If your goal is just indie games that are mostly 2D it might be totally viable. If you are looking for 3D gaming it would be limited to retro consoles just due to the hardware.
There are several channels on YouTube that try to push Pis to their gaming limits, check them out -- search for low spec gaming.
The Pi 4 overclocked to 2.3 GHz has approximately 40% of the single-thread performance, and 20% of the multi thread performance, which is quite impressive for a $35 board.
The Steam Deck also has quad-channel LPDDR5, and a relatively beefy GPU. The Pi 4's GPU is lacking compared to the processor, barely being capable of running a desktop environment with acceptable performance. I have run Portal 2 on a Pi 4 using box86, but it was extremely hacky, unstable, and netted something on the order of 2-3 fps.
You could run old school emulators that aren't GPU bound no problem, and probably even some old school shooters like Doom 3, but it's not going to be as polished or performant as a Steam Deck.
Anything Ryzen-based at or above above 3400G should be good. There's probably decent Intel alternatives too.
You may be able to use the Rpi4 (or equivalent) as a Steam Link client. I have it running mostly fine on a comparable 6yo embedded Celeron streaming from the desktop downstairs. Not sure how well that works without tweaks on ARM but it could be worth a shot if that's what you're after.
If the Nvidia Jetson Nano was still supported it would do MUCH better than a Raspberry Pi at nearly anything. It has a tiny (but very real) GPU on it, and tons of memory bandwidth: 4GB of RAM, I think, and something like 25GB/s of memory bandwidth.
Almost certainly not, in terms of time-money tradeoffs as well as the final result probably being less of an integrated thing. There's been an onrush of Deck clones lately from all sorts of companies, and a lot of them look worthy of interest. See ETAPrime's Youtube for coverage.
Based on my experiences trying to get Windows stuff working through WINE/Lutris/Proton on my Arch Linux laptop/desktop, I'm guessing that a huge part of why they're able to make the SteamDeck a good experience is being able to guarantee that all the software they've written to help with compatibility is tested on their exact hardware. It took me a full weekend of tinkering to get ray tracing to work on both my desktop (which uses an AMD Radeon RX 6900 XT) and my laptop (with a mobile 3070); even after getting Lutris to use Proton Experimental that I downloaded through Steam, I still needed a smattering of different environmental variables (only some of which were the same for both AMD and nvidia) along with a newer version of mesa (for DXR 1.1) that's available even in the Arch, which have a reputation for bleeding edge stuff (although since then it's been put into their testing repos, so hopefully it will get pushed out soon). Even after finally getting the configuration so that the GPUs successfully reported the ability to do ray tracing, it took some specific configuration of the WINE prefix itself to be able to get certain games to allow the setting to even be enabled; apparently the Windows 10 prefix that WINE created had its registry initialized with inconsistent values for the OS patch build number it would report to software and the human-readable version of the string, both of which were old enough that the games didn't believe that ray tracing was actually supported, so I had to update them both to the corresponding values for a new enough Windows 10 patch before I could even enable the ray tracing settings.
Long story short, I have to imagine that even if someone managed to make custom hardware that was powerful enough to run the games they wanted, trying to just install the custom Linux distro that SteamOS uses would not just magically run arbitrary Windows games well. This really seems like something where the hardware and software have to be designed and tested in tandem to be able to have any level of confidence in a good user experience.
Does the steam deck support ray tracing now? It didn't back when it was released (out of the box), and also required messing around with stuff to enable it.
If you don't care about ray tracing, Linux gaming on Steam is pretty much install it and it works. I enabled the multilib repos in arch, installed steam from pacman and that was it. I was playing games immediately.
You don't need to mess around with lutris/wine, Steam just does it for you with proton. At most you can install proton ge[0] to see if it fixes some problems with proton for the game you're trying. But if the problem is with proton, you'd have the same issues on the steam deck as well.
You cannot buy one outright currently, but you can still reserve one on Steam and from the looks of it you'll most likely get it by December. The steam deck is pretty incredible and I have greatly enjoyed tinkering with it.
Steam Deck is available in Canada, you can order it just like anyone else. In terms of gaming capabilities, comparing it to Raspberry Pi is like comparing a mid-end smartphone to a full blown gaming rig.
the Raspberry Pi memory bandwidth is absolutely terrible, which makes performance absolutely terrible. it is a computer designed to be inexpensive and to teach computers, and it excels at these two things.
The Raspberry Pi is not a good platform for virtually anything else, really.
"But PiHole!" Ok, sure. I would argue that this could run in a container on any other machine on your network and use less electricity, and if you don't have another machine on your network, fine; use a Raspberry Pi.
the Pi is not a Steam Deck competitor; it is not even good as a Linux desktop if you do anything in a browser or use any Electron applications.
The ads on this site cover literally half the screen and open when you click "skip". Just pure gross and terribly inhumane.
Marching ever closer to Idiocracy in real life.
For anyone who is interested in what videogames as a medium uniquely can do to tell stories in a way other media cannot and who hasn't played it yet I'd recommend Nier Automata strongly. It's in my opinion the smartest and for a lack of a better term 'deepest' game of the last decade.
I really enjoyed Nier Automata -- I'd say it's a solid second place -- but it doesn't hold a candle to Horizon: Zero Dawn. The storytelling was superb, and the gameplay was really good too.
Horizon: Zero Dawn is a marvel. One of the best looking games, original, solid and challenging gameplay and a storytelling that keeps on the edge of the seat wanting more. It has everything.
Horizon: Zero Dawn is fine. Definitely above average. But the narrative in Horizon: Zero Dawn is best described as "extremely conventional" with many predictable tropes (it was obvious your father figure was going to die from the first time you meet him). The main (past human) villain also takes a disappointing turn from "relatably misguided" to "mustache-twirllingly evil" in the second half of the game.
One illustrative difference is the side quests: I don't remember a single Horizon: Zero Dawn side quest. Nier Automata's side quests, meanwhile, are almost always tied into the main story or its themes - even if you don't realize it at the time you're doing the quest.
Nier Automata is rough around the edges, but the whole comes together to be greater than the sum of its parts. Horizon: Zero Dawn, on the other hand, is very polished and well-executed, but it doesn't "gel" as well as Nier Automata, nor does it take as many risks.
Not all the sidequests are great in H:ZD, but there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment in the end cinematic that explains one of the collectibles and makes it suddenly be much more meaningful.
(SPOILER: You see a circle of metal flowers around Sobek's grave at her home, implying they're GAIA's memorial to Sobek)
Can you put into words what makes it special without spoiling anything? I played to the first boss. Found zero interesting. Stopped playing. Up to that point it was just generic "game". Walk a character around, shoot stuff, repeat.
Every action from the first boss and beyond has meaning, and it gets more dramatic onward. But if you didn't latch on to the plot by the first boss it's probably fine to skip if you still have a refund available. If you are locked in financially I would still recommend playing.
I played until the robot village or whatever it's called, did most of the side quests which are all run-of-the-mill meaningless fetch/find stuff, and stopped.
Just looked up boss list: I passed three bosses. I never encountered this amazing dramatic storyline people keep gushing about. My guess is that these people never read enough books or watched enough movies, because Nier is just boring and predictable
It takes time for the game to develop it's story. In fact, the story doesn't even get very interesting until the second play through. But that is when it becomes exponentially better than probably 95% of all other games.
I read a ton of fantasy and fiction, and would say this game is a really unique story. You haven't even gotten a taste of it, you should really not judge the players who've enjoyed it.
It takes ~30ish hours to get endings A,B,C,D,E; realistically they're 3 story chapters, with the 3rd chapter having 3 different endings. For a typical JRPG that isn't anything out of the norm, I would say the story gets interesting halfway through the first chapter and gets continually better in the 2nd/3rd chapters.
The main theme of the game is one only a game could have and it's nothing boring like "robots have feelings".
>Robots have feelings and souls? Nothing is what it seems? Humans are the bad guys? With a few twists telegraphed two hours before they happen?
These aren't even the twists in Nier Automata, these are surface-level readings of the story from the first few hours of the game. Although, humans are the bad guys isn't even in the game at all, the humans are long dead. Which I thought was one of the more obvious story twists.
It definitely took me more than an hour. It's possible I've gotten further? I just don't remember exactly where I left it because there's barely anything there to remember.
Xbox profile tells me I've got 20 hours played, 20% achievements obtained, 7 endings acquired.
To add to that data point, I'm looking at my achievements. Its probably not a great way to measure progress but still:
- Creation and Insurrection. Complete the alien ship. 23,21% players have this achievement
- We Await Your Next Visit. Complete the amusement park ruins. 28,60% players have this achievement
- It's a Healthy Baby Boy! Complete the desert area. 32,26% players have this achievement
- Ruler of the Deep. Complete the flooded city. 18,33% players have this achievement
For a game where "every action and beyond has its meaning", "unique storytelling", "the deepest game in its decade" etc. only perhaps a third of all players achieve even the most basic of objectives and probably give up soon after.
I can't even imagine an actual storytelling game that would fail to present any semblance of an engaging story 20 hours in.
Well, yes, it'll take you longer if you stop to smell the roses.
The stats you cite are not as compelling an argument as you think. They're pretty much in line with what you see for most games. On PSN, Automata has a 30% completion rate, meaning seeing ending E specifically, which is about what you'd expect.
The fact that you weren't engaged by the story might simply have been because you spent the majority of your game time not engaging with it in any way whatsoever. The side quests you must've been doing are there largely to pad game time. Yoko Taro has a tendency to be thrifty in his game design, leading to both at times tedious side quests, and the several endings approach.
> Well, yes, it'll take you longer if you stop to smell the roses.
And at the same time somehow "because you spent the majority of your game time not engaging with it in any way whatsoever."
> The side quests you must've been doing are there largely to pad game time.
Funny that. Elsewhere in this conversation people claim that "side quests, meanwhile, are almost always tied into the main story or its themes - even if you don't realize it at the time you're doing the quest" and "Every action from the first boss and beyond has meaning, and it gets more dramatic onward"
Or perhaps, just perhaps, and hear me out on this: the game is really shit at presenting this "unique storytelling not seen elsewhere"? Perhaps, just perhaps, twenty hours, three (or more?) bosses, and four locations is more than enough to give the player a sense and a feel for this amazing story beyond the absolute boring and predictable?
It's also immensely funny to me that my repeated questions of "when does the actual story start" are met with absolute silence and people either deferring or questioning my abilities.
So? When does this amazing story start? 40 hours in? 60? Ever?
It pretty much starts at 0 seconds in. The first few lines lines of dialogue have more substance than the entire plot of most other games. Not because they're particularly deep, or evocative, but because of how they tie into the themes, story, and gameplay of the game.
In regards to the side quests, I've never looked at them in much detail. The gameplay they put your through is largely the worst you'll find in the game, which is why I said they're there to pad time. Automata is a very short game if you just go from set piece to set piece. Nier: Gestalt/Replicant was the same way.
You clearly are extremely against giving this game a chance, and seem fairly cynical in general. There is this video I always have my friends watch after they finish the game that really ties in what this game is about: https://youtu.be/63PzQIbTrM8
I don't expect you to watch this or change your mind. I do hope though that others who might be reading along will give the video a look. For myself, it made the game into an experience.
For you, OP, I recommend you don't play this game. You are definitely not it's audience. Maybe you'd like another call of duty instead. I heard those have good stories.
>Robots have feelings and souls? Nothing is what it seems? Humans are the bad guys? With a few twists telegraphed two hours before they happen?
This is funnier than you realize. First off, the game pushes those assumptions in your face to serve the greater narrative. Secondly, exactly those points, alongside "the game isn't deep just because it namedrops famous philosophers," are the most common critiques of those who didn't engage with the plot beyond the absolute surface.
Automata demands a lot from the player if they want to get to its core. You can turn off your brain and enjoy the spectacle, but you'll miss what makes it great that way.
At the beginning of Automata, pay attention to the worldbuilding/briefings given to the player character as they fly in to the opening battle. It’s a very linear battle which doesn’t feel that way in the moment, a really clever way to keep the player’s mind occupied just to the point that we feel as though our observations of the game’s world are self-motivated, neutral, and factual despite being force-fed exactly the same briefing as our character.
Once you finish the first stage and get to explore the game world more openly, keep on the look out for situations where the game world presents small subversions or inversions of the assumptions the game made you think were your own. The game won’t call direct attention to this and relies on you feeling like something is amiss.
This is probably what’s so “confusing” to some, but it wouldn’t work if the game told you which of your expectations are being subverted, because telling the player what they’re expected to expect would ruin the mind trick it pulled to get all that stuff in your head without you realizing it came from an external source. I love how the fake-self-realization trick puts the player into the same headspace as their on-screen character, but does so in a way that the player can’t realize how much of the game was a shared experience until much later.
It’s such a cool inversion of the very concept of the video game, where the player is nominally in control of the character by pushing the buttons and moving the sticks, but everything the player causes to happen in the game instead compels the player toward introspection of their own existence in order to understand the growing disconnect they feel between the game-world-as-observed and the game-world-as-expected-to-expect.
Just like our character, the player is presented with an “open world” with a limited list of things we can choose to go do. We both get just enough freedom of choice to feel like we’re in control without ever noticing all the ways the world effectively made our decisions for us by defining our limitations before we even got here so we won’t even realize it’s possible to question them. Do you want to smash robots in the desert, or smash robots in the grassland, or smash robots in the flooded city? Do you want to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a computer programmer? Non-participation is only an option if you turn the game off, and that’s no fun.
So I play the closed-off open world where I could theoretically command my character to go anywhere and do anything if both of us somehow realized we could choose what to choose. Still unknowingly placed in the same headspace as some very attractive computer code, the player can keep thinking about the nagging disconnect between the world as observed and the world as expected, but doing so is frustrating, fruitless, and the bad feeling goes away as long as you can distract yourself from thinking about it. Next mission; kill some evil machine lifeforms.
The visibly robotic “machine lifeforms” are invading earth and threaten the fate of humanity itself. Their glowing angry eye-lamps look out from otherwise-featureless spherical metal heads on cylindrical bodies, stumbling/hopping around awkwardly, shrill agonized cartoon-robot vocoder wails when we smash them, brandishing oversized novelty-industrial weapons. They’re super cute. They’re the biggest threat to our survival.
Earth’s defense force are the androids(/gynoids) taking orders from the moon base refuge of the last living humans. It’s such a noble cause for the androids that they were literally made in mankind’s image, visually indistinguishable from human at their most basic, up to walking talking fighting idealized perfection in the case of the YoRHa androids, especially 2B and her delicious 絶対領域 :d
Over the course of the game, which group seems to be more human, and how? Which group embodies the essence of humanity? (What is the essence of humanity?) Which group are the mass-produced automaton...
Traditionally Yoko Taro games have had weak gameplay and strong story. Nier auto was the first one to actually have some decent gameplay due to it being done by platinum. I think compared to other Platinum games, the Nier's game mechanics is roughly average Platinum. The strength of Nier auto is that it has good enough game play to not distract from the great story telling told through gameplay that Yoko Taro has been trying to do since Drakgengard.
The story of Nier auto is about breaking the cycle of fate and how to find meaning in "life" for androids and machines. A lot of what makes Nier auto's story great is the execution of story telling through gaming. Nier auto does everything it can to lead you into thinking its a traditional story with a standard gameplay loop and building you up as the key hero against the machine invasion after the first 2 endings/chapters.
Then the game really begins. And thats where you break with all the preconceived notions of what the game seemed to be about up until that point, along with probably a dozen other gaming tropes, and you feel the helplessness both in game and in story at that moment. Everything that was set up as a comfy gameplay loop is tore away and desperation just to survive takes over.
Afterwards, there are major shifts in tone, gameplay, environment, story, characters, etc. The remaining game's story builds to a climax that is probably of one the best payoffs in gaming history and is why this is considered a master class example of the gaming medium as art.
I forced myself through it expecting to be surprised at some point and it fell flat.
Some stuff is clever but parts of the story are terrible.
The character development is atrocious, in a single mission a character goes from "feelings aren't allowed" to "the mission doesn't matter I will literally die for you".
You've already lost me at "first couple endings." As much as I get that multiple endings are cool, I'd rather not spend hours more after a game has "ended" to get to the "real ending" that is somehow so good it makes the entire game worth it.
I know the average gamer wants MORE content for the same price, but I don't feel the same way, especially about story based games. TLOU and even Halo: Reach had great stories without being annoying long.
NieR: Automata calls them "endings", but the critical-path "endings", of which there are five, are actually chapters. You aren't playing to get collectibles or anything, it's a new experience along the way.
The game isn't over until the end of Ending E, and I think it is incredibly worth it.
Since it's an old-ish game now, i will write something here that might spoil it;
The endings are endings, because of the game's idea of cyclic nature of events. It's hinted that the events of the game aren't happening for the first time, but in fact, are a repeat of history.
That is, you are replaying the game as part of that cyclic nature. It's perfectly fine to stop the game at the first "ending" - but you will miss the total message of the game imho.
I get the idea. However, "ending" is not just a story trope but a gameplay element. Games end at their ending. Conversely, you are absolutely allowed to call timeloops or recurring events chapters.
The problem is that they aren't really, as you're playing in few of them in parallel to the story, with different character. "Chapter 2C" would be just as confusing...
I disagree, insofar as this is a Yoko Taro game, and that is a sub-genre unto itself. NieR: Automata first-time players are coming into this in medias res, and the expectations were made quite a long time ago for folks like, well, me.
> I know the average gamer wants MORE content for the same price, but I don't feel the same way, especially about story based games. TLOU and even Halo: Reach had great stories without being annoying long.
Yeah I'm actually thankful Cyberpunk doesn't take a billion hours to complete if I just want to focus on the main story, just don't have time for that
no. I wasn't enjoying the game and it was a chore to complete, and the only reason I even finished the first ending was because of the hype the game had.
I did go to youtube to explore all the endings and there's where I realized they got clever with them but I just threw the towel.
Same, getting to "ending 1" was such a boring slog that I felt they should have paid me for that time rather than the other way around. The frankly embarrassing character design didn't help, nor did the frequent crashing.
It's good only in that it provides a handy indicator that I should disregard recommendations from people who enjoyed it.
Agreed, I really disliked it and I forced my way through all the ‘endings’. I got that it was being clever, it just fell flat, annoying and a bit pervy.
Also it’s not particularly impressive technically, it looks like a launch Xbox 360 game so it’s not surprising that it runs on Switch.
I know people love this game but it seems to be a marmite experience.
> The character development is atrocious, in a single mission a character goes from "feelings aren't allowed" to "the mission doesn't matter I will literally die for you".
You might call that problem with the format but the reason for that was explained later on. It's "oh, that's why the thing few hours earlier happened!" moment
>The character development is atrocious, in a single mission a character goes from "feelings aren't allowed" to "the mission doesn't matter I will literally die for you".
I'm sorry, this is an incorrect reading of the situation on your part. If you finish the game, there is nothing incongruous there, aside from the localization making 2B a bit more curt than in the source material.
<light-spoiler>The lead-up to Ending E is one of the few gaming moments that managed to touch me deeply. It's ridiculously simple yet devilishly powerful. And the tough decision you have to make afterwards, even though my programmer mind can see right through it, is marvelous.</light-spoiler>
Nier automata is one of the most subversive games I've ever played over 30 years of gaming. The fact you played like 1-2 hours and dropped it doesn't qualify you talk about the game not having a unique story.
I can get you don't like gameplay or whatever and find it boring. But formulaic and predictable are the least descriptive words for this game.
I can guarantee that you didn't actually predict the story, and put it down before you could be proven wrong. The things you deem "predictable" are not so subtly hammered into your head, repeatedly. You didn't so much predict them as uncritically accept the world as it seemed.
I can accept that it's boring if you don't enjoy the gameplay, but it is anything but formulaic, by any measure. It can seem trite and faux-deep, what with seeming to have very predictable twists and name-dropping philosophers, but the twists you think you see coming are not the actual twists, and the point it's trying to make is actually meaningful and human, not some silly sci-fi trope.
It does take far too long on the setup to get to its actual points - especially if you don't enjoy the game-play or weirder grandiose moments (This cannot continue, Become as gods etc).
> but it is anything but formulaic, by any measure.
All quests are "get from point A to point B" and all side quests are basically "fetch X for a forgettable NPC number 15 000"
By the time I've beaten the third boss and gotten to the robot village or whatever it is, all I could do is run through the desert for half an hour and give up.
Graphically Nier is very basic compared to The Witcher 3, scaling the latter to Switch was indeed miraculous. Nier is not remotely surprising — there are probably more polygons in the main character model than the entire map.
Witcher 3 doesn't have crazy high requirements especially when you turn down the settings. On Switch it also only renders at 540p resolution, so just a quarter of 1080p.
Most games on Switch run sub 720p and don’t manage the seamless open world that the Witcher does. It certainly looks a lot worse than on other systems but it manages to deliver the experience pretty well. It’s hard to find a game other than BOTW that manages something similar and BOTW benefits from its sparse art style.
Sure, but the game launched on $400 consoles 7 years ago, running fine on harddrives without loading screens. It was optimized for such things from the start. Impressive but I'd say the more noteworthy part is that Nintendo managed to make the platform attractive enough for such ports. They succeeded where Sony's PS Vita failed miserably.
Those are fair points. The Switch has done exceptionally well considering its hardware limitations. Thinking back I remember playing the Witcher 2 and 3 on the same PC and being impressed by how much more performant Red engine was on the latter.
Nier is so graphically rough at times that it felt like a rushed indie game. Nevertheless it’s an amazing game and demonstrates what Nintendo lives by: graphics don’t make a game.
I honestly don't think it's coming through to people just how limited the Switch hardware really is. Sure, it is a modern machine, but the frame budget is just nothing compared to most home consoles. The Tegra X1 was a pretty decent mobile SoC... For 2015. And the one in the switch actually runs at a lower clock speed than NVIDIA was running it at before. The crowning achievement for the X1 was that it could technically boot UE4 games, but frankly as evidenced by a lot of Switch titles, it doesn't do all that well if the developers don't put a lot of effort into optimizing it. Nintendo is overall pretty good at making stuff that looks good on their own hardware, but porting games designed to run on other flagship consoles to the Nintendo flagship seems like it has been quite a challenge for the past ten years or so.
> Miracle? Eh. I'd rather pick up the PS4 copy for half the price and enjoy the game. It's not really a game designed to be played on a bus.
This is more of a nitpick but the Nintendo Switch definitely is made with Japan in mind. I am not a cultural expert on Japan by any means but it surely seems like people living near city centers have quite little space to work with, leading to folks using iPad setups instead of desktop or laptop computers. The Switch is certainly compelling in this regard, if you don't have much space for a comfortable TV setup at home. I think viewed through this lens, the contortions make a lot more sense. This also explains why Valve has been pushing very hard in Asia in general with the Steam Deck, and aggressively pricing it as well.
I just want to add to this. I'm a graphics programmer in the gaming industry and for the last few years my main focus has been performance. The games I work on are games targeting all consoles, but my main focus is largely getting the switch version to look decent and still run well.
I'm exaggerating a bit but my experience is roughly that you can throw almost anything together and it will work flawlessly on a PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Go through it and clean up the obvious unnecessary wastes of performance and it will run smoothly on PS4 and Xbox One. But Switch... getting the same thing to run on Switch generally involves lowering resolution, decreasing texture sizes, removing tons of set dressing, cutting several post process effects, and replacing a lot of shaders with cheaper alternatives which hopefully look good enough that people don't notice the difference thanks to the lower resolution.
It’s aimed at Japan in at least one way: the person you need to convince that it’s necessary to have a game console in the house is Mom. It’s why the Switch is designed for and marketed aggressively towards women and children, and why it’s a huge success.
>honestly don't think it's coming through to people just how limited the Switch hardware really is
I honestly don't understand why say Apple doesn't stick a few buttons to something like the ipod touch in iphone 13 pro max format and call it a console, what makes porting games to the Switch harder than to the iConsole (iPhone) for example? They already have the store, the brand name, the OS and the chips now? sure the videogame market is less profitable than say removing the 3.5mm jack then selling the awful sounding earpods for 150$, but more money is more money no?
Switch gamers pay €50-70 per game, iPhone gamers pay €0-€3. This incentivises making the current kind of simplistic, low dev cost, high microtransaction potential titles, which don't rely on console controls. Given e.g. Nier being a buy-once narrative experience, it's hard to see how they would make ROI in a mobile ecosystem
Apple managed to raise the price of everything they sell compared to their competitors by raising the bar for quality. They could do this to software too.
For me seeing an iPhone game priced at $20 or more is making me more likely to try it, not less. What stops many people from playing mobile games is time and quality tolerance, not money.
Apple are largely the ones who pushed down the ASP to begin with. I think my reflection of mobile games before I gave up on the whole market was similar to you, but the platforms are pretty much happy profiting off the stream of gacha transactions more than the bursty hits of AAA games.
Nier Automata is possibly the greatest video game ever made, definitely in my top 10.
Reading through this thread it's pretty clear most people who disliked it stopped before the first ending. I think the main issue is that the actual gameplay is the weakest part of the whole package, without the world building, story and experimental mechanics it's just a decentish rpg. It's really easy to miss the good parts (by design?) by stopping early or not interacting much with npcs.
I find it fascinating you could sonsider a game to be the greatest of all time when the gameplay itself isn't good. Is gameplay not the most important part of a game? It's like saying the greatest movie of all time, except for the plot. The greatest car, except for the driving. The greatest winter coat, except for staying warm.
It's really not important. If I want to play a "fun" game I'd go for mario kart. Nier is not very accessible and it's better for it. Also, the gameplay is not bad, just generic.
I could easily imagine someone who considers a movie to be the greatest of all time but to have a weak plot. A movie that is such a tour-de-force visually that it blows the plot out of the water, or a movie that focuses carefully on a character study without telling much of a story, or an arthouse film that stirs the emotions while making no sense from a linear summary perspective. Like video games, movies can have many more components than just the story being told.
> Is gameplay not the most important part of a game?
Not really. Gameplay is a part of the game and it can have multiple effects. It can reinforce the themes, see for example a game where you are meant to be strong the gameplay can make you feel like a god. Or if you are a fast robot pilot like Titan Fall 2 then the gameplay can be fast and acrobatic.
Or it can be at odds with the story. Plenty of games about cooperation or pacifism etc randomly have fight mechanics because they sell well. See for example Last of Us telling a moving story about humanity and then having sections where you mow down humans like crazy.
And finally there are games where the gameplay serves the emotion behind it, Nier, like for example Shadow of the Colossus or Death Stranding, the gameplay is there to make you feel something or help you feel something. If the gameplay was insanely intricate like Devil May Cry then the themes would not resonate as much. Its not like Hideo Kojima doesn't know how to make a character walk properly, but the clunky walking makes feeling relieved when you find help in death stranding mean something.
I had completely different experience. Pathfinding and inventory - honestly I don't remember, they didn't stay in the way. Not more than in any contemporary game. Combat wasn't in the center, but was fair and challenging enough to blend into the narrative. The gameplay was designed to facilitate the story-telling in a way to put the player as an agent in the epic tragedy.
I hate modern narrative-heavy games deciding to remove the gameplay to focus on the story/atmosphere. Movies/books are much better mediums for this kind of entertainment.
> It's like saying the greatest movie of all time, except for the plot.
2001 A Space Odyssey is probably a good example of this - it has very little plot, and it gets quickly resolved, but it is nevertheless an extraordinary movie that many love dearly, and for good reason I think.
I get what you're saying, but if the gameplay/design doesn't support it in any way, it doesn't matter how good the story is.
I feel like I went through it a little quick and then basically got softlocked at one of the later bosses in my first playthrough, since they take away all of your equipment when you die, which is supremely frustrating, and they won't let you buy any more supplies to prepare in that save since all of the shops are closed due to the boss... Must have given up after 15-20 tries and never touched it again.
I think I had this problem too, but got through it after a few tries. I strongly dislike mechanically hard video games but didn't find Nier particularly difficult.
Most modern video games give me the feeling that I've played the exact same game before, just in lower resolution. Nier is one of the few that feels like it's doing something original.
Similar here, lost interest after getting killed by that crane thing two or three times and getting sent back to the beginning to grind my way through a bunch of grind.
Maybe I can find all the good parts cut together into a single video online: that sounds more attractive than slogging through the game version.
If you ever pick it back up, try maxing out on HP-healing defense chips. There are chips that heal a set amount of HP per second, heal a percentage of damage dealt, heal a percentage of damage absorbed, etc, and you can use all of them at the same time: https://nierautomata.wiki.fextralife.com/Defense+Chips
I had the same problem you describe and kept dying from just the gangs of hub-area mobs when I was extremely low-level. It was honestly a huge letdown at the time. The original NieR (story, not gameplay) was more influential and personally important to me than any other piece of fiction in any medium I can think of. It was never a popular or well-reviewed game, so the announcement of a sequel was a total shock and sent me into Automata with unreal levels of hype. Day 1 buy on PC despite the port quality (quickly fixed by fan patch!), but no matter how I approached it felt like the very basic act of playing the game was preventing me from “getting” Automata’s story. I knew I wouldn’t get a good experience just watching somebody’s longplay either, so I felt stuck.
Then I stumbled on the Most Important Detail that was not obvious to me at all on my first (only, so far) playthrough: where to go to unlock additional chip capacity, and when the option to do so became available. I probably just missed a mention of it in a prior Bunker comm. The greyed-out expanded chip meter made it obvious it would be possible at some point, but I was too afraid of spoilers to look it up at that point in my playthrough. I found it by accident when I was walking around the Bunker trying to talk to all the Operators. (Thanks, 6O!)
You have to visit the Bunker, walk around to the Maintenance Shop, and find the upgrade terminal on the far side of that room. Not hidden at all, but I didn’t figure this out until almost all the way through the initial [redacted] and am still not sure how early it becomes available. Maybe it is as soon as the Bunker itself is? idk, plus you have to play for a while to afford anything.
Endless min-maxing possibilities open up after that, plus fresh incentive to leave no online player’s corpse unturned in the hunt for more and higher-level chips.
Getting that chipped HP buffer gave me the breathing room I needed to actually get into the Platinum-style combat for the first time ever. I’d always admired the Bayonetta games/characters, but same problem with them minus the drive to push through it for story’s sake. Maybe I’ll eventually give them another chance too :)
Disco Elysium is an excellent game, but it doesn't stand out all that much in the sea of text heavy video games. It could be the best story ever told, but Nier: Autoamta would still be the better video game, because it itself tells a very compelling story, undeniably in the upper echelons of the medium, while also, and this is the most important part, actually melding gameplay, plot, and real life interpersonal relationships in a way no other game has done. Every single aspect of Nier: Automata hinges on and is uplifted by it being interactive. What Nier: Automata does is wholly unique, it could only be done because it's interactive, and everything it does is great or better. That is why it's possibly the greatest video game ever made. No other games has reached those heights.
Somewhat. But the first zone, where dying resets everything, is by far the most unpleasant in the entire game. Talk about putting your worst foot forward.
It's a game that also requires a lot of patience (too much patience) to actually get to the truly good parts - especially the baffling decision to make you run the initial campaign twice with very little variation, before opening up more.
But it does have excellent moments and is excellent at invoking emotions from places you would never expect - especially with the final ending.
Edit to add: the gameplay quite frequently switches between button-mash combat and bullet hell (especially, but not exclusively, in the hacking mini-game), with various camera styles mixed in for both. It actually has quite a lot of variation on these two themes, and possibly a few more I'm forgetting.
Thanks all--I've added this back to my wishlist, I'll probably give it a try next time there's a sale. I agree that, if there's better stuff ahead, it seems weird to lead with the dullest part, but everyone makes mistakes.
It occurs to me also that I now have a much beefier machine and bigger monitor than I did back then, so perhaps it'll be more impressive and make a better impression.
Playing at higher difficulty will make just button mashing less feasible. The combat was much more fun when I raised it close to the max. Just don't raise it until after the first save location.
Also I have to say that "upper echelons" of video game writing is a _very_ low bar. Most of the best video game writing reaches the level of average genre fiction.
NieR Automata is one of the most amazing pieces of storytelling I've ever encountered. The gameplay is meh. I love it, personally, but it's really nothing special. But what it does do is provides an interactive enough environment for the player to experience the story.
128 comments
[ 5.0 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] threadI don't think you can still buy the original Steam hardware version in Canada where I live.
There are several channels on YouTube that try to push Pis to their gaming limits, check them out -- search for low spec gaming.
https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/compare/14301251?baseli...
The Pi 4 overclocked to 2.3 GHz has approximately 40% of the single-thread performance, and 20% of the multi thread performance, which is quite impressive for a $35 board.
The Steam Deck also has quad-channel LPDDR5, and a relatively beefy GPU. The Pi 4's GPU is lacking compared to the processor, barely being capable of running a desktop environment with acceptable performance. I have run Portal 2 on a Pi 4 using box86, but it was extremely hacky, unstable, and netted something on the order of 2-3 fps.
You could run old school emulators that aren't GPU bound no problem, and probably even some old school shooters like Doom 3, but it's not going to be as polished or performant as a Steam Deck.
You may be able to use the Rpi4 (or equivalent) as a Steam Link client. I have it running mostly fine on a comparable 6yo embedded Celeron streaming from the desktop downstairs. Not sure how well that works without tweaks on ARM but it could be worth a shot if that's what you're after.
Long story short, I have to imagine that even if someone managed to make custom hardware that was powerful enough to run the games they wanted, trying to just install the custom Linux distro that SteamOS uses would not just magically run arbitrary Windows games well. This really seems like something where the hardware and software have to be designed and tested in tandem to be able to have any level of confidence in a good user experience.
If you don't care about ray tracing, Linux gaming on Steam is pretty much install it and it works. I enabled the multilib repos in arch, installed steam from pacman and that was it. I was playing games immediately.
You don't need to mess around with lutris/wine, Steam just does it for you with proton. At most you can install proton ge[0] to see if it fixes some problems with proton for the game you're trying. But if the problem is with proton, you'd have the same issues on the steam deck as well.
[0] https://github.com/GloriousEggroll/proton-ge-custom
https://www.gamespot.com/articles/steam-deck-is-speeding-up-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_Link
https://help.steampowered.com/en/faqs/view/6424-467a-31d9-c6...
If you do want a Steam Deck, you can get one in Canada: https://www.steamdeck.com/en/
The Raspberry Pi is not a good platform for virtually anything else, really.
"But PiHole!" Ok, sure. I would argue that this could run in a container on any other machine on your network and use less electricity, and if you don't have another machine on your network, fine; use a Raspberry Pi.
the Pi is not a Steam Deck competitor; it is not even good as a Linux desktop if you do anything in a browser or use any Electron applications.
https://techcrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/idiocracy....
One illustrative difference is the side quests: I don't remember a single Horizon: Zero Dawn side quest. Nier Automata's side quests, meanwhile, are almost always tied into the main story or its themes - even if you don't realize it at the time you're doing the quest.
Nier Automata is rough around the edges, but the whole comes together to be greater than the sum of its parts. Horizon: Zero Dawn, on the other hand, is very polished and well-executed, but it doesn't "gel" as well as Nier Automata, nor does it take as many risks.
(SPOILER: You see a circle of metal flowers around Sobek's grave at her home, implying they're GAIA's memorial to Sobek)
Just looked up boss list: I passed three bosses. I never encountered this amazing dramatic storyline people keep gushing about. My guess is that these people never read enough books or watched enough movies, because Nier is just boring and predictable
I read a ton of fantasy and fiction, and would say this game is a really unique story. You haven't even gotten a taste of it, you should really not judge the players who've enjoyed it.
How long of a time?
> the story doesn't even get very interesting until the second play through
I couldn't trudge through even once, how can I get to a second play through? :)
> You haven't even gotten a taste of it
So, to "get a taste of it" I need to a) play an unspecified long time and b) preferably two times
> this game is a really unique story
Robots have feelings and souls? Nothing is what it seems? Humans are the bad guys? With a few twists telegraphed two hours before they happen?
The main theme of the game is one only a game could have and it's nothing boring like "robots have feelings".
>Robots have feelings and souls? Nothing is what it seems? Humans are the bad guys? With a few twists telegraphed two hours before they happen?
These aren't even the twists in Nier Automata, these are surface-level readings of the story from the first few hours of the game. Although, humans are the bad guys isn't even in the game at all, the humans are long dead. Which I thought was one of the more obvious story twists.
Which chapter is robot village and Beuvoir?
> These aren't even the twists in Nier Automata, these are surface-level readings of the story from the first few hours of the game.
So, again, how many hours do I have to sink into the game before it becomes anything but a boring and predictable?
Chapter 1. Roughly 1 hour into the game, if you play it for the story.
Quitting at that point is like quitting The Fellowship of the Ring because you "predicted" that the Hobbits would leave the Shire.
Xbox profile tells me I've got 20 hours played, 20% achievements obtained, 7 endings acquired.
- Creation and Insurrection. Complete the alien ship. 23,21% players have this achievement
- We Await Your Next Visit. Complete the amusement park ruins. 28,60% players have this achievement
- It's a Healthy Baby Boy! Complete the desert area. 32,26% players have this achievement
- Ruler of the Deep. Complete the flooded city. 18,33% players have this achievement
For a game where "every action and beyond has its meaning", "unique storytelling", "the deepest game in its decade" etc. only perhaps a third of all players achieve even the most basic of objectives and probably give up soon after.
I can't even imagine an actual storytelling game that would fail to present any semblance of an engaging story 20 hours in.
The stats you cite are not as compelling an argument as you think. They're pretty much in line with what you see for most games. On PSN, Automata has a 30% completion rate, meaning seeing ending E specifically, which is about what you'd expect.
The fact that you weren't engaged by the story might simply have been because you spent the majority of your game time not engaging with it in any way whatsoever. The side quests you must've been doing are there largely to pad game time. Yoko Taro has a tendency to be thrifty in his game design, leading to both at times tedious side quests, and the several endings approach.
And at the same time somehow "because you spent the majority of your game time not engaging with it in any way whatsoever."
> The side quests you must've been doing are there largely to pad game time.
Funny that. Elsewhere in this conversation people claim that "side quests, meanwhile, are almost always tied into the main story or its themes - even if you don't realize it at the time you're doing the quest" and "Every action from the first boss and beyond has meaning, and it gets more dramatic onward"
Or perhaps, just perhaps, and hear me out on this: the game is really shit at presenting this "unique storytelling not seen elsewhere"? Perhaps, just perhaps, twenty hours, three (or more?) bosses, and four locations is more than enough to give the player a sense and a feel for this amazing story beyond the absolute boring and predictable?
It's also immensely funny to me that my repeated questions of "when does the actual story start" are met with absolute silence and people either deferring or questioning my abilities.
So? When does this amazing story start? 40 hours in? 60? Ever?
In regards to the side quests, I've never looked at them in much detail. The gameplay they put your through is largely the worst you'll find in the game, which is why I said they're there to pad time. Automata is a very short game if you just go from set piece to set piece. Nier: Gestalt/Replicant was the same way.
The question isn't about "most other games". The question is about "this unique game with an amazing story where every action is meaningful" etc.
Most other games don't have a starry-eyed following which can't explain how 20 hours in you can't see even a shred of this story.
> Not because they're particularly deep, or evocative, but because of how they tie into the themes, story, and gameplay of the game.
Not deep or evocative but ties into the themes and story of the game is Game Making 101. Every single game with a semblance of a story line has that.
I don't expect you to watch this or change your mind. I do hope though that others who might be reading along will give the video a look. For myself, it made the game into an experience.
For you, OP, I recommend you don't play this game. You are definitely not it's audience. Maybe you'd like another call of duty instead. I heard those have good stories.
This is funnier than you realize. First off, the game pushes those assumptions in your face to serve the greater narrative. Secondly, exactly those points, alongside "the game isn't deep just because it namedrops famous philosophers," are the most common critiques of those who didn't engage with the plot beyond the absolute surface.
Automata demands a lot from the player if they want to get to its core. You can turn off your brain and enjoy the spectacle, but you'll miss what makes it great that way.
Once you finish the first stage and get to explore the game world more openly, keep on the look out for situations where the game world presents small subversions or inversions of the assumptions the game made you think were your own. The game won’t call direct attention to this and relies on you feeling like something is amiss.
This is probably what’s so “confusing” to some, but it wouldn’t work if the game told you which of your expectations are being subverted, because telling the player what they’re expected to expect would ruin the mind trick it pulled to get all that stuff in your head without you realizing it came from an external source. I love how the fake-self-realization trick puts the player into the same headspace as their on-screen character, but does so in a way that the player can’t realize how much of the game was a shared experience until much later.
It’s such a cool inversion of the very concept of the video game, where the player is nominally in control of the character by pushing the buttons and moving the sticks, but everything the player causes to happen in the game instead compels the player toward introspection of their own existence in order to understand the growing disconnect they feel between the game-world-as-observed and the game-world-as-expected-to-expect.
Just like our character, the player is presented with an “open world” with a limited list of things we can choose to go do. We both get just enough freedom of choice to feel like we’re in control without ever noticing all the ways the world effectively made our decisions for us by defining our limitations before we even got here so we won’t even realize it’s possible to question them. Do you want to smash robots in the desert, or smash robots in the grassland, or smash robots in the flooded city? Do you want to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or a computer programmer? Non-participation is only an option if you turn the game off, and that’s no fun.
So I play the closed-off open world where I could theoretically command my character to go anywhere and do anything if both of us somehow realized we could choose what to choose. Still unknowingly placed in the same headspace as some very attractive computer code, the player can keep thinking about the nagging disconnect between the world as observed and the world as expected, but doing so is frustrating, fruitless, and the bad feeling goes away as long as you can distract yourself from thinking about it. Next mission; kill some evil machine lifeforms.
The visibly robotic “machine lifeforms” are invading earth and threaten the fate of humanity itself. Their glowing angry eye-lamps look out from otherwise-featureless spherical metal heads on cylindrical bodies, stumbling/hopping around awkwardly, shrill agonized cartoon-robot vocoder wails when we smash them, brandishing oversized novelty-industrial weapons. They’re super cute. They’re the biggest threat to our survival.
Earth’s defense force are the androids(/gynoids) taking orders from the moon base refuge of the last living humans. It’s such a noble cause for the androids that they were literally made in mankind’s image, visually indistinguishable from human at their most basic, up to walking talking fighting idealized perfection in the case of the YoRHa androids, especially 2B and her delicious 絶対領域 :d
Over the course of the game, which group seems to be more human, and how? Which group embodies the essence of humanity? (What is the essence of humanity?) Which group are the mass-produced automaton...
The story of Nier auto is about breaking the cycle of fate and how to find meaning in "life" for androids and machines. A lot of what makes Nier auto's story great is the execution of story telling through gaming. Nier auto does everything it can to lead you into thinking its a traditional story with a standard gameplay loop and building you up as the key hero against the machine invasion after the first 2 endings/chapters.
Then the game really begins. And thats where you break with all the preconceived notions of what the game seemed to be about up until that point, along with probably a dozen other gaming tropes, and you feel the helplessness both in game and in story at that moment. Everything that was set up as a comfy gameplay loop is tore away and desperation just to survive takes over.
Afterwards, there are major shifts in tone, gameplay, environment, story, characters, etc. The remaining game's story builds to a climax that is probably of one the best payoffs in gaming history and is why this is considered a master class example of the gaming medium as art.
I forced myself through it expecting to be surprised at some point and it fell flat.
Some stuff is clever but parts of the story are terrible.
The character development is atrocious, in a single mission a character goes from "feelings aren't allowed" to "the mission doesn't matter I will literally die for you".
I know the average gamer wants MORE content for the same price, but I don't feel the same way, especially about story based games. TLOU and even Halo: Reach had great stories without being annoying long.
The game isn't over until the end of Ending E, and I think it is incredibly worth it.
The endings are endings, because of the game's idea of cyclic nature of events. It's hinted that the events of the game aren't happening for the first time, but in fact, are a repeat of history.
That is, you are replaying the game as part of that cyclic nature. It's perfectly fine to stop the game at the first "ending" - but you will miss the total message of the game imho.
Yeah I'm actually thankful Cyberpunk doesn't take a billion hours to complete if I just want to focus on the main story, just don't have time for that
I did go to youtube to explore all the endings and there's where I realized they got clever with them but I just threw the towel.
the game was definitely not for me.
It's good only in that it provides a handy indicator that I should disregard recommendations from people who enjoyed it.
Nobody tell them
Also it’s not particularly impressive technically, it looks like a launch Xbox 360 game so it’s not surprising that it runs on Switch.
I know people love this game but it seems to be a marmite experience.
You might call that problem with the format but the reason for that was explained later on. It's "oh, that's why the thing few hours earlier happened!" moment
I'm sorry, this is an incorrect reading of the situation on your part. If you finish the game, there is nothing incongruous there, aside from the localization making 2B a bit more curt than in the source material.
Metal Gear Solid 2 is the quintessential example.
https://www.deltaheadtranslation.com/MGS2/
There are games who actually uniquely tell stories, but Nier isn't one of them
I can get you don't like gameplay or whatever and find it boring. But formulaic and predictable are the least descriptive words for this game.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33047849
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33047849
It does take far too long on the setup to get to its actual points - especially if you don't enjoy the game-play or weirder grandiose moments (This cannot continue, Become as gods etc).
All quests are "get from point A to point B" and all side quests are basically "fetch X for a forgettable NPC number 15 000"
By the time I've beaten the third boss and gotten to the robot village or whatever it is, all I could do is run through the desert for half an hour and give up.
At which point does it become non-formulaic?
I see no miracle here.
Disappointingly, Final Fantasy XV on the Switch is the mobile demake.
Meanwhile there are fairly realistic (if downscaled) ports of Dragon Quest XI, The Witcher 3, and Nier Automata.
Miracle? Eh. I'd rather pick up the PS4 copy for half the price and enjoy the game. It's not really a game designed to be played on a bus.
> Miracle? Eh. I'd rather pick up the PS4 copy for half the price and enjoy the game. It's not really a game designed to be played on a bus.
This is more of a nitpick but the Nintendo Switch definitely is made with Japan in mind. I am not a cultural expert on Japan by any means but it surely seems like people living near city centers have quite little space to work with, leading to folks using iPad setups instead of desktop or laptop computers. The Switch is certainly compelling in this regard, if you don't have much space for a comfortable TV setup at home. I think viewed through this lens, the contortions make a lot more sense. This also explains why Valve has been pushing very hard in Asia in general with the Steam Deck, and aggressively pricing it as well.
I'm exaggerating a bit but my experience is roughly that you can throw almost anything together and it will work flawlessly on a PS5 and Xbox Series X|S. Go through it and clean up the obvious unnecessary wastes of performance and it will run smoothly on PS4 and Xbox One. But Switch... getting the same thing to run on Switch generally involves lowering resolution, decreasing texture sizes, removing tons of set dressing, cutting several post process effects, and replacing a lot of shaders with cheaper alternatives which hopefully look good enough that people don't notice the difference thanks to the lower resolution.
In the US, the Switch is almost exclusively marketed towards young adults, with perhaps a lean towards men rather than women.
I honestly don't understand why say Apple doesn't stick a few buttons to something like the ipod touch in iphone 13 pro max format and call it a console, what makes porting games to the Switch harder than to the iConsole (iPhone) for example? They already have the store, the brand name, the OS and the chips now? sure the videogame market is less profitable than say removing the 3.5mm jack then selling the awful sounding earpods for 150$, but more money is more money no?
For me seeing an iPhone game priced at $20 or more is making me more likely to try it, not less. What stops many people from playing mobile games is time and quality tolerance, not money.
Who says this was ported from the PS4 version? The author has no clue what they are talking about
Reading through this thread it's pretty clear most people who disliked it stopped before the first ending. I think the main issue is that the actual gameplay is the weakest part of the whole package, without the world building, story and experimental mechanics it's just a decentish rpg. It's really easy to miss the good parts (by design?) by stopping early or not interacting much with npcs.
It's an artist's medium. The most important part is what it does to who consumes it
> It's like saying the greatest movie of all time, except for the plot.
There are many movies people hold in great regard with just okay plot. Execution matters a great thing
> The greatest car, except for the driving.
If you want luxury you don't care about driving feel
> The greatest winter coat, except for staying warm
If you care for fashion, not freezing in -10C is "good enough", don't need to survive Syberian winters
Not really. Gameplay is a part of the game and it can have multiple effects. It can reinforce the themes, see for example a game where you are meant to be strong the gameplay can make you feel like a god. Or if you are a fast robot pilot like Titan Fall 2 then the gameplay can be fast and acrobatic.
Or it can be at odds with the story. Plenty of games about cooperation or pacifism etc randomly have fight mechanics because they sell well. See for example Last of Us telling a moving story about humanity and then having sections where you mow down humans like crazy.
And finally there are games where the gameplay serves the emotion behind it, Nier, like for example Shadow of the Colossus or Death Stranding, the gameplay is there to make you feel something or help you feel something. If the gameplay was insanely intricate like Devil May Cry then the themes would not resonate as much. Its not like Hideo Kojima doesn't know how to make a character walk properly, but the clunky walking makes feeling relieved when you find help in death stranding mean something.
Good example of a great RPG with terrible combat system was Arcanum but even there the gameplay was great (except the combat).
I hate modern narrative-heavy games deciding to remove the gameplay to focus on the story/atmosphere. Movies/books are much better mediums for this kind of entertainment.
2001 A Space Odyssey is probably a good example of this - it has very little plot, and it gets quickly resolved, but it is nevertheless an extraordinary movie that many love dearly, and for good reason I think.
I feel like I went through it a little quick and then basically got softlocked at one of the later bosses in my first playthrough, since they take away all of your equipment when you die, which is supremely frustrating, and they won't let you buy any more supplies to prepare in that save since all of the shops are closed due to the boss... Must have given up after 15-20 tries and never touched it again.
Most modern video games give me the feeling that I've played the exact same game before, just in lower resolution. Nier is one of the few that feels like it's doing something original.
Maybe I can find all the good parts cut together into a single video online: that sounds more attractive than slogging through the game version.
I had the same problem you describe and kept dying from just the gangs of hub-area mobs when I was extremely low-level. It was honestly a huge letdown at the time. The original NieR (story, not gameplay) was more influential and personally important to me than any other piece of fiction in any medium I can think of. It was never a popular or well-reviewed game, so the announcement of a sequel was a total shock and sent me into Automata with unreal levels of hype. Day 1 buy on PC despite the port quality (quickly fixed by fan patch!), but no matter how I approached it felt like the very basic act of playing the game was preventing me from “getting” Automata’s story. I knew I wouldn’t get a good experience just watching somebody’s longplay either, so I felt stuck.
Then I stumbled on the Most Important Detail that was not obvious to me at all on my first (only, so far) playthrough: where to go to unlock additional chip capacity, and when the option to do so became available. I probably just missed a mention of it in a prior Bunker comm. The greyed-out expanded chip meter made it obvious it would be possible at some point, but I was too afraid of spoilers to look it up at that point in my playthrough. I found it by accident when I was walking around the Bunker trying to talk to all the Operators. (Thanks, 6O!)
You have to visit the Bunker, walk around to the Maintenance Shop, and find the upgrade terminal on the far side of that room. Not hidden at all, but I didn’t figure this out until almost all the way through the initial [redacted] and am still not sure how early it becomes available. Maybe it is as soon as the Bunker itself is? idk, plus you have to play for a while to afford anything.
Endless min-maxing possibilities open up after that, plus fresh incentive to leave no online player’s corpse unturned in the hunt for more and higher-level chips.
Getting that chipped HP buffer gave me the breathing room I needed to actually get into the Platinum-style combat for the first time ever. I’d always admired the Bayonetta games/characters, but same problem with them minus the drive to push through it for story’s sake. Maybe I’ll eventually give them another chance too :)
https://youtu.be/BZuIh6qqkaU (TW: Tuber voice)
I can state definitively that it is not, mainly because it has the misfortune to exist in the same world as Disco Elysium.
It's a game that also requires a lot of patience (too much patience) to actually get to the truly good parts - especially the baffling decision to make you run the initial campaign twice with very little variation, before opening up more.
But it does have excellent moments and is excellent at invoking emotions from places you would never expect - especially with the final ending.
Edit to add: the gameplay quite frequently switches between button-mash combat and bullet hell (especially, but not exclusively, in the hacking mini-game), with various camera styles mixed in for both. It actually has quite a lot of variation on these two themes, and possibly a few more I'm forgetting.
It occurs to me also that I now have a much beefier machine and bigger monitor than I did back then, so perhaps it'll be more impressive and make a better impression.
Definitely among the best games I've ever played.