Last night I finished the initial playthrough of NieR: Automata after about nine and a half hours of gameplay, most of which was enjoyable. I usually don’t like action games, but the beautiful environments and music in NieR kept me wanting to come back. I especially enjoyed a lot of the dialogue, some of which managed to creep me out. I’m not sure I understand much of what happened, but I’m hoping the subsequent playthroughs shed some light on the story (from what I understand there are five different experiences / endings).

One thing I really enjoyed about NieR was the option to insert auto-evade and auto-fire chips into 2B’s operating system. Sure, this effectively put the game on auto pilot by automatically evading enemy attacks and firing ranged attacks, but I still had a good time carrying out the melee attacks without having to worry about dying. I’m sure some people feel like this should ruin the experience, but I still enjoyed it.

The video below is about midway through the playthrough, and may contain spoilers (it shows one of the bigger boss fight sequences that I really enjoyed).