Never would I have thought a game could touch me to my very core like NieR: Replicant √1.5 did. As a somewhat seasoned gamer, I thought I had already experienced the highest peak possible in a story for the type of person I am. Coming to this game, I had an idea of what was expecting me in this with hindsight masterwork, but I wasn’t as ready as I thought. I write this while listening to the amazing soundtrack of the game and as I just finished the game, got all the achievements, and got 100%.


Let’s start with what everyone wants to know: how does it run? Great. As you might know, NieR: Automata was plagued by a bad port, made playable only by the F.A.R. mod by Kaldaien. Square has recently promised they are back working on it now, 4 years later. The port of Replicant is actually a great step in the right direction. It’s not perfect, but it runs well. I’ve read it has some performance issues with controllers connected, but fear not, as the keyboard and mouse layout is great out of the box and I imagine they’ll post a fix in an upcoming patch. I personally confirmed only two issues. The game was made for 30 fps in 2010, and upped to 60 fps for this version. Over 60 fps the game runs quicker and introduces new problems, which is not a new problem with PC games, see the Dark Souls Remaster. You want to use an FPS limiter which is probably already in your graphics card drivers. Other than that it has a forced enabled v-sync that takes as a reference value for your refresh rate the base value of your display: so in my case with a 48-144Hz display free-sync, it took 48 as the lock, which was not ideal. Nothing that a driver-forced v-sync off could not solve. Obviously, in a perfect world, these problems would not exist, to begin with, but on PC it’s sadly never plug-and-play, so I don’t see it personally as a deal-breaker.


The game’s story follows a brother taking care of his sick sister, and everything in between. Obviously, it’s not that simple, but I don’t want to spoil anything. Originally there were two versions of this game, Gestalt and Replicant. Gestalt was made for the Western audience as it was thought that a brother/sister dynamic could be “misunderstood”, but, most importantly, they thought a young man going around with big weapons was unappealing for the Western audiences and so Gestalt was made introducing an older protagonist that is known in the community as “Dad Nier”. The original Western NieR from 2010 featured a father/daughter relationship and the story was set 100 years prior and didn’t connect well with Automata, which is the thousands-of-years-later sequel. Gestalt was outsold at a rate of 6:1 by Replicant, indicating the brother/sister relationship was the preferred one, which is why for this “version upgrade” Yoko Taro – the creator - chose to not include “Dad Nier” except for a small cameo and give the western audience one more reasons to play this version of the game. I don’t think “Dad Nier” was a bad choice, to begin with, and I know some loved it. I think personally, especially with the hindsight of what the game is about and what happens in it, a brother not only makes more sense but often can empathize more with what happens to the people you’ll meet in your journey. I don’t want to get into spoiler territory, so I’ll stop here, but trust me, I could reason a lot on why the brother is the best choice, in my humble opinion.


22474487139 is an approximation of the square root of 1.5, which means this would be NieR Replicant 1.5. This name was chosen because, as Yoko Taro himself says in this interview[square-enix-games.com], at first this was supposed to be a remaster. Simple resolution upgrade and some better textures, but the more the work went forward the more he was tweaking backgrounds or models, which would make it a remake. See, this game was released under Square Enix which also makes Final Fantasy VII Remake, which is on a completely another level, so he settled on calling it a “version upgrade”. This game, though, could be roughly classified as an actual remake, especially for Western audiences with the protagonist different from the original. Yoko Taro is a very respected creator, but his games were never blockbusters, until Automata. Automata was a success, and people, myself included, just loved it so much that even the atrocious port wasn’t enough of a reason to dislike it. It’s so good that it quickly became one of my favorite games ever. So, as they were working on this “version upgrade” of the original Replicant they evidently remastered the textures, redone the lightning plus color palette, and redubbed the whole game with the original voice actors. They even dubbed text-only dialogues of the game to add more emotions to it! The original character designer was even called back to imagine them in 2021, with the new tools they can use. I think by now you can tell, they put a LOT of work into this, but this was not it. The original Nier was clunky, slow to play, and frustrating: so they have improved the combat system. Not too much to completely make it different, but enough to make an Automata player feel at home. They introduced a targeting system, magics can now be used while jumping, and stronger magics can be used while moving. Combat is faster, more responsive, and freer to play as you want all packaged alongside all the updated protagonist’s animations. As the character is quicker, more responsive, and can do more, the enemies also have to be at the same level. Enemies and bosses have been updated as well with new animations with different patterns to adapt to the new combat changes. I think that by now you can see a pattern: this is not just a remastered, and it’s not lazy work just to make a quick buck (looking at you, Koei Techmo with Ninja Gaiden 👀). This version also features more story content that was not in the original, entire new sections of the game that before were just short stories in a book that was released after the game. The update also added story weapons as you upgrade them which was a staple of Taro's games but was missing in the original NieR Replicant but then introduced back in Automata. Most importantly, usually, Yoko Taro’s games give you a perspective in your first run, that changes in other playthroughs on the same save. Somewhat of a new game plus, except it's part of the story and not just a way to replay it. His work usually features 5 endings: A-B-C-D and E which often is the canon True Ending, but the original Nier only had up until D, and in this release, they introduced the E ending which connects to Automata even more.


I did not talk about one of the biggest improvements until now: the soundtrack. One of the best soundtracks I ever heard, not in video games, but in general. It’s on par with Automata for me, and that says something. It was completely rearranged to get closer to the quality and worth of Automata’s, but also to add more value to the game itself with completely new tracks and different versions of them. I said I write this review as I listen to it, and I still am. As a musician, Automata had already struck some very special chords in me with its soundtrack, to the point that 5 years later I still have them always synced up on my phone so I can listen to them whenever I want.
But now Replicant has entered the chat, and I’m happy I have more great songs to listen to.


As we’re finally at the end of this review, I have nothing else left to say. The game runs well, it has been overzealously upgraded and what you get from it it’s why video games are a form of Art.
10/10.