This was a long one, it was in my backlog a long time but its now done and I'm glad I did.

The game play is hack and slash with some RPG elements. Leveling up for example and equipping different equipment. Except equipment is relegated to chips, which was a system I liked. You also have a pod which can have are your main method of ranged attack.

Besides that there's the hacking mini-games where you fire bullets in a twin stick shooter kinda thing. I found it to get a bit repetitive but nothing excruciating bad since there's a decent amount of combinations.

I found the game fine on difficulty maybe a bit on the easy range except for a few particular boss battles but that's only since I was playing on normal.

I also found the story probably the biggest reason to continue playing. The game play was fine, but the story kept me going. Especially after the first second playthroughs the story starts unraveling itself and it starts getting really intense. I feel like you could probably write a super deep analysis about the story in this game and there probably is somewhere.

This game had me feeling all kinds of ways it was great. You can point some of that to this game's music. This game has phenomenal music, like the music in this game is so good. E.g: some of the Dynamic exploration themes such as the one for the City Ruins or the Forest Kingdom.

I can definitely see this as the type of series where it would easy to get really invested in the lore since it seems so. I know the first Nier didn't exactly get amazing receptions from reviews and such but I'm going to play it anyway. I mean a ton of people despised Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and I enjoyed that game for the most part. interesting.