Outer God known as Greater Will sends object of unfathomable power with guardian to a distant world, for unknown purpose. This object, is known as the Elden Ring.

People worship this unfathomable power for the benefits it gives, and become enamoured by its beauty, developing ideology known as Golden Order.

One of the notable locals possesses the Elden Ring and in turn becomes champion/guardian/embodiment of the Golden Order.

All local powers are in opposition to this new ascendant alien power, wars ensue, but through conquest and struggle, Greater Will and its manifestation, The Erdtree, become de facto reality of the world.

Golden Order becomes ingrained to culture of the world. So much so, that most people forget that it is, in fact, of alien origin.

The one in control of the Elden Ring, can even draft the logic of the world as he or she pleases, the very principles on which world and the people operate. And the leader of Golden Order did just that, she made people immortal by banishing the concept of death. Thus, person at the head of the Golden Order is also the chief god of the world, in simple sense.

However, the person who possessed the Elden Ring and became this new god, named Marika, had a shameful secret.

She was in fact a half-breed, half numen; being from another world, and half Fire Giant. She was ashamed of her "barbaric" Fire-Giant heritage, and waged war against these giants in self-loathing, and also to prevent them opposing status quo of the world.

And she presented to the public perfect image of the golden haired goddess, to win their adoration and love.

Her self-loathing however, due to her divine status, caused her to develop schizophrenia. It split her in half and produced a male counterpart, that symbolised her feelings of intense self-loathing.

This was unexpected, as Greater Will did not expect any such complications. The fickle nature of mortals was a flaw in the divine plan, as future theologians like Goldmask posit.

Her Fire-Giant side, the masculine side, was red-haired, and served as her lowly champion. Nobody knew of this secret.

However, Marika, the feminine side, now starts to have her doubts. She is no longer satisfied in the blind faith and obedience towards the Outer God she serves, but wishes to understand it.

And so, she schemes in order to kill herself, shatter the Golden Order, and plunge the world into fractured age, where people have through the struggle discover meaning of their lives.

She hopes that in that ruin, some epiphany or discovery will rise.

She is willing to be martyred and in limbo for eternity if she has to, so that her subjects can have a free reign to do as they please. She hopes they will discover the truth she was unable to that way.

Her male half, who represents her idealism and faith, desperately tries to fix his female half, all in vain.

In the meantime, succession war ensues among demigod children of Marika. Plots and conspiracies are everywhere.

Children Marika, some who are born to the female half, some to the male half, and some when female half has kids with her make half, start to war against each other.

They all are Martin characters, which means they have both noble and evil side. And even the most evil are somewhat understandable, if depraved.

Each demigod child has dreams of becoming successor to their mother, inheritor to the world's logic. Some dream to destroy the whole structure of the world. Some seek different Outer God as their patron.

But they all fail to win the succession war which leaves the realm devastated.

Thus, Greater Will, wishing the see the broken world logic mended, resurrects an old reviled caste of banished champions, once spurned and exiled, known as Tarnished, to succeed in what demigods failed.

To fix and inherit the Elden Ring.

NieR Replicant left me surprised, the music felt better than in Automata, the gameplay has much more depth especially since I played it in HARD mode which made the enemies have a high amount of HP and would take forever to kill unless you used a specific Magic against them. Precisely this is what made a game with "simple" mechanics feel fresh even after nearly 70 hours of gameplay, changing magics depending on the enemy felt really good, the variety of weapons felt great as well. And the story... I honestly cried a few times.

Lets break it down:

Story
One of the best stories in JRPG history for sure, there wasn't even a bad guy, you could say that Nier is the bad guy of the story but his motives were noble, saving his sister was all that mattered, watching Shades destroy the life of so many people put him in a pat of revenge that no one could stop him, even Weiss mentioned a few times how revenge is pointless when talking about Gideon.

Its incredible how they gave the big bosses of part 2, so much story, were they bad?

Gretchel felt useless after losing Hansel and made friends which you murdered.

P-33 and Kalil didn't do anything wrong and Gideon blamed them for his mistake that killed his brother. This was so sad, watching Kalil yell at you to stop killing his friend and after killing him you murder Kalil.

Louise wanted to be human, not sure about her origins, if she's the combination of every soul in that slave ship that ended up creating her. As a kid she was naive in thinking that eating humans would make her turn into one, she wanted to live like a human, sing like a human, be a human... I wonder if Devola and Popola had anything to do with her since she was the weapon they were going to use against OG Nier.

Wolf Shade was a good boy, the humans started poisoning the streams and killing them, so of course they had to answer back, it was so sad to hear him say "what did we do to deserve this?"

Aerie very sad what happened here, not so much about the massive amount of people that died, but because it was Emil that killed them because he lost control of himself.

Shadowlord just wanted his sister back just as Nier.

The act of replaying the story so many times is explained by Emil in Ending E, people ends up living in the past too much that they don't see what is awaiting for them in the future. It was a nice touch but as a player I was annoyed asf to do so many replays.

Ending E left me very confused about what happened and how this will connect with Automata.

Gameplay
Playing in HARD mode made this game so much fun for me, it was nice that every enemy had their special quirks to kill them faster, armored dudes? Dark Execution and finisher, flyers with magic shields? Dark Lance and finisher, many many little shades swarming you? Dark Whilwind and chill, Magic Shades that unleashed a rain of magic? Dark Wall full charge and then one shot them.

Part 1 bosses were more creative and were my favorites gameplay wise. Part 2 bosses were more about the emotional punch to the player while you were massacring their hopes and dreams like a souless murderer.

What I found amazing, is that I was never tired of the combat, it felt so fresh, fast paced and didn't need complex mechanics at all, you need timing and brains to know when to parry, and what specific magic to use.

The minigames were fun too, fishing in this game is one of the most fun I had in fishing in a very long time! Last game I had this much fun fishing was in Cold Steel 1.

Grinding for materials... Holy mother of... This was bloody annoying, because there the drops are tied to the difficulty and if you're using Item Drop words or not. I managed to upgrade ALL my weapons though and felt so nice! Until an accident happened and I overwrote my save file T.T

Characters I liked
NieR: I know he's not called NieR, but everyone does, so I go with it. I loved his story, he was a sweet person that loved the people around him, his love for his sister gave him strength to endure everything he did, but also made him blind for revenge, it also didn't helped that he couldn't hear what the shades were saying, only Kaine did. He also made the ultimate sacrifice without thinking about himself.

Emil: The star of the show for me, what a sweet child! Its so sad what happened to him but he felt grateful that both NieR and Kaine accepted him for who he was now. What he did to the Aerie was brutal too... Surprised to see him in Ending E and rescuing Kaine.

Grimoire Weiss: I love Weissy! What a great friend you had and has so much more personality than the Pods in Automata. He added a lot of sass to the team and his VA was outstanding.

Kaine: I was surprised about her secret and when I went for the Daredevil Trophy I noticed it... Damn lol I didn't expect that. I love Kaine a lot, she's a kind soul driven by hatred about how she was treated as a child. Her conversations with Tyrann were so great! He was a comedic asset to the story. Playing as Kaine was a lot of fun too!

Yonah: Not much to say, but her VA when she was a kid was so good!

Devola and Popola: They're dumb and stupid, they made NieR strong, guided him to destroy humanity and then they were like :surprised-pikachu: when they couldn't defeat him. Other than that I liked them a lot, their song at the tavern was oh so beautiful! I was there in my chair for one hour with my eyes closed listening to them.

Facade King: Talk about character development! I love this guy, he's such a great character and the way he came for you was sweet and sad.

Red Bag Couple: Their ending was sad, but they were a fun couple, sad we couldn't invite them to NieR's house for a meal.

Locations
So original, so so so beautiful! Emil's mansion, Aerie, Junk Heap, Shadow Lord's Castle, North Plains, the Desert and all the locations in it, this is probably my favorite desert in JRPG. The music in each location was great and added a lot of personality to them.

Conclusion
This is the first JRPG I have ever Platinum'd it was one hell of a grind, a massive one, I managed to upgrade all my weapons, get all the fish, I was like level 65 by the time I finished ending D but I ended up overwriting it by mistake and lost everything even after recovering it in ending E :') But my Trophies still remain :D

This is a beautiful game, a masterpiece imo, even with the forced playthroughs which had a message for the player that living in the past doesn't get you anywhere, you need to move forward and focus on your objectives.

I felt sad last night and started checking every location with NieR and ended up in his room and just chill there with the sad music that was playing. Imo a much muuuuuuuuuuuuuuch better game than Automata and Automata is pretty damn good, but Nier Replicant is just wow.