NieR: Automata could be the best game I have ever played if it didn't have some of the mistakes like "Ending B". Although, I still love this so much.

I want to make something clear for those who are confused about if they should play the replicant first to understand the story or not. No, you don't actually need to play it before Automata. Now what I said just now may trigger some of you at first, but let me explain. This game is mostly based on two of our main characters and the game gives you enough information to understand how they feel and how their characters improve, so if you're more interested in characters, it's pretty much okay to play Automata first. But if you're insisting on understanding the world lore, not only you need to play the replicant too but you also need to deep dive into with reading the fragments of lore that are written in items and lines between.

Back to Automata. This game has a really emotional, good and touching story. The game makes you symphathize and have a bond with the characters through the whole story and with this way you can have empathy towards all protagonists easily and can understand the reasoning behind their actions which is what makes the story interesting because in this story nearly every action is based on characters' emotional situations. Understanding their reasoning keeps you connected to the story. You might get confused after seeing every ending but i can guarantee you that you will be satisfied.

Story Telling. My biggest issue with this game's is that there is an ending which we play the exact same story as 9S and that playthrough adds only some extra cutscenes which are i believe were not needed to be added like this to the story. Because it gets boring to play the whole story with slight changes and more of it as a character with a seriously boring gameplay mechanics. Hacking is an awful and boring in this game and 9S's gameplay requires you to use the hacking system quite often. This straight up kills my motivation to continue on playing. Other than this, issues with story telling are not really much. First of all, need to tell you that if you're looking for some lore explanation and answers to some of your questions about the world and it's history, because it's a lore it's not explained directly in the storyline of the game. You will need to search the bits for the information which I'm fine with since it's not lore dumping me about a world of really old game which i need to play in order to understand everything about it. It's the job of telling the tragic story of our characters and leaves enough open doors to get invested in the lore if you would like to. Although the questions you will have which are not really answered directly might just cut your connection from the story, but it didn't bother me to not know those answers. I was pretty much into it the whole time. I believe you're also gonna be, because the bond you get with the characters are just that strong.

Let's get to the technical points.

There are certain issues with the environment designs I really don't like at all, even hate them. The atmosphere is seriously so good, it gives the post-apocalyptic vibes really well. Though there is this one thing I seriously hate about the designs in this game, buildings. Texture designs of the buildings may look like you can get through from some parts of the building but you can't, some invisible texture blocks you and this thing makes me sick. There are other examples for this invisible walls like the fences in festival part. These invisible walls are just really annoying for me when I see somewhere I can obviously just pass through but instead I can't because of them. Other than this, there isn't something coming to my mind I can complain about. I really love the level designs, they look nice, also the sountracks support the atmosphere of them so well I can literally just sit in one of these parts of the world and just vibe with the sight I have in front of me. They're so good.

Combat system is fun, but it gets boring the more you play, but hey this is literally the same thing with almost evey game! Am I wrong? What is fun about the combat though? It's fun because the movements are so smooth, sensation of hitting is good, there are fun skills you can use to add more variety to your gameplay, has a unique character upgrading system which I will talk about later. There are different types of weapons which are small weapons like daggers, swords, spears, great-swords and fighting bracelets. You can combine two of these weapon types and have different attack patterns, but it doesn't have to be 2 different types. You can combine same type of two weapons too which is what I was actually using through most of my time. Every weapon it's own unique buff such as critical hit chance, attack speed etc. You can have your own weapon combination with the buffs you want and play in your own style. The system give you enough room to develop our own style of combat which I believe is something really nice.

Alright, now time to talk about the skill tree system. The skill tree system is basically based on chips. You have one motherboard with certain amount of chip slots limt for your character and you can upgrade yourself with plugging chips and every chip type has a different slot cost, so what you need to do in order to get decent builds you can do fusing chips to upgrade to make it one stronger and optimized chip, you can also grind for the most optimum ones for every type which is a really big grind by the way, I would not recommend going for that. There is a quite good variety to the amount of chips and most of them are really useful. Chips are loots, meaning they can drop from monsters or can be found in open world or can be bought in shops. There are specific spots and enemies for grinding some of the specific type of chips and you can find them from internet. There is a chance that you can lose your chipset if you die once and can't retrieve your old body back. They're just gone if that happens, so be careful about that. There is also this feature for online players which I find quite bittersweet, players can retrieve other players' death body and this action can be done in two ways. You can either revive them as you ally to fight next to you or you can get their chips to temporarily buff yourself, both of these actions can help you out so well at tough times and it's just something I like to see.

Overall I love Nier: Automata so much and would definitely recommend to those have even the slightest interest to play it.
Thanks for reading my review, I hope it was helpful for you at deciding whether or not to play the game.