Nier

I concur with the original Nier being sadder. I liked the characters in Nier more than Automata's, so I felt more emotion when they inevitably died off (Weiss was my favorite). Moreover, Nier did a better job in giving the bosses and enemies fleshed out and tragic backstories.

Edit: I also thought the original had a better soundtrack. Automata has a damn good one too, but Nier's was more melancholy as a whole in addition to being epic whereas Automata's is mostly epic. I listen to virtually all of Nier's as a whole whereas there's a handful of tracks I picked out from Automata that I listen to. Automata also uses remixed tracks from the original that while good I feel aren't as good as the original song.

edited 26th Apr '17 7:17:53 PM by Nerevarine

I feel like the original Nie R is sadder through circumstances, however both teh games are rather different and tackle different challenges.

Plus Automata is less (or maybe more sad) if you played the original Nie R and the revelation of humanity being dead doesn't come off as a surprise

Automata is happier in tone due to endings D/E (I see ending ending D as happy especially if you have 9S join Adam and Eve on the ark)

Plus I think it's the styling. A lot of Nie R was grungy and dark, while Automata has a whole bunch of shiny happy places that are destroyed.

The only thing I miss from Nie R is that horror element from the mansion. That was my favorite area of the game and it was underused.

Patch 1.08 is out which fixes the hacking/menu text bugs

edited 27th Apr '17 5:00:22 PM by Ukokira

Now for the ultimate Tear Jerker test.

Nie R or MOTHER 3 (including the originally planned Kill Em All ending.)

I definitely cried more while playing Mother 3.

I said it in an earlier post before, but when you get right down to it, there are so many coincidental similarities between the two's stories that its uncanny.

There really is. I think M3 gets more to me, though, because Itoi has... I guess a delicate touch? There are just these moments in Mother that are completely mundane, and absolutely devastating because of it.

I think a lot of that just comes down to Itoi being someone from outside the game industry. In Japan I believe he's primarily known for his essays and other ventures with Mother being reasonably popular but just one of the many things he's done.

A lot of people who work on JRPG's basically feel like they're basing their stuff mostly on what other JRPG's and some manga and anime have done and I feel that ends up having a negative effect over time because the stories and characters become more reductive and predictable and it just ends up robbing the stories of verisimilitude because it doesn't feel like the writers are putting themselves and their own personal experiences into the work. Since Itoi is from a different sphere he has a very different sensibility and writing style that comes across as very fresh compared to what people in JRPG's usually do.

Yoko still sort of works within the confine of how JRPG and anime storytelling works a lot of the time, he's even talked about some of the things that have influenced him like Madoka and Evangelion, but he manages to at least shake it up by experimenting with gameplay systems to tell the story and having characters with more eccentric or bizarre characteristics that make them stand out from the rest.

So you can say Yoko Taro can do Strange, Funny, and Heartrending?

That's basically what I enjoyed about Nier, yes.

So how about that concert continuation of ending E?

My thoughts:

Godfuckingdammit Yoko Taro

Tell us.

Well it goes from C to E and

2B is fully rebuilt and wakes up but the reboot for 9S completely fails. A2 also doesn't survive and she's merely mentioned as a corpse. 2B recieves a email about the "ark" and 2B goes there to look for survivors. 2B ends up shutting down due to overload from the Arks giant memory unit and gets rebooted by her pod. She looks for a cure for 9S and gets told that he very likely killed himself (Also I totally called him being as good as dead after ending C without 2B to love and A2 to hate). The pods then tell 2B that a reboot of 9S is impossible. 2B finds a data playback of 9S that says he got the offer to join the ark (Even on ending C) and that he rejected it (Even though his choice didn't matter since A2 sunk the ark and he would have just been stuck on earth although that actually probably would have helped keep him alive long enough for 2B to find him). He then says "2B, we will not exist forever, we will eventually return to the earth, meeting you gave meaning to my birth". After hearing this 2B doesn't exactly kill herself but she stops moving and talking and remains like that to the end of the act

edited 30th Apr '17 1:22:59 PM by Ukokira

There's the Yoko Taro l love.

...

Oh eat a dick, Taro Yoko!

Why does he keep doing this to us?!

Because he wants you to hear a sound.

What sound, my heart breaking in 2? And then the 2 pieces of my broken heart going to hang themselves out of depression?

EDIT: Or better yet, the two pieces of my heart joining up with the pieces of the broken hearts of the other observers and players of this game to kill themselves in an effort to become as gods?

edited 30th Apr '17 2:37:31 PM by TargetmasterJoe

The sound of despair, of course:

It should be featured if the Stage play scenario makes it into the game as DLC somehow.

So Ending C is meant to lead into the completely miserable ending. I love it just for that. Also because it made sure A2 died even more for absolutely nothing

Oh, I just had to walk into that trap, didn't I?

Dang it, can't Yoko-sensei come up with a game that doesn't do this deconstructing junk?

Like how about a game where the main objective is to make friends with everyone? Can he do that without pissing on our feelings?

Play the Persona series, if you want that.

I'm sure he'd take the Rumbling Hearts route and rip apart such a game idea.

Yoko Taro has a rather cynical world view, so no. Also he doesn't like doing standard stuff. Otherwise we would have the character of Caim.

Caim is Bishy Guts anyway, so it makes sense.

If Muv Luv ever got a game spinoff that wasn't a VN, Yoko Taro would be perfect for it.

edited 30th Apr '17 3:00:28 PM by Demongodofchaos2

Taro Yolo for SMTV! He'll make sure every route is a bad end just the way it should be.

edited 30th Apr '17 3:07:57 PM by OmegaRadiance

At least this is a series that operates on multiple timelines.