When comparing Valkyria Chronicles 4 vs NieR: Automata, the Slant community recommends NieR: Automata for most people. In the question“What are the best PC games with full controller support?” NieR: Automata is ranked 7th while Valkyria Chronicles 4 is ranked 26th. 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 Tense and challenging tactical war battles
In this alternate version of World War II, you and your squad fight to defeat an empire with gameplay that really makes you feel like you're out on a battlefield. As the commander and tactician, you take turns controlling your different squadmates around the field, expending Action Points as they run to where you want them to go. Managing your AP while sending your squadmates to the most strategic location can be a challenge, but it pays off to outsmart your enemies.
There may be times when you feel overwhelmed, but you have options at your disposal. Using the terrain to your advantage to send grenadiers to lob explosives over buildings for cover fire, while expending the rest of your AP to get your other squadmates to safety is one tactic that you can pull off. Figuring out the best approach to tackle any given situation helps you tackle anything that the game throws at you.
Pro Side stories help you grow attached to your squadmates
Valkyria Chronicles 4 really gets you to care about your team. There are special side stories for each individual member, showing you more about their past and who they are as actual characters. It's a nice addition that lets you empathize with their personal struggles and appreciate how serious, funny, or down-to-earth any one of your squadmates are.
This is especially important since, if anyone dies during combat and you're unable to get a medic to them in time, they will permanently die. These side stories are a good motivator to make you want to keep everyone alive because you're attached to the characters, and not necessarily just because of how useful they might be in battle.
Pro Great starting point for Valkyria Chronicles newcomers
Despite this being the fourth entry in the mainline Valkryia Chronicles games, this is actually a good starting point for anyone new to the series. The tutorials are simple to understand, the gameplay is easy to grasp after a couple of battles, and the story doesn't expect you to have any prior knowledge of the other games. You can jump right in with this one and not feel like you're missing out on anything.
Pro Charming watercolor art style
Valkyria Chronicles 4's graphics are straight out of a storybook. The visuals look a lot like watercolor illustrations, giving them a unique charm that you don't see a lot of from other games. Green pastures in particular look beautiful in how vibrant and full of life they are. And the anime-style character models all look excellent, fitting right in with the environments as a cohesive look.
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 Anime tropes distract from the story
The story does a wonderful job of showing the gritty reality of how war changes people, but there's a serious issue with the way the narrative gets interrupted by anime tropes. Too often, grave moments during cutscenes get sidetracked by anime-like slapstick humor that ends up ruining the moment. These scenes would have been fine if they happened at more tactful times, but sadly, this just isn't the case. So if you don't have much tolerance for these types of tropes, you may not like the story all that much.
Con Battles can take a long time to finish
Valkyria Chronicles 4 isn't the type of game you can pick up and put back down. Battles are quite long and involved, usually taking about an hour to finish. On top of that, there are no checkpoints during battle, so if you lose, you have to start all over again. If you don't have that kind of time or patience, then this may not be the game for you.
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.