Part 2: Episode I-B: Not Hard

Episode I-B: Not Hard



Welp. That happened. Hey. Guess what?

DO NOT FUCKING PLAY THE PROLOGUE ON HARD OR VERY HARD!!!
DO NOT FUCKING PLAY THE PROLOGUE ON HARD OR VERY HARD!!!
DO NOT FUCKING PLAY THE PROLOGUE ON HARD OR VERY HARD!!!

The game said it didn’t auto-save. There’s not any save or checkpoints until after the prologue. There are no achievements for playing on Hard or Very Hard. You are a dingus who ripped their shirt out and flapped your dick about before getting owned if you die on the tutorial and deserve any ridicule you get, you masochistic dumbass.



Keeping that in mind, that was one of the 26 Endings of NieR: Automata. Yeah... there's an ending for every letter of the alphabet this time around. That was Ending W. All but five of them are mostly for fucking up badly during the course of the game. We'll be hitting all of 'em as we progress through this title. I'm not even allowed to do the fake everyone dies gag anymore. Yoko Taro stole it all... Jerk.

With that said, let’s put the difficulty back to Normal and play the game as it was intended...


Music: Alien Manifestation



If the player dies at ANY point until the tutorial is over, it’s a restart from the very beginning. Again, do NOT play on Hard. You die in two hits. It is very easy to fuck up and get insta-gibbed early on! Let’s skip back to where we were, shall we?



As previously stated, Heavy Attack gives us a protective aura in addition to attacking. Strangely, this tech destroys ALL enemy orbs. It’s the only attack in the game that destroys BOTH colors of attacks. But it’s only available in the auto-scrolling top-down shooter segments. What does that mean? Well...



Permission granted.



Switching to all-range mode!





Say, how are you at dual-stick shooters? Cuz this is now a dual-stick shooter. We can fire in 360-degrees as enemies slowly scroll in firing from all directions.



Our Heavy Attack is now a 360-slash that fires out a full-screen attack in the direction it’s aimed. It still has the dark purple orb destroying attribute. We also have a Light Attack that doesn’t get a prompt tutorial. This just does a slash in one direction in all-range mode and ahead of us in the auto-scrolling shooter segments. This does NOT destroy purple orbs.



All-range mode introduces new flying saucers that scroll across the screen firing a concentrated laser blast. Best to take them out early, even if the Evade function can dodge through the laser fire. Gotta get that High Score! This game has no score system or anything telling you how much you’ve sucked in battle like most Platinum games. That shit is dumb.



You should evade. It is right trigger. R2? Oh, Christ... are you playing with keyboard and mouse like an idiot? It’s double-tap a direction. It’s bad. Why would you even do that? There are many instances where keyboard and mouse is demonstrably NOT the best option. This game is one of them you fo—



Fool. I’m still calling you a fool. I don’t care if you just died in a fiery explosion. Don’t play this game with keyboard and mouse next time!





*ring* 2B to Operator 6O. All allied units down. The operation is compromised. Awaiting further orders.



We need you to rendezvous with unit 9S and begin gathering data on the local terrain.
Understood.



Alright. Got it. Back to plane mode. There’s also Star Fox-esque head on shooter modes of gameplay. I’m still playing here. We’ve got Y and X axis controls but Z-axis is just gonna keep trucking.



And if you haven’t noticed, our mission destination is finally revealed: a coastal industrial facility. While the original Nier sort of a post-post apocalyptic setting where societies had sprung up again after things went to pot, we’re a couple more apocalypses deep and more of just a straight up post-apocalyptic setting now. You’ll see...



Anyway, 2B are you maybe going to cool it with your jet assault. I know the rest of your team got vaporized on the approach, but I *think* you’re within the safe zone at this point...



No? You’re just going for it...? Alright, I mean that’s on y—



WAIT SHIT! I’M STILL PLAYING! PLEASE SLOW DOWN 2B! FRICK!



Alright. Are you gonna slow down, now? That wasn’t cool. Just take it ea—



Oh. Now it’s Gradius. Side scrolling shooter sections have the same mechanics as the top-down scrolling segments. Heavy attack is again the “DESTORY EVERYTHING” orb.



NieR: Automata retains the rather arbitrary leveling up system of the original game. We gain a full heal and our stats all go up with each level gained. We’ve got more health and we hit harder. This, of course, applies to bullets as well. Our bullets are now stronger. That’s just science.



Levels are more important in this game than the original, as we now have access to enemy levels as well and a dude 10 levels higher than you WILL fuck up your day. But let’s not worry about that for now. Everyone we’re encountering now is Level 1 or 2. We’ve got this!



Even if it suddenly shifts to a twin-stick shooter mode again. It’s still fine. On Normal, the reasonable difficulty, the game will briefly slow down time when we’re in critical health. AND it will auto-use a healing item, of which we’re given 15 regardless of difficulty, if we’re truly nearly fucked. That is disabled on Hard and above.



DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD! DONOTPLAYTHEPROLOGUEONHARD!



The final challenge of this segment is a new enemy... kinda. I mean, they just sort of taped five of the flying saucers together.



Though bound as they are, they’re capable of spinning around rapidly producing a damaging whirlwind if you... happen to fly into it as it slowly advances towards 2B’s craft. This is countered by just kinda backing up...



Since that doesn’t exactly work well, the craft opts to fire up lasers and slowly rotate clockwise around the screen. This is countered by err... circle strafing slowly in the same direction while firing at all times.





All the additional crafts can be individually destroyed to take out their lasers at this point, though only the middle craft counts to depleting the enemy’s HP.



Still, not a hard task. You’ll notice we’ve gained Unit Data from wrecking enemies. There’s a whole big codex of all enemies we’ll get to later. But for now...



Time to keep advancing down the tunnel that seems to be the same length as the runway from the end of Furious 6.



Err... 2B... I am pretty good at dodging obstacles and whatnot but err... You’re not giving me a lot of wiggle-room here. 2B? 2B...?



Break away on impact planes is the latest in safety innovations in the future.





That’s an angle...



Better.



That’s my go-to response for farting. Granted, I don’t know if that’s quite eff—





Oh. A sword... Right. Short range attack gear... That makes more sense!



Yes. I’m aware of that.

So meet our protagonist and the Grimoire Weiss support boy stand-in (voiced by a much less dickish sounding DC Douglas aka Grimoire Noire.)



Tune in next time for this game actually starting properly.






Video: Episode 1B Highlight Reel





2B Character Art – Look, I know we’re not playing on Hard anymore but you don’t have to do this blindfolded...