Many years ago, I was browsing the PSN on my PS3 and saw a rhythm game demo with some anime girl in it. I liked Guitar Hero and Elite Beat Agents, so why not try this?

At first, I'm like what is the high pitched squeaky weeb nonsense? But after replaying the same demo all night long, I realized I had to hit the buy button on Amazon for my first copy of Project Diva F.

That started a many year affair with PS3, PSP, PSvita, PS4, and Switch games; soundtracks, figures, concerts and a trip to Hokkaido even.

Now, finally, Project Diva lands on PC officially .

The game is capped at 60 FPS, but I have no issues playing in windowed borderless mode at 1440p on my i7 6700k, RTX 2080 build. Nothing seems out of line, plenty of settings similar to the console releases, with a few graphics options sprinkled in. I do not see this as a demanding title performance-wise.

I am using a wireless Xbox One pad and have no issues so far. I am not very good at these games, but find no glaring latency issues, but YMMV.

I strongly recommend the VIP version since it has the most content of any of the releases, perhaps save Future Tone, at release for $60. If you're going to go in, go big. Just realize that the Item Unlock key is included. For returning fans of the series who want to skip straight to Extra Hard, they're likely to download this. But for new players who want some progression, I recommend disabling it in the games properties within your library such that you can work you way up the difficulties while unlocking outfits.

Just one hour in, I strongly recommend this game. But be cautious, as you might delve down a dark rabbit hole and find yourself buying LED glow sticks and nendoroids.

I have the unfortunate standing of being a fan of Yoko Taro's previous works, a fan of Platinum action games, and general philosophy reader from time to time that should be the core audience for this title. This game may be for you, the reader, so I do recommend you read my review as I will explain my criticisms of the title, but that doesn't necessarily say it isn't one worth playing for yourself.

SUMMARY/TL;DR: Automata is the movie, as Nier (2010) is the book. The revelations in this game can be grand, but only to those not read into this style of dystopiate science fiction and can withstand some mile wide, ankle deep depth analysis of existentialism as explained by androids coupled with some of Platinum's weakest combat to date. Amazing music, talented artistry, in a sadly bland color flat world, top off the overall package that is Nier: Automata. Everyone will love their first, and Taro's work is novel, however it's just that Automata isn't novel when it's "all been done before" by Taro himself.

The core mechanics are that of a third person combat action game, which is customary for Platinum who are best known for the Bayonetta series. In this game you play as the titular 2B, along with 9S and others as the plot thickens. The combat itself is your typical two button combat, weapon swapping/pairing capability with leveling handled through the chip system. Keeping in the tone of the world, all of your menus are part of your androids operating system, so the "leveling up" portions are reprogramming your android, adding in more heatsinks through a vendor to hold more chips, power them up/combinging them, etc. More so, after figuring out how certain chip combinations work, I had an android that was nearly unkillable with all the healing I could get from various sources. This resulted in no need to innovate or pull from the gameplay aspect until the game decides to change up the requirements (it never did for me). Due to the presentation style likely dictated by Taro, the glitz and glamor of stylish combat really doesn't follow through as much. There are some over the top moves possible, but these are unnecessary. I beat the entire title without really swapping from the primary weapons, which can be powered up themselves through grinding fetch quests, as the game never really forced my hand. As a veteran of many combat action style games, this one was not in the highest tier of gameplay in comparison to Platinum's own work.

The second character you play as, 9S, rolls back combat even further by having what amounts to one button combat; thematically, he is not a combat unit hence more mopey than 2B when swinging a sword. To make up for this, you can "hack" targets to various degrees of success all of which involving a two dimensional shoot 'em up (shmup) like combat. I am not a fan of this genre, so playing the gross majority of 9S in terms of gameplay was severely grating to choose from button spam combat or shmup shooting. As the game progresses, a great deal more importance is placed on the shmup sections.

The actual game structure, which will relate to the plot, follows the Taro fashion of telling an incomplete story with the first pass, as is typical. You'll see "The End" many more times than you think necessary in most games, with up to 26 endings in total, however the core five endings are the only ones I will discuss. This will then be broken down into five overall parts, A, B, C, D & E. Normally I would be okay with this, but issue is the overall hype that there was something radical to this structure that could not be missed. As I pressed through each of the five parts, I was waiting for the mind-blowing aspect most of the ardent fans had told me to keep searching for only for it to never come. The issue is if you're already well entrenched into the "Taro-verse" is that this structure is something he has had for over a decade, likely starting from the Drakengard series (from what I can recall, you can go off the deep end in YouTube videos linking Drakengard to just about everyting...). This is more a note than criticism in that the player who hasn't yet experienced some revelation by, say, post Part B, you're probably not jiving with game.

This then brings us to the narrative. To say I do not connect with existentialism would be a bit of understatement. I cannot really connect with the characters unabashed desire to find a need to exist, be it main characters or side characters. There are plenty of obvious foreshadowing to the overall plot that if you are an avid anime watcher, played plenty of dystopiate sci-fi games, or read plenty of sci-fi, you'll find most of the major points fairly boiler plate. The big deal is the revelation of "what is meaning?" to our cast of characters. The issue with that is I never developed any connection to the characters outside some of the side/non-playable characters throughout the story, with the best side-character already having motiviation for meaning and then dealing with the loss of it; truly the most resounding moment in the game and my choice of action regarding it... If I could spoil one moment... That one singular moment, an aside to the main plot, had such an impact where the overall affair was a shallow narrative approach to meaning since the characters are all androids; shallow, empty vessels (it's a metaphor, get it?).

So I have ripped quite a bit into Nier: Automata, what's good? The soundtrack. I spent more on the imported physical soundtrack than on the game itself. The Nier series has a haunting series of themes that can sound like folkish, chanting, of a civilization long lost that truly does take you away to far away lands. I feel like the music is almost possible to stand alone on its own, but when paired with story sequences in the game, you'll find the impact much more meaninful. One reason I would support playing the game is to experience the art this game paints. The graphics are well done, with the technical issues the only real thing holding it back. The art design is Taro, it's got a lovingly bland aesthetic for the enemies, a lovingly detail for the ladies (the game has in-jokes about this even), and bosses are defintely stand outs. The environments are just brown, brown, and maybe another color here and there. Possibly to reflect the melancholy, but definitely lackluster in comparison to android and enemy designs.


Why am I so harsh about this work in reality? Every single thing that has been hyped about Automata, it's music, it's aesthetic, the unique structure, the depth, the darkness, the dealing with difficult themes, and the novel gameplay approaches was done in Nier (2010). Yes, I know, no one played Nier, but someone who has read my opinions and has best summarized it as thus: Automata is to the movie, as Nier is to the book. Nier came first, set the stage first, had more depth to characters because they were people, had clunky combat you could look past due to art, setting, music, and story. Even the big thing people lost thier minds about in Automata? In Nier, as well. I would take Kaine's story over nearly everything in Nier in terms of story quality. I can relate back to that weird 2010 game that I raved about, like Automata fans of today, that no one would play. A part of me is happy for Taro making it big, that we may see another Nier-like title, but part of me is frustrated as this is "the movie to the book." People are all a buzz and you cannot change someone's opinion on their "first;" Automata was a lot of folks first into the mind of Taro and I can see why they have passion. And as I can look past Nier's issues on the PS3 nearly a decade ago, so to are fans today. My review is to say I liked it best the first time I played it (Nier) and found it lacking the next (Automata).