Nier: Automata

This action role-playing game covers broad philosophical ideas, but its gameplay won't appeal to everyone. You know those broadly accessible games that grab hold of audiences with their relatable characters, traditional ideas, and familiar mechanics? Nier: Automata isn't one of them. From the outset, it challenges players with unusual concepts and imagery that some might find hard to understand (or swallow): Beautiful, blindfolded android warriors who do battle in nightclub attire. Dirty trash can robots that have taken the names of old philosophers. Characters who tear down the fourth wall, repeatedly referencing the fact that we're playing a game while providing advice on how to play. Action that sees players abruptly moving from arcade-like top-down shooter combat to side-scrolling platforming to open-world adventuring. It's an undeniably unusual experience likely to resonate only with a select few.

The game's designers certainly have things on their minds that they want to communicate, though. Whether they're successful is debatable. While plenty of interesting questions about identity and personhood are posed, few are answered -- at least in the first play-through. Once the credits finish rolling, players are encouraged to play again, this time experiencing the game's events from the perspective of 2B's companion, 9S, learning more about the world and characters within it along the way. Whether the player wants to do this will depend largely on whether he or she enjoys exploring the world -- which is surprisingly bland and small compared with many other open-world games -- and engaging in a type of frenetic, multi-genre combat that will be an acquired taste for most, to put it mildly. If you're searching for instant, easy, and familiar gratification, your money will be better spent elsewhere.