NieR:Automata - Walking in the shoes of 9S

WARNING! This post contains heavy spoilers from NieR:Automata

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It's been a good few months since I finished NieR:Automata and at that time I planned up a few posts I was going to make about the game. I already posted my First Impressions back then but I also wanted to make a post about the subsequent playthroughs you need to do, the sidequests and also my journey towards collecting all the achievements in the game.

I therefore present to you my quite belated series of posts about Nier: Automata.

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To some the biggest thing in NieR:Automata might be 2B's jiggling butt. To me it's all about that story. The butt is nothing but a decent bonus. The way they do storytelling in NieR:Automata is quite special and was one of many things in the game that took me by surprise. When you finish the main story as 2B you get to do it all again as 9S. You get to see the game and story from his perspective and you get to see the things he did while he was off camera in the first playthrough. This is very cool.

This playthrough starts off rather strange. At first you're not controlling 9S or 2B but a tiny little machine. This is a rather short session that ends after we pick up some oil and feed it to the machines hurt friend. This is when we take control of 9S and the playthrough really starts.

What's special here is that we start in the abandoned factory. We're just down here doing some research when we're contacted by the Moon Bunker who tell us that 2B is on her way and is in need of assistance. Eventually as we run around 2B starts talking to us and it's the same dialogue that we had with 9S that we had while playing as 2B. This is something that happens again and again throughout this playthrough.

For the most part this whole playthrough is the same as the first except for a few key points.

• At the very start where we rendezvous with 2B by flying through the tunnels of the Abandoned Factory and hacking its systems.
• During the Abandoned Factory section where 2B goes to check out the religious machines we infiltrate the factory alone as 9S and helps 2B during the boss fight with the Machine Sphere.
• During the Flooded City section while fighting the Ancient Machine Weapon we support 2B by hacking it.
• The Copied City section is skipped overall as 9S in captured by Adam. 2B comes and rescues us, like we did in the first playthrough.

Throughout the whole playthrough we also get to see some weird cutscenes. They play out like small puppet theaters that give us additional lore on the machines and their pursuit to become more and more like humans.

Another unique thing from the 9S playthrough is the hacking. I've mentioned hacking several times in this post already and that's because it's quite a prominent feature of this playthrough. Luckily hacking isn't done only by pushing a button and waiting for something to happen. It's actually a mini game on its own. This adds yet another little genre within this game.

This was something I really liked although it did get quite repetitive and tedious as time went on. You mostly hack chests and enemies as well as some unique story items. There's a ton of different setup mini games depending on the difficulty of the enemy you're fighting and hacking. What I did not like is that some of the boss fights just end up being a hackathon seeing as its 9S biggest damage dealer. I think I hacked some of the bosses 10 times in quick succession and had to do one of these mini games each time. Luckily the mini games wasn't the same each time.

This playthrough was the one I spent the most time on out of the three. During the first playthrough I got so hooked on the story that I just ended up rushing it. When I got to this playthrough I decided to do side quests and well and I ended up completing pretty much all of them. At least the ones that were available to me.

There's also much more things to do as 9S. There's more side quests in his playthroughs and there's chests and doors that are available only to him. This is fine and all but it's a little disappointing seeing as the combat is so much better and more fun when playing as 2B. It still didn't keep me away from the game though. There's so much to do and explore in this game that a dull moment is really rare.

Just like the first playthrough this one also ends with 2B kinkily choking 9S out. A sight that might have produced a slight chub in many a man who played this game. Can't blame them.

This playthrough was quite fun but my favorite is yet to come. The last playthrough propels the story forward instead of taking on a different perspective and I'll be talking about that in my next post about NieR:Automata. Expect it. Not necessarily soon. Just expect it.

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^{All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.}

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