One of the good things about Nier is that it doesn’t allow itself to be restricted by typical genre conventions. It instead chooses to exhibit characteristics of multiple game styles, sort of like a digital and interactive chimera. In the main story-line, this pays off. One dungeon is a complete text-based adventure rather than one blood-splattered room after the next. Another is an homage to the original Resident Evil, with the halls and rooms of a mansion having pre-determined camera angles that aren’t always convenient. There are nods towards many other game types throughout, and it helps keep the game feeling fresh instead of wearing down the same basic mechanics for several hours.
 
Unfortunately, this technique doesn’t work so well with the side missions and distractions. I’ll address them in general in my full review of the game, but I wanted to take some time to discuss two in particular that are more boring and tiresome than joyful and addictive: fishing and farming.
 
I have no problem with a game taking a bit of influence from Harvest Moon, as it is a great franchise with well-executed gameplay elements. Natsume managed to take a concept like farming and make it enjoyable. Part of what makes it fun is that the entire game relies on an internal clock that disregards real-world time and moves at its own faster pace. If a player saves their game and doesn’t return for several days, everything has frozen in time until the player returns.
 
Nier goes in a different direction, tying plant growth to the real-world clock inside of the Xbox 360 or Playstation 3. Plants will grow based on how many real-world hours have passed. This means if you plant some seeds an hour before you save and quit for the night, then can’t return until two or three days later, all of your plants will have wilted due to a lack of care.
 
It may be that the developers of Nier wanted to combine some of what made Animal Crossing a success, and I know in Japan there are studios that want to further blur the boundaries between reality and electronic fantasy. Problem with this is that some of us have jobs, and many of us will have obligations that keep us from being able to play a game every day. While the farming mini-game for Nier is mostly optional, if you want to complete all of the side quests you will be forced to try and tackle a difficult farming task to harvest specific seeds by planting two different types of crops at different times. In other words, one quest must take the player multiple days to complete, meaning they must schedule their time around the game. This is inconvenient and enough to turn a fun game into a tiresome chore for anyone wanting to complete every side quest.
 
The best option here would have been to simply do what Natsume did in Harvest Moon. Have the crops rely on an internal timer instead, and if the player saves the game and cannot return until several days later then everything is as they had left it.
 
It should also be added that the player is never really told how to farm or how the system works. Similarly, they are never properly explained how to fish either. The game gives some bare bones instructions to pull the analog stick back in the opposite direction of the fish, but this is actually rather misleading. If the player keeps their eyes on the bubbling water representing t he position of the fish and pressing against the thumbstick in the opposite direction, they will inevitably end in failure. The player really needs to be watching the movements of Nier himself, the protagonist, and press in the same direction that he is leaning. This is the proper visual indicator the player needs to pay attention to, not the position of the fish.
 
One simple direction is enough to inform the player to respond and react to the wrong cue, and thus prevent them from catching any fish at all. Once they manage to figure it out (if they don’t simply quit and give up on completing every side quest already), they must then suffer through the most irritating and thumb achingly annoying confrontation with a fish. Once Nier nabs himself a biter a bar appears on the bottom of the screen. In order to catch the fish Nier must pull and tug against it (the player pressing back on the analog stick) until the b ar is empty. Or, in a more Pokemon style, wait until the bar is nearly depleted and press the A button hoping that they’ve caught the fish instead of permitting it to escape.
 
Even as the player completes the various fishing side quests to increase their fishing abilities (more on this in a bit), the struggles become more and more time consuming. The player must catch up to ten fish at first, then later five or three of the most “challenging” fish to hook. Of course, it’s not really challenging at all, but tedious. There is no skill in pulling back on the stick and waiting until the bar has depleted.
 
The resources don’t come cheap either. Specific fish require specific kinds of bait, but there are so few kinds of bait that the many fish overlap. Try catching a Blue Marlin later in the game and you may instead find yourself hooking a Bream. The bait used is now gone permanently. Even if you catch a rusted bucket, empty can or plethora of other worthless (and unavoidable) objects, your bait is gone forever. Your only option is to go and buy more or to try and catch the smaller fish to use as bait, either costing you more time (and potentially more bait) or more money.
 
When all is said and done the game gives the player nine side quests required in order to boost and maximize their fishing capabilities, some of which must be completed if you want to have enough of a certain type of fish required by one or two separate side quests. That is a lot of time spent trying to nab dozens and dozens of aquatic creatures while spending hundreds or thousands of gold on bait.
 
A better option may have been to base a character’s fishing ability on their fishing level, which requires a certain amount of fishing experience to improve. Each type of fish has a base experience level that can be modified on the catch’s size and weight. Say a sardine gives a base experience of 10, but you catch one that’s 1.5 times larger than normal. The player should get 12-15 fishing experience for such a fish since the struggle was a bit more “difficult” (yes, different sizes of fish will change how long it takes to reel them in).
 
Now require certain types of fish to only be interested in certain kinds of bait while simultaneously only being catchable at certain levels. By time a player has reached level two they should have enough sardines to catch the next fish, who can then be bait for the next fish. The smaller fish will still net additional experience, but when you need 300 instead of 100 that 10-15 experience won’t be so impressive. Nonetheless, it isn’t a waste of time trying to catch more sardines so that you can t hen use them to catch the larger fish who grant 20-30 experience.
 
As for fishing itself, follow the lead of Zelda and make it more about aiming for the fish and luring them in rather than the act of reeling them. While the larger fish in Zelda do take more time, it is always kept to a matter of seconds. The player instead must throw their lure or bait to where the fish is, then try to draw it in. This way there is more skill and attention required from the player than merely tugging back on the analog stick.
 
Finally, give some additional benefits to fishing. Most of the fish aren’t worth much money, especially not for the cost in bait, and while the player is said to get “stronger” in order to haul in the larger fish such as sharks they gain no strength boosts. If the player takes the time to fish, grant them a few buffs. Same with farming, where the player can only yield some money for what they plant. It’s a nice way to get some extra change, but if they could create healing potions or even poisonous bombs then the player could yield more practical rewards and be further encouraged to farm more.
 
As it is, the two mini-games serve no purpose other than making a small, insignificant amount of cash or allowing the player to complete every side quest. This will turn it into a chore rather than a fun side distraction that can help improve the other aspects of the game.
 
In most cases Nier succeeds in creating an enjoyable experience by varying the activities the player gets to partake in for each dungeon. Unfortunately, the side quests intended to keep the player involved in the world aren’t really all that fun. In the end they just make the game take longer for the sake of absorbing more time, meaning the game works much better as a straight forward experience. This is a real shame because we have enough games like that already.

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