NieR Replicant ver. 1.22474487139, the remake of the remake of Yoko Taro's opera
NieR Replicant ver. 1.22474487139
Nier is certainly not an easy to evaluate title: a monstrously underestimated game, and perhaps the only real creative peak ever reached by the Cavia, was largely ignored and massacred by most of the critics, who did not understand its intentions or did not he even bothered to try to understand them. Let's be clear, the error is partly justifiable, since Nier was still a game from the technical sector to say the least mediocre, with multiple structural problems, and a plot as brilliant as it was dark in certain elements. To superficially approach a title like that - and more generally to everything that comes out of the head of that crazy Yoko Taro - is simply a suicide ... yet, in its small way, this curious jrpg action has become a cult. Do you want for its memorable characters, for its brilliant narrative, or even for its extraordinary soundtrack, a group of fans decided to play it, pamper it, and study it in every tiny element, coming to make it deserve a place among the forgotten pearls of the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 era.Fortunately for us, some of these fans still exist today in the ranks of Square Enix and Platinum Games, and it is thanks to them that a following like Nier Automata is arrived on store shelves, allowing Taro to become a well-known author and his "predecessor" to jump back to the headlines with an unexpected remake. This new incarnation of Nier, called NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139, is however surrounded by doubts related to the nature of the original game, the management of its storyline, and the willingness of the developers - the Toylogic - to recreate only one of the two versions of the game: that Replicant designed for the Asian market in which the protagonist was a handsome young man, who cancels the "Gestalt" version with a much older and beefy Nier.
During this last week, therefore, it has been a pleasure to get our hands on this very peculiar work and, even if we still have no way of answering all the questions that surround it, at least now the plan of the new team to the reins it is much clearer.
The old and the new
Due to NDA and various limitations we cannot particularly go into the descriptions related to the plot, so we will limit ourselves to specifying one thing very important: NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 seems to be for now an extremely faithful remake to the original game, with practically no changes to the campaign and dialogues, and even to the structure. This involves an almost identical repetition of the quests of the original, including a whole series of secondary ones that are anything but memorable (even if for the most part they are negligible missions). The interventions of Toylogic therefore focused on other aspects: the technical sector and the gameplay, fortunately with big steps forward in both fields. From a graphic point of view, the new Replicant is in fact significantly more beautiful to look at, and has completely renewed textures, models of the main characters and most of the npc redone from scratch, and a generally much improved glance. But be careful: perfecting the original Nier in this aspect was certainly not difficult, and there is no need to expect a total graphic makeover. The Toylogics have managed to give the whole thing a more modern look, however the polygonal detail of the maps is practically unchanged, and the color palette remains deliberately pale to get closer to the original look. In short, although it is much more beautiful to look at, we are not facing an incredible leap in quality; it is only a partial remake of what has been seen in the past.NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139: one of the protagonist's powers The intervention on the combat mechanics is more significant. The first Nier had a good list of great ideas in the combat system (which have been kept), but he was rather woody in the strokes and movements of the characters; in Replicant ver.1.22474487139 all of this has been corrected, and the protagonist moves and hits with great speed, the dodges are enormously more responsive, and there is a targeting system available that significantly facilitates the use of magical powers. The spells, for their part, are similar to the original ones in effects, but have clearer animations and are faster and more precise. Combine all these improvements with a more elaborate and interesting combo system, and you will get a game much closer to Automata in combat than we expected, albeit with less variety in maneuvers and more "classic" dodges.
Killing a shade
NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139: boss fight This is obviously an improvement across the board, with only one obscure point: the boss and enemy patterns are extremely close to the past, and the tweaked mechanics have therefore led to a slight lowering of the original difficulty, precisely because the execution of offensive and defensive maneuvers is much more natural. The fact that the bosses we met, more precisely those of the landfill and the nursery, are still more than enjoyable today, however, is a testament to how well thought out they were even at the time. On the other hand, Nier may have had a lot of problems, but his constant changes of perspective, constant gameplay variations, and his bizarre hybrid boss battles - sometimes structured to look like a sort of Bullet Hell rather than a three-dimensional action - features are as pleasant today as they were then, and we are not surprised that they have been reported paro paro in this version of the game (although perhaps the platform sections with fixed camera we would have partially revised them).That said, the fundamentals of Toylogic's work should now be crystal clear ... NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 is a "halfway" remake, modernizing some badly aged aspects of the original with the clear intention of keeping it both the spirit and the supporting columns are intact. A plan that will undoubtedly make it more attractive to historical fans, while inevitably limiting the final quality. On the other hand, it is difficult at the moment to say whether there will be more or less heavy interventions on the plot, yet from what we have seen the road would also seem to be that of absolute fidelity in this field. since Okabe's wonderful soundtrack is always present but rearranged great, and the dialogues have been re-doubled with many of the original actors, which can only please us (especially in the case of O'Brien, back to dub unmistakably Grimore Weiss ).
NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139: change of perspective We have not had the opportunity to go into too much detail, but Toylogic's plan with NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139 already seems quite crystalline: to recreate Nier without particular landslides, at the outside of an improved combat system and a significantly more pleasant technical sector. An understandable choice given the curious characteristics of the original game (which deserve to be rediscovered), but at the same time risky due to its limitations. Reviewing this underrated pearl of jrpg reborn in this way still warms the heart, and we are very curious to find out if as we advance we will discover some big unexpected transformation. We doubt it, but even so it is a work that deserves to return to homes.
