Nier: Automata - 3C3C1D119440927 Review (ahhrk)
Misleading advertisement and punishing design.
Update 2019-01-05: I feel bad about posting such a dismissive review. I still stand by everything I said, but you should notice that it only really applies if you're only here for the female characters' costumes. If you are the kind of player who likes the idea of the arenas and the grinding and don't care about the costumes, then sure, go ahead; buy it. Otherwise keep reading.
The store page says "To enjoy this content you will need to have progressed a certain way into the main story of the game." This is technically true, as the game does let you unlock a bunch of garbage early, but the one reason why many people are purchasing this (the female characters' costumes) is impractical to unlock until character level 80 is reached. (Everyone I have met reaches the final ending on level 60ish.)
So in principle, there's a lot of grinding to do to reach the costumes, in addition to the paywall.
But there are a few other issues that stack together to aggravate the problem:
- The game tempts you to erase your game file during the final ending. So you will likely not be able to unlock the costumes on your first playthrough at all.
- The costumes belong only to save files in which they have been unlocked. They do NOT carry over to a New Game. There's no way to do a complete playthrough with the costumes on.
So expect to have to grind for 140 levels (first playthrough's 60 + second playthrough's 80) before you're able to enjoy your costumes.
Also notice that, by the time you can unlock them, you're bound to be past the point of diminishing returns. Unless you're planning to 100% the game, there's really not much fun to be had after level 80. I'd hazard to guess that the only content left you're probably curious about is two sidequests: Emil's Determination and the highest DLC arena tiers. The former pre-requires you to upgrade all the weapons all the way to max level (which involves the kind of mat farming we all love to hate from MMOs). The latter is probably good for a challenge, but I've heard it's a somewhat jarring difficulty spike. I don't think this is bad per se, but after two consecutive playthroughs, I'm not in the right mindset for this kind of investment.
Point is, realistically speaking, I forecast that most people will be done with the game literally immediately after gaining access to the costumes (assuming they weren't already, that is). Therefore, they will not spend any time enjoying them at all. Think about this. In gaming, quitting right after fulfilling your objectives is standard operating procedure.
These drawbacks can be somewhat alleviated by NOT deleting your first playthrough file (hence minimizing the grinding to "only" 80 levels) or by backing up the file before the game deletes it. There's also a fast leveling technique (Google "nier rabbit statue") that can be used roughly from level 70 65 onwards. There's also an endgame item that unlevels you back to 1, in addition to a chapter selection menu. However, you need to notice that this item does not reset your sidequest progress nor unlockables, so it's really a poor excuse for a New Game.
Sorry about the negativism, but as someone who does not appreciate "watching numbers grow"-based gameplay, I was very disappointed to realize that my money unlocked hours of pain and suffering rather than, well, what we alI know I came here for.