When comparing Titanfall vs NieR: Automata, the Slant community recommends NieR: Automata for most people. In the question“What are the best action games on Xbox One?” NieR: Automata is ranked 32nd while Titanfall is ranked 62nd. 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 Thrilling first-person shooter multiplayer with teams of six
Titanfall is a great team-based FPS game with well-designed gunplay. Running and gunning with your team of six friends or online players is fast-paced, with tons of destruction on the battlefield all around you. You rely on twitch reflexes to gun down enemies as soon as you see one rounding a corner, or to react in time to someone shooting at you and taking you by surprise. Though there aren't too many guns to choose from, the ones you can pick are each unique and fun to use. Everything feels balanced in a way that's well thought-out, leading to frantic and intense multiplayer matches.
Pro You can use powerful mechs called Titans for their added defense and high-powered weapons
Aside from playing as a regular infantry soldier, there are also huge mechs on the battlefield, known as Titans, that you can control. As soon as a player gets in the cockpit, that's when you know that the tides are about to turn. Titans are big enough to act as tanks for your allies, soaking up damage and dealing a ton more with their specialized guns, giving your team a huge advantage just by having one with you. But they're not all-powerful, since a normal soldier can get on a Titan's back to dismantle it and take it down, even though it won't be easy. Titans are strong without being overpowered, turning battles into power plays to see who can take out the enemy team's mechs the fastest.
Pro Stormtrooper NPCs are present on the battlefield as allies and enemies
Maps and missions feel realistic thanks to the stormtrooper units that you see during matches. Some are part of your team, acting as guides to your next objective and moral support in the way their voiced lines express appreciation for your presence on the battlefield. The enemy team also has groups of these same NPCs, with certain multiplayer modes focusing on you taking out certain number of them in order to dwindle their numbers. Overall, they help populate the maps to make them feel like actual missions with soldiers accompanying you or opposing you, making things feel more epic.
Pro Jetpacks and wall-running let you move around more freely
While playing as a regular soldier, you have great mobility with jetpacks that allow you to run on walls. Maps are designed with verticality in mind, giving players options to use their jetpacks to climb above the opposition for a better vantage point. It also gives you a leg up when facing against a Titan, since you can always run along a nearby wall to get on top of the mech to take it down. This helps to make sure than infantry soldiers aren't just weak fodder for Titans to take out, with their speed and parkour abilities as their main advantages.
Pro Multiplayer has its own story
Since there's no dedicated story campaign, there is instead a narrative woven into the multiplayer gameplay. Before you drop down to each mission, you get a brief cinematic with an explanation of your objective and what's at stake. These stories all add up to an arching plot that guides you through the multiplayer. Throughout the missions, you also unlock new Titans for you to use while playing in regular multiplayer matches. Even though the story here isn't much, it's something, at the very least.
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 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 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 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 No single-player campaign
There is no dedicated single-player story mode whatsoever. It's worrying that the devs overlooked or chose to outright ignore an actual narrative. If you're looking for a single-player FPS experience, you won't find it here.
Con The story in multiplayer is low-effort
Even though Titanfall tries to compensate with a story through multiplayer, it's a wasted effort. It's limited to a few cutscenes and voice overs here and there, with things like exposition and character development dumped on you without any emotional investment. The story is so bad and bare-bones that the writers shouldn't have even bothered putting it in.
Con Lack of gun variety, game modes, and customization
There's a distinct lack of variety to what's available here in general. Even though the available guns and game types are solid, there just aren't enough of them. It can be easy to get bored with using the same guns and playing the same matches over and over again. There's also not nearly enough customization options for your character or your Titans. Without ways to make them truly your own, they end up feeling like soulless avatars. What is here has lots of potential, but there needs to be more to choose from to keep things from getting stale.
Con Everything is online-only
Having everything online means you're at the mercy of your internet connection. If you disconnect during a story mode match, for example, then you risk losing all progress and having to start over again. The story isn't exactly something you can skip, either, since you have to play through it if you want to unlock all of the Titans. For those with decent connections, you'll probably be okay, but anyone else should be wary about dealing with frequent interruptions.
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.