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NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139. Review

It has been bizarre watching the NieR series become a tentpole franchise within Square Enix over the last couple of years. Surpassing 5.5 million sales as of February, NieR: Automata has absolutely shattered sales expectations beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Witnessing Yoko Taro’s claim to fame exponentially increase has been a sight to behold. My purchase of the first Drakengard ages ago was simply by chance as a tremendous Dynasty Warriors 3 fan, and I’ve followed his career ever since then, for some reason.

The original release of NieR has a special place in my heart. It was not a looker, even in 2010, but it is one of the most memorable games I’ve ever experienced. I was so enamored with NieR Gestalt, the only version that received a western release at the time, that I went through the hassle of importing the other version, NieR Replicant. The situation surrounding two identical releases of the same game simultaneously, just with the alteration of whether the main character was a dad or older brother, fascinated me.

Whether it be the Replicant or Gestalt version, NieR was a true diamond in the rough. Its visuals were often marred by a muddy tone and harsh, overblown lighting due to extensive bloom. Combat was disappointingly basic, albeit serviceable, in a year when flashy action titles like Bayonetta, Darksiders, and God of War III made their debut prior to NieR’s launch. Another blight that plagued NieR was its consistently inconsistent technical performance; it struggled to maintain 30fps and would occasionally dip into far lower frame-rates during busy scenes. Despite its flaws, I still cherish the original NieR as one of the ugliest games I love.

Let’s be honest. A lot of modern NieR fans were introduced to the series thanks to the excellent NieR: Automata, and it’s admittedly difficult to go back and play its predecessor these days for many, either due to a lack of hardware accessibility and/or the game’s dated presentation.

NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139… is a fantastic second chance to showcase this special game once more to series fans, new and old.

I think Replicant ver.1.22 strikes a fine balance between remaking the rougher aspects of the original release, while leaving most of the game’s content practically untouched. Frankly, I was hesitant at first to see if the developers at Toylogic would go too far in changing the core experience of NieR, but thankfully, the decisions behind what was changed, what was added, and what was left the same were carefully thought out and smartly implemented.

The first thing players will notice is the huge upgrade to its visuals from the get-go. Replicant ver.1.22 exhibits a much cleaner look from top to bottom; everything is simply prettier. The vastly overhauled lighting engine brings an astounding amount of visual clarity to Replicant ver.1.22 compared to the original. There is certainly an argument to be made in how the original NieR’s dirtiness and griminess added another layer to the game’s underlying themes, though, and that aspect is something that Replicant ver.1.22 leaves behind in favor of greater graphical fidelity.

From the Northern Plains, Facade, Seafront, the Lost Shrine, and even the Junk Heap, every single environment got a significant facelift in Replicant ver.1.22. Even though they’re gorgeous now, all of the stage layouts have been faithfully re-created and are astoundingly identical to how they were before, from crate locations, enemy placements, and sound effects. I cannot stress enough that much of Replicant ver.1.22 will feel very familiar to previous players and I am very glad that is the case.

The lighting engine in this new release of NieR is delicious. And arousing.

Another big change present in Replicant ver.1.22 is, of course, that all the significant characters in NieR have new character models. The younger version of Nier himself, the player character, no longer has stiff spikes of death protruding from his head; instead, his hair flows more naturally and is gentler to gaze upon. Popola and Devola are somewhat closer to their Automata designs now, though they’re a bit livelier and perkier visually in Replicant ver.1.22. Emil, Yonah, and the rest are all prettified in their own way.

Kainé is the one redesign in Replicant ver.1.22 that took me the longest to get accustomed to, since I’m so used to her old model in the original NieR. She has a much more refined appearance in this new release that lines up closer to her concept art. I grew to like it over time, though there was definitely an adjustment period for me. Worry not, she still kicks ass.

One enhancement that caught me off-guard in Replicant ver.1.22 is how much of this game is now fully voice-acted. Almost every single piece of dialogue in the game is fully-voiced, including all the NPCs players that randomly chit-chat with as they stroll around. The only intentional omissions are a key character that primarily communicates with players via sign language and the text adventure segments players come across.

The stellar voice cast from both the English and Japanese audio tracks make their return. Obviously, NieR Replicant never received a release in the west originally, so the older brother version of the protagonist is newly voiced in English, and he fits right in delightfully with the rest of the crew.

All the DLC outfits from the 15 Nightmares DLC for you and your companions have all made their way into Replicant ver.1.22 and look better than ever. Players will still have to unlock them though.

Many western fans only ever played NieR Gestalt and are fond of the old, gruff dad as the main character. Unfortunately, Replicant ver.1.22 does not allow players to use him for the main adventure – but, everyone’s favorite dad is indeed playable thanks to the original NieR’s 15 Nightmares DLC now included with Replicant ver.1.22. This DLC had always allowed players to play the “other” version of the titular character, so Gestalt could play as the older brother and Replicant could play as the dad. The caveat was that it wasn’t voiced… until now. Fans of Papa Nier may not be able to venture with him much, but he isn’t totally lost to time.

Replicant ver.1.22 is going to be a lot of players’ first time seeing how the story and character interactions unfold with Nier as an older brother. Of course, everyone will have their own preferred protagonist at the end of the day, and I’ve always thought that the brother version of the protagonist worked better overall. Dad makes for a powerful, heartfelt first impression as he looks after Yonah desperately in the first half of NieR Gestalt, but I still believe that brother Nier meshed with the game’s overall themes more gracefully. There isn’t a right answer, and both have their inherent strengths and weaknesses narratively.

The combat system in Replicant ver.1.22 is the single aspect that is most inspired by Automata, but it tweaks just enough that the feel of Replicant ver.1.22 doesn’t feel overwhelmingly consumed by the foundation that PlatinumGames established in its sequel. Toylogic worked with PlatinumGames’s Takahisa Taura to provide a surprisingly nice middle ground that preserves the weightiness of the original NieR’s weapon impacts with slicker, snappier movement animations. Much of the attack strings are now flashier and flow more fluidly, yet they manage to keep the satisfying weighty cadence of melee combat. Rest assured, NieR Replicant has not drastically transformed wholeheartedly into a PlatinumGames action game; the influences are sprinkled on with enough restraint.

Messing around with the slicker combat system during NieR’s handful of homage sequences make them a lot more engaging.

Since the whole game runs at a consistent 60fps now, battles feel better than ever. A few minor systems were added to flesh out Replicant ver.1.22’s combat even further too, including the ability to deflect attacks with a carefully timed block that leaves enemies open to a powerful counterattack blow, as well as now being able to instantly switch weapons mid-combat. The magic arsenal by the trusty Grimoire Weiss remains intact and untouched. Players will still be able to bind Weiss’s magical spells on each trigger if they’re willing to sacrifice being able to defend or evade, just like in the original.

If players don’t want to concern themselves with combat at all, an auto-attack option menu opens up on the easiest difficulty. It lets players toggle some options on whether they want all aspects of combat to be done for them automatically, or simply have magic, recovery items, and defense mechanics be done for them instead as they concentrate their efforts elsewhere manually.

Another peculiar feature that caught my eye in Replicant ver.1.22 is the extensive control scheme options it provides. On top of the default control scheme and the option to set up a custom one, Replicant ver.1.22 also provides a total of six different controller configurations for one-handed players; three for left-handed only and three for right-handed only. This, along with the auto-battle feature, is a big win for accessibility features in this updated re-release.

As I mentioned earlier, this is almost a 1:1 recreation of the original NieR in terms of content. Weapon stories, all of the (sometimes tedious) sidequests, gardening, fishing, and the Words mechanic that adds stat-boosting prefixes to weapons and spells – they are all there, untouched. The handful of homages to other genres that play around with perspective shifts in several areas all remain unsullied. Every cutscene, and their transparent letterboxing, plays out exactly the same shot-for-shot.

Replicant ver.1.22 now spells out exactly how each subsequent ending is unlocked after a playthrough is completed.

As many Yoko Taro fans know, he has an affinity for multiple endings in his works. NieR delved into this concept in a unique fashion back then, as the second and third New Game+ playthroughs had players revisit the latter-half of the game with new scenes and dialogue that provided additional perspectives to the main narrative. It added vital context to the background of what players had witnessed before. These additional endings, and the ways to get them, are all still in Replicant ver.1.22; the only minor inclusion on this end is that this new re-release does a better job communicating to players on how to obtain them with a brief message at the end of each playthrough.

Once again though, almost a 1:1 recreation.

Those who fear that no new content has been added at all in Replicant ver.1.22 can cast their worries aside. A new, additional side-story has been seamlessly integrated into the main narrative without taking anything away from it. I was quite impressed with how elegantly it was slotted in. Much like NieR’s latter-half content, this is further examined in future playthroughs providing new scenes and context to what players are initially exposed to. This new story isn’t the only thing added to Replicant ver.1.22 though, but that’s for me to know and for you to find out.

Also, the entire soundtrack of NieR has been remastered and rearranged in Replicant ver.1.22. To a handful of players, NieR’s soundtrack ranks highly as one of the best video game soundtracks of all-time. It is an exceptional, masterful work of art that elevates the entire game to another level. In Replicant ver.1.22, the rearranged tracks opt for a more orchestral approach with live instruments, and this new release employs dynamic transitions into them naturally; it’s breathtaking. I would say it is fairly comparable, by and large, to the original NieR’s soundtrack. It still stirred me with its serene, haunting nature that no other game can quite match. There are a handful of brand-new tracks that are simply brilliant as well.

I prefer the original NieR’s score though, because I’ve personally been listening to it for years now, but Replicant ver.1.22’s rearranged tracks are still very amazing overall. I am a bit bummed that Replicant ver.1.22 doesn’t give players the option to switch back to the original soundtrack. It fooled me into thinking it would, though. After completing the game once, the ‘Change Music’ feature is added to the options menu. I was excited for a hot second thinking it would let me use the original NieR’s tunes only to find out that… it was to switch it to NieR: Automata tracks only. Devastating, I know.

Last but not least, I played the entirety of Replicant ver.1.22 on PC. It doesn’t seem to exhibit the same problems that Automata suffered from what I can tell. Cutscenes ran smoothly, though there are a few cinematic movies that don’t run on the in-game engine, so they obviously do not run at 60fps. My only issue is that some of the environmental assets, like rolling through an abundance of grass, can cause the image quality to get noisy or grainy at times. I’m not entirely sure if that is an inherent part of the game through its anti-aliasing solution or a problem on my end; it isn’t that big of a deal for me, all things considered. There weren’t any noticeable stutters either. Of course, everyone’s mileage may vary on this front.

NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139… is one of the most carefully constructed re-releases in recent memory. I was delighted to see just how much of the original experience remained intact, with the bulk of alterations focused on its visuals and combat. While I am happy that NieR: Automata remains a resounding success, its influence over this updated release of NieR hasn’t robbed it of its unique identity; this is, by and large, the NieR that I fell in love with. I think all the new content that has been added to Replicant ver.1.22 is all worth seeing. Looking back at my journey once more with Nier, Kainé, and Emil, I am so happy that one of the most underappreciated games gets another chance to show why it is so special again.

Nier Replicant is a brilliant game with one big catch

Chris Plante co-founded Polygon in 2012 and is now editor-in-chief. He co-hosts The Besties, is a board member of the Frida Cinema, and created NYU’s first games journalism course.

Nier Replicant is a brilliant video game that I recommend with the most frustrating caveat in entertainment: “It gets good after 10 hours.”

Of course the game would move slowly by 2021 standards. Nier Replicant is a remake of a game from a decade ago, itself criticized by its harsher reviewers for outdated pacing and repetitive combat. It might look new on the surface, but this game’s skeleton shows its age.

If you can muscle through to the 10-hour mark, however, you’ll discover why this — at times plodding, often messy — cult game spawned the hit sequel Nier: Automata, a touring symphony, and a humongous expansion to, of all things, Final Fantasy 14, despite having nothing to do with Final Fantasy beyond a shared publisher and rabid fandoms.

Should you play Nier Replicant or Nier: Automata first?

Image: Toylogic/Square Enix

The story defies concision, so let’s stick to the throughline: In 2049, a mysterious virus appears first in Shinjuku and then across the world, converting humans into either statues of salt or shadowy ghouls called Shades. Flash-forward 1,300 years, when a young man named Nier learns that his sister Yonah has been infected with a similarly mysterious and seemingly incurable virus.

Refusing fate, Nier quests across an Earth reclaimed by nature and populated with Shades, now ranging in size from “lap dog” to “cruise ship.” Nier believes that uncovering the mystery of these creatures — by slaughtering them — will grant him the lost ancient knowledge necessary to save Yonah.

Nier: Automata review

You take on fetch quests and navigate various dungeons, killing bosses, collecting keys, and learning how the death of a space dragon caused the near-annihilation of the human race. Picture The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, but gorier, raunchier, and loaded with enough existential dread to make a matinee of Annihilation sound like a fun way to kill a couple of hours.

After a few hours of table setting, establishing Nier Replicant as a standard action adventure, the game begins to warp into something stranger. Slowly, at first imperceptibly, the quests deviate across unexpected genres, such as shoot-’em-ups, Resident Evil-like horror, and Diablo clones.

Image: Toylogic/Square Enix

Rather than recreate its inspirations on a one-to-one basis, Nier’s pastiche is closer to a hurried tour through the halls of video game history, winking and nodding with each new locale. Like Automata, Replicant’s adventure doubles as a critique and parody of its contemporaries. And like Automata, it features multiple endings, each new playthrough of the game revealing new information that calls into question the actions you took in the previous run.

(If you plan to see everything, read our guide to unlocking all endings before playing. Without certain tasks completed, some endings will be cut off permanently. That’s a bummer if, like me, you’ve already committed 30 hours and change and realize you forgot to buy some obscure, but important sword.)

If that sounds weird and dense, dear reader, I haven’t scratched the surface of the game’s lore. We have a top-secret government plan to split soul and body; a talking book named Grimoire Noir, who works more or less like Green Lantern’s ring, morphing crimson energy into bullets, spikes, and giant fists; and the lore of a largely forgotten series called Drakengard.

Image: Toylogic/Square Enix

Don’t let any of this intimidate you. The slow intro affords newcomers time and context to get their sea legs. The early journey is minimal to the point of parody. One quest scraps the visuals altogether, converting the game into a text adventure in which you have no responsibility other than clicking through page after page of ellipses. For hours, you learn the backstory and terrain of this open world, taking long hikes back and forth and back again through deserts, forests, caverns, and abandoned factories.

Nier Replicant runs counter to most contemporary video game “wastelands,” which paradoxically brim with life. Despite the nuclear holocaust or hordes of zombies or rising sea levels in games like these, humans have survived, if not thrived, cobbling together entire towns, subcultures, and edgy fashion lines from the detritus of the Before Times. Nier Replicant’s post-apocalypse, by comparison, feels empty and banal, an open world largely empty of things to do and people to meet.

The vibe calls to mind Andrei Tarkovsky’s sci-fi of the mundane. In films like Stalker and Solaris, Tarkovsky would let shots run for minutes as characters did little more than trudge through a tunnel or float in an empty spacecraft. This pacing becomes meditative, transportive, and magnetic. Time in the movie and time in real life begin to align, and the two worlds blur together.

Image: Toylogic/Square Enix

Even the action — slaughtering thousands of Shades with dozens of swords, daggers, and spears — tends towards mindlessness, something you do to spice up a long trip or to farm materials. Nier Replicant is unapologetically repetitious on a moment-to-moment level.

It also bets boldly that you will replay the game multiple times to see its true endings. I did. The game entranced me, like listening to Gregorian chants on a cross-country road trip . only with more sword fights.

Forcing me to walk the same empty world over and over and over and over and over and over and over again tricked my mind into seeking a fleck of novelty, to notice every tiny detail. I became familiar with the environment the way I’ve memorized the layout of my hometown, despite never having seen it on a map.

After I charted enough of the world to be a credentialed tour guide, I could spot all of the hints that this Earth is our Earth.

Image: Toylogic/Square Enix

Time after time

Nier Replicant’s time frame is so distant from today that the world is nearly unrecognizable as our own. Not just in nature and architecture and communities, but also in the very evolution of life.

By the 10-hour mark, my compatriots are a talking book, a mutilated child with a Medusa-like curse, and a young half-demon who wears lingerie and carries a big sword. We meet shadow creatures, giant gelatinous sea creatures, and a bottomless cup of bored robots.

This weirdness serves a purpose. Many post-apocalyptic games feel like our world in cosplay — it’s everything we know and understand, just mutilated, decrepit, and more corrupt. The obvious metaphor of so much post-apocalyptic fiction is that the end of the world isn’t so different from the world of today.

But imagine if we stepped into a time machine and warped a thousand years beyond our own apocalypse. The planet (assuming anything’s left) would be incomprehensible, and inhuman by our current perception of “human.” And at its best, that’s what Nier’s weirdness accomplishes.

Image: Toylogic/Square Enix

But at its worst, the weirdness can be mean-spirited and grating. One of your party members is a hypersexualized young woman who wears a negligee that goes unexplained for dozens of hours. And the eventual justification is a misstep, with the story lightly and poorly unpacking the character’s experience as intersex. The aforementioned talking book alternates between sounding like a voice-over from a BBC nature documentary and Stewie Griffin, calling women hussies and making dry jabs at Nier about his life choices, as if the book were swirling a glass of Suntory.

Nier Replicant also carries the burden of its predecessor’s popularity. I played Nier: Automata first, so playing Nier Replicant fresh in 2021 felt akin to reading a writer’s first draft. For a fan, this is a treat, getting to see how creators’ ideas evolve, to see the germs of concepts that will flourish in the finished product. We simply wouldn’t have Nier: Automata without the game that inspired Nier Replicant. But the remake, even with the polished visuals, refined score recording, and modernized combat, can’t conceal its aged and shaggy design.

Image: Toylogic/Square Enix

With that burden of comparison, Nier Replicant has the obligation to serve two audiences. For longtime fans of the original Nier, this means the game is being preserved and celebrated. This release will be a masterpiece for them.

For fans who joined the series with Automata, Replicant may feel like an appetizer, feeding the craving for anything new, whether it’s an MMO expansion, a gachapon mobile game, or a fancy remake. They will find some surprises here, despite the nagging sense of déjà vu.

So I return to the caveats. If you’re a fan of the series, and you can respect the audacity of these decade-old ideas, Nier Replicant is the best appetizer yet for whatever main course Square Enix will inevitably serve in the future. But for newcomers or casual fans, the caveat stands: Nier Replicant is worth the time, but only if you have plenty of time to spend.

Nier Replicant will be released April 23 on PlayStation 4, Windows PC, and Xbox One. The game was reviewed on PlayStation 5 using a pre-release download code provided by Square Enix. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.