When comparing Night in the Woods vs NieR: Automata, the Slant community recommends Night in the Woods for most people. In the question“What are the best singleplayer games on Steam?” Night in the Woods is ranked 39th while NieR: Automata is ranked 43rd. The most important reason people chose Night in the Woods is:
Every character feels like they have a history and realistic personal motivations, even when they're left unexplained. Mae's friends are all different yet interesting in their own ways, like Gregg who's always happy to see her and helps Mae feel like someone truly cares, and Bea with her biting sarcasm and apathy that seem to cover up her more complex issues. The residents of the town also talk about things in ways that are true-to-life, like how they gossip about their neighbors as you listen in, or just flat-out tell you sometimes to leave them alone. Every character in the game feels like a real person, whether they're central to the story or just one of the NPCs you see sitting on their porch all the time.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Well-written side characters
Every character feels like they have a history and realistic personal motivations, even when they're left unexplained.
Mae's friends are all different yet interesting in their own ways, like Gregg who's always happy to see her and helps Mae feel like someone truly cares, and Bea with her biting sarcasm and apathy that seem to cover up her more complex issues. The residents of the town also talk about things in ways that are true-to-life, like how they gossip about their neighbors as you listen in, or just flat-out tell you sometimes to leave them alone. Every character in the game feels like a real person, whether they're central to the story or just one of the NPCs you see sitting on their porch all the time.
Pro Tragic, realistic setting and NPCs
Night in the Woods is set in Possum Springs, once a booming mine town but now a forgotten speck on the map, rife with poverty and decay. Its history is based on several real Adirondack towns, and its portrayal of rural decline is painfully accurate. The townspeople you talk to lament about having to close down their businesses, or wonder out loud how they'll make ends meet. Everyone's economic hardships feel real and relevant to anyone who's gone through the same thing or knows someone else who has.
Pro Great coming-of-age story
The coming-of-age story in Night in the Woods is unconventional for a video game, making it more unique and intriguing. After dropping out of college, the main character, Mae, struggles with her own disillusionment in life and refusal to grow up, all the while her old friends find success and move on without her.
You join in on that struggle as you live as Mae: aimlessly going around town talking to everyone and listening to their worries, browsing your laptop when you're supposed to be doing other important things, and even pressing a button to wake up in bed every morning as a reminder of how mundane life can be. You see all the ways she doesn't necessarily want to grow up, wishing she could stay a kid forever, but then she talks to an old acquaintance who thinks she's washed up now, making her feel anxious about her failings as a young adult. This type of story is familiar for anyone who has also had a hard time with similar problems, and eye-opening for anyone who hasn't.
Pro The simplistic gameplay is surprisingly fun
Running around the side-scrolling town as Mae day in and day out is more enjoyable than it sounds at first. It's mundane, but there's a lot of meaning to find around the town if you're willing to look for it.
You go wherever you want, finding out stories about the townspeople and the town itself, or hanging out with friends for scripted story moments. Poking around all over town to find out the history is pretty cool, like the underground diner that Mae used to steal from back in the day, or the old shopping mall that barely gets any customers anymore. When you're not talking to people or going somewhere, you can play around with the rhythm mini-game as you practice with Mae's bass either in her room or in her old band with her group of friends.
You can fall into a nice habit of checking in with the NPCs and locations you care about most, almost like in real life where you prioritize the people and places you spend the most time around.
Pro Fast-paced, action-packed combat
The combat in NieR: Automata is fantastic. It has a hack-and-slash feel to it, with an emphasis on agility and showy acrobatics. With the fluid and responsive controls, you can switch seamlessly from using swift attacks with your weapon to devastatingly strong attacks as you combo them together. You also use customizable ranged missile attacks from your personal robot pod, such as powerful laser beams or a giant hammer attack. It can be difficult to win battles sometimes, especially on the harder gameplay settings, but it's worthwhile to keep at it and watch yourself progress and improve.
Pro Unique storytelling with a real emotional impact
NieR: Automata's outlook on storytelling is incredibly special. To get the full experience, you have to run multiple playthroughs of the game, each of which offers a new experience and perspective. Your world view of the story events and characters expands drastically as you complete each playthrough, playing on your expectations to help you develop a deeper emotional bond with the protagonists and become invested in their plight.
Things take a real turn on your third playthrough, putting you on an emotional roller coaster all the way to the true ending. The plot twists and knocks on the fourth wall elevate the story to a truly unique place. Getting all the way to the very end can be a religious experience from how much heart and meaning you discover in the symbolism.
Pro It's got a hauntingly beautiful environment
NieR: Automata is set in a post-apocalyptic landscape after Earth has been overrun by hostile machines, and the artists really nailed what that would feel like. Abandoned and overgrown cities litter the landscape along with old refineries, graveyards, and eerie forests. When you add the beautiful soundtrack to the experience, it fills you with a bittersweet mix of loneliness and hope.
Pro Varied genre-spanning gameplay elements
NieR: Automata has different types of gameplay to keep things interesting. From the very start, you're on an on-rails bullet hell section, and then you switch over to the more traditional action RPG style of fast-paced combat. Things change up again not long after with some side-scrolling platforming from a 2D view. Later on in the story, there's a hacking mini-game where you navigate a tiny ship through a short puzzle, with the music changing to a charming retro sound to fit the theme and mood. This is a game that doesn't stay boxed in a single genre.
Pro An incredible amount of content
Outside of the main story, there's plenty of optional content to dive into. The side quests are the best way to get to know the characters and lore of the world, with some of them giving clever and subtle foreshadowing of the game's most critical events. There are also weapons to collect and upgrade, each of which offer nice little tidbits of lore after you get them to max level. And after reaching a certain point in the story, you get access to Chapter Select that lets you go back and replay whatever you want. You can easily spend 60+ hours exploring the world and still have much more to do.
Pro Gorgeous, ethereal soundtrack with amazing vocals
NieR: Automata's music is out of this world. It's so stunning and elegant in a way that nothing else can really live up to. The soundtrack manages to emotionalize the game through music, from the action-packed tracks with hard-hitting wind instruments and percussion, to the softer, somber songs that encapsulate the hauntingly beautiful environments and story moments you encounter. Vocals in the lore's indescribable language makes the music even more memorable, adding to the ethereal quality of the sound. This soundtrack is definitely one that you can go back to again and again without getting sick of it.
Cons
Con The main character is insufferable at first
It's hard to like Mae from the start for a few reasons. She's extremely self-centered, she likes to steal for the thrills, and she has no interest whatsoever in fixing her shortcomings. Her life seems to be one awkward moment after another where you can't help but cringe in embarrassment, like in one early scene where she gets drunk at a party and blabs away about her personal problems after spending hours telling herself she wouldn't. As you get to know her, Mae might grow on you, but if you're the type to lose your patience with people who are immature, then you probably won't like her all that much.
Con Some pacing issues with the story
The story slogs through the premise of Mae's anxieties and disillusionment for a long time until it suddenly switches somewhere in the middle. There are a few hints here and there about how and why the plot becomes a murder mystery, but these things seem inconsequential and not as important as Mae's personal issues. It ends up feeling strange to change things up partway through to something unrelated to the original premise. While the murder mystery isn't necessarily bad, it would have been nice to see a more focused insight and resolution to Mae's young adult troubles.
Con Limited open world
Even though NieR: Automata is technically an open world game, it doesn't always feel like it. It's more that there's a big open space in the center of the ruined city you explore, with branches that lead off to vastly different environments, like a desert, a village, and a few other places. These locations aren't that spacious, either, and it's a bit of a stretch to even imagine all of these places being so close together in the first place. It's not too much of an issue as long as you find the story and combat engaging enough.
Con Second playthrough can get repetitive
Once you get to Route B, your second playthrough, you may find that too much is the same. There are some big differences, such as the new way you get to see things play out, but a lot of it rehashes Route A, your first playthrough. There's a ton of hacking you have to do as well, which gets pretty boring after repeating it over and over again. But if you stick with it, Route C and onward are absolutely worth the time spent getting to that point.
Con Some boring fetch quests
The pacing gets messed up when you're forced to run certain fetch quests near the start of the game. This is somewhat forgivable after the fun and action-packed introductory level, but the quests themselves are still a drag to play through. Some of the side quests can also boil down to the same thing. Even though these quests give a lot of useful information about the world, they're not all that fulfilling, and you may dread having to repeat them when playing through the game again.
Con Buggy on PC
Some players complain about the game crashing, freezing, their save files mysteriously disappearing, and more. As of June 2018, over a year after the game's initial release, there is still no patch to fix these problems. Not everyone on PC will have these bugs, but it's still quite prevalent. If you continually run into issues, your best bet is to find a mod or play the console versions instead of waiting on an official patch that may never happen.