NieR
You’ve probably heard of this one. Square Enix made a small splash at this year’s E3 by announcing a sequel to Cavia’s 2010 project: NieR. While many of NieR’s hardcore fans were left in tears of joy, myself included, I’m sure there was an even larger number of gamers who had never even heard of this game.
NieR is an action RPG with rather mediocre gameplay. In NieR, you take control of a father who travels around the world with a talking book in the hopes of finding a cure to save his terminally ill daughter. The game is very standard RPG fare; you kill enemies, level up, buy weapons, and do fetch quests.
While the standard gameplay isn’t terribly exciting, NieR does do a fantastic job with its boss fights. Every boss feels epic in proportion, and they all come with a slight trick or puzzle that you’ll have to figure out in order to hurt them. But you’re not here for the gameplay. No. You play NieR for its captivating story and phenomenal soundtrack.
If you’re an RPG lover, and you enjoy a good story that can make you cry, and you appreciate good music in your games, you’d be remiss to pass up on NieR.
Drakengard 3
While we’re on the subject of video games made by Yoko Taro, I thought I’d bring up Drakengard 3 as well. The Drakengard series isn’t particularly popular, nor did it exactly make a splash in mainstream media but, like NieR, it’s garnered a bit of a cult following. Drakengard 3 isn’t quite as dark as the original Drakengard (pedophiles and baby-eaters, anyone?), so even some of the series fans might’ve passed up on it, but hey, just because it’s a little different doesn’t mean it’s bad.
Here’s another action RPG where you take control of Zero, a woman who is hell-bent on murdering her five sisters. She also has a flower growing out of her eyeball. You have four types of weapons at your disposal, and you can chain combos by swapping between weapons on the fly. Killing enemies soaks Zero in blood and fills up a meter, which allows you to activate Intoner Mode, in which she essentially goes batshit crazy and starts killing enemies at an even faster rate. You also get to fly on a dragon.
When it was first released on the PS3, many critics panned Drakengard 3 because of its shoddy framerate, incredibly crude toilet humor, and the lack of explanation as to why Zero wanted to kill her sisters.
The thing is, terrible framerate aside, when you play a Drakengard game, or even its spinoff NieR for that matter, you need to play it all the way through to see what the game’s really all about. Trust me on this, Drakengard fans; the crude humor and the sex jokes are just a veneer for an emotionally heavy story about a woman who isn’t quite as cold-hearted as she lets on. It’s also worth mentioning that Keiichi Okabe, the composer of the NieR soundtrack, makes a similarly epic musical comeback with this game as well.
And even if you’re a newcomer to the series, that’s okay too. Drakengard 3 serves as a prequel and origin story, so you won’t be too lost even if you haven’t played the other games. Drakengard 3 might not be for everyone, but it has a lot of heart. Take a chance on this quirky gem, and you just might fall in love with it like I did.
Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne
Before there was Persona, there was Shin Megami Tensei. Developed by the good folks over at our favorite JRPG company Atlus, Shin Megami Tensei was an incredibly dark series of games that often involved our morally ambiguous protagonist having to choose between the forces of Law and Chaos, and killing off some of his friends as consequences of his decision. You’ll also have to fight God or Lucifer and their hordes of demons, depending on the alignment you choose to go with. Yeah, it’s all very morbid stuff.
Nocturne was a particularly outstanding entry in the series because of its presentation and intriguing characters. Nocturne pulled no punches in the manner it unfavorably depicted religion and in underlining the hypocrisy of the people you meet. Ultimately, it’s a subtle story of excessive greed, selfishness, self-destruction, and all that other happy stuff. And you, as the protagonist, get to land right in the middle of it, and decide how you want to remake the world.
The gameplay itself is masterfully executed too; Persona fans will be familiar with the demon fusion system (oh did I forget to mention they’re called demons, and not Personas?) where you can fuse two or more demons to create an even more powerful abomination to fight for you. Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne doesn’t joke around when it comes to fighting enemies either; the foes you face, even in random encounters, will be tough. You’ll need to constantly review your party of demons and make sure you exploit their strengths and cover their weaknesses in order to come out victorious.
Nocturne certainly doesn’t carry any of that happy-go-lucky attitude that Persona 4 has plastered all over itself. However, a game that’s so unafraid to tackle socially taboo subjects is hard to find indeed, especially one as hauntingly immersive as Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne.
999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
Do you like escape room puzzles? Do you like mysteries? Do you like music with the power to make you bawl like a baby? Do you enjoy the tension of having only a few hours to escape from a steadily sinking ship? Well then, 999 should be right up your alley.
999 is a visual novel with multiple endings, with each ending being dependent on the player’s actions. And no, you won’t be able to get the true ending on your first try. Directed by Kotaro Uchikoshi, 999 tells the story of Junpei, who’s been kidnapped by a mysterious masked figure named Zero, and forced onto the sinking ship to play the Nonary Game. In order to escape the ship, Junpei and the eight other people who have been kidnapped along with him have to solve a series of escape room puzzles and seek a door with a ‘9’ on it.
Without giving away too much of the plot, 999 paints such a wonderful atmosphere of dread, confusion, and the constant fear of being betrayed by one of your allies. 999 is the kind of game where you’ll never be able to guess what’s coming next, and its climactic final act will send you spiraling down an endless abyss of ‘What the fuck just happened?’
Umineko
I used to think visual novels were silly. I mean, if I wanted to read a book, I would, well, I’d read a damn book. But what I didn’t understand was that visual novels had the power to evoke certain emotions from me with the usage of really damn good music.
Up until this year’s Anime Expo, you’ve probably never heard of Umineko: When They Cry. While this ‘game’ is as linear as it gets (you don’t make any choices at all until the very last episode), Umineko more than makes up for the lack of gameplay by telling a damn good fantasy mystery story, and throwing in some of the best atmospheric music I’ve ever heard in a game.
You follow the story of Ushiromiya Battler and his family as they all head down to Rokkenjima Island for their annual family conference, where they discuss the inevitable death of the family head and how they want to split up the inheritance. It all sounds very political, until a malevolent witch comes along and throws a wrench into their plans.
Umineko, at its core, is a battle between the elements of fantasy and reality. The story features several locked room puzzles, and Battler, along with the players, must decide whether the mysterious murders on Rokkenjima Island were performed by a human or a witch. While each episode starts off a little slowly in the beginning, the story never fails to ramp up the excitement factor once people start dropping dead.
There’s a reason why Umineko has such a vocal cult following, and why an updated version of the game has finally been promised for Steam this year. The story itself is gripping, but the music is even more outstanding. Whenever Golden Slaughterer starts playing, you just know shit’s about to go down.
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