When comparing Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice vs NieR: Automata, the Slant community recommends NieR: Automata for most people. In the question“What are the best games on Steam with a rich story?” NieR: Automata is ranked 11th while Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is ranked 19th. The most important reason people chose NieR: Automata is:
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.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Amazing voice acting
Melina Juergens gives a riveting performance that showcases the full range of Senua's rage, vulnerability and introspection throughout her journey. Each tremble of fear in Senua's voice and her sharp cries of pain in battle further highlight her determination to reach her goal, pressing onward in the face of insurmountable obstacles.
Pro Powerful environments and atmosphere
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice boasts a beautiful, yet haunted atmosphere that evokes powerful feelings of awe, with towering mountains that stretch on for miles, lakes that glitter in the sunset glow and reflect the intimidating architecture of the Norse halls throughout the environment.
Pro Intense boss fights
Though few in number, the boss battles in Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice are a testament to how brutal the game's combat can be, with menacing boss designs and distorted arenas that inspire true fear in their intensity. These fights put Senua's skills as a warrior to the test with telegraphed moves that she must react to swiftly, along with tight windows of opportunity for her to wound the enemy. With no UI elements for health bars, neither for Senua nor the enemies she faces, these boss fights are an exercise of patience and mettle, giving an adrenaline-filled sense of satisfaction after a hard-fought victory.
Pro Compelling main character
Bolstered by an award-winning performance from Melina Juergens, The story constantly pushes Senua to her limits, both through the innumerable enemies who challenge her and the voices in her head that mock her to give up her impossible journey. She is an incredibly vulnerable character who fights on with her many fears and doubts, showing a different type of protagonist in the gaming landscape.
Pro The infighting of voices in Senua's head is unnerving
The many voices in Senua's head, all with their own unique personalities, showcase her struggles with psychosis, with the voices either taunting Senua, picking at her weaknesses, or encouraging her to stand her ground and fight. They can also be useful in battle, with some voices warning Senua to look out behind her as a new enemy spawns and readies to attack her. Constant exposure to these voices is unsettling, because their constant back and forth with praise or insults can take a toll on you after a while. Playing with headphones on is a must in order to feel the full experience of the voices and how well they blend into the gameplay.
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 Too many puzzles
Because those with psychosis are adept at pattern recognition, Senua's strength with patterns translates into puzzles to solve throughout the linear world, but they're far too numerous and overstay their welcome quite early on. They often break the pace of exploration, with too many instances of Senua needing to loop around a small area several times in order to align shadows or illusory portals to open up the path to the next area.
Con Shallow combat
Although the enemy and boss designs are top-notch, the moment-to-moment swordplay with Senua isn't as deep as it could have been. Simple presses of light attacks and heavy attacks mixed in with blocks, strafes and rolls are most of what the combat has to offer. Occasionally an enemy will be blacked out and unable to take damage, and Senua can use her Focus ability to rectify this and continue attacking normally. On one hand, it's realistic that Senua's sword fights are to-the-point, but from a gameplay perspective, things can get dull rather quickly.
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.