When comparing Sea of Thieves vs NieR: Automata, the Slant community recommends NieR: Automata for most people. In the question“What are the best open world games on Xbox One?” NieR: Automata is ranked 11th while Sea of Thieves is ranked 41st. 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 Hours of content thanks to the the Voyage system
Due to the variety of the voyages and three different factions, things stay fresh and fun for quite some time resulting in quite a bit of content to play through as you sail your ship towards loot and infamy.
The game centers around a quest system, called voyages, which works incredibly well to provide hours of content. Completing these voyages will allow you to build your reputation and earn gold, which in turn, will allow you embark on even more dangerous and exciting voyages, sometimes with multiple parts and their own ministory.
Voyages include sailing your ship on the rough seas to your destination, and then finally following your map to the treasure. But there are a lot of variables involved. Getting attacked at sea, various enemies, islands with different layouts, traps on the treasure chests, and other obstacles are between you and your goal at all times, with each voyage being distinctly different so you'll never be doing the same thing twice.
Pro Rare and random events keep everyone on their toes
For example, your ship may be attacked by a huge Kraken. This can happen anytime or anywhere you're on the open seas. The water bubbles and turns black, the sign of a big and deadly sea monster approaching. Eventually it will be attacking your ship, attempting to drag your ship and your crew down into the depths. You'll have to fend it off and unleash all your firepower on it if you want it to release your ship so you can safely sail away. This can be especially dramatic if you're hauling back a large amount of loot to sell off. Because of the completely random nature of these events and their ability to easily sink an unprepared ship, you will have to stay alert and on your toes at all times.
Pro The ship battles are intense
Other players and their crews can attack you on the open waters in PvP combat, as well as AI skeletal crews with varying strengths and weaknesses, sometimes with little to no warning. This results in some pretty intense and epic battles where authentic pirate warfare comes into play.
Battling involves the coordination of your entire crew as things can get extremely hectic really quickly. Someone will have to run below deck to grab the cannonballs, while another loads them in the cannons and shoots at the enemy. Others may be using buckets to bail out water after your ship takes damage and starts to sink. You'll have to manage damage to your ship while also protecting yourself from enemy attacks.
You can even grab your pistol and sword and jump aboard the enemy ship, swinging and shooting your way to victory. Keep in mind, the enemy will also try to board your ship and cut you down, so you'll always have to stay alert and react on the fly.
Overall, the ship battles are done incredibly well, require teamwork due to offensive and defensive aspects such as shooting cannons and bailing water, and are loaded with fast paced and intense action.
Pro Controlling the pirate ship together provides a great co-op experience
When playing with friends, you can all control the pirate ship together. The sails need someone to control them so that the ship is able to take advantage of wind to propel itself forward. Another in the role of captain may be steering the ship as it rolls over salty ocean waves. A friend might also opt to climb up to the crow's nest to keep an eye out for other ships on the prowl. Additionally, someone will have to be making repairs on the ship with wooden planks or bailing with buckets if the deck takes on water. Working together to control the ship works well and encourages a level of team work that is very conducive to fun co-op play.
Pro A lot of unique ways to customize the look of your pirate
You can outfit your character in a variety of different costumes and outfits, including hook hands, hats, eye patches, and bandanas. While some are open to anyone with the gold or reputation, sometimes the game will put special items on a vendor just for your play style. For example, if you spend a lot of time killing other players, the game will recognize this by putting special items on vendors that you can purchase to denote you are a bloodthirsty pirate who does a lot of PvP. If you want to be the biggest, baddest looking pirate around, there's plenty of ways to unlock the look you want.
Pro A huge open world with lots to explore
For those who enjoy exploration and games without restrictions on travel, there is a lot to see and do here. The game is mainly an open world where you are free to sail your ship around in any direction you choose and explore the various islands at your own leisure. There are reputations to grind, quests from 3 different companies, forts to conquer, shipwrecks to scavenge, and islands to plunder for their treasure. The game world itself is huge, giving you the freedom to traverse it and discover it's secrets at will.
Pro The water looks absolutely incredible
Standing on the port of your ship and looking out over the water makes you feel like you're really standing on a real ship in the ocean. Utilizing the Unreal 4 engine to full capacity, the water itself looks fantastic, with great shimmering effects as waves gently roll or violently crash. Sea foam froths and the sun illuminates the water below. It's some of the best looking water in any game to date and helps immerse you in the world of pirates and ships, as the game world is largely made up of being on the water or surrounded by it.
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 look of outfits, ship upgrades, and weapons are cosmetic only
The various outfits, ship upgrades, and weapons require you to spend gold in-game, but they are cosmetic only. This can be a huge turn off after saving up a bunch of gold for a shiny new weapon, only to find it's purely cosmetic and doesn't add to any kind of stat pool.
Con Lore can be hard to follow without outside sources
Without the lore book or comic book, characters and lore may be hard to follow. To understand the legends and characters properly, you will most likely need to read from outside sources simply due to the sheer amount of the lore the game tries to tackle.
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.