NieR Replicant™ ver.1.22474487139... is the Game of All Time and I'm being so genuine

On December 25th, 2023, I bought NieR Replicant™ ver.1.22474487139.... On December 27th, I booted the game up for the first time, after a night I fucked up my medication scheduling and had to go without Caplyta for a day. The morning of the 27th, I said "Nier Replicant is very chill".

The momentous first mention

I'm going to chronicle my emotional experience with NieR Replicant™ ver.1.22474487139... through quoting my past self, as my memory of the past 2 weeks is quite bad. So. On December 28th, 2023, at 1:34 AM CST, I scribed "Nier Replicant so good | It's so low-stakes and exclusively fetch quests". Later that morning, at 2:49 AM, I wrote "People are saying Nier Replicant is Game of All Time material ☝️😳". The next morning, December 29th, at 3:32 AM, I penned "It's insane how kinographic Nier Replicant is". The day after that, December 30th, at 2:19 PM, I writ "Nier so good". 7 hours and 14 minutes after that, I typed "Nier sooooooo good".

On the 31st of December — New Year's Eve — I composed, at 1:25 PM, "I have now gotten the first ending | Kinography". 2 hours and 49 minutes later, I noted "Nier brainrot", which Crank ❤️-reacted. I then simply scrawled "Nier" on January 2nd of the New Year, 12:52 PM. Next, January 4th, 12:29 PM, I recorded "Finished Ending B of Nier". Semifinally, on January 6th, at 2:28 PM, I authored "God Ending D is so good | I'm fucking crying | I've chills | This might be the game of all time". Finally, later, at 6:15 PM, I penned my missive: "Just got Ending E | Peak alert‼️".

A meme I made during this experience

NieR Replicant™ ver.1.22474487139... means so much to me. It's impossible to fully put into words, but it was something truly transcendent. It was almost strand-like of a game, really. Death Stranding meant so much to me, in all that it did, and NieR Replicant™ ver.1.22474487139... is the exact same. The art style is phenomenal, the characters fulfill their roles perfectly, and the game is really just, like, completely artful. It's heavily flawed, but all of its flaws make it rise above its surroundings. You could say it's a gestalt. Having to replay the game, multiple times, with minimal changes, honestly added to the experience. Crank perfectly described it as a "sensory deprivation tank" - when I would see a sliver of new content, I'd go absolutely insane. He said that during Ending E, and that really was the perfect example of that. I began tearing up when I started approaching the trigger for beginning Ending E. I felt such a whirlwind of emotions, of building towards new content. It's fucking insane, and it's unlike any other gaming experience I've ever had.

Nier (the MC) has an almost Alm-esque appeal to him. He's a wholly different Alm-type, I guess. I love him a whole lot. Kainé and Emil are amazing, too. The environment they exist within — the world of NieR — is beautifully crafted. It's strand-like, too, in the way it's constructed. Except for the desert, the fields within the game are wholly made of gray, craggy rocks, with smatterings of grass and an oft-overcast sky. It's gorgeous. Well-and-truly gorgeous. The story is, I mean. It's hard to describe it with words, for me. My experience with it is highly personal, due to how I experienced the game, and I feel like giving it any objective measure would be wrong. It's not groundbreaking, nor is it particularly amazing. But I was wholly moved by it, and what it represented within the game itself.

When I say it's the "Game of All Time", there's no adjective before Game for a reason. It's not the best game of all time, nor is it the most impactful, nor is it the most artful. But it's so... Game. I was enthralled by it from its opening, and it's just a Game. It's such a perfect example of a Video Game. In this moment, I could cry at how much of a Video Game it is. It's pure kinography.

So, uh, my experience with NieR Replicant™ ver.1.22474487139... was really, really something. It's art. I highly recommend the game. I should shout out my close friends Crank, M@, and Kip, too, as they're part and parcel to my experience. Crank frequently discussed NieR and Drakengard with me during this, M@ was an active participant alongside Crank in the Discord chat I recorded my NieR brainrot in, and Kip has been on the recieving end of infodumps they definitely did not ask for. Now, on to Automata! 🫡