When comparing Assassin's Creed Odyssey vs NieR: Automata, the Slant community recommends NieR: Automata for most people. In the question“What are the best singleplayer games on Steam?” NieR: Automata is ranked 43rd while Assassin's Creed Odyssey is ranked 133rd. 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 You can choose between a male or female protagonist
For the first time in the Assassin's Creed series, you can pick whether you want to play the entire game as the male protagonist, Alexios, or the female protagonist, Kassandra. Alexios and Kassandra are siblings living in Ancient Greece -- they used to be spartans, but now they live out their lives as mercenaries, taking down mysterious plots or just killing whoever's necessary for the money. Through dialog choices, you get to choose their personalities: whether they're funny and sarcastic or more serious and to-the-point. While the main story mostly plays out the same no matter which sibling you go with, certain scenes read differently depending on whose point of view you experience them from, so you might want to play through the game a second time to see the changes for yourself.
Pro Intense combat that relies on your skill and strategy
The combat in Assassin's Creed Odyssey is really up-close-and-personal. Wielding weapons and shields, your skill with blocking and parrying is as important, if not more, than landing strong blows. Enemies are relentless and aggressive in how fast they attack; parrying them is especially satisfying because of how tough they are. Chaining your defensive moves into attacks that take your opponent off-guard is great, rewarding you with some awesome finishing animations. Taking your time to read your enemies before going after their weaknesses pays off in the end.
Pro Cool naval combat against rival ships out on the open seas
You get to navigate out in the open waters to get from place to place, getting hands-on with the full mechanics of steering your ship while firing off cannons at surrounding enemies. Using the directional indicators to line up the perfect shot is incredibly satisfying as you take down one ship after another, sending them sinking in flames. There's a full crew aboard with you, helping to give plenty of liveliness to your surroundings as they shout in anger and cheer in victory as you go along, with dynamic weather like raging storms that adds to the realism and intensity. It's a lot of fun and serves as a nice way to break things up from normal missions on-foot.
Pro Massive open world set in Ancient Greece
The in-game map is absolutely gigantic. There are so many places to go and so much to do in the world, easily giving you over 70 hours of content. Exploring the rolling hills and ancient cities of Greece and the nearby Mediterranean Sea is such a joy because of how lush and beautiful everything is. Wandering around often surprises you with new side quests to find off the beaten path, with new characters to meet and history to learn about in whichever area you find yourself in. And there's just a ton of other mythological secrets and fun diversions to discover as you adventure throughout the world.
Pro Your choices affect how side quests play out
There are some well-done instances where your decisions have real consequences with the side quests. Depending on how you interact with side characters, if you're polite to them, or if you choose to be mean and uncaring, this will change how they view you. If you cross the wrong people, it could have dire effects on certain locations, and some of the characters can outright die if things end up spiraling out of control. It's up to you to find out how everything plays out depending on how you role-play as Alexios or Kassandra.
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 Other than with side quests, your choices don't mean much
It's cool that Odyssey offers plenty of dialog choices, but they don't have as much of an impact on the game as a whole. The choices you make don't fundamentally change what happens during the main story. It would have been nice to see the side quest variations on a bigger scale, with more drastic changes and consequences depending on how you handle things. Beyond those side quests, any other choices you make feel like filler: too many lost opportunities.
Con Leveling up can be a chore, bottlenecking exploration
The one thing that may keep you from adventuring as much as you want: levels, including your own and your enemies. It can take a while to gain enough experience points to level up, cutting you off from that one area you want to explore that's filled with higher level enemies. Going on side quests is one of the best ways to level, but you may find yourself questing for hours just to gain enough levels, especially in the late-game.
Con Voice acting sounds weird at times
The voice acting is usually pretty solid, but when it isn't, you will probably notice. Some of the side characters' accents are really bad and obviously fake, to the point where you might not even understand what they're saying. Alexios' voice acting also isn't as strong and consistent as Kassandra's, with times where he sounds off compared to his sister. It can be quite distracting when someone just doesn't sound right.
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.