When comparing inFAMOUS Second Son vs NieR: Automata, the Slant community recommends NieR: Automata for most people. In the question“What are the best open world games for PS4?” NieR: Automata is ranked 15th while inFAMOUS Second Son is ranked 35th. 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
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Gameplay is full of fun, action-packed destruction
There is a huge emphasis on blowing stuff up and obliterating bad guys in creative ways, so if raw carnage is your cup of tea, you'll find a lot to enjoy and have fun with here. Using your superhero powers, you can blow up cars, fry enemies, and otherwise cause mayhem and destruction wherever you go. Among your arsenal are powerful cinder blasts and phosphor beams which leave explosions, charred remains, and smoldering rubble in your wake. There is even a skill tree which focuses on using concrete to your advantage by encasing your foes in concrete or lifting larging cinder blocks and smashing everything in sight. Almost all of your abilities have the central theme of destruction baked into them, so finding things to destroy and fun ways to do it is an easy task.
Pro It's exciting to get around within the massive world
Traversing the huge open world offers plenty of opportunities to climb and jump. Almost everything can be scaled in one way or another, so you'll be free to climb buildings and jump across rooftops in some true parkour styled action. With some impressive superhero powers like a long range double jump that leaves a trail of light behind it, almost nowhere is out of reach. Using a special dash you can even pass through fences or other obstacles. It's easy to get lost for hours, climbing and exploring around the city, while you perform death defying leaps and jumps that only a superhero could pull off flawlessly.
Pro Beautiful, polished graphics
The graphics are downright beautiful. The particle effects on abilities are colorful and have a fiery glow. Explosions look devastating and rubble smokes in the aftermath. Streetlights reflect in puddles of the water on the ground. Even the textures used for the buildings are heavily polished. Character models are refined and almost photo realistic.
Pro Really easy to become attached to the main super hero
It's incredibly easy to jump into the role of Delsin Rowe. While some of the writing in the game is poor for the side characters and antagonist, it never really feels that way with Delsin. He's constantly smiling when unleashing his super powers or scaling the urban landscape. Unlike other superheros, he never feels like his powers are a burden. Instead, he basks in them, oftentimes providing commentary to us about how cool his newfound abilities are. While he always strives to do good, he enjoys every bit of the destruction he causes, which allows you to easily enjoy it right along with him.
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 evil morality path doesn't make much sense
There's nothing in the writing or story itself that would suggest Delsin is an evil character, so the evil morality choices really make no sense in the grand scheme of things. It feels tacked on to give a sense of replayability.
Con Weak delivery in some dialogue
During some scenes, the voice acting is poor and the writing itself is a bit on the generic side. The voice actors try their best, but some dialogue is so poorly written that it's hard to act it out with any conviction or meaning. It ends up sounding a bit forced.
Con The morality choices feel restrictive
You'll be making some morality choices which can affect the story and the powers you have access to, but the choices themselves are very black and white.
Once you start down a path (basically good or evil), the game pigeonholes you into your choice due to the fact your powers become increasingly better the more consistent you are in your choices. Some interesting decisions will only have 1 "correct" choice if you want to keep your powers strong, as meandering from your path too much will result in a weaker character.
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.