. This is a game that definitely sticks with you after you finish it. It's hard to just put it down and forget about.

It has some very memorable themes and moments, especially at the end. Yep. All right. Well, we're an hour into the episode here. That's a lot of what we think about the game. Josh, I understand you have pulled up some community reviews. I have been a good host and I did my job and pulled up reviews. So I'm not scrambling on this one, but yes, so we've kind of broken down our thoughts on the game. We'll get into how we rate the game here in a little bit, but we always like to give different perspectives, right? Everybody's a little bit different. And so if we read some reviews from the community, some good ones, some bad ones,

it kind of just helps to kind of give you an idea of what near automata is about as a whole. So that's what we're going to do. Um, this first review is recommended. They have 178 hours on record and they say this game is the most beautiful, heartwarming and heartbreaking story I have ever experienced. This first playthrough is like a warm blanket and then a cold morning. Every route experience from then on are breathtaking and emotion-provoking. Please, if you get this game, play the game more than once. Every time you play,

the ending will be different, and each playthrough expands massively on the last. This game has touched my soul. I have fallen in love with the lore of this world. I think a lot of people would say that exactly. Yep. Yep, because it's very true.

You got to kind of put in the effort on this one to get the payoff. All right. So this next one is not recommended. 39 hours on record. And it says, The biggest problem with this game is how backloaded everything is. Route A and B have very shallow plots, and B is 70% a retread of A. C is where some

interesting stuff actually happens, and by then you're probably sick from running through the repeated assets twice in a row. Near One did this, but the new content was all in one big chunk, at least, rather than switching between new, recycled, new, recycled, etc. A and B could have easily been combined and just had you switch perspectives when necessary and merged moved or cut a few scenes one thousand percent but route two or route b of this game is such a colossal it's worthless it's a waste of time yeah it really is because you have this amazing thing that is waiting for people to... Right around the corner.

Yes. But you put this roadblock in front of gamers to say, hey, you have to grind. You have to play combat that's not nearly as fun as Route A. You have to go through the same story, the same locations, and have less fun doing it. Except for maybe 30% of the time where you're actually playing as nines and seeing things you haven't seen before. Like, why did you do that to me? Maybe that's the point, though. Maybe the

whole point of it is that the game is... No, like, to have a hidden passage in there. Essentially, the game is complete if you play it all the way. You play the 20 hours to complete the whole game, right? It's a good enough game. It's a fun fun hack and slash but maybe you have to get through the pain to get to the real payoff i don't know maybe i'm just there's a little little bit of truth in that

but yeah i still think that route b yeah it's just such a misstep i don't get i agree with you okay and this next one is recommended it says four hours on record but i've seen a lot of these type lower hour reviews so I think this is people that played because this was a console exclusive and then became a PC port. So I think a lot of these lower hour ones are people that actually have played through the game because they seem to know what they're talking

about, but their hours don't reflect it so much. So anyway, this is recommended. It says, be me. Start playing the game. Get bodied in the tutorial mission. Have to use all my starting healing items finish tutorial mission barely get released into the world immediately try to fight a moose die 10 out of 10 game those starting moves are rough when you start out they get easy later i know i was like what the heck is this moose man well they're like

level 12 or something in the very beginning. Yeah, they're pretty rough. If you're like me, the first thing you do is go attack a moose. I'm like, ah, let's go kill the moose. Let's go kill... Oh, no. I had to pick that one just due to both of y'all's difficulties in the tutorial mission there. Thank you.

Yep. All right. And then this last review, this is not recommended. Eight hours on record. And it says, boring. Really painfully boring. The concept and the premise are both extremely interesting. The music is great. The art direction also characters are really charming in my opinion, but gameplay wise, this is the same old garbanzo. We've been fed for over a decade. Get quest at point a go to point B defeat, some dudes

retrieve quest item long way back to point a through a vast open world quest at point A, go to point B, defeat some dudes, retrieve quest item. Long way back to point A through a vast open world that's beautiful, but a bore to traverse. Rinse and repeat. Combat could have been something like Metal Gear Rising or Bayonetta, but they really dropped the ball and made the combat so boring when the story and setting allow for some

kick-butt engagement. I literally only ever boot it up when I have nothing else to do with my time. At least the characters are hot. Nice. The reason there's a truth, there's a touch of truth to this. And we touched on that, that this is not, you're not playing this game for the combat alone. You're not playing this game for the combat alone you know you're not playing this game for any one uh specific thing i guess like as a whole they do come together but i get this guy's complaints in

that the open world's barren man like again maybe that's on purpose maybe we're seeing a like earth that's just desolate at this point but these zones suck man i did not have fun in any of these zones did you guys like was there any of them that you were like, wow, this area is gorgeous, or this is super interesting or cool? In the city one, even if you can go into a building, it's a completely empty room. There's literally nothing. There's

no furniture. There's no... No debris. Right. They could have done so much more with the world to really flesh it out, and I just felt like that was a missed opportunity as well. It's a minor complaint. I'm not slamming the game for that, but it's kind of like the year 12,000.

There's going to be no furniture left. Maybe, maybe like I said, maybe it's intentional, but the game is filled with buildings and you can't enter any of them. There's a lot in this game where it looks like I should be able to go in there and check that out. Or maybe there's something waiting and you really can't.

Sometimes you can run along the rooftops and you might find a box to open here or there. But yeah, there's not as much in the open world as you might want. I think it's not. It's like it's not really an open world. It's like it's almost guiding you. It's like it's, I don't know. It's like it's an action game where you're guided down a path similar like Tomb Raider games where

it's not really open world. There's open areas here and there, but it's it's not like a breath of the wild open world or a sky where you can just wander around and find

things to do. Yes, here where you can revisit. It's kind of. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

So that's the areas were small anyways. So that's why I didn't get bored with it. I'm like it's all small. It's a small open world. So yeah. All right. So that's the areas were small anyways. So that's why I didn't get bored with it. I'm like, it's all small. It's a small open world. So, yeah.

All right. So that's some of the community reviews we've kind of hinted on some of our thoughts on the game. This is the point where we try to guess the overall score, which will give a little bit of insight into how maybe we're going to rate this game personally. But what do you guys think on the steam rating scale of zero to 100? What do you think the overall rating for this game is? Uh, no idea.

Pass. I believe Josh is the reigning champ. So you get to guess. Oh yeah. I had a pretty bad intro to the other one. Um, my guess on this, I, I, I guess 91. I'll explain that here in a little bit, but I think that there was an awful lot to like about this game. I think it misses on a few things, but I think overall, this is a very unique, memorable type game. And I felt like the community would probably respond positively to that. So I went kind of high, and I said 91%. Go 90, Michael. Paul, you guys going to sandwich me? Michael goes 90, Paul goes 92.

Paul went last last time, so I'm going to bite my tongue and wait. All right, that's fair enough. Because I was going to go 90. I have lost this game so many times in a row now. I feel like I used to win this a lot. You did, yeah. I've lost like times in a row now i feel like i used to win this a lot i did yeah i've lost like seven in a row um i think this game has a very strong cult following i don't know that the masses are gonna love it quite as much i do also know from reading one article despite trying to

avoid anything about steam ratings i did read what you mentioned earlier josh that the port did have issues that were not fixed for quite some time so i bet that drove it down just a tad i'm gonna say 87 percent all right so 87 from paul 91 for me michael i was actually gonna go lower because i think a lot of people will hate this game and a lot of people will love it. I didn't even think about the port in there. So 82. 82 from Michael. Oh, boy.

Do we have a tie? Nope. But it was real close because the actual overall rating is 85%. So, Paul, you won. Your slump is over? Yes! Despite going second. I was going to do the dirty thing and just be like, 86.

You know what I mean? I want to try and actually guess. I will say this. A majority of the negative reviews were because of how bad the PC port was. It was very hard to filter those negative reviews into people that actually had complaints

about the game itself. 90% of the negative reviews on this were, hey, this PC port is terrible and it's taking them forever to fix it. In contrast, the recent reviews, because Steam always breaks it down overall and recent, the recent reviews are actually at 93%. So you can see how people responded when the PC port was working properly and had the bugs resolved and stuff.

Before we hear Paul work his magic, did you guys play this game? Because I didn't even think about the fact that it was PC since I played it on the PlayStation. Did you guys play with mouse and keyboard or controller? I played with controller 100%. I started with mouse and keyboard just to get used to it and i will say that running on mouse and keyboard is so much easier because all you have to do is double tap w and you're sprinting when you use a controller having to hold down the trigger to sprint was kind of you guys had to hold it down yeah oh i just tapped is there a toggle option no i just tapped it once

and she would dash and then she would run yeah maybe i held it down i didn't have to yeah i never held it down i thought the sprint was awesome because i'm like this works as a dash or it works as the run button which i thought was brilliant i'm like i love this i always held it down and maybe i didn't need to you just tap it and she runs but she still i don't like it the longer you hold it the faster she gets to you right no i but i didn't have to hold it i literally tapped it and then she would start out slower then go faster faster faster faster yeah and i would just tap it maybe i could have rebound keys but it should always be just click in the left thumb stick why is that not sprint that should always be sprint because it's recenter the oh that was flashlight oh that was flashlight yeah that was for those cave levels which by the way the

flashlight was almost useless yeah and it should just auto turn on when you're under yeah and that would have taken care of that button then you got a run button all right paul all right well you're back to being champion i'm back you get to You get to introduce this next segment in only the way that Paul can. Yeah. All right, DJ. Spin that record. Hey there, Miss 2B. If you were on Star Trek, your phaser would be set to stun.

All right. This segment is Make Love, Marry, or Murder. This is where all three of us give the game a rating. Is this game marriage material? It's worth picking up. You can spend a ton of hours. It's worth beating. And we highly, highly recommend it.

Or is the game make love? Where it's, you know, maybe it's worth picking up if the price is right. And you can pick it up for a while and have fun. But maybe it's not long-term material. Or is this a game that is worth murdering all right i feel like i want to know what josh thinks of this game what what are you gonna rate this am i starting to be the wild card that's that's what i want i really want to be the wild card guy where it's like dude i have no idea if josh loves game, hates this game, or what. I used to be the wild card. I miss being the wild card.

Yeah, no. For me, there is a lot to like about this game. I don't think I ever dreaded picking this game up and playing it. I also feel like it's very memorable. This is a game that even if I'm not insanely crazy about it, I still am going to remember it for a long time. I do enjoy it an awful lot. I think it misses on a couple things, and those hurt it a lot. I think having to play through it multiple

times is a huge miss. I'm not really sure why they went that route. I would much, much just have rather them say, hey, this is a 30-hour game, and the more you play it, the more you get the payoff and the reward on it. So for me, that was a huge ordeal there. This is an easy make love for me. It's not quite a merry just because there are a few flaws to it. The combat's not great. The world is bland. There's that whole thing with the multiple playthroughs and having to basically do almost everything you just did for another 10 hours.

That really bugs me. So there's a few things that keep it from being a Mary for me, but it's an easy make love in my opinion. I think this is a very unique game. I think it did a lot right. It's very, very memorable. When you get into some of the philosophical stuff, man, that's where it really stands out to me. It's one of those things where it reminds me of Subnautica or Outer Wilds, where it's like you could talk about this game with people for a very long time and have in-depth conversations about it. But from a gameplay perspective, I feel like it's just kind of middle of the ground in that opinion.

So easy, make love. Definitely not a Mary. Michael. Uh, I was hoping for something spicier from Josh. I think make love is just so it's like, no,

I'm going to go the safe route on that one. That's not me throwing shade. Maybe it is kind of, um, I hated this game when I first started playing it uh and now i am absolutely marrying this game i love this game i this was one of my favorite games i played in the last 10 years which is ridiculous because i hated this game i didn't want to play it i didn't like the the first hour at all enough to where i did i broke my own rule i'm like i'm going easy mode

just to get through this real fast here's what i love about this game it was 20 bucks i got a lot of experience out of it i got surprised a whole bunch about the fact that it's not just an action game it's not just an action rpg i love the fact that the combat is button mashy and that's so stupid to say that but sometimes you just don't want to have to go and Elden Ring a game. You want to have fun and get through a story. The action was nonstop. You didn't have any downtime. Yeah, the world's a little bit barren, but you weren't in that world for very long because

the next time that you got to another point in the story, you were fighting another Goliath or fighting another boss or fighting Adam or Eve. There was almost no time where you were not button Goliath or fighting another boss or fighting Adam or Eve. There was almost no time where you were not button mashing, having a great time and being enthralled by the story, which was a lot more. It was like an onion, man. At first, you're like, this is an onion. This is a game that

I hate. I hate you, onion, even though onions are vegetable. I love onions. Yeah, it makes you cry. But I don't know. I don't know why I like this game so much. It just hit everything on me. It was a fun action game where it wasn't super hard. But if you play it on a harder mode, it's hard enough.

You know what I mean? Where you had to... I mean, Paul and Josh will have you all think that it's like... It's just literally just keep tapping the circle. There's a little more to that. You know what I mean? It's a lot more than that. It's more than that. It's definitely a game that does have challenge

but it's not trying to get in way over its head on let's make it so complicated that it's a pain in the bum all the time to play i like how easy the chip system is it's nice to not have to go through nine different things of like i've got perks i've got skills i've got weapon upgrades i've got armor upgrades i've got different materials in my armor i've got chain mail i've got plate i've got leather it's like this is cut and dry go have fun go fight bosses and then also get surprised by the story and unfortunately i'm the person that will go through all five playthroughs uh josh we were talking about this a couple days, how you're looking for a game that you can play on your own and just play as like, hey, this is my game that is my single player.

Just play not for the podcast. I tell you this game for that is me. I will keep playing it and I'm going to enjoy the heck out of it. And I'll go through the second playthrough. Yes, thinking, okay, it's a little bit lame because I've got to do this again. But I want the payoff of knowing the story. I want to see it. I don't want to cry. And I think it might get me there. And so I don't know why I love this game so much, except for the 94 reasons I just said. So I don't know why I said I don't know why, but I love this game. I'm marrying it.

Nice. Paul, what do you got? You know, for me, this one kind of teeters between marry and make love i think that it's a must play game but i think that there are stretches that definitely lull i it's it's far from a perfect game but it's so unique and it has such a fresh narrative take like you can read a book or you can watch a movie or you can play a video game and all of them are a little different, right? And so it's like, what works best for a video game? And the themes that this game explores at the end lend itself so well to a video game. Because if you have to experience suffering, you can read that in a book and it's only going to relate so much. And you can watch it on a movie, and it'll hit you a little harder because you have the visual element. But when you're holding a controller, fighting what feel like impossible battles at the end of the game, that is a very clever way to make you understand what it's like to suffer.

So I think that this game really marries combat with storytelling in a very clever way. I think everyone should pick it up and play it. But if you do, you have to play it through all the way. If you just play Route A, this game would probably be a murder for me. But because it's so clever in the late game, I don't really know where to land, whether that's a marry or a make love. I guess ultimately I would say it depends on the price. Like Michael only paid 20 bucks. If you buy it in Steam, it's a full 40.

Now the game's been around a while. You can buy a key from third party sites that are going to be a lot cheaper. I think if the price is 20 or that are going to be a lot cheaper. I think if the price is $20 or less, absolutely, it's a must-buy. You have to play it. If it's $40, I almost say just watch all the cutscenes on YouTube, and you're probably going to experience everything. But ultimately, I'll say make love. I love how difficult this was for you, Paul.

Honestly, that tells you what this game has to offer yeah you know i mean we we all have given it a you know a lot of praise in that regard you know i bordered on mary but gave it a make love you bordered on mary and gave it a make love and michael gave it a mary so it does tell you what this game has to offer for people. And we rarely fully agree on everything. So there's something about this game that's just memorable. I think this game has very high highs and it has very low lows. There are some games that just hit a 10 out of 10 for most of the game, and maybe it has slight lulls here or there this game has pretty big chunks that are like why am i doing this why did they program it this way this could

have been tightened up and made a lot better especially with route b so yeah i i think that's why i would ultimately say make love but i still think it's a must play game if that makes yeah no absolutely all right so we've got one segment left on the show. Let's go to the leaderboard and see where this game stacks up. All right, Michael, in case there's anyone out there who's listening to the show for the first time, you want to tell them how the leaderboard works? Yes. So what we do is we've got these video games, and they're all in a giant list, right? And it's on our website. So if you go there, you can follow along right now. But essentially, any game that we deep dive goes in this list. And so essentially,

all three of us are going to rank it where we think it should be, and we're going to find a place that works as our consensus. So if you listen to a deep dive about a month ago, actually, on an incredible video game called Elite Dangerous that I said was my favorite game on the entire list. An incredibly bad game. Others in this room disagreed, and we had to find a place to rank it.

But essentially what you're seeing is our consensus ranking of all the games that we have deep-doven? Deep-diven? Deep-dived? We've never figured out the past tense. Deep-doved. Deep-doved. Deep-doved.

Yeah, so it's essentially just a giant list of all the games we've deep-dived. It gets one longer every single time we do a deep-dive because we're doing one game at a time there are 73 games on here right now we're going to figure out where this game ranks in this deep dive list that's a very long way to explain it but i did it guys no that's that's perfect and then just to let you know a couple of the games that are on here we've got some stuff like split gate coming in at 18. We've got Resident Evil Village at 25. We've got Far Cry 5 at 34.

We've got Little Nightmares 2 down at 45. And then even lower, we've got some stuff like Human Fall Flat at 60. And Battlefield 2042 Dead Last at number 73. Looking here at the leaderboard, what are you guys thinking for this game? Because I think for me this would fall... Well, let's compare it to V Rising. Would you have this above or below V Rising, which was the last deep dive? I'd put it above. I would put it above.

That one came in at 29. It's way more memorable. Yeah, I'd put it far above. I would not put it far above. By far, I mean like 5 or 6 above. I think 29 gets us pretty darn close to where i would want it yeah i actually agree it's a half inch above v rising for me v rising's combat and the blood altar and the boss systems i think are far better than any of the combat you get in near automata but maybe that's just me the story though i think kicks it up a notch

i would have a real hard time putting this above the story though i think kicks it up a notch i would have a real hard time putting this above weird west which i was gonna ask as a marker for you paul like would you would you put it below weird west i would put it below i'd put it in between weird west and v rising so i'd have it maybe in the late 20s if it were up to i'm actually spot on with you to be honest with you now we rated the game the same way too, so Michael might be a little bit higher than us, but it's a great game. I think it deserves to be high on the leaderboard.

And so I think that's where... Where are you at, Michael? Weird West is hard for me where it is because I think it's way too low. And that's because I did make love to it when I played it, and now, a month and a half removed i'm still thinking that weird west needs to be significantly higher so i'm going to

remove weird west from the equation in my ranking sure i i want to put it somewhere between above or below forgotten city because you love for god i know and that's i that forgotten city is what i'm looking at i'm staring at forgotten city right here i i think that i think i want to put it right there with forgotten city whether it be above or below i think it belongs right in there um i also think lost ark hasn't rate hasn't aged well so that needs to come down i just think i think that it's all convoluted on certain parts of here i would probably put it somewhere in the low to mid 20s is where I'd like to have it. I think it goes above

Deep Rock Galactic. I want to ignore Weird West because it doesn't belong where it is. Forgotten City, I would put it... The thing about Forgotten City is it's so short. It's so short. And this game has so much replayability. But it's so memorable to me.

So I want to put it right in there with Forgotten City. I think we might need to do a leaderboard shakeup relatively soon because Lost Ark is looking kind of high now at 20 in hindsight. I just think the end game on that, once I got to the end, I just hated that game. I'm not opposed to what Michael's saying either. It's just this game's so unique. It's so memorable. It's not

without its flaws, and it's not without its dull points. You know what I mean? So it's not a perfect game, but it is a memorable game. It is a game that probably should be experienced by a lot of people. You know? I'm fine. Personally, I'm fine anywhere

from the early 20s to the late 20s but i think it belongs in there somewhere i'd put it 23 or 22 knocking bumping the forgotten city down one or leaving it there and bumping rainbow six siege down which i've never played i i found the forgotten city to be a more enjoyable experience all the way through which granted might be because it's a short game but i'm more inclined to put it below so what what if we just put it in at 23 right below forgotten city and above rainbow six siege which is just too sweaty i think that's great 23 works for me 23 we'll plug it in right. Perfect. So for anyone out there who's curious to know what our next deep dive will be, we always do a deep dive every other week. So two weeks from

today, we will be deep diving The Quarry, which is very similar to Until Dawn. If you're familiar with that game, same developers. It's essentially an interactive movie. I think that will be a blast to talk about. And just to close out the show here, just as a reminder, we have that community night for trivia coming up on July 1st. Please come join us for that on our Discord server. It's going to be epic. It'll absolutely be. It's going to be a lot of fun. And you might win a SteelSeries controller out of it, which would be awesome. And also, if you want to support us on Patreon and you want those additional episodes while also helping fund our show,

go to multiplayer squad.com and you can see all the Patreon options there. And I think that's, I think that's it for today. Thank you everyone for listening. It was a blast. I hope that you all go out and play near automata for yourself, or at least check it out on YouTube. And then that's it.

We'll see you guys for our next episode this Thursday for this week in gaming. And until then, happy gaming, everybody. We'll see you next time. Last time that I get to say Domo Arigato, Mr.

Nier Automata. I messed it up. I messed it up. I'm out of here, guys. Cheers. Good night. See you,

everybody. Be well. Oh, bye. see you everybody bye