I have been on a steady grind with NieR since March and it has been one of the funnest games I've yet played. As an action RPG I definitely prefer it over Persona 5 and the story is arguably more interesting to me (I tend to enjoy dystopian existentialist stories generally more than anything else), so this game was definitely right up my alley.
The combat is fun, and the number of combos you can pull off with the PS4 controller are honestly very impressive. It feels as though there are dozens of different button combinations and you're only limited by how dextrous you are on the controller. I can mix light attacks with heavy attacks and Pod throws and finish it all off with a massive down attack, and then unleash my Pod program at the end of all that if I wish. That's all whilst using the cannon fire attack.
There's no shortage of things to kill and ample methods of dispatching of the limitless number of nuts and bolts machines that populate the playing world.
I've finished the game, but I haven't finished it at all.
You see, NieR:Automata has multiple endings - 26, in fact. By finishing the game once, you get ending A, but actually you progress forward by playing the story part of the game again through the perspective of another character. Once you finish that one, you play it again, furthering the story even more. From what I understand, there are five story-based endings and 21 optional endings that you trigger if you do certain things (say, kill someone you're not meant to, or wander off somewhere you aren't supposed to go).
So far, I've unlocked 14 of the endings, and I'm going to try to get all 26 without the use of a walkthrough. There's no in-game way of knowing how to get an ending or even anywhere to keep track of where you got them, only that you did get them (they carry over between deaths and loaded saves), and they display on the menu, as shown in the image above.
Unfortunately the game's internal clock maxes out at 99:59:59 hours, so there's no way of knowing how much of the game I've actually played. I use the game's jukebox mode to play music either in the background or whilst I sleep, so that would pack on the hours pretty hard, but I think of actual gameplay, I'm clocking in at nearly 250 hours. I grinded my levels really hard and ended up being considerably overleveled for most of the fights (even on Hard difficulty).
