Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139…
Developer Square Enix, Toylogic
Publisher Square Enix
Format PC (tested), PS4, Xbox One
Release Out now
Oppressively bleak. Repetitive. Player-unfriendly. Repetitive. Those criticisms remain as valid now as they did more than a decade ago. While 2010’s Nier might not have been the unlikeliest candidate for cultdom, surely no one could have predicted its trajectory since. Seven years on, a celebrated sequel reinvigorated interest in the series, and now we have this: somewhere between a remake and a remaster, a so-called “version up” that exists by dint of its sequel’s success, which in turn has more to do with the original’s reputation than its sales. Celebrating its ten-year anniversary a year late (and how very Yoko Taro is that?), this is an update of a game many will feel they already know without necessarily having played it.
Most players, we imagine, will appreciate more for having finished beforehand. That game was a relatively welcoming and refined vehicle for its creative director’s offbeat ideas, whereas this is more fricative. But not as much as it was. It runs more
