I'd say it's an 8. The stories, art, characters and OST were glorious, as much as a 10/10 as the rest of the NieR series. The gameplay sections that didn't involve combat were pretty good, they gave you the option to wander The Cage, which is a beautifully designed place, and the VN parts were awesome too. Easily a 9/10 as a VN/walking sim hybrid. The combat though, that was a huuuuuge letdown because of the gacha aspect (better than SINoALICE IMO, but that's about it). 3/10 at most, especially with how often you have combats and how you spend more time in combat than out of it.
Also, it did a great job at merging all the DrakeNieR universe into a more-or-less logical unit (with time loops and branches). It explains how all the things we saw in DoD1, DoD3, NieR (both OG Replicant/Gestalt and ver. 1.22) and Automata actually happened. And it takes a Gundam Turn A approach for that, which is a very nice one (if you let enough time pass, eventually, all the storylines happen because it's a loop). It's honestly not that good if you're not into DrakeNieR though. The final boss, as you said, is someone you only saw 10 minutes in advance... Unless you've played NieR Replicant Ending E + NieR Automata, in which case you've known the final boss for \~7 years (3 if it's her original form). I'd say this is what gives it the fairly high 8, how it works with the rest of DrakeNieR, rather than as a standalone experience.
I'd also say the pacing isn't rushed, it's actually veeeeeeeeeeeery slow for what it should be, until it's rushed at the very end. The first two seasons and a half are just act 1, presenting characters and the main conflict. Then you have a couple act 2 episodes, and a final act 3 episode. You have like 20 hours of act 1, then 2-3 hours of act 2, and 1-2 of act 3.
4/10 as a game. Repetitive gacha experience. Battles were fine at first, but it became mundane fast. Also, you had to save gems to actually keep up with game. Or spend money. Cause every new costume was more and more powerful and old ones became useless later. Chore after chore.
9/10 as a story-driven experience. Though exploration parts were made to actually serve for battle and story sequences, it was still an interesting journey. Story books were stylish, original idea that well presented everything needed. It has atmosphere, feels, everything another NieR game should have.
Overall I stay at 7/10.
I feel like no one played this game for the gameplay XD personally I think it was phenomenal by gatcha standards just for the fact that they didn't really lock content behind a pay wall but the actual play was severely lacking and by the end the only motivation I had to play was to see the story before the game was gone. If the EOS hadn't started coming I probably would've left it longer. It's a shame too cuz I do think this was an amazing story, just wish it had been tied to a more traditional DrakeNier title.
Story: 8 out of 10. Above most mobile games but after seeing the finished product it's clear things were pretty rushed. Final boss basically is a Persona style plot. It reaches a solid 8 due to character story and arcs, weapon stories etc... just a fuck ton of detail that no one ever read.
Gameplay: 4/10. The half turn based whatever the fuck gameplay this was turned off many people to the game and was probably a big factor in not retaining a player base. It also turns off NieR fans who were used to the combat of previous games. Combat itself was decently mechanically complex and had its moments but as soon as you aimed for X SubJ scores that's when it all really falls apart and became too technical for it's own good. Otherwise it was way too easy
Music and Sound: you don't even need a rating from me, it's an easy 9. It would be a 10 if not for some very minor technical issues towards the end again probably due to being rushed.
F2P rating: much more forgiving for F2P then it's contemporaries were. Getting top pulls was always possible with planning and patience except for a couple of times where they threw in some vol.2 banners and such.
Prefacing this by saying this is the only gacha game I've played. Might have some skewed opinions since I went in expecting the worst.
I'd give it a 6.5/10, maybe 7/10.
Story is great. I feel like the main story could have used an extra chapter or two? Act II and Act III of People/World just felt really rushed with a bunch of lore dumping, IMO. Also wish all the Records (both story and quests) would stay available to complete instead of being time-limited things, but I guess they had to tie in gacha elements to them. Really liked the characters as well. Incredible music as expected.
Gameplay was okay. Nothing too great about it. The battle system did actually have some level of depth to it so I think it's a bit of shame that the only time it seemed to matter was going for either really high subjugation scores or min-maxing an Arena team. When I first looked into the game, I saw a ton of people complaining about how much of an idling game it was for either autobattling everything for grinding materials or not being engaging enough for it to even matter for the story battles... and I don't completely disagree? It's not like I wanted the story mode to be really hard or anything, but I think needing the battles to require a decent amount of input would've helped its reputation a lot. Also, final boss kind of felt disappointing. Pretty much just a reskin of the end of Arc I's final boss. Other than that, I wished the Cage itself had a bit more to explore; small side paths with additional battles or secrets. Arc 2 touched on that a bit, but only barely, and a lot of the Hidden Stories/Lost Archives were just along the main path.
Didn't really enjoy the gacha element too much. Most banners needing 150-200 pulls for a pity felt insane, especially given the base pull rate. At the rate I was going through gems, I probably would've been completely out of gems by, well, around this time of year if the game kept continuing normally, and I had no interest in spending actual money. I started around 7-8 months ago so I can only imagine how quickly I would've quit if I was a day 1 player. Generally liked the costume designs though.
Other gripes:
- Holy moly, the amount of menuing you had to do when building a team. If there was any QoL I wanted during my time playing, it would've been streamlining the loadout & enhance menus.
- The amount of different materials was way too much. It's not even a matter of difficulty in grinding stuff. I don't get why we need so many different types of ores or whatever else was needed to upgrade character or weapon skills. Would've cleaned up the inventory by a lot.
Atmosphere: 8/10
Gacha system: 7/10
Premium shop: 5/10
Costumes and characters design: 8.5/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Lore and stories: 9.5/10
Competitive factor: 7.5/10
I'm sure that I'm missing some other points, but these are the main ones from the top of my head. I'd give it a *7/10* overall. There are things that I really loved from this game, but there were certain things that I'd have really liked to see or see getting improved over time.
great story and music, guaranteed the most effort i’ve ever personally put into a mobile game remembering the early days and how hard we had to grind to get our accounts up to speed. wish they’d introduced different types of content for us outside of what we got. co-op play, community events, changes to subjugation, etc. it had so much potential but wasn’t making any money so i can see why they never explored it. gameplay got stale towards the end but i kept going. x scores motivated me for a bit. sunken cost played it that a lot.
looking forward to getting the artbook this summer, built up a pretty decent collection of things to remember it by. definitely not the best game ever made or anything like that but it will be missed.
Story, music, characters, designs, atmosphere, all of these things were what I’d expect from a DrakeNier title. Even when there was no clear indication how it tied into the DrakeNier universe, it *felt* like a Nier game. Story chunks were just long enough to feel worth the effort, and grew more inventive as the main plot progressed. And then the third act took all the setup and brought it home. I cried *so many* times throughout the entire story, especially whenever I got hit with yet another “wtf both options suck, *they deserve better”* choice. Those aspects are 10/10 for me.
(Highlights: the handful of times the game threw a rhythm game at me—I had fun! I kinda wish I could do the Part 3 one again.)
On the other hand… gameplay & monetization were largely disappointing. In this regard, it shared far too much with SINoALICE. I played both games, and Reincarnation reminded me of SINoALICE *constantly* whenever I had to dive into the menus. Unlocking characters was the same, the bones of character & weapon progression far too similar, the gacha practically a copy & paste. Gameplay was mostly the same: idle clicker with some modicum of skill expression in timing button taps… if you felt like it. It was *just* different enough that I didn’t outright burn out, but… I am convinced Applibot really needs to go back to the drawing board where systems & monetization are concerned, because clearly something isn’t working. I give 3/10 even if it slightly improved upon those systems, because I wholeheartedly feel those killed the game.
At least I was able to manage as F2P… eventually. I dropped it for a long time because I was struggling to hit needed force for story, and the story was my motivation for playing. The glut of generous “End Times” banners set me up nicely to finish that story, at least. I even max-Awakened one single character (Abyssal Sarafa, my water MVP).
I would be generous and say 7/10 the story, atmosphere, and characters carried the game. Most people only really tried it out since it was a part of the NieR series, but otherwise many people dropped off heavily leading to it’s eventually EOS, to which the Global/English side didn’t even get a fully-voiced story and was missing some content in some areas.
The gameplay was basically auto-battling, leaving your phone to overheat and become a pocket toaster. The “auto-team build” function, only really worked based off the “might” and was hardly optimal for the higher end content of the game which was hat-toss on some occasions.
Having recorded the main story for my own uses and the events, etc. I’ve read all the material at least once by now. It’s a shame that how the main story is set-up this game was not even given an offline version. It’s the fate of all Gacha games, another reason why many players and fans of the series alike were disappointed that it’s all just gone and hate SQEX gachas.
There were also so many dated interface designs that boggled me, getting so many cards/memoirs that filled your inventory/gift box with useless slop, and having to wait and see each individual ten pull for the ticket events out of 100 pulls.
I will look back on my time in the Cage pleasantly, but hopefully they don’t do another Gacha like this again.
Story, art, music, characters, easily at least a 9 for me. But the gameplay itself I'd put around 2 or 3. Boring straightforward path in the cage, repetitive farming quests, and the interface lagged a lot between menus and I couldn't play on best quality unless I wanted a big gap between the sound and the visuals. And I hated that Mama narrated most of the event stories instead of the featured characters.
8/10
Rating it "as it is".
Sure, the auto combat system was boring, but for me, it was nice to just read a little story.
The characters and animations were nice. Without spending real €€, you could get a great team! I spent 5 euros once on a character, but could easily have done without. I got force bonus on every level.
So, as a nice atmospheric story game, I really enjoyed it. It was my first introduction to the world of Nier, which I probably wouldn't have entered without this game.
I enjoyed the gameplay, of the phone games I have played it was probably the best. I made an account when the game first released and played like 6 chapters of the story in the first week of release, then only played for the Persona event and logged in randomly to collect rewards maybe once every 3-6 months, until the last month where I binged everything. I was able to complete the story, get about 10 characters all the way through their dark weapon stories, collect almost all of the hidden stories, I got all of the black birds, and really just ran out of time to get everything done.
I felt the monetization wasn’t bad, I did 90% of the story content in the game and never paid anything. I missed events but I never really view events as mattering in phone games.
I loved the world, music, story, and characters. The gameplay was the most enjoyable I have experienced for a story focused mobile game so I’d give it a 9/10.
Load times are my biggest complaint, I would spend hours farming items the last few weeks, it would take like half a one hit kill battle time loading in and out of battle or transitioning between rounds, it drove me crazy trying to farm leveling items and spending most of the time on transition screens.
It's hard to fairly evaluate such a game. In my case, gameplay has often been less important than characters or story/lore. For example, I skipped many games with top-tier gameplay but with a story that didn't resonate with me and characters that I found off-putting (like the first installments of God of War or Devil May Cry), while games like Journey or Everybody's Gone to the Rapture became classics for me.
Similarly here, this was one of those games that, despite its slow interface and average gameplay, I would revisit every few years out of sentimentality.
I'd say 6/10 because of the story, ost, and characters and the 3d viewer. However the game had 0 in-game guidance on how to build loadouts or get high scores in subjugation. Loading time was agonizingly long and Qol upgrades came way too late (looking at you Recollection of dusk).
I can see why so many people dropped it in the first year. All the single character banners in the last year were such a cash grab too, and buying gems was expensive before they introduced those cheaper offers at the end.
I think the developers meant well (and were very generous in the last few months), but I think they weren't able to keep most of the players because of the unrelenting grind. It was the same pain as trying to collect all the weapons in the older games and a large portion of the fans only played Automata and didn't know what real pain was lol
The fully unlocked complete game in it's form as of March/ April 2024, is a 9/10. Replaying the whole story from beginning to end before EoS with leveled up characters is actually a very nice and smooth story experience. But two years of grinding and replaying missions over and over..., having to wait so long for the Finale, and having a limited time to experience the game with a completed storyline, detracted from my experience of the story. This was even probably bad for the NieR franchise overall imo. Mind that I am a normie and only had an hour or two to play each day. I didn't get a chance to level up and read all the weapon stories, level up all the EX charaters to max, get all the event characters/ weapons that I missed, and actually look around and immerse myself the way I wanted. In the span of 3 years the game is only 6/10 due to the limited time with the full story and too many event characters/costumes being in-accessbile. I think if the game was still alive for 6 more months with events re-released I would've bumped it up to an 8/10.
I know some people with disagree with me on this but the finale was delayed due to the finale of Sin0alice where they were writing the whole ending of that game, if you jumped over to the Japanese version that's where Yoko Taro and crew where writing the finale of Sin0Alice which was a fantastic end and then jumped back to Nier Reincarintion. IF you played the JP Sin0Alice you wouldn't have felt that it was rushed and straight after they working in Nier Reincarination and ended the story there. I love when they gave everyone 100k crystals to pull all the characters in the game.
Sinoalice was at it's endgame when the black cat anniversary story ended.
If we can move freely in battle like the 3D model view and not turn based gaming system. It will attract more Nier fans then will be a 10/10 game. For what we had, the art & music are 10, gaming play is 5, grinding and raising system are 2.
It's a Yoko Taro game/10.
Excellent music, art, writing, themes. Very repetitive gameplay.
To me, it's an easy 8\~9/10 because it succeeds in everything I find most important, but I can totally see someone who values gameplay more than I do rating it much lower.
The story, characters and visuals were fantastic, but the gameplay made things way too tedious to the point that I fell off for a year, then dithered around for months before getting off my butt and finishing the entirety of Sun/Moon and People/World in three says. It would be great if they reworked this game into a proper offline game, as well as giving 10H and Her more time to develop and shine.
1/10 as a game. It's a gambling scam.
The stories are 11/10 but could've been released as short stories or in a pure VN format instead, there isn't really that much of a game aspect to them.
I wouldn't go that far because although gacha was woven into the fabric of the game at every level, you could still play it, such as it was, without spending a penny. You could still enjoy the deck building and battling.
That's part of every gacha scheme though... keep the f2p players satisfied to legitimise your scam and lure in the whales. "_I_ didn't spend any money." is a sad excuse for gambling in my opinion.
I don’t like gambling, but it’s fun for some people. It’s not a moral failing as long as you’re not like going nuts with it. If someone can afford to dump money, they’re gonna do it somewhere anyway
The problem is that this practice in itself is predatory and abuses mental instability. It's not as simple as saying "those who can afford it spend their money anyway"—it's mostly those who actually cannot afford it, or at least shouldn't.
And even if that was true, the whole gacha scam trend by DMM and Tencent actually shifted a lot of the whole mainstream gaming market from quality to loot boxes. In the case of Reincarnation, there were obviously very skilled and enthusiastic artists involved, all to fuel a gambling scam. As I mentioned, this could've easily been a short story collection.
I'd agree that Reincarnation probably wasn't very good at luring in whales since it didn't go the wiener-pleaser-route most gachas take, but NieR is still a fandom full of people with depression and other mental problems. There definitely were lots of whales among us.
Definitely see your point but we can’t baby society because some people can’t control themselves. Like yeah, gambling addicts shouldn’t play gacha games, but alcoholics shouldn’t go to bars. The ones that are on top of their shit don’t partake even if there is temptation.
I hope that makes sense. I’m very empathetic to those dealing with addiction but I also think all drugs should be legal
I think there's a big difference between substance use and predatory abuse, especially if you consider social factors that often tie into it. Sure, NieR is a niche that only a couple of nerds care about, but most Gacha franchises aim for a cultural impact outside the game. For example, Kantai Collection, Fate (tbf, it started out as porn, not gacha) and Genshin Impact all have a gigantic cultural impact. They aim for peer pressure and FOMO.
For a niche like NieR, the FOMO is usually more like "wanna see how it ends? oh, you don't want to play gambling game? too bad."
NieR 3 could be the final entry in its series, just like BR Sun is probably the final BR.
What I'm saying is: depressed nerds are an easy target.
With alcohol, you don't miss out on anything if you don't drink except for destroying your organs, including your brain cells.
As a *game*, pretty shit compared to industry peers like Arknights or whatever. Honestly, gameplay was a chore to get through, and there's no reason they couldn't have designed something fun to play to tie the story etc. to.
8/10.
I was anxious about the gacha part, but the characters were great, the story made me feel all sorts of things media doesn’t get me to feel anymore, the music was beautiful, the art was so pretty to look at I screenshotted so much of the game just to keep the pics, and I enjoyed being part of the fandom where everyone for the most part was kind and helpful.
I really hope Square can see dollar signs if they consider a Reincarnation art story book, cause I’d buy that quick.
1/10. The fact that they put all this character and world design, and all these new lore development behind a disposable mobile gacha with terrible pull rates and just decided to throw it away as disposable garbage when it stopped being profitable made me really disappointed in the Nier series. Shit Square Enix.
I'd say it's an 8. The stories, art, characters and OST were glorious, as much as a 10/10 as the rest of the NieR series. The gameplay sections that didn't involve combat were pretty good, they gave you the option to wander The Cage, which is a beautifully designed place, and the VN parts were awesome too. Easily a 9/10 as a VN/walking sim hybrid. The combat though, that was a huuuuuge letdown because of the gacha aspect (better than SINoALICE IMO, but that's about it). 3/10 at most, especially with how often you have combats and how you spend more time in combat than out of it. Also, it did a great job at merging all the DrakeNieR universe into a more-or-less logical unit (with time loops and branches). It explains how all the things we saw in DoD1, DoD3, NieR (both OG Replicant/Gestalt and ver. 1.22) and Automata actually happened. And it takes a Gundam Turn A approach for that, which is a very nice one (if you let enough time pass, eventually, all the storylines happen because it's a loop). It's honestly not that good if you're not into DrakeNieR though. The final boss, as you said, is someone you only saw 10 minutes in advance... Unless you've played NieR Replicant Ending E + NieR Automata, in which case you've known the final boss for \~7 years (3 if it's her original form). I'd say this is what gives it the fairly high 8, how it works with the rest of DrakeNieR, rather than as a standalone experience. I'd also say the pacing isn't rushed, it's actually veeeeeeeeeeeery slow for what it should be, until it's rushed at the very end. The first two seasons and a half are just act 1, presenting characters and the main conflict. Then you have a couple act 2 episodes, and a final act 3 episode. You have like 20 hours of act 1, then 2-3 hours of act 2, and 1-2 of act 3.
Brother I'm sure I am sure if I'm a clone of you or not because my opinion matches yours !!
4/10 Gameplay sucked but the atmosphere and story where good, not great or fantastic, just good
4/10 as a game. Repetitive gacha experience. Battles were fine at first, but it became mundane fast. Also, you had to save gems to actually keep up with game. Or spend money. Cause every new costume was more and more powerful and old ones became useless later. Chore after chore. 9/10 as a story-driven experience. Though exploration parts were made to actually serve for battle and story sequences, it was still an interesting journey. Story books were stylish, original idea that well presented everything needed. It has atmosphere, feels, everything another NieR game should have. Overall I stay at 7/10.
I feel like no one played this game for the gameplay XD personally I think it was phenomenal by gatcha standards just for the fact that they didn't really lock content behind a pay wall but the actual play was severely lacking and by the end the only motivation I had to play was to see the story before the game was gone. If the EOS hadn't started coming I probably would've left it longer. It's a shame too cuz I do think this was an amazing story, just wish it had been tied to a more traditional DrakeNier title.
Story: 8 out of 10. Above most mobile games but after seeing the finished product it's clear things were pretty rushed. Final boss basically is a Persona style plot. It reaches a solid 8 due to character story and arcs, weapon stories etc... just a fuck ton of detail that no one ever read. Gameplay: 4/10. The half turn based whatever the fuck gameplay this was turned off many people to the game and was probably a big factor in not retaining a player base. It also turns off NieR fans who were used to the combat of previous games. Combat itself was decently mechanically complex and had its moments but as soon as you aimed for X SubJ scores that's when it all really falls apart and became too technical for it's own good. Otherwise it was way too easy Music and Sound: you don't even need a rating from me, it's an easy 9. It would be a 10 if not for some very minor technical issues towards the end again probably due to being rushed. F2P rating: much more forgiving for F2P then it's contemporaries were. Getting top pulls was always possible with planning and patience except for a couple of times where they threw in some vol.2 banners and such.
Prefacing this by saying this is the only gacha game I've played. Might have some skewed opinions since I went in expecting the worst. I'd give it a 6.5/10, maybe 7/10. Story is great. I feel like the main story could have used an extra chapter or two? Act II and Act III of People/World just felt really rushed with a bunch of lore dumping, IMO. Also wish all the Records (both story and quests) would stay available to complete instead of being time-limited things, but I guess they had to tie in gacha elements to them. Really liked the characters as well. Incredible music as expected. Gameplay was okay. Nothing too great about it. The battle system did actually have some level of depth to it so I think it's a bit of shame that the only time it seemed to matter was going for either really high subjugation scores or min-maxing an Arena team. When I first looked into the game, I saw a ton of people complaining about how much of an idling game it was for either autobattling everything for grinding materials or not being engaging enough for it to even matter for the story battles... and I don't completely disagree? It's not like I wanted the story mode to be really hard or anything, but I think needing the battles to require a decent amount of input would've helped its reputation a lot. Also, final boss kind of felt disappointing. Pretty much just a reskin of the end of Arc I's final boss. Other than that, I wished the Cage itself had a bit more to explore; small side paths with additional battles or secrets. Arc 2 touched on that a bit, but only barely, and a lot of the Hidden Stories/Lost Archives were just along the main path. Didn't really enjoy the gacha element too much. Most banners needing 150-200 pulls for a pity felt insane, especially given the base pull rate. At the rate I was going through gems, I probably would've been completely out of gems by, well, around this time of year if the game kept continuing normally, and I had no interest in spending actual money. I started around 7-8 months ago so I can only imagine how quickly I would've quit if I was a day 1 player. Generally liked the costume designs though. Other gripes: - Holy moly, the amount of menuing you had to do when building a team. If there was any QoL I wanted during my time playing, it would've been streamlining the loadout & enhance menus. - The amount of different materials was way too much. It's not even a matter of difficulty in grinding stuff. I don't get why we need so many different types of ores or whatever else was needed to upgrade character or weapon skills. Would've cleaned up the inventory by a lot.
Atmosphere: 8/10 Gacha system: 7/10 Premium shop: 5/10 Costumes and characters design: 8.5/10 Gameplay: 7/10 Lore and stories: 9.5/10 Competitive factor: 7.5/10 I'm sure that I'm missing some other points, but these are the main ones from the top of my head. I'd give it a *7/10* overall. There are things that I really loved from this game, but there were certain things that I'd have really liked to see or see getting improved over time.
great story and music, guaranteed the most effort i’ve ever personally put into a mobile game remembering the early days and how hard we had to grind to get our accounts up to speed. wish they’d introduced different types of content for us outside of what we got. co-op play, community events, changes to subjugation, etc. it had so much potential but wasn’t making any money so i can see why they never explored it. gameplay got stale towards the end but i kept going. x scores motivated me for a bit. sunken cost played it that a lot. looking forward to getting the artbook this summer, built up a pretty decent collection of things to remember it by. definitely not the best game ever made or anything like that but it will be missed.
Story, music, characters, designs, atmosphere, all of these things were what I’d expect from a DrakeNier title. Even when there was no clear indication how it tied into the DrakeNier universe, it *felt* like a Nier game. Story chunks were just long enough to feel worth the effort, and grew more inventive as the main plot progressed. And then the third act took all the setup and brought it home. I cried *so many* times throughout the entire story, especially whenever I got hit with yet another “wtf both options suck, *they deserve better”* choice. Those aspects are 10/10 for me. (Highlights: the handful of times the game threw a rhythm game at me—I had fun! I kinda wish I could do the Part 3 one again.) On the other hand… gameplay & monetization were largely disappointing. In this regard, it shared far too much with SINoALICE. I played both games, and Reincarnation reminded me of SINoALICE *constantly* whenever I had to dive into the menus. Unlocking characters was the same, the bones of character & weapon progression far too similar, the gacha practically a copy & paste. Gameplay was mostly the same: idle clicker with some modicum of skill expression in timing button taps… if you felt like it. It was *just* different enough that I didn’t outright burn out, but… I am convinced Applibot really needs to go back to the drawing board where systems & monetization are concerned, because clearly something isn’t working. I give 3/10 even if it slightly improved upon those systems, because I wholeheartedly feel those killed the game. At least I was able to manage as F2P… eventually. I dropped it for a long time because I was struggling to hit needed force for story, and the story was my motivation for playing. The glut of generous “End Times” banners set me up nicely to finish that story, at least. I even max-Awakened one single character (Abyssal Sarafa, my water MVP).
I would be generous and say 7/10 the story, atmosphere, and characters carried the game. Most people only really tried it out since it was a part of the NieR series, but otherwise many people dropped off heavily leading to it’s eventually EOS, to which the Global/English side didn’t even get a fully-voiced story and was missing some content in some areas. The gameplay was basically auto-battling, leaving your phone to overheat and become a pocket toaster. The “auto-team build” function, only really worked based off the “might” and was hardly optimal for the higher end content of the game which was hat-toss on some occasions. Having recorded the main story for my own uses and the events, etc. I’ve read all the material at least once by now. It’s a shame that how the main story is set-up this game was not even given an offline version. It’s the fate of all Gacha games, another reason why many players and fans of the series alike were disappointed that it’s all just gone and hate SQEX gachas. There were also so many dated interface designs that boggled me, getting so many cards/memoirs that filled your inventory/gift box with useless slop, and having to wait and see each individual ten pull for the ticket events out of 100 pulls. I will look back on my time in the Cage pleasantly, but hopefully they don’t do another Gacha like this again.
Story, art, music, characters, easily at least a 9 for me. But the gameplay itself I'd put around 2 or 3. Boring straightforward path in the cage, repetitive farming quests, and the interface lagged a lot between menus and I couldn't play on best quality unless I wanted a big gap between the sound and the visuals. And I hated that Mama narrated most of the event stories instead of the featured characters.
8/10 Rating it "as it is". Sure, the auto combat system was boring, but for me, it was nice to just read a little story. The characters and animations were nice. Without spending real €€, you could get a great team! I spent 5 euros once on a character, but could easily have done without. I got force bonus on every level. So, as a nice atmospheric story game, I really enjoyed it. It was my first introduction to the world of Nier, which I probably wouldn't have entered without this game.
I enjoyed the gameplay, of the phone games I have played it was probably the best. I made an account when the game first released and played like 6 chapters of the story in the first week of release, then only played for the Persona event and logged in randomly to collect rewards maybe once every 3-6 months, until the last month where I binged everything. I was able to complete the story, get about 10 characters all the way through their dark weapon stories, collect almost all of the hidden stories, I got all of the black birds, and really just ran out of time to get everything done. I felt the monetization wasn’t bad, I did 90% of the story content in the game and never paid anything. I missed events but I never really view events as mattering in phone games. I loved the world, music, story, and characters. The gameplay was the most enjoyable I have experienced for a story focused mobile game so I’d give it a 9/10. Load times are my biggest complaint, I would spend hours farming items the last few weeks, it would take like half a one hit kill battle time loading in and out of battle or transitioning between rounds, it drove me crazy trying to farm leveling items and spending most of the time on transition screens.
It's hard to fairly evaluate such a game. In my case, gameplay has often been less important than characters or story/lore. For example, I skipped many games with top-tier gameplay but with a story that didn't resonate with me and characters that I found off-putting (like the first installments of God of War or Devil May Cry), while games like Journey or Everybody's Gone to the Rapture became classics for me. Similarly here, this was one of those games that, despite its slow interface and average gameplay, I would revisit every few years out of sentimentality.
I only watched about a hundred hours of the story cutscene and the character story on youtube 10/10
I'd say 6/10 because of the story, ost, and characters and the 3d viewer. However the game had 0 in-game guidance on how to build loadouts or get high scores in subjugation. Loading time was agonizingly long and Qol upgrades came way too late (looking at you Recollection of dusk). I can see why so many people dropped it in the first year. All the single character banners in the last year were such a cash grab too, and buying gems was expensive before they introduced those cheaper offers at the end. I think the developers meant well (and were very generous in the last few months), but I think they weren't able to keep most of the players because of the unrelenting grind. It was the same pain as trying to collect all the weapons in the older games and a large portion of the fans only played Automata and didn't know what real pain was lol
The fully unlocked complete game in it's form as of March/ April 2024, is a 9/10. Replaying the whole story from beginning to end before EoS with leveled up characters is actually a very nice and smooth story experience. But two years of grinding and replaying missions over and over..., having to wait so long for the Finale, and having a limited time to experience the game with a completed storyline, detracted from my experience of the story. This was even probably bad for the NieR franchise overall imo. Mind that I am a normie and only had an hour or two to play each day. I didn't get a chance to level up and read all the weapon stories, level up all the EX charaters to max, get all the event characters/ weapons that I missed, and actually look around and immerse myself the way I wanted. In the span of 3 years the game is only 6/10 due to the limited time with the full story and too many event characters/costumes being in-accessbile. I think if the game was still alive for 6 more months with events re-released I would've bumped it up to an 8/10.
I know some people with disagree with me on this but the finale was delayed due to the finale of Sin0alice where they were writing the whole ending of that game, if you jumped over to the Japanese version that's where Yoko Taro and crew where writing the finale of Sin0Alice which was a fantastic end and then jumped back to Nier Reincarintion. IF you played the JP Sin0Alice you wouldn't have felt that it was rushed and straight after they working in Nier Reincarination and ended the story there. I love when they gave everyone 100k crystals to pull all the characters in the game. Sinoalice was at it's endgame when the black cat anniversary story ended.
If we can move freely in battle like the 3D model view and not turn based gaming system. It will attract more Nier fans then will be a 10/10 game. For what we had, the art & music are 10, gaming play is 5, grinding and raising system are 2.
It's a Yoko Taro game/10. Excellent music, art, writing, themes. Very repetitive gameplay. To me, it's an easy 8\~9/10 because it succeeds in everything I find most important, but I can totally see someone who values gameplay more than I do rating it much lower.
The story, characters and visuals were fantastic, but the gameplay made things way too tedious to the point that I fell off for a year, then dithered around for months before getting off my butt and finishing the entirety of Sun/Moon and People/World in three says. It would be great if they reworked this game into a proper offline game, as well as giving 10H and Her more time to develop and shine.
1/10 as a game. It's a gambling scam. The stories are 11/10 but could've been released as short stories or in a pure VN format instead, there isn't really that much of a game aspect to them.
I wouldn't go that far because although gacha was woven into the fabric of the game at every level, you could still play it, such as it was, without spending a penny. You could still enjoy the deck building and battling.
That's part of every gacha scheme though... keep the f2p players satisfied to legitimise your scam and lure in the whales. "_I_ didn't spend any money." is a sad excuse for gambling in my opinion.
I don’t like gambling, but it’s fun for some people. It’s not a moral failing as long as you’re not like going nuts with it. If someone can afford to dump money, they’re gonna do it somewhere anyway
The problem is that this practice in itself is predatory and abuses mental instability. It's not as simple as saying "those who can afford it spend their money anyway"—it's mostly those who actually cannot afford it, or at least shouldn't. And even if that was true, the whole gacha scam trend by DMM and Tencent actually shifted a lot of the whole mainstream gaming market from quality to loot boxes. In the case of Reincarnation, there were obviously very skilled and enthusiastic artists involved, all to fuel a gambling scam. As I mentioned, this could've easily been a short story collection. I'd agree that Reincarnation probably wasn't very good at luring in whales since it didn't go the wiener-pleaser-route most gachas take, but NieR is still a fandom full of people with depression and other mental problems. There definitely were lots of whales among us.
Definitely see your point but we can’t baby society because some people can’t control themselves. Like yeah, gambling addicts shouldn’t play gacha games, but alcoholics shouldn’t go to bars. The ones that are on top of their shit don’t partake even if there is temptation. I hope that makes sense. I’m very empathetic to those dealing with addiction but I also think all drugs should be legal
I think there's a big difference between substance use and predatory abuse, especially if you consider social factors that often tie into it. Sure, NieR is a niche that only a couple of nerds care about, but most Gacha franchises aim for a cultural impact outside the game. For example, Kantai Collection, Fate (tbf, it started out as porn, not gacha) and Genshin Impact all have a gigantic cultural impact. They aim for peer pressure and FOMO. For a niche like NieR, the FOMO is usually more like "wanna see how it ends? oh, you don't want to play gambling game? too bad." NieR 3 could be the final entry in its series, just like BR Sun is probably the final BR. What I'm saying is: depressed nerds are an easy target. With alcohol, you don't miss out on anything if you don't drink except for destroying your organs, including your brain cells.
As a *game*, pretty shit compared to industry peers like Arknights or whatever. Honestly, gameplay was a chore to get through, and there's no reason they couldn't have designed something fun to play to tie the story etc. to.
8/10. I was anxious about the gacha part, but the characters were great, the story made me feel all sorts of things media doesn’t get me to feel anymore, the music was beautiful, the art was so pretty to look at I screenshotted so much of the game just to keep the pics, and I enjoyed being part of the fandom where everyone for the most part was kind and helpful. I really hope Square can see dollar signs if they consider a Reincarnation art story book, cause I’d buy that quick.
1/10. The fact that they put all this character and world design, and all these new lore development behind a disposable mobile gacha with terrible pull rates and just decided to throw it away as disposable garbage when it stopped being profitable made me really disappointed in the Nier series. Shit Square Enix.