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Nier


The NZA

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NIER.jpg

 

i know, even the cover doesnt look overly-compelling. if it wasn't for Maldron and Kotaku's rather praising review id've likely passed it by, as well.

 

i mean, ive seen almost no other western reviews of the game (Joystiq utterly failed at this, as is their MO), and there's more talk of its penchant for backtracking and quirkiness (hermaphrodite swordswoman, talking grimoire, etc) and the like. I'm just over an hour in and finished only the first story-based quest, but i'm already intrigued: i was told this game looked last-gen and such, but really, the choice of art style is really nice; kinda has this soft, Ico/SOTC-esque Ueda vibe. Gameplay's not overly difficult, kinda reminiscent of Sword of the Berserk. even those not inclined to try it are praising its soundtrack as one of the best game OST's this year.

 

more to come as i get further, just wanted to pass on Mal's half-recommendation. id say newt might dig the sarcastic exchanges, but again, way too early to say much yet.

god knows idve waited till i tied up Lost Odyssey's 4th disc if the @#$%ing game wasnt oddly asking for disc 2 first. im on disc 4, let's just play that one, dammit! where was i going with this? oh yeah: did anyone play Drakengard? was that any good?

 

neir.jpg

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Christ, you made something under the radar like this and expected me to jump on it?

 

I like Nier, but I liked it better when I wasn't being a trophy whore about it. That aside, I bought the game and it's DLC, and I don't regret any of it for a second. Hard mode in the DLC is genuinely challenging, which is nice. But right now, I'm mostly pissed about pursuing materials for weapon upgrade trophies.

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yeah, i was told to ignore trophies/achievements for boss-fight times and such on the first go-through, im comfortable with that. so the DLC is just a hard mode, or did it bring anything else?

 

did fahey over-hype the forest of myth? wait no dont tell me i dont wanna have it spoiled

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yeah, i was told to ignore trophies/achievements for boss-fight times and such on the first go-through, im comfortable with that. so the DLC is just a hard mode, or did it bring anything else?

 

did fahey over-hype the forest of myth? wait no dont tell me i dont wanna have it spoiled

 

The forest of myth is awesome for a particular sort of patient person that you clearly aren't.

 

And I'd ignore the timed fights until new game ++, for reasons that may become obvious to you on the NG+.

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taking this one slowly, still quite enjoying it.

i can agree with some reviews ive read claiming this might be the best gaming OST this year, and considering how solid FF XIII's was, its been a good year so far.

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The forest of myth is awesome for a particular sort of patient person that you clearly aren't.

 

maldron: wrong about NZA, wrong for your children. vote no on maldron 8.

 

Finished this game last night...man, talk about some Braid-like plot developments, really interesting shit. im still stumped how Square put their name on a game that plays like Sword of the Berserk done by Team ICO but with a bit've crazy strewn in and flew under so many radars.

 

already started new game+, which ill come back to, as it seems the multiple endings open up more plot sequences for the other characters. Sleeper hit of the year so far, i traded a guy on GAF for the PS3 version if newt/bish/etc wanna give it a go.

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There's already a hard mode, but this shit is harder than the main game. You get some remixed musical themes and the costumes, as well as three new weapons. Just stick with the NG+, and remember, Ending D erases all of your save data.

 

Que?

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 10 months later...
  • 5 weeks later...

saw this, had to share with my fellow Nier fans:

 

 

Playing Nier, this blew my mind utterly. Long post, but bear with me:

 

 

 

These days lots of games will invent alphabets and other written

characters for their worlds. Usually they're based on the Latin

alphabet, but not always (the GC Zelda games, and more recently El

Shaddai, use the Japanese syllabary). I'm a huge fan of this stuff and

always try to figure them out.

 

 

 

In the opening scenes in Nier, some orange letters that look like Hebrew

appear in the background, and they're used all over the game.

 

 

 

Trying to read them as Hebrew was pretty confusing at first, because

some of the letters are weird (and you have to read it from left to

right), but it eventually transpired that they just borrowed the font wholesale from Heinrich Agrippa's 16th-century Angelic alphabet which you can read about here: http://www.omniglot....ing/angelic.htm .

 

 

 

Using this, you can tell that

 

 

 

the two lines of text in the opening video say HOROBIRU SEKAI and HITO

SAIGO; the first one means 'a world collapsing' and the second one is

not quite grammatical but means something like 'a person's end'.

 

 

 

That's not the mind-blowing fact, though. The mind-blowing fact is this:

 

 

 

Most of the text you see in the game is gibberish, including the text on the big round seal on the game's cover:

 

 

 

Nier-Game-1.jpg

 

 

 

The letters used in the icons above the villagers' heads indicating that they have something to say to you are also gibberish.

 

 

 

Almost everything in the game looks like gibberish, but if you look

carefully, you'll notice that both the round clock-like indicator used

at the end of boss battles, and the Black Scrawl itself, seen here:

 

 

 

500x_500x_whowasthatmaskedman.jpg

 

 

 

...only use four different letters, despite the font having many more than that.

 

 

 

Which four letters are they? Well, test out that font here

and see for yourself. Type in A, T, G, and C (in any order you like,

just be sure to use capitals) and you'll see that those letters are the

Black Scrawl.

 

 

 

These are the initial letters of adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine, the four bases that make up human DNA.

 

 

 

When I figured this out, close to the end of the game, I was thinking,

"But why would they go out of their way to make the Black Scrawl

correspond to human DNA while people's speech and the rest of the text

is meaningless garbage?"

 

 

 

Oh. So that's what this "disease" is.

 

 

 

And at that point I knew what the real story was, who the Shadowlord was, and what was going on with the Shades. I didn't see Devola and Popola coming, though.

 

 

 

What a fantastic thing to hide right in plain sight! Is Nier a great game, or what?

 

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  • 3 months later...

2a9zfde.jpg

 

 

01 Snow in Summer ~ The Black Colossus Destroys All

02 Grandma

03 Song of the Ancients/ Devola ~ Song of the Ancient/Popola

04 Temple of Shifting Sands

05 Suite Of Nier (Restructuring Snow in Summer, The Ultimate Weapon, Ashes of Dreams)

06 Kaine/Salvation ~ Kaine/Escape

07 Shadowloes

08 Emil/Sacrifice

09 Repose

10 The Wretched Automations ~ Hills of Radiant Wind

11 The Incomplete Stone

12 The Lost Forest

 

that's right, possibly the best soundtrack this gen gets a tribute album! so happy, thanks to Losifer for putting me onto this.

also: notes from it announced a piano album! cannot wait.

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  • 5 months later...
  • 6 years later...

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