When comparing Attack on Titan 2 vs NieR: Automata, the Slant community recommends Attack on Titan 2 for most people. In the question“What are the best story-driven games on PS4?” Attack on Titan 2 is ranked 20th while NieR: Automata is ranked 23rd. The most important reason people chose Attack on Titan 2 is:
You can swap and lock onto targets at will. Even though you'll be wildly attacking and zipping around the air in aerial acrobatics, control of where your attacks will land is easy to maintain. Whether you're attacking the arms, legs, or head of the massive Titans, you'll be able to lock on to your chosen body part. This locking allows you to focus your damage with precision and control, resulting in smooth and refined combat.
Specs
Ranked in these QuestionsQuestion Ranking
Pros
Pro Control is easy to maintain during combat thanks to target locking
You can swap and lock onto targets at will. Even though you'll be wildly attacking and zipping around the air in aerial acrobatics, control of where your attacks will land is easy to maintain. Whether you're attacking the arms, legs, or head of the massive Titans, you'll be able to lock on to your chosen body part. This locking allows you to focus your damage with precision and control, resulting in smooth and refined combat.
Pro Incredibly fun aerial combat
The combat has a satisfying feel to it that never grows stale, so even after the long campaign, it still feels fresh. It's fast paced, fun, and zipping through the air never loses its appeal.
Just like in the anime, you wear a jetpack type item called the ODM (Omni-Directional Mobility). It's what you'll be using to perform aerial maneuvers and fling yourself across levels. It makes you move incredibly quickly, so the combat has a very fast paced feel to it.
Once you've got a Titan in your sights, you can lock onto 1 of 5 attack points on it's body such as the arms or legs. Using the ODM, you'll send out hooks that latch on to your target as you launch yourself into the air.
From there, you can bounce around, almost like a bungee cord, between the open air and your target as you time your weapon strikes for maximum damage. You can also swap targets midair, such as going for an instant kill neck hit. This results in some impressive aerial combat.
Pro Using bases on the map, you can customize a unique strategy for your playstyle
Deciding what base to build is up to you, with each providing it's own benefit. This leaves a lot of room open for your own personal playstyle and strategy based on the battle at hand. Bases can be used for offense, defense, or supply generation. For example, if you find you're always running low on blades and gas, you could put up a Supply Base to give you a steady stream of resources. Other bases include cannons and turrets which can be used to provide cover or attack the Titans from long range.
Pro Sneak attacks are a fun risk/reward stealth mechanic
Choosing whether or not to unleash a sneak attack before the Titans notice you can be great fun when you pull it off, but downright hazardous when you mess up. It's a risk/reward system that allows for some rather interesting stealth strategy in an otherwise action-heavy game. Sneak attacks allow you to instantly kill or severely wound a Titan (provided they haven't seen you yet). However, if you mess up or botch the attack, the Titan will become instantly enraged. This makes them stronger and incredibly dangerous to fight.
Pro There's a secret ending that's not in the anime, which puts a new spin on the story
There's a secret, special ending for gamers that's different from the ending in the season 2 anime. Even if you've seen the anime, you'll still have the opportunity to see the story conclude in a new way.
Pro The unique opportunity to fight alongside characters from the show and manga
You can recruit characters from the show and manga to help you in combat. While you can't control them directly, having them in your group allows to you unleash powerful combat buffs on-demand such as attack power increases and one shot kills. This provides a fun aspect to gameplay where you feel like you're engaged in fighting the Titans alongside well-known characters from the anime without having to micromanage too many things. At the same time, you'll still be getting all the benefits and excitement of playing with a group of anime heroes.
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 friendship system and skill unlocking is extremely one-dimensional
Skills are unlocked by forming friendships with other characters. Choosing the "wrong" dialogue option during interactions prevents you from building this reputation, thus locking you out of certain skills. For example, if an NPC is bragging about how awesome he is, you either have to agree to appease him or else you'll lose out on valuable combat skills.
Con Your main playable character feels like a secondary thought rather than the main focus
You are nothing more than a trainee that lives to serve the other characters. When interacting with them, there's no consistency in the dialogue options. Nor is there anything to denote your character has any kind of unique personality at all. It's hard to form an attachment or become invested to your character when you're just a "Yes Man" for the NPCs if you want to learn combat skills.
Con Story mode has a lot of repeated content from the first game
Majority of the story mode in Attack on Titan 2 is simply a retelling of the first game. This is perfectly fine for people new to the series, but if you've played the first game, prepare to see hours of the exact same cut scenes and boss fights before you get to the new stuff.
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.