The best time to play Nier: Automata is now

Nier: Automata spent the last week In the headlines, the result of a secret door that caused an uproar in the community. The mystery itself may have come to a sudden, surprising conclusion, but that doesn’t mean the base game it was part of should disappear from your radar. In fact, it’s all the more reason to reconsider what many are heralding as one of the best action RPGs of all time.

By the way, this recommendation applies to everyone, whether you’ve hit the credits a dozen times or haven’t seen firsthand what’s popular Nier: Automata to so many people. Developed by PlatinumGames and first released in 2017, Nier: Automata is an Action RPG set 9,000 years in the future where you play as a small contingent of battle-hardened androids. It’s mostly focused on hack-and-slash combat, but there are moments when it’s straight bullet hell.

Nier: AutomataThe main gimmick of – and what makes it stand out from a crowded field – is that it has multiple endings. Not just two or three alternatives either. All in all, there they are 26 different endings. Most of them are semi-serious at best (including one where you drop an item that specifically says will kill you when you equip it). But five are real, which means you’ll have to play through the campaign multiple times from different perspectives to get the full storyline.

Nier: Automata is a narrative tour de force in its own right, which may partly explain its recent cultural resurgence – again because of that secret door.

In the past two months, dedicated members of Nier: AutomataThe online community of was teased by a player asking for a “church” that didn’t match any known area of ​​the game. Some people called it bullshit, but video evidence of the previously undiscovered area surfaced early last week. However, the door to the area seemed strangely only accessible to one player.

After a week of frantic community-fuelled speculation, it turned out the whole thing was a viral campaign for a new, potentially game-changing set of modding tools whose designers say they plan to release the tools to the public soon. In other words, Nier: Automata is about to host some really wild community creations.

That’s not all. In February, This was announced by publisher Square Enix it would produce an anime adaptation of Nier: Automata. (Details are currently sparse.) kidneyThe story of is branching and emotionally devastating, but it’s also deeply personal as only games can be. No matter how you end up getting there, you probably got there a different way than anyone else. The only way to really compare the anime to its source material is to actually play that source material.

Also, come on: although the release calendar will pick up steam soon, it’s dry AF at the moment. If you want to put something first in your backlog, there’s little you can do better Nier: Automata.

Some advice for the newbies: Juggle multiple backup files and Beware of the fish.