Well executed story + player interactions - awful creative decisions. (Minor Spoilers)

I'll keep it short, I'm leaving this negative review because of some poor creative decisions made by the dev team when making this game.

For one, if you don't do any of the rather dull fetch/side quests whilst playing through as 2B and 9S, you find yourself woefully under-levelled later. To the point where simple machines become harder to beat than set-piece bosses, and why would I be interested in eating a fish given to me by the token comic relief character for a secret ending, when the main story is so enthralling?

Next, when playing as 9S, I just couldn't master the hacking mini-games, which took away from the gameplay significantly.

Later on, after a long period playing as 2B where I couldn't save, I became A2, and fought a boss that I struggled for a long period with. After this, I awoke as 9S, and realised I needed more healing salves. I went to the trader in the resistance camp, and found that I had to sell a bunch of my stuff before being able to buy more. I began spamming sell on all my useless junk items, before accidentally selling my 'OS Chip' - which for some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ awful reason, was hidden in my inventory. If you sell this random item, you die. Le funny secret ending is unlocked, and you re-spawn. I re-spawned 2 hours of game-play earlier. ♥♥♥♥ that.

The general map layout is also repetitive and boring. Having to play through the city ruins for the 8th time as 9S became a little dull. The collision on the map is also just broken.

The game offers fun and innovative combat though, which was by far my favourite non-story part of the game. I'd recommend playing the first play-through as 2B for sure - a fun little experience. The story definitely picks up past this, but the game design just didn't do it for me personally. A let down.

Well executed story + player interactions - awful creative decisions. (Minor Spoilers) I'll keep it short, I'm leaving this negative review because of some poor creative decisions made by the dev team when making this game. For one, if you don't do any of the rather dull fetch/side quests whilst playing through as 2B and 9S, you find yourself woefully under-levelled later. To the point where simple machines become harder to beat than set-piece bosses, and why would I be interested in eating a fish given to me by the token comic relief character for a secret ending, when the main story is so enthralling? Next, when playing as 9S, I just couldn't master the hacking mini-games, which took away from the gameplay significantly. Later on, after a long period playing as 2B where I couldn't save, I became A2, and fought a boss that I struggled for a long period with. After this, I awoke as 9S, and realised I needed more healing salves. I went to the trader in the resistance camp, and found that I had to sell a bunch of my stuff before being able to buy more. I began spamming sell on all my useless junk items, before accidentally selling my 'OS Chip' - which for some fucking awful reason, was hidden in my inventory. If you sell this random item, you die. Le funny secret ending is unlocked, and you re-spawn. I re-spawned 2 hours of game-play earlier. Fuck that. The general map layout is also repetitive and boring. Having to play through the city ruins for the 8th time as 9S became a little dull. The collision on the map is also just broken. The game offers fun and innovative combat though, which was by far my favourite non-story part of the game. I'd recommend playing the first play-through as 2B for sure - a fun little experience. The story definitely picks up past this, but the game design just didn't do it for me personally. A let down.