Nier

Nier is an action RPG from studio Cavia that in 2010 fell behind in virtually every measurable respect except the most important one: how powerfully it can hit you. The main hero, in a decayed world of the far future, tries to save his sick daughter Yonah, and together with the talking book Grimoire Weiss, the tough Kainé, and the boy Emil, searches for a cure as well as for the true nature of the monsters called Shades. The Western release casts the hero as a father, while the Japanese version, Replicant, made him an older brother instead.

The gameplay is deliberately disjointed: the core is action combat with bladed weapons and magical projectiles, but the game shifts without warning into bullet hell, isometric dungeon crawling, a text adventure, or a fixed-camera platformer. On top of that come fishing, growing plants, and gathering materials to upgrade weapons — things that are deliberately tedious. The real core, though, lies in the structure of repeated playthroughs: a second run shows the same events from a different perspective and turns enemies from anonymous targets into beings with their own reasons, and further endings go even further, including one that has a lasting effect on the player's own save data. The combat itself isn't especially demanding, and the party members each have their own long side-stories, unlocked only later, which rank among the strongest parts of the whole.

Technically Nier was already lagging at the time of release — environments are empty and the image doesn't feel clean, which was the main target of contemporary reviews. All the more exceptional, then, is Keiichi Okabe's music, built on vocals in an invented language, which became one of the most acclaimed game soundtracks ever and can tell a story all on its own. Contemporary scores were average, but the cult around the game endured and eventually led to the sequel NieR: Automata, which turned Yoko Taro's name into a brand. Today Nier is played mainly for its story and the feeling it leaves behind.