When comparing Grey Goo 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 Grey Goo is ranked 171st. 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 Balanced asymmetric races
Each of the three races have their own powers and weaknesses, which makes for asymmetric gameplay due in part to how each is balanced. Relying partially on a rock, paper, scissors approach, each faction has power over the others in some way, as well as exploitable weakness. Thus, when choosing a race, the player has to keep in mind what they need to do in order to defeat the other races, which results in different and unique play styles, increasing strategic longevity of the title.
Pro Accessible gameplay
Being that this is designed to be a traditional RTS game, fans of the genre should find the the gameplay familiar and easily accessible.
Pro Polished design
The graphics look great and look to be designed with care. There are plenty of tutorial pop-ups as well, which enhances the overall design and polish, as it alleviates any confusion players may have mid-match.
Pro Great map editor
Users can create their own maps with the custom map editor, which makes for a ton of longevity to the game as players can create their own maps to play on.
Pro Great soundtrack
The soundtrack features different music for each of the three available races. All of it is done well and feels as though it fits with each race making for a more immersive experience.
Pro Clever AI
The AI in Ashes of the Singularity is programmed quite well, allowing it to detect a player's weakness and using that to its advantage. Allowing the AI to have the same advantages that regular human opponents receive, in regards to Player Power Level and Mini-Map expansion detection, this keeps the player on their toes and makes for challenging single player action.
Pro Amazing building shortcuts
It's super easy to quickly select and build a specific unit and/or building, thanks to the excellent build menu.
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 Terrible UI
User interface is terrible: it's hard to select units and the cursor frequently gets stuck on other functions.
Con Can't change game speed
There's no way to slow down or speed up game speed.
Con Region locked
The matchmaking component of this title suffers from the region locking instituted upon it. Due to this constraint, finding players and getting into matches can be a issue, and take a great deal more time, as you will be unable to look for anyone outside of your respective region.
Con Lack of replays and spectator mode
There is no replay feature in the game, which means users will not be able to look back at previous matches, nor is there a spectator mode to allow others to view a match in progress.
Con Maximum of four players for multiplayer is limiting
The game's multiplayer greatness is stymied due to the limit on the maximum number of players being only four. With the only large-scale battles limited to 2v2 game types, players hoping to have more epic battles and play with more friends will unfortunately have to look elsewhere.
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.