When comparing Metal Gear Survive 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 Metal Gear Survive is ranked 46th. 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 Base-building is great for those who like to micromanage small details
As you collect resources like metals and wood from around the open world, you'll return to your base where you can improve the structures to better protect you from the zombie invasion. Building more walls and tougher enclosures will be your main focus to help make sure you have a place to escape from the harsh environments filled with zombies everywhere else. If you're diligent about collecting materials, you can build some sturdy additions to your home base to help you have a safe place to return to. It's a solid feature that makes resource collecting feel worthwhile with a payoff, especially if you like keeping track of small details.
Pro Smooth graphics
The Fox Engine used for Metal Gear Survive looks great, with human faces and models that look believable, and great textures for environments. Characters are fine to look at during cutscenes, almost true-to-life in how realistic they seem at times. Even though the open world itself is pretty empty, it's realistic enough with smooth surfaces for the ground and bodies of water. For the most part, everything is pleasing to the eye and you might not notice anything all that jarring or out of place.
Pro Only costs $39.99 USD at launch
The game is a bargain right away, costing less than most retail non-indie games at launch. If you don't want to pay the usual price to purchase other new games, then this is an option for you.
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 Hunger, thirst, and stamina reminders are a pain
As you run around the world, you'll have to manage your hunger, thirst, and stamina, with constant reminders from the game when you need to watch out for these three things. Your AI companion is in charge of telling you when you need to eat food, drink water, or slow down to conserve your stamina. Her robotic voice is monotone and uninteresting, growing annoying after listening to it over and over again. It'll more than likely drag on you after a while, possibly killing your enjoyment with the game.
Con Phoned-in story presentation
Cutscenes are really boring, lacking the inventiveness that the Metal Gear series is known for. There isn't much flavor to the cutscenes or voice acting to keep you invested in the story. Important segments will show slides of dialog with the character's picture while their voice actors drone on as they oversupply you with information about operations. Everything has a staleness about it that feels dated and passionless.
Con Fights against zombies are easily exploitable
At first, you'll notice that zombies do quite a lot of damage to you, but there are a few simple ways to deal with them that cheapens the entire game. Hitting enemies while you're on higher ground from them keeps you from taking any damage whatsoever, making these battles trivial. You'll be free to whack away at them with your spear while they just run into the cliff or bridge or whatever you find yourself standing on. You can also build a gated fence when you don't have any higher ground to stand on, and the zombies will, for the most part, keep running into the gate while you hit them through the wall. These are such boring workarounds, but they're sadly the best ways to deal with enemies and avoid damage altogether.
Con Combat is bland and boring
Whether you're fighting with a spear or a bow and arrow, combat is incredibly bland, with the same repeating animations over and over. Battles with spears are the worst offenders, since your character will do the same 1-2-3 motion over and over again. Combat lacks weight and realism and will probably get on your nerves after a while from how uninspired it feels.
Con Extra save slots locked behind real money purchases
It's frustrating that you can only have one save file for free. If you want to make a new save slot for another playthrough, you'll have to fork over $9.99 USD first. Gating such an integral game mechanic behind a microtransaction is unnecessary.
Con Bare-bones, tacked-on multiplayer
The multiplayer is basically the same horde mode against countless zombies, except you get to play with other people. Nothing feels new or exciting here, other than how easy it is to obtain resources here compared to the tedium of single-player mode. Other than that, it's the same gameplay with the added frustrations from the terrible matchmaking system and long load times, forcing you to wait for minutes at a time to play a single match.
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.