NIER REPLICANT V1.22
A cult hit re-emerges a decade on, looking younger than ever
Developer Toylogic
Publisher Square Enix
Format PC, PS4, Xbox One
Origin Japan
Release April 23
The Northern Plains look a lot more attractive than the barren expanse of the original. As before, you’ll encounter more enemies when night falls
Combat is more responsive and dynamic: you can move while charging up certain spells, for example.
Like Automata, multiple playthroughs are required to get the full story.
Though Replicant was never released here in the west, Japanese Xbox 360 owners did get to play Gestalt, albeit with subtitled English dialogue.
The game’s genre-blending approach extends to including elements of bullet-hell shooters
Typically, we don’t cover remakes unless they’re substantially different from the originals; there are already more new games than we’ve got the time or the pagination to cover. But these are special circumstances. For starters we’re being given an opportunity to speak to Replicant’s charismatic director, Yoko Taro, who is on familiarly playful form. And this version of Nier is neither a remake or a remaster, but something in between; Square Enix is referring to it as a ‘version up’. So, we ask Taro, what exactly does that mean? “We set out on a remaster but found ourselves doing more than we had expected, and it became a more extravagant package,” he says, which is pleasing news. “However,” he continues, “when you say ‘remake’, people expect something of crazy high-quality like FFVII Remake, so the intention is to quickly gloss over that by calling this a ‘version up’ instead.” Ah.