The Worst Difficulty Scaling I’ve Ever Seen

[@coolio6855]

Honestly I'm glad I entered this series with Automata because somehow this story is better experienced backwards rather than forwards.

[@dylancameron382]

You are on crack

[@speedb.bernard5404]

Agree

[@speedb.bernard5404]

​@@dylancameron382 nah he is right

[@edelric321]

Disagree completely. You miss out on so many references and major plot points by not knowing the story of the rest of the Yokoverse, especially in Automata. For instance, seeing Eve's tattoo, the Red Eye disease, Emil & the Machines imitating Facade's culture for the 1st time. These are vital story threads that need proper context in order to understand what's going on beyond surface level. Not saying this to take away from your experience or anything, just to inform other people who have yet to play the games.

[@akaviolaqrif350]

Yep going through drakengard now kinda cool to see some of the weapons are available in automata

[@mistman_161]

I completed 98% of sidequests, got a few of the best words, a level four Phoenix Spear, went through the entire C route then switched to Hard just to spice up the Shadowlord's Castle a bit... it felt fair, the enemies just needed to be knocked down to be insta-killed and the bosses lasted only slightly longer than the dialogue. Which is a problem because if Hard Mode is fair at the very end of the game when I've almost 100% the entire thing, I can't imagine how awful it must be to play on Hard from the beginning.

[@thetoyodacar2264]

yeaap I did a lot of exploring. Unfortionatly they don't do exploration like fromsoft or the witcher so I always ended up in the same areas in later story missions, which is pretty normal but whatever. Then I one shot everything

[@manoftherainshorts9075]

On Hard Prologue is the hardest part of the whole game

[@Xenowave]

I played on hard the whole way, and the DLC was damage sponge city 😭😭😭😭 but I made it through, it was so fun nonetheless.

[@koheikyouji]

In my experience with Gestalt/Replicant, id say Normal is balanced around you having default gear, whereas hard mode is balanced around you having maxed gear, and maybe using some item buffs when you have to deal significant amounts of damage in a short time. Its a bit...annoying, really, that theres no in between. I like being forced to use the utility items etc, but Id have much rather the difficulty affect the enemies bullet spreads. And make their attack patterns more elabourate etc. Maybe add more of the purple spheres instead of red (you can shoot the red away but not the purple), or maybe add a couple of new colours to them. Blue could chase you. Green could bounce off of walls etc. Just something to make the player behave differently rather than 'I need more numbers'. I love the Nier games, but I do think Taro shot himself in the foot a bit when he decided to make them so simple/easy. Which was a deliberate choice btw since he wanted the focus to be on story. No reason we cant have both though imo >_>

[@CanalWolfy]

I played it with hard mode from the start and it wasn't that bad. Maybe diff spike in dlc was a bit frustrating

[@kaikrassin8096]

Difficulty is always a slippery slope for games. It's difficult to find that balance between natural challenge and monotony where health arbitrarily increased and more damage is dealt. That's kind of why I always pick normal mode for any game. I'm very casual with games and I just want to experience what the developer intended for me to. As you said though accessibility is a great thing. If a person wants more challenge then increased difficulty is nice. I would just like if developers also included which mode the game was tailored around. I don't mind challenging games if that's how they were intended. Just let me know damn it so I can get the best experience a casual like me can get. Lol

[@thetoyodacar2264]

Fromsoft has nearly perfected difficulty imo

[@ddm_gamer]

Yeah developers should realy mark what difficutly is recommended. Stalker is absolute garbage on normal difficulty

[@Outofrealman]

Hard to find a balance sure, but we know FOR SURE how not to do it. Both Nier games fail really hard because it is sooooo ridiculously OFF. It is hard to get a 90/100 doesnt mean you cannot at least get a 70/100. Meanwhile Nier FAILS the test. Nier:A has normal that you can face roll the game as long as you are pressing the attack button because heal is instant and you can even do that in the pause menu and the enemies does no damage. Then comes hard that most enemies one-shot you unless you over leveled, but if you are over leveled the game is piss easy again where pressing the attack button = win. So no, the difficulty of N:A is still, EXTREMELY TERRIBLE.

[@kevinfelix2302]

Just do what KH2 Critical does, every action game ever should just follow KH2 and they would be perfect, and no its not hard at all just make the player a bit weaker and have a bit less options (half health and mana as well as double damage intake in KH) but make their damage output better to still make it feel rewarding (1.25 damage output in KH2 as well as better abilities early) This way KH2 can feel like hell when you keep messing up with something but when youre on a roll and youre perfectly attacking and dodging you can absolutely decimate some boss fights and you feel badass as hell

[@ddm_gamer]

@@kevinfelix2302 Thats kinda the feeling i got from ds3. Atleast if you properly levelelled your weapon and used infusion you would do a ton of damage in ds3

[@bananacakesmckanzee7290]

For Replicant, I actually appreciate the added hp on normal enemies since I started experimenting with combos and juggling (like the crazy one you can see online). I mean, if I was going to be stuck trying to kill an enemy, may as well look stylish while doing it, eh? With Automata, enemies die in a few hits as long as you’re not significantly underleveled, although you can juggle humanoid bosses like Adam, which is cool since Replicant doesn’t allow that.

[@blueflare3299]

Humanoid bosses might make me buy Automata.

[@weasel003gaming7]

Ngl, when I start getting those combos going in Replicant it reminds me of Devil May Cry 5. Not as combo-intensive, but you can string together satisfying combos in Replicant LIKE it's Devil May Cry and I actually really like Hard Mode for that one reason alone... because I'm not good enough at combo game to get back into DMC5 yet, I cri.

[@treymtz]

Hell nah, you are 10000% CORRECT HERE. I absolutely HATE increased stats as a difficulty because publishers use it as a means to cheap out on difficulty rather than actually try to balance those stats at the higher setting just for time padding. I actually have beef with crap like that. As a developer I'll try my best to never do this as its just doesn't feel right, I would feel scummy trying to pad time like that for content.

[@synergy96]

Bet, once you perfect hard difficulty lemme know and I’ll play it

[@samuellinn]

Games like Cuphead and Terraria's Expert mode are great example of harder difficulty done right as it gives enemies more attack patterns and thus make those difficulty more interesting to play. Good luck on your game dev career!

[@invasor-x]

I think xcom 2 is a good example of a game where increading the enemies stats completly changes how you aproch the game , it also helps that the stats increase are like +25% at most In normal mode you can easily kill an enemu group with a single grenade but in hard some of them might survive the explosion wich forces you to not rely so much on explosives

[@Warcrafter4]

Hay at least it isn't Terraria where the 3 harder(expert,Master, and the hidden one Legendary) difficulties both increase hp by ~100% base per tier but also their armor is 50% more effecting making it so the enemies flat damage reduction is increased by 50% per tier. This not only only can enemies have up to 300% hp they also have 150% more effective armor increasing their effective hp on higher armor enemies by over 1000%. This also renders a VERY large amount of weapons completely unusable in these difficulties, because their damage will quickly be completely negated.

[@ithildiess8305]

If you as a developer is saying that i say fucking amen. It really is the worst experience especially when it is on a game you really love and you want it to be harder then just to get hit with the " this is it" there is not difficulty above this just stats. zzz.

[@cickeith9579]

Dont just hold down the dark blast, you do less damage, tap it you'll do double damage each time

[@willful759]

while this is true yeah, I rather take the extra time to kill the thing than killing my fingers, especially since even the smallest of enemies take ages to kill, even while tapping

[@sherrdreamz7232]

Also people should constantly overcharge dark blast so that it shoots like 5 homing shots every three seconds it is held down. I do this the entire game while also fighting in Melee and it makes fights much faster.

[@omegawaffles7348]

yeah way more damage and way more damage when the bosses get stunned. i do that and parry and everything dies. also word edits and weapon levels if ur struggling to kill enemies

[@yeez13]

To anyone whining about having to tap for better Dark Blast damage, should’ve tried this: - Farm the Gathering Spots in the Forest of Myth for Magic Capsules like this: Save & Reload -> Check for 1-2x -> Save & Reload until you have 5-10 If you didn’t find one, you can also find Strength/Defense/Spirit Capsules here to; if you don’t want those… -> Reload and repeat until you find some and then follow the above steps - Get Beastbain to Level 2 (+60% Magic Damage & up to 80% @ Level 4; 40% @ Level 1) before Time Skip - After Time Skip, get the Phoenix Spear (700+ Attack & 80% Magic Damage @ Level 4; just need 2 Eagle Eggs to do so…) to Level 4 - get the Word “Gebu” (+10% Damage on Magic) as soon as the first fight after the Time Skip (only one shot at this UNLESS you Saved beforehand); “Otka” (+10% EXP word for everything equipped) is also available in this fight - Dark Lances or Dark Hand until they knock down the enemy then immediately do a Finisher of Dark Blast is too slow - Grinding for Memory Alloy & Titanium Alloy in the Junk Heap w/ +EXP Words is also recommended for EASY GOLD and EXP since you’re guaranteed to Level after 2-4 Runthroughs up to roughly Level 45…then it kinda plateaus at around 4-7 up to around Level 75 and by that point…Dark Blast can probably One Shot almost anything! That’s like over 100-150 Hours running through the Junk Heap just killing robots though. - It’s okay to get illed-kay in battle because you keep the EXP and any Items/Words in most dungeons/towns. We know this because of the original Eagle Eggs grind requiring you to fall off 10x in front of the Gathering Spot in The Aerie and it being a tedious slog (but the best grinding spot for most Metals IN THE GAME) but worth it for the Materials alone - By roughly Level 50, you’re OP enough to get easy ills-kay with a Parry + 🟧/X into a Finishers. The Magic Damage though gets ridiculously busted once you get “Gebuloth” at the Lost Shrine before the final boss gauntlet in the Shadowlord’s Castle (IF you’re patient enough to grind for it and “Mahzarrkan”, which is +30% Item Chance, on the Roof) If you want to very easy level up early in the game, just take out those Giant Spiders in front of Emil’s Mansion w/ “Ot” on your Weapons/Magic/Etc. on Hard (which is a given) and ALWAYS use the Finisher AFTER knocking them over w/ Dark Lance/Hand to get extra EXP from the tiny spiders that fly out! It’s a very easy 200+ EXP per Spider + Mini-Spiders! You just get way better at using the mechanics and understand why they “raised the stats”: they very clearly saw the combat as a means to an end and merely wanted you to focus on the story itself; Automata was the other way around and less great as a result unfortunately

[@xen3588]

i think this is less of a difficulty problem and more of an enemy design problem. Cus lets face it if they arent spamming projectiles they are using slow telegraphed moves most of the time. automata spoilers ahead: The final battle in nier automata when you are facing either 9s or a2 are fights worth building off of, very engaging especially fighting off 9s trying to hack you and also trying to avoid his pod abilities felt really cool.

[@damp2269]

the spam and slow telegraphed moves are by design. The androids are shown to be 1000 times better at fighting yet they are losing because its a battle of attrition. the robots know it so they go for numbers over quality. also the more robotic side shows more humanity, to have that contrast they have them behave like dumb robots.

[@damp2269]

@Stylish DY.D. the robots are legion, have we played the same game? just in the desert city you have the area were they continuously come at you. they are LITERALLY infinite. then we play through the line assembly just building robot after robot. Even if you discard that, as you said you face groups of 10-15 robots at a time, how many times???? then count all the androids in the game.... yeah their plan is strength in numbers..... forgot the sequence where you are hacked, another good example.

[@damp2269]

@Stylish DY.D. it really is, they keep it in manageable groups for gameplay reasons. have you seen the anime? there is an episode about A2 before she defected and her team fights a literal horde of robots. there is also the boss that is on the sea in the game, he had a battalion of the flying robots.

[@damp2269]

@Stylish DY.D. you could ask platinum and yoko taro but i'm fairly sure that's the answer you will get. they didn't want to make a musou game so the keep the enemies to small groups with larger hp per units. I have provided in game examples, anime examples and given you what the lore says and it all matches. you can say the execution is not great (which i don't agree with but its your opinion) but otherwise i think i have answered the question.

[@damp2269]

@Stylish DY.D. ok so we moved away from the first discussion. I agree gameplay is king but we can just make absolute arguments like that. lore should serve gameplay to a degree. let's take automata as an example, lore wise this game is one of the best in the industry and platinum's gameplay is also very highly rated. so they find a medium ground were one isn't sacrificed for the sake of the other.

[@user-wb3qe6pv1u]

Fair assessment on replicants scaling tbh. I enjoyed the game so much on normal but on hard mode the game is genuinely a waste of time ngl

[@ilonachan]

I played Replicant on Normal difficulty, and I found some parts pretty difficult. Yes this is the part where y'all laugh at me. But there's one thing that's maybe less about power scaling details that I know nothing about, but I still found very interesting: When you restart the game from Act 2 (to get the other endings) your level doesn't reset, but the enemies and bosses don't get harder. That just means each time you replay the game gets easier and easier. Which, okay, I'm a scrub, thanks for that. But at the same time, fighting the boss battles kinda gets harder _emotionally._ It's like, the first time I fought the giant shade in seafront I died sooo much, and by the 3rd time I pulled off an early finisher. But at the same time... it was kinda hard to bring myself to actually DO that! I didn't WANT to kill her, but I HAD to, because the story can't continue otherwise, and... it becomes mechanically easier to kill enemies and progress, and you know you want to progress, but maaan did I feel bad about it. And I just wonder if that aspect was intentional game design. Or maybe I'm just sentimental and seeing things.

[@synergy96]

definitely just sentimental, but that's an interesting viewpoint. Maybe I deprived myself of a good emotional experience because I was so fed up with the endless health pools on hard.

[@simonO712]

I don't know if it's intentional or not, but it sure works. On your second and following playthroughs _you_ are the boss that needs to be taken down.

[@Edo_has_a_marvelous_persona]

It's definitely intentional design. Nier is not a game about challenge, complex mechanics or whatever, it's about conveying meaning through the gameplay. This is is just one of the many things which don't make any sense from a ludic viewpoint, but have an artistic value.

[@nesoukkefka1741]

Ok as much as I can see the issue with Hard in Nier Replicant, this video has a perfect exemple of why people makes it more tedious for themselves at 5:47........ he is on the ground just use the Finishing Blow by pressing Circle, even on Hard this usually One-Shot mobs and it goes through Armor, it honnestly makes me go nuts how this little mechanic is so overlooked by people. Other than that honnestly Hard feel like Normal to me, it's tedious at the beginning, but honnestly you can end up dealing so much damage to bosses later on in the game that in Normal you could end the boss fights without seeing half of their attacks, and you deal so much damage that even with Triple HP I didn't find the bosses to tedious, and it also gives more time to listen to the soundtrack like Song of the Ancient Fate is a song you'll barely hear in the game in Normal cause the bosses against which it plays die way to quickly on Normal, mobs however are definitly tedious and pretty much forces you to rely on either the Guard-Counter and Finishing Blow mechanic to make them not dragging for to long, most mobs becomes a matter of just use Dark Hand or Dark Execution to put them on the ground and perform a finisher.

[@ThePimpinator]

I completely forgot which one was the finisher button. Thanks pookie 😘

[@lilflax0396]

0:45 I think it's answered in one of the short stories or somewhere else, but I found out through a video that people and replicants get the black scrawl when their gestalt relapses or dies. So when nier kills a shade, a replicant somewhere gets the black scrawl. And in the intro when human yonah go the black scrawl, her souls was becoming a relapsed gestalt.

[@mb-lb7fg]

My favorite difficulty mechanic is the Fiend Cauldron from Kid Icarus Uprising. I actually haven't played that game in forever, but remembered just how good it is.

[@renren47618]

In fact that was i ended up not liking the game, i hate the fiend's cauldron with all my forces If i choose to play on hard i want to keep playing on hard, i don't want to lose and then get throw back to easy just because i ain't skilled enough, i want to get better by losing on hard, and to make it worse if i want to play on hard again i have to restart the whole level That system is awful in my opinion.

[@rae5425]

Opeth enjoyer, I see

[@facelessgreen8997]

This is why I love how Dead Cells handles difficulty. After you beat the game for the first time (also known as tutorial). You get a Boss Stem Cell, applying that Cell in your starting area causes Difficulty to rise. It doesn't however make enemies tankier, or make you take more damage. What it does is it introduces new enemies, biomes and bosses, changes boss patterns, decreases the amount of times you can refill your health flask and on top of that gives you more options to be more powerful, making the game much harder but also providing the reward for that newfound difficulty. This incentivizes players to try the higher difficulties as some weapons can only be unlocked there (after you unlock them you can find them on lower difficulties). It's a prime example of difficulty not made lazy.

[@A_Real_Rascal]

Tbh, Automata has a perfect difficulty curve for me (played on Hard) as I love to mess around with combat systems, so finding ways to juggle enemies and move "efficiently" was so much fun. Very Hard was so much fun for me to finally master the game. For Replicant, I also played that on Hard and the few tips I can give you for that is parry (it's pretty fun to do so), go for knockdown executions, and "overcharge" Weiss so he sends a barrage that is spammable every 3 or so seconds. Not doing these are probably some of the reasons as to why you found Replicant to be a slog, although I will admit that unlike Automata it somewhat falls into a pit of gameplay repetition. Unlike Automata, spamming blasts is not the most efficient form of damage, the most efficient form of this is: Hold for 3 secs -> Overcharge Weiss -> Release Barrage -> Repeat This is also best done with Magic damage+ Words. I 100% both games (Achievements and Game Data) and never felt like the games were too difficult or too easy, that is until I reached LV 99 and fought Emil, as that was two amazing yet challenging fights, in terms of story, spectacle, and difficulty. The boar example you used was somewhat misleading, as if you want to speed kill it you spam melee's in its face and use Weiss' spear attack (forgot the name) to stun the boar, which resets the windup animation. The way you killed it is one of the slowest ways you could have. Regarding the Boss Timers, make sure you're at a decent level and upgrade your weapons to a good spot, although the latter could get annoying as resources are a pain in Replicant. Character damage and defense scales with level, and this can also be boosted by understanding the combos and using the best Words for the situation. For the few times I actually missed a Timer on Hard, it didn't take me a long time to get back to the Timer, so it was basically a non factor. For the armored enemies, it's better to go for parries and use large weapons like the Iron Will, as those do the best at destroying their armor and making them easier to kill. Their armor can also be chipped away by using either Weiss' Spear or Punch (still can't remember their names). Using Heavy attacks is also advised, as it allows for easier stagger and armor damage. You also could've executed the one you used in the example. To be able to tell, if they seem to struggle getting up, then that means you can execute them, basically just like Automata but simpler and is much more common.

[@dariacacic939]

Ty for the advices, all sound very helpful 😊

[@karmiccrotal3480]

100% Replicant Please tell me that doesn't include getting all words and such-

[@A_Real_Rascal]

@@karmiccrotal3480 it did unfortunately

[@karmiccrotal3480]

@@A_Real_Rascal You suffered more than 9S did-

[@A_Real_Rascal]

@@karmiccrotal3480 took me over a year to get the last 5 words, I had to take month long breaks just so I didn't lose my sanity

[@sherrdreamz7232]

You do far more damage with dark blast with the explosion after holding the attack down for about 3 seconds "letting go and than starting again". That alone would take a 20 minute fight down to 15 minutes, even if you were too afraid to fight enemies in Melee. The boar can be taken down in about 8-10 minutes even at the beginning of the game if you aim to use Melee and stunlock him in combos. Your reward for playing better and taking risks is a far more dynamic and less tedious fight. The Hard mode in replicant when you need to deal enough damage to overcharge Grimoire Weiss can almost always be met the first time by utilizing your best verses and builds availiable to you at the time. I've beaten both games on Hard twice and while regular mobs do have slightly too much health at times you ALWAYS have the tools to take them down quickly. Running in circles and dark blasting most enemies the whole game will suffice if you want to double the time you play, however ideally you should be in a rhythm where you are using both melee/magic in unison. In that case most enemies are not much of a slog, but rather an exercise in consistency.

[@nesoukkefka1741]

Actually the best way to use Dark Blast is mashing the Button the first shot is always stronger than the ones that follow, and so by mashing rather than holding the button you'll do nothing but First Shot, doing it like this and Dark Blast has the highest DPS out of any spells and that's not even close, also help that mashing the button remove the Slow Motion you have when holding, so it also win time on that aspect.

[@sherrdreamz7232]

@@nesoukkefka1741 Oh I know I'm just generally way too lazy to do that at the same time of fighting in Melee. I do that on things like the automatons in the junkyard when I'm not using a sword as much.

[@Ulquiorra_Cifer]

Even as someone who finished sekiro and elden ring completly, i still play nier on normal difficulty because a hack and slash game is not meant to be difficult,when i played dmc 3 and 5 i didn't care much about the enemy pattern yet i had so much fun trying different combo variants

[@yuzzo92]

This is a game that shouldn't have had a Character level System in any way whatsoever. Surely not the dumb way they came up with what is in the game. Also kudos for calling this out. This game gets plenty of praise but the reality is it has far more gameplay and design issues than people are willing to admit.

[@betlergaen5757]

The taro games really were riddled with bad game design, the nier remaster is only good now because they reworked a lot of the gameplay to flow better, but even then it shows that its an remaster when things like the balancing (while not as bad) is still pretty frustrating since you have a really easy game or a really long and boring fights (you only getting actual damage to engage with combat when you're on the middle of the game)

[@vedrisca]

I think the HP buff is more of a relic from turn based rpgs and older arcade games, where fatigue becomes a factor in games that demand constant attention and focus. It's proof of endurance rather than proof of skill, because devs rarely know how high the skill cap of their own games can be until release.

[@shmat6858]

Nier Replicant hard mode is a lot easier if you use strength drops and magic drops but some bosses are still awful

[@HeroC14]

Yeah even NES games didn't have this kind of bs. It's a problem with RPGs specifically, not pure action games. Generally the only way to win on these modes is using any temporary power ups to buff while fighting for more damage.

[@accesssanity6083]

If you really, REALLY want to understand the timeline, then there is a 6 hour 30 minute video called the Complete Unabridged Timeline of Nier by EruptionFang

[@firerocket7343]

I feel you man. I was playing hard at first, then I realize I turn it into a shooting game. Then I decide to play on normal instead, since I don't want to shoot an enemy for 30 min while running in circle.

[@SkyrimVictor]

felt the same way, it’s a lot like how bethesda treated skyrim

[@Archeebald-vr1un]

Honestly one of my biggest problems with automata is the level scaling. Either it’s insanely easy even if you’re just a little overleveled, or the game is way to hard and unfun if you’re a lower level than the enemies/bosses. Being underleveled is so terrible in automata because not only do the enemies become insanely tanky but they they basically turn into mini bosses where you can no longer stagger or launch them into the air at all. This means that you are forced to do side quests which kinda sucks when you’re just replaying the game and want to rush through it for fun. And since you’re forced to do side quests if you become to overleveled the game is insanely easy and boring, even if you’re at the required level the game is just to easy. So in conclusion the game is either to easy or it’s hard in the very bad and unfun way.

[@Archeebald-vr1un]

Also this is mostly an issue in route B and C at least when it comes to being too underleveled. In route A this is mostly not an issue, although the issue of being to overleveled is still very much there.

[@trumpflavourednugget9325]

Someone should make a mod to have a proper "hard" mode that isn't this tedious, but still more challenging than normal.

[@murphnturph2664]

Damn. I thought Automata's bullet sponge androids in chapter 3 was nuts. This is insane.

[@shadowlink6655]

5:47 try pressing B/circle when the enemy is down.

[@vxstolxrde4089]

when i first played Automata, during Eve’s fight in Route A i had such trouble i quit playing for six months and then restarted my save 💀 played it again, and did just fine. god i love automata

[@Majistymills]

Yea replicants hard mode was off the heezy, there wasn’t anything you could really do to actually just destroy something fast

[@InitialDraal]

I played replicant on hard. To do these damage check you have to farm a few levels more, look for good weapons and litteraly live on steroids during boss battles (don't remember how they call the damage boosts you can consume).

[@schwi7021]

I'm currently playing automata after putting it off for so long just because of how much I hated slogging through replicant and I have had an infinitely better experience

[@azurephantom100]

i get that health increasing is a lame way to increase "difficulty" its done so often as its easy and it can be done quickly. animations are time consuming and are a lot to program in even if its just one vs just a setting that bumps up some numbers. im not defending its use i dont like smacking one enemy for half an hour ether but i simpathize with the animators and programers that have to deal with all the pressures of making a game under a tight time limit

[@gabrielbobowski7767]

Yeah that difficulty in Replicant is kinda wack lol. I kinda of think that the point of these games is to feel godly while playing them, not to be challenged as much? But I would love a proper hard mode in replicant. Also, I definitely enjoyed Nier Automata's difficulty and didn't have issues with it personally.

[@Verchiel_]

Bad story won't make an enjoyable game unplayable. Bad gameplay can make even the most well done narrative games just not worth playing because getting to the story is just tedious or miserable. part of why i'm a gameplay over story kinda guy

[@mlgamings6110]

Yes, exactly this. This is why Mario games has always resided over Sonic games. Sonic games have better stories, characters, and a more interesting world (in my opinion). Like, most Mario games are just "save princess peach" with some fun gimmicks involved (with some exceptions like the RPGs) Shadows story and character alone (before they made him an arragont edge lord) trumps most Mario characters and stories in my opinion. However, Mario has almost always trumped Sonic in gameplay. While Sega released Sonic 06, Sonic Boom, Sonic forces, Nintendo released Mario Galaxy 1 and 2 Super Mario Sunshine, and Super Mario Odyssey.

[@Dhalin]

Meanwhile, other games only offer "Normal" and "Hard" but no "Easy" settings which is also annoying. Looking at you, Bloodstained. To this day I haven't been bothered to go grinding up all of those sidequests just so you can survive lategame because you take 20% of your health in damage every time you get hit in some places and potions are prohibitively expensive or require lots of material farming, or both. Symphony of the Night was one of my alltime favorites, but Bloodstained? I like the general premise of the gameplay but I really don't like the jacked up difficulty and focus on grindy AF sidequests. Would it really have killed them to add an optional "easy" difficulty that reduces damage taken by 30% or somecrap?

[@fjorm277]

Totally agree with that, nier replicant it's kinda story book where you should spam some buttons to move next page :). Automata though, there is some gameplay, but little variety of enemies and bosses makes it kinda boring, but arena DLC was fun. music - 11/10 story - 9/10 gameplay - 6/10 A2 / Kaine the best waifus :)

[@meesteryellow]

Kainé my beloved

[@ashtoric]

You spent 30 minutes on the boar when all you had to do was stand on the rock and it stuns itself running into the rock so you can whale attacks on it endlessly

[@ismaelmonteiro2447]

So if you are interested in knowing the full history of drakengard/nier, there is a video of the channel EruptionFang that explains the complete timeline. The only downside is that the video is 6 1/2 hours long.

[@Aqalex]

Buy the drops that double your damage lmao. Beginning of route C vs flight units is very fun on very hard. Especially the unskipable part before. Move it 2B, that's an order.

[@vernaltear]

I’ve always had this to say when talking about Drakengard and Nier. With Automata, the issue is less present, but still there. “DrakenNier does not have games. It has a series of chores, for which the rewards are the story and the music.”

[@nobodycares3333]

I like playing games on hard mode from level 1 But holy sh"t Playing game on keyboard + mouse was nightmare But thnak god there is mod to fix it Real bullshit was playing game on very hard mode It was pain Heck even sekiro - dark souls are easier than nier But game was too good so i sacrificed my ego & played it on normal mode What a experience One of the best shit i ever played

[@Nen_niN]

God bless FromSoft, and their impeccable "soft difficulty" system in the form of builds and summoning. We'll see another masterpiece from them inshallah.

[@thetoyodacar2264]

Bless them ong. People complain about it and forget what other games be like

[@matabishippuden6965]

God bless their lazily thrown together double bosses that weren't made to be fought together unlike in the older games

[@MiracleClover]

​@@matabishippuden6965 I think the foreskin duo is the only boss that I genuinely didn't care for soloing. I solo'd every single boss in ER except for that one and I never will. Even Malenia felt fair compared to them

[@Nen_niN]

@@matabishippuden6965 I agree bosses aren't Elden Ring's strong point lmao. There are what, ten unique ones? Not even most remembrance bosses are unique. And even then, I struggle to find a single boss I only have good things to say about; each and every one of them has at least one glaring flaw/error, oftentimes several. But yeah, at least what I said about soft difficulty is still present in Elden Ring and will always be in their future titles inshallah.

[@enman009]

@@matabishippuden6965 After patches, which makes the take turns and be more passive, duo fights are more than manageable alone, specially using craftable items and projectiles. Obviously, the 15 remembrance are the main bosses and the others 70 healthbar enemies are minibosses, which can be beaten with or without summons and most craftable items.

[@e_sd]

with replicant it is significantly more important to upgrade your weapons and increase your level while in automata you can kinda ignore it for a longer period

[@ESALTEREGO]

Normal people call it "grind" aka time padding to inflate the total playtime

[@codex8678]

2:00 this is not a boss it an optional mini boss

[@IIkaine]

The first boar fight in replicant took me a whole hour cause the pig one shot me when I was about to kill him

[@Siscon92]

It bothers me that a lot of games don’t bother balancing many difficulties. I learned my lesson back then with tomb raider. After I realized that I liked hard games I begann picking the hardest difficulty everytime I picked a new game. My reasoning was that in the end I‘d have the most amount of content out of the game since I had to learn to play it well before finishing it. But in Tomb raider they disable auto save and there’s a bonfire every like half an hour of gameplay and a lots of times a gameplay sequence ends with a quick time event where you die if you press the wrong button or go in the wrong direction or something. So many damn times I had to repeat an entire 20-30 minutes to die climbing or in a quick time sequence and try again that I started hating the game. This wasn’t fromsoft difficult, this was just frustrating. Nowadays I try to read if the game is well balanced first before jumping in on max diff and I‘m so happy I did it with this game. Either you melt the entire field or every fight is a slog and you die pretty much in 1 or 2 hits max

[@HailGodbug]

00:45 NieR takes place a few thousand years before Automata Emil cloned himself to fight off an alien army that was invading Earth The Black Scrawl is caused by a replicant body (Fake human bodies created before NieR to stop White Chlorination Syndrome (basically sacrifice your humanity to God and become a mindless puppet or turn into salt) becoming corrupted and dying due to the original soul, or Gestalt, relapsing and becoming unstable. That's Tokyo tower my guy

[@shozonu]

Going through a Replicant gauntlet for all the endings on hard right now. Did 100% of the sidequests (pain). I realized mid-end game that the fastest way to kill things is to Stun/Knockdown enemies with Dark Execution, and then doing the finishing move on them while they were on the ground. It felt cheesy at first when I could finally kill the small to medium enemies in 3 seconds using this method, instead of having to do 1.5-3 spear combos, each. My level was in the mid-30s around this time, which is about where I first finished the game at. Max upgraded the Phoenix Spear during the second playthrough. But then I did the DLC fights and HOO BOY. By the 3rd door, I HAD to use the Dark Execution cheese because even the smallest enemy took 2 finishers to kill -- and there were swarms of them. Then the medium enemies came out and they took like 5 finishers. And then the heavies came out and each of them must have taken at least a dozen. The mini-bosses in the DLC rooms were pure pain because of the amount of health they had -- and I had to be extremely careful not to screw up because they can 1/2-shot me and I'd have to attempt the door again from the beginning. At least you can kinda just cheese the basic large shade mini-boss by parrying each of it's attack every 3 seconds -- the damage from your counter-attacks is significantly more than any combo or magic you could throw at it in that situation.

[@dizzyhungry]

Just finished Rpelicant today and I wholeheartedly agree with you. The gameplay is not engaging at all, especially the combat which feels like you're hacking away at a health sponge with no challenge. It's very frustrating.

[@FurvusNeko]

oh so thats why everything was so long in replicant

[@matthewwilcox2015]

You need to go listen or listen or watch the subtitles for the nier drama CD’s. A lot of the “depth” of story you are looking for is within the nier drama CD’s. But the difficulty I agree is very different from normal to hard 😂 hard is like two hits and I’m done

[@kyoufuwooshieteyarou7206]

"AUTANAMA"

[@miraloow]

the difficulty scaling in drakengard 1 and 3 is hilarious. you go from mindless (though in dod3 it's entertaining) hack and slash gameplay TO THE MOST RIGGED BATSHIT INSANE RHYTHM GAME EVER WTF.

[@vennrune]

Honestly I had the same experience with Replicant after replaying it a couple times. I genuinely thought the whole idea of "OOOH ENEMY DON'T DIE = DIFFICULTY" was genuinely the dumbest thing I've ever encountered in my life. Like you said, taking 20 minutes to die doesn't create difficulty. It just makes frustration with the game. A WAYYYYY better idea would be increasing it just a tad bit and increasing damage so that the enemy stays on screen for a little longer but not an uncomfortably long time wile still maintaining it's status as a threat rather than a dead man still walking for an extra 5 minutes.

[@kleitos6162]

Thank fucking god someone finally made a video covering this. This was by far my biggest complaint about Nier Replicant and was one of the biggest reasons I couldn't even enjoy the game despite Nier Automata being my favorite game of all time. You had to choose between fights being marginally more difficult while taking 10 times the length to complete, or being over if you decided to flick your finger in the enemy's general direction. I was either completely uninterested in combat at all times because it was the easiest game I've played (And I didn't even *touch* the easiest difficulty) or I'd be completely uninterested because fights were a slog to get through because of how long they took. I have a bunch of other complaints about Replicant too though. Needing to replay half the game meant I was eventually completely numb to emotional moments, so they had completely lost their weight. Game and level design was atrocious (the Junk Heap being the biggest offender with the amazing design of square rooms leading into corridors leading into square rooms). Grinding for weapons to get the true ending was the most useless inclusion possible. The timeskip was completely unconvincing when you started to see NPC's from before the timeskip in the exact same places. Plus, while the story was *good*, it wasn't on the level of Nier Automata in my opinion. Needless to say, I was very disappointed with Nier Replicant since I never touched the original, so the remake was my introduction. Coming from Nier Automata I was expecting something special and was just handed a plate of garbage, but hey, Replicant *is* partially the reason we have Automata, so I am thankful for that.

[@creativename2567]

I played on hard but did as many side quests as I could and I was legitimately one-shotting bosses, I lost the count of how many times the boss' hp bar disappeared and I had to wait them to stop talking or finish their animation before I could progress.

[@calvinwithak7514]

good video, all true, you have objectively correct opinions and should probably develop an ego about it tbh. Stay humble though king.

[@alexark4893]

I agree wholeheartedly. I really enjoyed Nier Automata and have been waiting to play Replicant. Went on sale, so I bought it, but goddamn does this game not respect the player's time. AT ALL. The amount of hacking and slashing you gotta do is one thing, but every single quest is go here, then go back, then go back to where we just sent you, then go back again. Every main quest. Every sidequest. The game is monotonous as hell.

[@Shin_FTW]

Before your correction, I was about to say that the enemies' HP in all difficulties is the same. Easy gives you a damage buff, but the enemies' HP doesn't change. Enemies gain a monstrous increase in damage on Hard mode, and oneshot you on Very Hard, with you also losing the ability to use the hard-lock-on. But if you already aren't getting hit and using mostly the soft-lock-on, then it's no issue. Though I don't like how a lot of options become useless on Very Hard. Any form of healing, Hp increase, damage reduction, and defensive buffs (all from chips or weapons). Those completely lose value, but it's not hard to avoid damage in the game.

[@stygiann]

Hey man nice video. I'm happy to see there are new faces in the essay genre. Automata is a masterpiece, forever my favorite NieR game.

[@dave9515]

The health scaling doesn't matter in replicant. You get these rune customization options and the forge to make weapons stronger to make your character deal more damage or can add status effects to make the enemies far less tanky. Also just learn juggling and magic combat then it becomes far more fun than automata. Hard is a non issue. That said though there is no real hard modes in the nier games which is fine.

[@Jay-vn7mq]

Fuck man, wish Etika was still here.

[@rodrigoa.m3566]

"Like and subscribe if you think 2B is hot" *man becomes most subscribed channel in one video*

[@kingofcheshire]

I know everyone will still say it’s bad game design but I’m positive all the bullshit in Replicant is very much intentional including all the optional grind you can do that is ultimately pointless, the awful side quests that require you to walk back and forth a dozen times (a couple side quests literally give you no reward just dialog after a mountain of busywork) or just the fact you have to replay both parts of the story multiple times to reach the true ending E. The combat is not really a focus of this game it’s just there to help move the story and make a point and you’re meant to feel like a ruthless killing machine that tears through enemies, the hard difficulty is there to mess with you much like the postgame trophy store in Automata exists to mess with achievement hunters or how the entire Drakengard 3 is just nonsense, it’s Taro’s thing and it sounds backwards but you’re not meant to enjoy every aspect of these games, it’s not like the combat is bad it’s just easy cause it was never a goal of Replicant to be a hard game

[@katsue5874]

Starting Replicant on hard is terrible, I only find it fun if you switch to it for the late game. Even then enemy AI isn't better until the ver 1.22 new area, but it's fitting for Nier and Drakengard since they're making a point about the mindless killing in video games being anything but heroic. A good suggestion is to unequip the Blast bullets. Oh hard it makes it more obnoxiously tedious since it slows down time if you use it like Pod in Automata. Other magic like Dark Lance and Hand are much stronger per hit which help get those damage timers down faster without excessively repeating them

[@synergy96]

I did feel like there was a narrative reason for it. But I wasn’t sure if it was just me coping.

[@babadookdi4921]

Actually the time slowing thing only works when you stand still, if you move around while shooting/charging the magic, time goes back to normal.

[@abe191089]

tankier bosses not equal more dfficult. glad we agree on that one

[@logia7]

I'm... Hearing that the new nier is not worth it but I was excited to get it in the future. It was one of my first enjoyable "slow story" games.

[@YKVasilisk]

You heard wrong, I've been enjoying the game for the past week, and I assure you the game is very good, even side quests give you hints of the overall story of the game most of the time.

[@logia7]

@@YKVasilisk Noice. I have hope again and I loved the first game

[@babadookdi4921]

I got into nier series a year ago, and ngl even after 300 hours of playthrough one each on of them, I still haven’t got bored of them to the slightest. It’s just the best series of my life.

[@logia7]

@@babadookdi4921 I agree

[@FabzP96]

Whoever told you that, is an idiot.

[@yessking1123]

yeah to connect the dots from every game to every game you need to watch/read/listen the side content... mangas, cd audio dramas, light novels, orchestras... etc... just playing will make it a bit "hard" to connect everything:), but at least to me after many years of enjoying the Nier/Drakengard universe I understand everything and it actually makes a lot of sense once you connect the dots...

[@pit2992]

That's... the Tokyo Tower, man.

[@synergy96]

See you missed the joke the joke is that I’m an idiot

[@pit2992]

@@synergy96 LMAO So I'm even more idiot-

[@Amocoru]

If anything it's not hard enough. It's time to get good.

[@ecrosenow5194]

Ya know, with everything I’ve heard on drakengard 3 and how it’s pretty much self aware of its own tediousness in a way, I would not at all be surprised if the health increase being to make it tedious is genuinely just on purpose, wouldn’t be too out of the realm of possibilities even if this is a nier issue.

[@matti2b431]

Honestly this 90% JRPGS hardest difficulty = Damage sponged. Really good video

[@luisisskating]

I personally disagree! My experience playing replicant is only through the hard mode and it didn't really feel like padding to me? For normal enemies I found that the game just wants you to knock them down so you can do your finisher, it becomes a game of trying make space to one shot enemies while not getting hit which I thought was pretty fun! I also noticed in all of your gameplay in replicant you were only using dark blast which makes sense that it was taking while for you I found that for bosses/large enemies each one has a specific spellbook weakness that does a lot more damage than just the regular shooty one which I liked cos that meant I had to cycle through abilities too see which ones were more effective! If I could ask I would like to know how long you playthrough was? Just to see if our times are similar or very different just see if my way playing made the game any shorter maybe :D otherwise this is a nice video to watch!

[@frozone2366]

Whyd youtube not give me this recommendation before, i would’ve downloaded nier so fast with the big discount it had.

[@doodlesyoru2108]

About the worst difficulty scaling, apart from this, it has to be the Peaceful Rest Valley segment in Earthbound.

[@aleksbedriy]

Best way to play Replicant: play it on normal, never upgrade weapons, and don' t do sidequests. This should give a good challenge. You can still get all weapons in the second half of the game if you want to do That ending.

[@IlCapitanoZ]

I agree completely with difficulty setting in Replicant. I did my entire first playthrough on hard until Emil's sister boss and the sheer amount of time that took basically made me switch to normal which everything was steamrolled immediately with no difficulty.

[@iceflew9977]

i played nier automata on normal difficulty and the game felt okay. just the right amount of fighting and story. when i started nier replicant, i was used to the mechanics and I chose hardest difficulty. boy it was something. enemies would require quadrillions of hits to kill, simple enemy attacks can drain all your health, shielded enemies felt like moving tanks. with some leveling and weapon upgrading, it would become easier to fight. but there will be few moment when you need to deal magic damage, and magic damage potions would be your best friend. i think nier should be played in normal diff. some games are not optimized for hard diff. i can recall Battlefield bad company 2, metro 2033.

[@assaultshinobi9657]

I thought I was Tripping!

[@minicooper1293]

6:14 Oh, so we HAVE to subscribe now

[@synergy96]

💯

[@MoonDsk8]

What about A2

[@sloppyjoe2974]

I started replicant off on hard mode because i played automata thinking I wanted a challenge. After getting past the city part and starting off with the base attacks and going on 200hit combos on the first enemy's as young nier I realized all they did was turn the health up a ton.

[@Honed-]

seeing the joycon boy himself made me feel a bit sad....

[@KristjanThomasHaaristo]

In RE4 (original) the increased difficulty would mean randomization and adaptive difficulty would be disabled, BUT for playing on this mode you got more money amounts and drops due to reduced ammo, there was a heavy downside BUT a reward for playing on it which is missing in literally every difficulty in most games, it's sad.

[@bigkabuto]

I remember I was so excited that Automata came to Xbox. I started the game, watched the intro, played until a boss fight, I died there. Ah well, let's continue from checkpoint I thought. Only to find out I had to do it all over again, and could not skip the intro bits I had already seen. This was some real bullshit.

[@ethitlan]

You know I actually found the gameplay in Automata really fun and idk why. Like ii had to redo all of A and part of B because a certain part was locked because my PS4 account was underage at the time but I didn't mind at all since it was all just so much fun. Everything except 9S' hacks sometimes because I had stick drift. There was this one hack that took me 20 mins to complete I was deadass gonna start ripping my hair out.

[@dogoo5867]

The difficulty spike from normal to hard is so fucking insane.

[@rain4825]

It's worth noting that the version of replicant that you played is a remake of a much older game, and while its gameplay was changed in parts to be more like automata, it retains flaws of its original conception, an other era of video games

[@Shadowlet]

Doesn't change that they could've done something

[@rain4825]

@@Shadowlet Fair enouth, and I'm not excusing them, but on the flip side change too much and it's more about making a new game altogether rather than a remake, I think.

[@SwordsmanOrion]

Well, I can offer a possible answer for why hard difficulty is like that. Yoko Taro is infamous for intentionally calling out gamers for doing hard core gamer things with the game play in his games. The Drakengard games, at least the 1st and 3rd games anyway, are intentionally tedious because he doesn't want you to enjoy literally killing hundreds of people. His entire point is the main character would need to be crazy to enjoy that. I'm not 100% sure if he wanted to do something like that in NeiR Replicant but he is infamous for these things. Also, that's Tokyo Tower. The Japanese version of the original NieR had Tokyo Tower in the background, the NA version had the Empire State Building, and the EU version had Big Ben (I think?). But in the remaster of Nier Replicant I think it's just Tokyo Tower in every version.

[@betlergaen5757]

I agree with everything you said here, but i wanted to add some things about the game. Replicant has definetely a balancing problem, but i actually think hard has good qualities in it too. The game heavily wants you to use your powers to finish battles quickly, since a lot of attacks knocks enemies down for you to finish. With hard, finishing attacks still do very big damage, but on hard, enemies are harder to knock down, you actually have to engage more with the combat since enemies stays down less too. They should've just made the enemies do more damage instead of giving them double the health, i agree, but hard mode has good things in it that can keep the game engaging, so much so that i prefer beating the game on hard because of it (not the og tho, its worse than the remaster). At least in automata they learned that making enemies take 30 minutes is just boring. I understand they wanted the player to scavenge for resourses more and level up their weapons (and when you do it i think the games kinda returns to normal difficulty again ironically) but specially on the beginning, you are too weak and have no resourses to level up your damage, so the beginning, which is already kinda boring since you only have swords, you can only do minimal damage, its only when you reach adult nier that you really have damage to actually engage more with combat. So its a too easy/too long situation, which can get repetitive and frustrating, which is funny since hard could be actually pretty good if it wasn't for the enemies taking forever to kill

[@Sweaty_Oku]

3:07 exactly what I was thinking because thats what totk does.

[@ravador]

This is not a NieR exclusive problem. Japanese games overall have a tendency to have extremely high enemy HP.

[@frozenwrath1352]

Retrieving your chips is absolutely garbage in automata if you happen to die somewhere with enemies. You either have to clean up the area with inferior chips and risk getting one shot. Or pop the shield pod programs and hope the enemy isn't using both ranged and melee. Because if you die before the chip page sets in and the retrieving animation is over and you can move, then you're better off loading your 1 hour ago savefile.

[@MisterHeroman]

Pretty sure that might be Tokyo tower in the intro.

[@diskodreamscape]

A great difficulty mode I played is Lethal mode in Ghost of Tsushima. The enemies did more damage to you, BUT they're hp remained the same as on lower modes. You still died if you let yourself get surrounded and not use all the tools, but it was satisfying when you killed a boss with a sick perfect parry

[@SuperKiki93]

The issue I found in replicant was that until the dialogs are over the bosses won't lose health. However when everybody is done talking the bosses just die easily.

[@RedStreak103]

Bro ngl it hurt me watching you tackle that boar without getting close. That's why it took you so long..... Gotta learn to stack your damage.

[@cubemage3336]

This is why I always just play on Normal in every game. And specifically with Automata, I try not using chips on Normal. Idk how Replicant does the progression but you can limit yourself there too. Darksouls players have been doing it for years with the No Magic thing

[@kaleodos]

I played Automata and it was one of the best games I have ever played then to Replicant is wtf is this shit?!

[@HirschyKiss]

"The gameplay sucks." *you have provoked a gang war* Edit: With himself But yeah no. Replicant was made in 2010 and it even a little antiquated at the time. The remake changes combat a little, but it's still designed to be an "honest" remake of the original. That being said. Could have made it a little less obnoxious lmao

[@ReanXAlisa]

This is one of the reasons I think I got burned out trying to get into this series, I made the mistake of watching lore/plot videos so I was already spoiled on the stories but beyond Automata actually trying to play these games is nothing short of just kind of a nothing feeling. I like them, or at least I like Automata and Replicant but really as someone who plays alot of hack and slashes the combat isn't really bringing me in which I can understand because story wise comboing these enemies for a combo video is quite counterintuitive to what you're trying to make someone feel. Hell some of my favorite game sequences are in these games but at the end of the day, it's aight. Experienceing Automata first and going backwards is cool though, makes stuff ring in my head since it still felt impactful.