Entry 135: "Nier" Pt.3 End

Dear Internet,

                Well, I am a day late and a Gald short.  I said that I would usually post these reviews on Friday, and here it is Saturday.  I was up late yesterday in an attempt to finish off "Nier" so that I could write a full review.  By the time that I had finished "Nier," it was too late to write a final review.  I think we can all learn something from this experience.  I need to start these reviews earlier so that I can make sure I have enough time.  And you need to remember the definition of "usually."  But I jest, unlike "Nier."

                "Nier" is a game that takes itself too seriously.  From the story to the message that it wants to impart on the player, "Nier" does not know how to lighten up until it absolutely has to.  Everything is taken with the same layer of dark narrative and done so poorly at that.  Take how the game handles the quest to cure Yonah and how it attempts to force the audience to care.  We know as an audience that Nier cares deeply for his daughter.  He is constantly trying to find a way to save her from a death sentence.  That is the whole point of the quest that he sets out on from early on in the game.  However, there is little to no emotional bond that occurs between the character of Yonah and the audience because there is little to no attempt to create that bond.  Early on in the game, there is next to no interaction with her as a character.  We only get a few lines of dialog here and there with a few fetch side quests thrown in.  We are meant to care for her not because we have grown fond of her from a depth of interaction with her but because she is a plot item.  She is there as a reason to go around and explore.  The player does not have to even interact with her at all beyond a few forced dialog bits.  We know she is most likely going to be OK by the end of the game in one way or another since denying this would be one amazing anti-climax.  There is not a real threat of losing her at all, just missing her a little while.  Unlike a game like "Valkyria Chronicles," where having one of your soldiers fall in battle can risk them dying permanently and you will never use them again, "Nier" cannot reproduce this effect by just telling the audience that they are supposed to care about the plot character.  I cared more about the super minor characters in "Valkyria Chronicles" way more than Yonah because there was a real threat of losing the character.  It made me want to protect and keep those characters safe because it would have been my own fault for losing them.

It does not help the fact that the game openly denies interaction with her.

                There is a scene in "Nier" where a certain character permanently changes their physical form significantly, to the point that they look more like a monster than human.  They naturally freak out at such a change, breaking down and crying a little.  Less than two minutes later they say about the transformation, "I was terrified at first, but I think I'm okay with it."  This kind of turnaround of emotion within a short amount of time and with so little force to do so is a reflection of the game's poor story pacing.  The character lost their mortal body but was perfectly alright with it mere minutes later.  The whole transformation felt unneeded to the plot, instead feeling as if the development team had created a character design that they did not want to go to waste.  In fact, Nier himself receives a redesign after a time skip in the game which feels more like forced implementation of unused art assets.  I say this because prior to the time skip he receives immensely physical wounds through his upper body and abdomen, but after the time skip he is wearing an eye patch.  His eye had not been damaged.  Is the eye patch supposed to illustrate how battle weary he has become since before the time skip?  It only brings forth the question of how he lost his eye since it was not injured when we last saw him.  If the aim is to show the character's culmination of his battle exploits that have formed him into the character that we see after the time skip, how about we see him with the scars of the battle that we saw him fought, not the ones we did not see?  Every time we would then see those scars, we would remember the incident that formed them, reminding us of a specific even in the game's story.  Instead, we get an eye patch because eye patches means he is a tough guy.

                Then there is the death of a side character that cannot be avoided no matter what which should come as no surprise to anyone who plays the game.  I say this because the opening movie that plays every time the game is launched clearly shows the character dying.  This is not the only spoiler that occurs within the opening movie.  All one has to do is watch the movie just once for a number of images to keep popping into their heads as they play the game to have a number of plot points lose their impact when they finally occur.  This is not something that is unique to "Nier."  A number of Japanese games that I have played like to do this.  They take all of the game's highest quality cinematics and mash them together to form an opening movie.  This is not something all that bad in upon itself.  One usually wants to put their best foot forward when showcasing the game in an effort to pump up the player and get them excited to see what the game has in store for them.  However, when the game throws together the most pivotal scenes into that mash up and includes plot hints as well, it becomes a ruining experience that devalues the game's story.  

                I said last about mentioning the game's fishing and farming aspects.  Let me just say that there are extensive fishing and farming mechanics.  You can fish in a number of locations that even include quicksand.  You can farm anything from wheat to flowers.  It can even be enough to be a game on itself, especially considering that there are a few difficult goals within those aspects of the game.  I only have one problem with these things.  What in the world do they have to do with the core game?  Absolutely nothing I tell you.  You only have to fish once in the game, and you do not even have to farm to complete the game.  Neither of these things have got anything to do with the core game mechanics.  Reeling in a major catch does nothing to make you hit harder.  Growing a tulip will not make your magic any better.  Or at least I am not aware of such things.  I do not mind a small diversion in some games, even if it is to break the monotony that some can fall into.  But when there is such a large side game that does nothing to correlate itself to the main game, it just feels silly to include it.  I would rather go play a "Harvest Moon" game or "Fishing Resort" at that point.  If the diversion is to the point of being another game itself then it would be better to just go play a game that does that diversion much better.

                I will end just saying that the game world is recycled fluff.  There are only about five or six dungeons that get revisited a number of times, too many times in my opinion.  Sure, when you revisit one or two, you will get an added room or corridor to explore but this is the same problem that "Skyward Sword" suffered from.  Both games have a few giant worlds that take a while to get from one end to another, which highlights their size, but both games end up feeling empty due to a limited number of locations that matter which are visited way too often.

                "Nier" is not a bad game.  It is just generic.  It is another one of the multitude of Japanese games that have got more angsty and brooding characters than substance.  There is even the token city that gets destroyed completely.  The central gameplay is fine, just underdeveloped for the most part.  I looked forward to some of the enemies whose attacks made the battlefield resemble a bullet hell game.  The multiple endings are not all that interesting other than the extra backstory of Kaine.  The only thing that I would say is worth its weight is the game's soundtrack.  The soundtrack alone is worth listening to even without playing the game.  But I cannot go recommending a whole game on just one single aspect.  The game is an alright diversion for a while, but I cannot think of dumping more time into it.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S.  Next will be "Four Faultless Felons."

Entry 134: "Nier" Pt. 2

Dear Internet,

                "Nier" continues to amaze me with its soundtrack.  The blend of fantastic lyrics and orchestral melody work well to add atmosphere to the post-apocalyptic world and create a unique musical identity for the game.  Everything else that the game has to offer, on the other hand, makes me want to gloss over the game.

                Let me start off with the graphics and aesthetics.  The game "Nier" has an interesting landscape to itself.  Rusting raised-railroad platforms dot the landscape, missing entire segments that have fallen away.  Stone villages carved out of desert rock that house masked people, dominated more by their law system than by the raging sandstorms just outside.  An automated factory houses numerous robots that at a moment's notice will evict or kill any intruding outsider.  So on and so on, the game makes use of its visuals to create a world that is able to convey the story along.  The problem is that the game has a few hiccups so far.  The most obvious one is the excessive use of bloom.  Bloom is a visual mechanic that games and films have started to use in excess in recent years.  It is a lighting effect that is meant to replicate the way that the human body manages light entering the eye.  If a person in real life enters a bright room or goes outside on a bright day after being in a low-lit location, the surrounding area then appears very bright until the eye is able to focus and adjust to the new light situation.  Bloom attempts to replicate this by illuminating the screen every time the camera goes from dark to bright, when the camera is looking at a light source, or when an abundance of light is refracting off a surface.  "Nier" does all three with the final effect being an excessively lit up screen that is irritating to the eyes.  Sometimes the game forces the bloom to activate on a hair trigger, instantly lighting up the surrounding so quickly that I have to stop moving for a few second just so I can let the game auto-focus.  I can understand that the developers wanted to replicate real-world mechanics to make a slightly more realistic image, but when it gets to the point that the player has to actually stop playing for a few seconds this interrupts and flow that the game has built up.

At least I am not on fire, lady.

                On the note of the game's flow, "Nier" moves like a lemon of a car.  It chugs forward intensely for a few feet before giving up and going back to a crawl.  The first segment of the game has the main character collecting various Sealed Verses which act as spells that the player can use.  A small pattern begins to develop of the player getting a Sealed Verse with every boss that is defeated.  Then the game changes shift radically to a text simulator for one "dungeon," if you want to call it that.  The game's pace slows to a crawl while the player has to read a bunch of text that in the end has no point other than to cause the player to slow down.  Worse yet is a labyrinth in text format that can cause the player to have to reload back to a save point because there are no indications as to what the right answer is.  The game just throws out the central game mechanics for a required reading list that does absolutely nothing to add world building or character development.  "Lost Odyssey" had segments of pure text stories interjected into the game, but those were not necessary to read and were implemented to add depth to the characters while making a more fleshed out world.  When "Nier" tries this, the effect is a jerk in a direction that only serves to remind the player that the game has one more hobbled together homage to another game or genre.

                "Nier" has many references to other games and dips its toes into many genres.  One moment, the camera is free control over the character's shoulder, and the next moment, it is locked in a top-down 2D angle.  In one moment, the player is fighting enemies while having free roam movement, and in the next moment, the player has to deal with a bullet-hell styled fighting segment.  One level is designed in a classic "Resident Evil" look, all the way down to the horrible locked cameras that will inevitably lead to cussing players who get sideswiped by an unseen enemy while trying to go around a corner.  There is even a "Legend of Zelda" reference sneaked in if you look quick enough.  This is all well and dandy but it just highlights one of the game's problems.  It is often too busy trying to make a reference or homage to another game that "Nier" itself is unable to make its own identity.  The central gameplay mechanics are constantly being focused through these various lenses of other games that it becomes difficult to say what exactly is supposed to be the norm.  If I want to play a game that pulls from various genres and references, I would rather play "Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door," which does not abandon the core game mechanics set down in the beginning.  One could argue that the over the shoulder, free movement fighting gameplay is the most often gameplay of "Nier," but that would most likely only be the case if the player spends the time to do the various side-quests.

                The sidequests of "Nier" are bland.  They boil down to just a few types of quests.  There is the delivery quest and the collection quest.  Either you are going to go out and find a bunch of normally useless items or carry a package to someone.  This by itself is not all that bad.  Most games boil down to "go here" and "get me this."  The trick is to make it an enjoyable experience by making more than just simple chores.  The first problem is that there are only about five characters that give quests that are named.  Everyone else that hand out jobs is given names like "Villager" or "Merchant."  The game makes no attempt to differentiate between the quest givers.  At first, the game highlights the NPC, via a mini-map and glowing icon over the characters head, when they have a quest to give, but often do not give any indication as to which NPC you must report back to when the job it completed.  This leads to confusion since unless the player memorizes who gave the quest they will have to talk to every person they meet.  On top of that, the quests are rarely given any sort of mask to hide the fact that they are tedious time-wasters that do not even give out worthwhile rewards.  Sure, the player can do them for the cash, but there is nothing that the player needs to buy since health items drop like flies and all the good weapons are practically handed out free while exploring dungeons.  Doing the quests for non-cash rewards usually just end up with rewards that have to be used in other quests.  The never ending spiral continues.  

                It does not help that the game's bosses are just as boring.  Either the player has to bash away with attacks, dodging the attacks that can be seen coming a mile away, or they have to do precision attacking that requires no real thinking to figure out.  One boss is as close to a carbon copy of Gohdan from "The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker" that can be done without leaning to copyright infringement, which ties more into the homage problem than the game's rote gameplay.  Various times, the game tries to add another tutorial, explaining a new move to the player, but when the first strategies end up working the best for so long, why learn the new moves?  A considerable amount of the game can be easily overcome by lining up the enemies in a row and spamming one of the two projectile magic spells.  I was able to beat one dungeon by just standing still and shooting down the corridor.  It was like "Metroid: Other M" all over again.

This is like trying to feel clever when being told there will be cake.

                I have not even touched farming, fishing, the main quest's tediousness, or even the plot problems yet.  But with multiple endings in store, that last part might have to wait a while.   

       

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

Entry 133: "Nier" Pt. 1

Dear Internet,

                "Nier" has been on my backlog for a little while now, and I was happy to finally get to it.  While I do my best to be as unknowledgeable as possible in regards to the various medias I want to consume (so as to prevent any sort of spoilers for myself), I knew one thing for certain about this game.  It had fantastic music throughout the game.  From one forum to another, "Nier" would almost be guaranteed a mention for having one of the most beautiful soundtracks in the last/current generation of games.  Beyond that, I knew just about next to nothing.  In fact, I had believed that the game was more of an RPG than anything else.  But I am getting ahead of myself.

                "Nier" follows around the titular character, who can also be named whatever you want.  Nier is a middle aged man with a daughter named Yonah.  His daughter is sick and dying from a mysterious magical ailment, called the Black Scrawl, which manifests itself in black runes that appear over her body, giving her pain among other things.  The setting is a futuristic dystopia that has more in common with the middle ages than a science fiction epic.  The biggest threat to the people of this world is the Shades, a kind of monster that seems to be born from darkness.  They are slowly encroaching upon the various villages, terrorizing and killing the people of the land.  One day, Yonah attempts to obtain a flower from outside the village.  Nier followers her in pursuit, only to find her passed out and surrounded by Shades.  There, he finds the talking book Grimoire Weiss, an ancient tomb that has many magical abilities that are slowly unlocked.  After saving his daughter, Nier plans on taking on the Shades and unlocking Grimoire Weiss's verses in hopes of curing his daughter.

Shades readying an attack.

                So far, the plot is fairly straightforward and sounds like many other games that have come out from Japan in the last fifteen or more years.  The biggest notable change is that the player is controlling a father character as compared to a teenage angst ridden desperado.  It is a change of pace that I wish the game would place more emphasis on.  There is very limited interaction that the player has with the daughter, only being able to take on an extra side quest or two.  On top of that, the main character does not seem to take a more personal role with Yonah.  Sure, he provides for her by doing a number of odd jobs for the various villagers in order that she has food and medicine, but there is something of a gaping hole that forms because he is more concerned with her physical well-being than all her other needs.  This of course stems from the fact that she is dying from an unknown disease.  The game is somewhat aware of this gap and highlights it to the player, so it is not as if the game itself was unaware.  The father/daughter interaction is one that few games go near and rarely from the perspective of the father.  "Lost Odyssey" had it briefly, only to snatch it away just as quick.  The "God of War" franchise has a bit, but in those games the daughter is more a goal than a fleshed out character.  Then again, the Japanese versions of "Nier" had two different formats, one with Nier as the father and the other with Nier as Yonah's brother.  Keeping this in mind, the various themes that appear might only be there through the injection of the audience rather than the creators.  If the main character can just as easily be Yonah's father or brother for the purpose of the story of the game, he might as well be her cousin, mailman, or pet hamster. 

                The gameplay is not as RPG as I thought it was.  In fact, it is more action-adventure like a beat-em-up game.  You control Nier in a third-person perspective that occasionally goes side-scroller or top-down.  Jumping, attacking, evading, and combo-ing are very much like games such as "Bayonetta" but is probably more like "God of War."  I say that because the combos are less string based than "Bayonetta," which uses at least one more attack button, and combat in "Nier" is more reliant upon learning the various enemies' patterns than juggling them in the air.  There is also a little magic thrown in for good measure, but so far, the magic is limited to use in only two buttons that are player-designated spells.  The player can hold the attack button or spell button for a harder attack, but the stronger attack charge is usually rather long, which can slow down combat or create too wide of an opening.  The magic charged attack is a little more creative with some spells just being powered versions up while other spells being altered to the point of having an added effect.  Evading feels a bit sluggish at times, but it is balanced out by being able to avoid most attacks.  

                Enemies are categorized into two groups.  There are the passive ones and the aggressive ones.  Passive ones, like sheep and goats will not normally attack unless provoked.  These types of enemies are almost guaranteed to be harvestable for materials that are used for side-quests and money making plans.  The aggressive ones, such as Shades and bats, will attack on sight (or when within earshot).  These are usually better hunted for Exp than for materials, although the bat can be harvested upon victory.  Most of the time, Shades drop nothing, but occasionally they drop medicine and more importantly tutorials and "Words".  The tutorials are really strangely scattered around.  Sometimes I found myself amidst a group of enemies that I was attacking, only to be told I found a tutorial somewhere in the battle that tells me how to plant crops.  But what is more valuable are the Words.

Sometimes, tutorials are hidden in boxes around town.

                There are 120 Words within the game.  I know this because that's what the back of the game box says.  It also says that there are 30 weapons and 8 spells.  This is most likely why I thought the game was more RPG than anything else.  Words are used to alter weapons, spells, and attacks.  These effects can raise damage output, spell cost, item drop chance, and so forth.  The effects are minor so early in the game, which mean that there is no real strategy at this point.  Until the Words have effects that at least alter stats by double digit percentages, Words can be largely ignored.  It is rather strange that the game's back cover could only think about boasting about these three things.  The only other thing it says is that there are a lot of side quests and multiple endings.  Bragging about the Words , weapons, and spells makes the game feel like the game is scraping the bottom of the barrel.  It would be like Bethesda Game Studios bragging about the number of different NPCs its game has.  Sure, there are a lot of them, but after a while you realize that they are not that different and they sort of look alike.  Having only 8 spells loses its appeal when just in the prologue you get to use about half of them.

                I'll end here and carry on next time.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

Entry 131: "Spriggan" (1998)

I was disappointed at the lack of Cornish faeries.

Dear Internet,

                Later this month, the film "Noah" will be making its theatrical debut across at least one country.  Lo and behold, it will be following the Biblical story of a non-unioned carpenter taking a divine interest in animal husbandry and fresh water traveling.  Now, what does this have to do with the animated film "Spriggan," based on a seven year running Japanese comic?  Well, I'll get to that point in a paragraph or two.

                "Spriggan" is very open about its brutally violent nature.  The opening scene includes at least three deaths by ultrasonic vibrations.  This is one of those films that makes me want to have a body count ticker in the bottom right corner of the screen.  Unless the character has got a name, they are most likely going to be cannon fodder before the end.  Considering that there is at least one secret paramilitary organization in the film, it only makes me wonder how such an organization could exist considering that the sheer amount of people that are dying would probably guarantee them a reserved position at the local unemployment office.  People die left and right in such numbers that it is boggling to think that they are not nearly as secret as they hope to be.

                But let me start off by telling a little about the plot.  "Spriggan" centers around Yu Ominae, a high-school student in Japan and a member of the secret military organization known as ARCAM, a group created to keep under wraps a number of ancient artifacts from a forgotten society.  Early on in the film, Yu's classmate is shown to commit involuntary suicide by means of an incendiary vest.  Yu is mildly injured in the resulting explosion.  This event prompts Yu to take action within the organization to find out the details despite his superior denying Yu to take on any missions while being injured.  He learns that ARCAM has discovered the remains of Noah's Ark.  However, unlike the scriptural description of the vessel, this ark is at least four times larger and made from a material that cannot be affected by traditional human means.  What follows is a struggle between ARCAM and another secret organization that wishes to gain possession of the ark for their own personal reasons.  Between cyborg soldiers, inhuman levels of pain tolerance, telekinetic children and the occult, "Spriggan" pulls from a variety of different angles in an attempt to keep the audience glued to the screen.

                This is all well and good, but there is an important fact to remember about the film.  It is being based on a specific arc that occurs in the source material.  The film is not the entirety of the story that the original manga wished to tell.  This of course does not allow it a handicap in any sort of way.  A film has to stand on its own merits and present itself to an audience as a standalone item.  It cannot rely on hoping the audience is caught up with some other medium to be able to tell the story.  "Spriggan," thankfully, does not do this, but certain elements do highlight the fact that the film is but one of a series of tales in an overarching plot.  Some of these elements include the character Jean Jacquemonde, a number of lines made by the film's main antagonist, and the back story of main character Yu.  While these do not create a whole detraction from the film, they do create a nagging feeling when viewing the film.  I found the character Jean to be most notable of these nagging sensations, mostly due to his repeated appearance whenever the film wrote itself into a corner and needed a way out.  Has Yu got into a fight he might not win? Jean shows up and nearly solves the problem single-handedly.  Yu snaps and goes on a personal vendetta?  Jean stops him from going crazy.  Yu gets caught in a collapsing structure?  Jean appears out of nowhere to help Yu hobble away.  It feels artificial in the very least and just makes me wonder if the character was thrust into the film to appease the original fanbase of the manga.  

                I mentioned the film "Noah" at the beginning of this rant for now obvious reasons.  "Spriggan" takes a science fiction approach to ancient stories.  I have no qualms about this.  It is an interesting take, even if it is not all that original.  Pointing the finger at prehistoric aliens has been around for decades prior.  The only thing that the film, or at least the subtitles, constantly irked me was the fact that the characters would constantly refer to the ark itself as "Noah."  They would only sporadically call it the arc or refer to it as a ship.  It is as silly as referring to Little Bastard as James Dean.  But I should not be so critical of this.  It probably stems from a Japanese habit or something of the sort.  One thing that the film does interestingly enough is being able to spin the ark from being a solution to being a problem.

                The film does have one pivotal problem.  The film is suspense based, deeply encroached in mysteries and secret societies, which means that quite a lot of information is not readily made known to the audience.  The balance of knowledge, ignorance, and revelation is a delicate game where if one begins to outweigh its position all three topple.  There is no other element that so strikingly comes across as poorly balanced as does Yu's back story.  Throughout the film, there are numerous references to where Yu came from, why he is a teenage soldier, and his various previous interactions with the film's antagonists.  If the audience is even paying attention, they can piece together what the characters are saying into a reasonable understanding of how Yu got into the position he is currently in.  The only hole maybe being the reason as to how Yu gained superhuman abilities.  Instead of treating the audience as having two brain cells to rub together, it decides to completely illustrate Yu's background as a child soldier in the middle of the film's climax.  This in turn slows down one of the most pivotal moments of the film so it can display information that could have already been reasoned out or just plain out neglected due to the minutia of its importance.  This deluge of character exposition is poorly placed and halts a climatic confrontation that also sadly gets slammed to the ground quickly.  The final fight is just plain uninteresting and does not logically work considering that Yu overpowers his enemy despite being in a clear disadvantage.  

                "Spriggan" is not a bad film.  The entire narrative works, and it can be entertaining at times.  It pulls from the hardcore 80's era of graphic violence and cannon fodder individuals.  I am reminded in part of "Genocyber" and how that treated non-named characters.  However, it also makes me think of the "Full Metal Panic" series, which came out a few years later, and was able to explore many of the same elements expertly.  Overall, I am underwhelmed by "Spriggan." It aims for a lofty narrative by interjecting numerous elements throughout the film, but fails to culminate into a story that can stand on its own.  Too many elements causes the film to feel spread out too thinly.  Perhaps the manga had better pacing and was able to introduce the various themes well, but the film feels too much like a segment of the comic was ripped to make a movie.  At the same time, if there are plot-holes, they are patched over with either a 30 second scene or a line to smooth things over.  Both are true and sadly work against each other.

Yours in digital,

BeepBoop

P.S. Next is "Sympathy for Lady Vengence."