This is definitely one of the games that was ever made.

In summary, it's an action RPG with a good (not perfect) story, fantastic world-building, and terrible systems.
I was told to play this before Automata, so I can't compare it to that game yet. (I ended up playing this for 5 days straight, so I need a break... But I might come back and update my review once I do.)

- Great, life-changing plot and writing with lovable characters. Not flawless, but still very good and clever. I was so heavily invested in the world that I didn't want to put the game down, and I feel like I'm walking away from this with a new perspective on life. (However, the game is also very slow, and the ending B playthrough 20-30 hours in is the best part.)
- Unique and amazing soundtrack. The World of Recycled Vessel has the best tracks in the game. It's rare to hear vocals in game music because they tend to distract the listener's focus from the game, but in Replicant, vocals are at the heart of nearly every track. The composition team managed to blend the vocals in a way where the voice really does sound like just another instrument.
- Worldbuilding: I don't think I've ever been more interested in how a fictional world came to be and the story behind it before playing this game. I'm usually not even interested in it, but now I want to dive into bonus materials and the sequel just to find out what happened to some of the towns, or what was on the other side of the ocean.
- The subtle LGBT+ representation is fantastically done. However, there is also a lot of tragedy and discrimination surrounding these identities that could make it hard to sit through, especially for transfem and intersex people.
- Terrible game design in nearly every corner that stops this game from being truly great.

• The general progression--especially the beginning of the game--is slow (you can tell they were faithful to the original because the first 2 hours of this almost made me refund it)
  
• Tutorials are found in breakable boxes and are single sentence, text-only optional reads in your menu.
  
• Sidequests are 85% fetch quests (I kept myself going by telling myself that nothing this game has is as bad as FFXIV's ARR, which I still believe fullheartedly.)
  
• The only way to obtain all the endings is to replay the final 6 or so dungeons 4 times, including travel time and errands inbetween. The second playthrough has some of the best scenes in the whole game, but the 3rd adds a very minimal amount (you do find out important information about a certain character, but only after the second to last fight)
  
• You randomly get 2 new weapon types halfway through the game and the jury is still out on how they have any impact outside of attack speed. There's also a defend/parry button, but it's so uncritical to the game that I loaded someone else's save and they rebound it to something else.
  
• Fishing, weapon upgrading, and gardening are so irritating and grindy that they're nearly unplayable. Do not 100% this game if you value your sanity.

- Yonah. They didn't adjust her character in response to changing Nier's age in this version of the game (he was originally her dad instead of her brother,) which leaves her feeling very flat and unsibling-like. She only talks about loving Nier and wanting to spend time with him without any of the other elements of a sibling relationship, like banter or shared experiences as equals in a mother-father-child family dynamic. There's some parts that even made it feel like they were trying to pull an incest angle, which was extremely uncomfortable and made me strongly consider setting my review to Not Recommended. In general though, she's treated as a plot device instead of an individual, which is kind of ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and extremely uncharacteristic of the game's writing otherwise.
- This is a very, very sad and tragic story in a lot of ways, and there are a lot of deaths--which is one of the many ways this game is not for everyone.
- Some important parts of the story are delivered through text-only sections. Not gigantic plot-points, but critical enough that if I was a 14th century king and one of my citizens told me that they skipped the novel sections because they were "boring" and didn't want to read them, I would have them beheaded on the spot.
- Difficulty: For me personally, Normal difficulty felt just right. However, I've always liked my games on the easier side. There's a dramatic difference between normal and hard, and so for people who appreciate more of a challenge, normal might be too easy but hard might be too difficult/too much of a PITA. It also doesn't scale well, so the fights leading up to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th endings were a bit too easy even for me.
- Combat: It's okay. People call this a beat-em-up, but for a large portion of the game, beating em up feels very punishing because you can't take a ton of hits until you get the first ending. Additionally, none of the mechanics are introduced or explained very well, and you can go through the entire game ignoring most of the magic attacks you get and the advanced mechanics. Combat still feels good most of the time, but your character's reaction time is a bit slow so it's not as satisfying as a game like ZZZ.
- Voice acting: For Japanese vs. English voices, it's really a case of the strongest English dub versus the weakest Japanese dub. A lot of the English voice actors are apparently well-known in the English dub world (lots of Liam O'Brien, Ray Chase, Zach Aguilar, and Laura Bailey if you know any of them,) though a lot of the Japanese voices sounded generic. Nier has protagonist voice, Weiss has generic old magical companion voice, etc. The Japanese isn't bad and the line delivery and emotion was always in the right place, but there's not the same level of performance that Japanese voice acting is renowned for. At the same time, the English dub is good... For an English dub, and it still has all the same issues that English dubs tend to have. Oh, and Kaine's swearing is censored in Japanese, like literally beeped out. I can't speak for the English cast because I don't like the way dubs are typically voice acted, but in the Japanese, the only character that sounds bad is Yonah (not a performance issue, more of a casting one imho). It's a very equal pro-con split, so I'd go with whatever you usually pick and change it later if you end up not liking it.
- Translation: In English, your book companion is named Grimoire Weiss. In Japanese, his name is White Book/Book of White (白の書 (Shiro no Sho)). The whole game feels kinda like that. I don't know enough Japanese to say whether the translation is good or bad, but from what I could understand from listening to the game in Japanese, the lines felt a lot more raw and straightforward than the subtitles I was reading on screen (and I was laughing a little more at the Japanese lines than the English). If you know Japanese well, it might be worth playing this in Japanese!

Overall, I can't say that I'd recommend it or not recommend it--it depends on what you as a player find enjoyable or not. But I spent the last 5 days of my life in a trance doing nothing but playing this game, which might speak for something.

This is definitely one of the games that was ever made. In summary, it's an action RPG with a good (not perfect) story, fantastic world-building, and terrible systems. I was told to play this before Automata, so I can't compare it to that game yet. (I ended up playing this for 5 days straight, so I need a break... But I might come back and update my review once I do.) [h2]Pros:[/h2] - [b]Great, life-changing plot and writing with lovable characters.[/b] Not flawless, but still very good and clever. I was so heavily invested in the world that I didn't want to put the game down, and I feel like I'm walking away from this with a new perspective on life. (However, the game is also very slow, and the ending B playthrough 20-30 hours in is the best part.) - [b]Unique and amazing soundtrack.[/b] The World of Recycled Vessel has the best tracks in the game. It's rare to hear vocals in game music because they tend to distract the listener's focus from the game, but in Replicant, vocals are at the heart of nearly every track. The composition team managed to blend the vocals in a way where the voice really does sound like just another instrument. - [b]Worldbuilding[/b]: I don't think I've ever been more interested in how a fictional world came to be and the story behind it before playing this game. I'm usually not even interested in it, but now I want to dive into bonus materials and the sequel just to find out what happened to some of the towns, or what was on the other side of the ocean. - The subtle LGBT+ representation is fantastically done. However, there is also a lot of tragedy and discrimination surrounding these identities that could make it hard to sit through, especially for [spoiler]transfem and intersex[/spoiler] people. [h2]Cons:[/h2] - [b]Terrible game design[/b] in nearly every corner that stops this game from being truly great. [list] [*]The general [b]progression[/b]--especially the beginning of the game--is slow (you can tell they were faithful to the original because the first 2 hours of this almost made me refund it) [*][b]Tutorials[/b] are found in breakable boxes and are single sentence, text-only optional reads in your menu. [*][b]Sidequests are 85% fetch quests[/b] (I kept myself going by telling myself that nothing this game has is as bad as FFXIV's ARR, which I still believe fullheartedly.) [*]The only way to obtain all the endings is to replay the final 6 or so dungeons 4 times, including travel time and errands inbetween. The second playthrough has some of the best scenes in the whole game, but the 3rd adds a very minimal amount (you do find out important information about a certain character, but only after the second to last fight) [*]You randomly get 2 new weapon types halfway through the game and the jury is still out on how they have any impact outside of attack speed. There's also a defend/parry button, but it's so uncritical to the game that I loaded someone else's save and they rebound it to something else. [*]Fishing, weapon upgrading, and gardening are so irritating and grindy that they're nearly unplayable. [b]Do not 100% this game if you value your sanity.[/b] [/list] - [b]Yonah[/b]. They didn't adjust her character in response to changing Nier's age in this version of the game (he was originally her dad instead of her brother,) which leaves her feeling very flat and unsibling-like. She only talks about loving Nier and wanting to spend time with him without any of the other elements of a sibling relationship, like banter or shared experiences as equals in a mother-father-child family dynamic. There's some parts that even made it feel like they were trying to pull an incest angle, which was extremely uncomfortable and made me strongly consider setting my review to Not Recommended. In general though, she's treated as a plot device instead of an individual, which is kind of shitty and extremely uncharacteristic of the game's writing otherwise. [h2]Neutral:[/h2] - [b]This is a very, very sad and tragic story in a lot of ways,[/b] and there are a [i]lot[/i] of deaths--which is one of the many ways this game is not for everyone. - Some important parts of the story are delivered through [b]text-only sections[/b]. Not gigantic plot-points, but critical enough that if I was a 14th century king and one of my citizens told me that they skipped the novel sections because they were "boring" and didn't want to read them, I would have them beheaded on the spot. - [b]Difficulty[/b]: For me personally, Normal difficulty felt just right. However, I've always liked my games on the easier side. There's a dramatic difference between normal and hard, and so for people who appreciate more of a challenge, normal might be too easy but hard might be too difficult/too much of a PITA. It also doesn't scale well, so the fights leading up to the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th endings were a bit too easy even for me. - [b]Combat[/b]: It's okay. People call this a beat-em-up, but for a large portion of the game, beating em up feels very punishing because you can't take a ton of hits until you get the first ending. Additionally, none of the mechanics are introduced or explained very well, and you can go through the entire game ignoring most of the magic attacks you get and the advanced mechanics. Combat still feels good most of the time, but your character's reaction time is a bit slow so it's not as satisfying as a game like ZZZ. - [b]Voice acting[/b]: For Japanese vs. English voices, it's really a case of the strongest English dub versus the weakest Japanese dub. A lot of the English voice actors are apparently well-known in the English dub world (lots of Liam O'Brien, Ray Chase, Zach Aguilar, and Laura Bailey if you know any of them,) though a lot of the Japanese voices sounded generic. Nier has protagonist voice, Weiss has generic old magical companion voice, etc. The Japanese isn't bad and the line delivery and emotion was always in the right place, but there's not the same level of performance that Japanese voice acting is renowned for. At the same time, the English dub is good... For an English dub, and it still has all the same issues that English dubs tend to have. Oh, and Kaine's swearing is censored in Japanese, like literally beeped out. I can't speak for the English cast because I don't like the way dubs are typically voice acted, but in the Japanese, the only character that sounds bad is Yonah (not a performance issue, more of a casting one imho). It's a very equal pro-con split, so I'd go with whatever you usually pick and change it later if you end up not liking it. - [b]Translation[/b]: In English, your book companion is named Grimoire Weiss. In Japanese, his name is White Book/Book of White (白の書 (Shiro no Sho)). The whole game feels kinda like that. I don't know enough Japanese to say whether the translation is good or bad, but from what I could understand from listening to the game in Japanese, the lines felt a lot more raw and straightforward than the subtitles I was reading on screen (and I was laughing a little more at the Japanese lines than the English). If you know Japanese well, it might be worth playing this in Japanese! Overall, I can't say that I'd recommend it or not recommend it--it depends on what you as a player find enjoyable or not. But I spent the last 5 days of my life in a trance doing nothing but playing this game, which might speak for something.