I really don't like how dismissive you were of Yoko Taro's earlier works. For the majority of his modern audience, sure, 2B's fat ass is what got them into his games. Yoko Taro wouldn't have kept getting hired if no one believed his games had merit though. Even in the example you gave of Drakengard where you showed the metacritic numbers, the user score was positive. Art isn't meant for everyone. A lot of the best art is hostile or divisive. Unfortunately game development is a business. It's difficult to say what decisions Yoko Taro did and didn't have control over. If I'm a starving artist I don't think it's unreasonable to take a job offer that's going to put money on the table. If you watch interviews Yoko Taro is always playing a character. It's rare to find footage of him without the Emil mask. I don't think he's completely serious when he says he's only doing this for the money. If he was, he wouldn't keep making weird ass games.
i was going to make a comment similar to this until i saw this comment, and you worded it far better than i ever could have. this video was incredibly frustrating to watch for how dismissive it was toward yoko taro's pre-automata works, including nier gestalt/replicant which is not acknowledged at all outside of briefly mentioning that yoko taro directed the remake (which yeah, he directed the original too, but the original wasn't even acknowledged once), and then boiling his legacy down to 'wishywashy mobile games'.
A few bits of context you are missing because you are a westerner: - Drakengard was quite successful in Japan, in fact it was quite a meme in their online communities (especially on Futaba Channel, aka 2chan, which is the japanese predecessor to 4chan; getting something viral on one's internet cesspool is pretty much an instant reputation boost). It had an enduring viral status hence why Yoko has such a reputation prior to his western exposure. - NieR Automata had extremely unconventional origins, even compared to Yoko's later gacha games. Namely, it started out as a J-Pop music group called "YoRHa" which was then made into a stage play series (also called "YoRHa"), and THEN later was made into a video game at the recommendation of Yosuke Saito (which became NieR Automata). In the beginning, the YoRHa multimedia project had absolutely zero connection to NieR other than being the group that made Drakengard 3's bizarre boss battle music. Even the initial pre-Automata stage plays had correspondingly little connection to NieR (the YoRHa stage plays literally ran for 3 years before Automata came out!). It was only when Yoko decided to make a game based on "YoRHa" did he decide to also mix it in with the rest of Drakengard/NieR universe. Such a decision was absolutely a profit consideration from Yoko's point of view. So I see little strength in the argument that Yoko lost his way due to trying to turn a profit. YoRHa was literally just a non-game-related pet project of Yoko's until his manager friend at Squeenix told him he should make it into a game
replicant and automata was good because he had other people to work with him and correct his mistakes its platinum games we are talking, give him too much creative direction and you got drakengard and many manga where he is part of the directors. He suck balls at writing long story, nothing cant deny that.
This dude is the equivalent of Dragon Ball fans who didn't actually watch/read Dragon Ball, and if they did, they probably completely ignored the og Dragon Ball with Kid Goku.
I have accepted most people will never experience drakengard 1 and 3 because the games *suck* but being a nier fan and not playing replicant which is an ok game is punishible by a fate worse than death: replaying drakengard 3's final boss for all eternity This cannot continue
I'm so glad I played Replicant before Automata. I'm glad people enjoy Automata as a standalone experience but imo having the context of what happened to the humans made it hit me so much harder.
From what I know, creative directors are responsible for the creative vision (story, character designs, art direction, music) and not the gameplay, monetization or promotion. Not sure if those games failed because of insufficient creative direction or just bad gameplay and/or monetization (or both).
exactly. i dont know how someone would read the title "creative director" and think the person would be responsible for how the game is handled. creatively, all of his games stand out with that signature yoko taro style. the story and art of these games (the creative aspects) have never been questioned by anyone. this is like blaming the artist for the mishandling of their manager.
@@_mako he did direct some manga where he is main story director, as it stand he always fail to deliver a long term story, he is simply not built to direct live service game due how he relied on shock factor but terrible at directing the story once it get past the comfort zone.
@@LIGHTANGEL_EX drakengard is as awful as the mobage he worked on, as its stand, yoko only succesful ip is nier automata. He dont excel in writing long term story unlike nasu and jun which both are succesful in writing live service game, he is only good at first impression+presentation and fall flat later if the story dragged into visual novel, maybe he is not that great after all.
In my opinion, Yoko Taro seems to have very eccentric ideas that he can't really mold into something appealing to a wider market. Nier: Automata was a lucky stroke, in the sense that he got just the right people to make it work. Platinum Games was still riding the high tide of admiration from their work on Bayonetta, Squenix was still interested in appealing to more limited markets (and was caught off-guard by Automata's massive success), and Yoshida and Okabe managed to turn Taro's ideas into something striking and unique. In all other cases, Taro's involvement results in crazy games that clash between their ideas and presentation, and I get the feeling that this might be Taro having too much freedom. Kinda like Kojima during his work on Metal Gear, the team surrounding him made his insane ideas more digestible. I think Taro needs people around him that rein him in when he gets too absorbed in his craft, or things just come off as random and pointless. With Nier: Reincarnation, the team at least had two prior Nier games to use as blueprints, but SINoALICE was confusing in its presentation, and feels like hundreds of different approaches to the same concept thrown together at random. And 404 is just one funny gimmick severely overstaying its welcome while employing a dying genre. Taro is a creative man, but not a good planner or game designer.
he needs the right people around him make something good, the Original Neir was good game but it had issues, Dragnard which is tied to neir series was good at start but got later with other entries. i feel he has interesting ideas, but again without right people around the guy game either be good or bleh.
A good game is not always a monetary success. This is especially true when we talk about mobile games. The fact that Yoko Taro's games were closed doesn't mean that they were bad games, at least, not in the parts that were his competence (story, artistic direction, etc.).
yoko wishes that he can write better than nasu or jun, they were bad the only "good" franchise he had is nier, even drakengard is as atrocious as 404 in terms of gameplay.
Watching that Library gacha animation just gave me the thousand-yard stare. As a SinoAlice vet, I can attest that the gameplay was absolutely ptw since the end-game content mostly focused on guild PvP and raids. Even story content could feel impossible if even your sub stats weren’t boosted properly. And there was ALWAYS something to grind. However… I genuinely miss the game. I still have my inventories saved as screenshots and I have what little merch was available in my personal collection. The music was haunting yet beautiful (simple enough that it did not become too repetitive as it washed into white noise), and the aesthetic was much of the same. The stats systems were as simple as pressing “Auto” when you wanted that quick setup, but surprisingly in-depth if you wanted to take your time to get gud. The story was overly simple (some say effectively none existent in its presentation), yet also dark and just as brutal as the aforementioned grind. Ironically, this game had an incredibly effective way of telling you how much it does not care about you - I may have read a bit into it but I give Taro credit that it was an intention air about the presentation. SinoAlice was a story that was effectively an ergodic experience that will delight in your failures… and it kept me coming back for me.
I've played a decent amount (not much) and felt it had potential if it wasn't an auto battler As you mentioned that it's insistance on PVP is what turned me off too, I liked it's dark twist on fairy tale characters
Same. Holy shit was guild pvp annoying. Once in a blue moon we had an interesting (or as exciting as the game would allow) battle, but most of the time it was my guild getting wrecked by chinese leviathans for a whole session. I quit when my guild disbanded. The story was fun but boy was it dark and I loved it for it. I am not one to complain about gameplay in a gacha, since I'm usually there for the waifus, so really what killed it for me was the p2w.
I really don't think his reputation has been effected by some gacha games he wrote concepts for, let alone have been heard by most at all. You are just trying to sound big by going over some of his small projects. For me, I heard him from drakengard3 around 2014, then heard about nier but never got to play them due to their console exlusive nature. But, I did consome a lot of media about these games and learned that his games had some interesting ideas going on, even if they were agreed universally to have bad gameplays. Even in here that you agree these games have good ideas and stories, yet you somehow still find him as a "hollow shell". Now a "gacha" channel gives his "adult" opinions about him and deeming him not good as before. If anything, this is the most popular he has been during his whole career, and yet to have released another pc game after reincarnation which is another success. Not really a good idea to criticize him like this from some gacha games he worked for. I may have sounded like some white knight fan about taro but I just don't think this is a fair video.
My first exposure to Yoko Taro was with Drakengard 3. Yeah that game was rough around the edges but I enjoyed it. I quickly went back and played Drakengard 1 and Nier. Loved those too. Did all this before Automata was even announced. I think what let Automata appeal to a wider audience was having well put together gameplay. The story and characters weren’t that different from what Taro normally did, aside from a more hopeful ending. I bet if Drakengard 3 had gameplay on par with Automata we’d have seen Zero and her sisters showing up everywhere like 2B is.
I also played Sinoalice for about 2 years and the pvp stuff is what made me quit. The story moved really slow and it just made me wish it was a normal single player game. I hope the next Yoko Taro game is that whether it’s Nier, Drakengard, or something else entirely
Exactly. The success of Automata was the art and story that was always there in his previous games + actually good gameplay. I do think the writing in D3 isn't the best (God, the dialogue sucked) but the presentation was definitely there that I can see it being a success if it had Platinum gameplay. Same with D1, very dark story and characters, but still quite on brand with Nier.
Yes, about half a year after both its japanese release and the launch of the ps4. The english version had a rough translation. It was especially confusing to longtime fans since they translated some terms differently from drakengard 1. They also charged extra for japanese voices.
Man, SINoALICE. There is a game that is deeply special to me. I played it since a few months after its release in JP and god I have a lot to say about it. I don’t think there was or ever will be a game quite like it again, especially in how it tended to insult the player (I don’t mean in terms of monetization, or mechanics. I mean the game literally made fun of you). The dolls (Gishin and Anki to JP, Parrah and Noya for everyone else) rarely had anything nice to say to you, to the point where the game had a selfie rater that could be about as insulting as you’d expect. The gameplay wasn’t anything amazing, but we weren’t there for the gameplay. We were here for the horrifically awful characters we got attached to. It was fun to see them interact and bounce off one another. Events were either heart-wrenching or the biggest shitpost you’ve ever seen. It was fun. That being said, it was not free of problems. Powercreep did become a major problem in the last few years of the game’s life once they added a new evolution tier and two new elements (light and dark) to the game. It became more expensive to max things out and optimize your build. Pokelabo, the company doing development, was always kind of a mess (tbh good luck to anyone looking at that new Madoka game, they’re a lead dev on that). There could be a lot of bugs. Some of them were really bad like locking people out of Colo if you weren’t in Japan (which did get fixed), but others were funny, like a stat that got tuned incorrectly on something. There were so many apologems for stupid things. I also feel like the story didn’t really end when it was supposed and if you were a fan of an unpopular character the content you got for them wasn’t always great. Yet, I kept coming back. I played through the JP version’s finale and I ugly cried at the end. The finale itself broke the fourth wall and we got to literally destroy the game from the inside out. Characters talked directly to the player, thanking us for breaking the cycle of despair the game created. And the game still exists as an archive of sorts. I still have it on my phone. It was a messy game, but again, I don’t think there will ever be a game quite like it, although honestly, Limbus Company comes VERY close.
An old SinOAlice global player here, and I agree with you, game was painful, but it was fun too, and I think Limbus Company(I also play the game) gives the same vibes bcuz both are book based games, SinOAlice being fairy tale, while Limbus Company literature books. Both also have small cast and dark setting, although imo I prefer Limbus more, both in story, presentation and gameplay
This "downfall" of Yoko Taro is funny to me, because its also happening with the studio that made the other aspects of Automata, Platinum Games. And its a shame, considering that Platinum made some great games in the past.
@@Fishman465yeah but they have been doing that for way too long and have been just throwing darts around to see what sticks. I mean people forget that before the Souls games FromSoft was sort of like Platinum going around freelancing for different publishers and trying different genres to see what sticks until Demons souls. Heck that was meant to be nothing but a cash grab attempt by Sony and contracted to From to make an Elder Scrolls clone at the time until Miyazaki took over and focused the project with his creative vision and the rest is history with Souls games bringing From to new heights with each new game. Platinum needed someone like that and they have the talent and experience but no visionary leader to make that happen.
@@Fishman465 I am not saying that Miyazaki created everything. He obviously took a lot of inspiration from FromSoft's past games with so many references and ieads from King's field to the lock on feature and third person perspective of Amrored Core (specifically 4 and for answer since those were the game he was first time as director) to even their obscure horror games. It is just that after reading interviews of their past, it is crazy From was such a mess back then and didn't know what would stick. He tried to reinvent themselves a lot and following trends of the time but found their niche and built upon it.
This video flip flops between “financial” success and “creative” success, often treating them like they’re the same thing. I’m not a big fan of gachas, but I do think every one of them was a creative success. Like you said, the last one had a unique gameplay style for a gacha. Would that not show that Yoko Taro isn’t “creatively hollow”? It’s important to understand that most of his games have subpar gameplay. That’s never stopped him from doing crazy things though. He’s even said he’s fine with an experience that can only be experienced once. You don’t have to agree with that mindset, but that’s just how he operates. I feel like this video is trying to say too much yet also not enough, while missing crucial information.
Yeah I agree, he brought up some good points, but that last sentence where he was like "make me something profitable, give me another [insert popular game here]" made me shrivel up a little. But now that I think about it I guess it's natural for someone who mostly plays gacha and live service games to care more about the financial success and popularity - since gacha games live and die by player retention and mainstream appeal while regular games don't have those same pressures. It sucks when a gacha game you like and have spent time and money investing into gets shut down because no one else is playing or because the company goes under, but by contrast I don't have to give as much of af if, for example, Horizon Zero Dawn wasn't as successful as it could have been, since I can still just play it whenever I want
I think the first two games were considered successes. Gachas aren't intended to run forever and they ran their courses. I think they completed their story arcs and summarily wrapped up.
8:00 I get that fear of mainline gachas. If they last long, they build lot of lore for the series that will one day vanish. Limbus company is doing that to project moon's story, can only hope for a plan for an offline client.
Limbus has a better chance of becoming offline and likely pretty easily too. (Barring programming issues) They mostly just need to remove the gacha and timed/stamina systems, add in option to select mirror dungeon canton and reflection railways, and maybe rebalance some ID's and grind for threads, exp, and shards.
My dude, wouldn't it be fair to judge Yoko's work not only by mobile cashgrabs, but by other 3 games he was involved in? I've played them. For small games, they are "Yoko Taro" alright. "Hollow shell" is such a dramatic expression, that is sounds like a bait (which I have, supposedly, taken, shame on me).
This channel is about gacha games, and it was in the disclaimer that this was about his games in the gacha market, even mentioning that he had worked on games outside of it and name dropping some.
@@azeria1 are you willing to fund those games? publishers are willing to hire him for mobile gachas (since that's where the real money is sadly...) so he makes them
Play Drakengard 3 and NieR. Calling every other game he made niche is overgeneralizing to a fault. You can't just say "Nier Automata was his only good game" but not touch anything else. You'd just be parroting everyone's reviews instead of making your own independently. This stinks of "I put my expectations on this one game, and have decided to judge every other game he made under the same criteria." Which is even funnier when you bring up "They're niche". That's like acknowledging that apples and oranges are different, but when presented with an apple, you judge it as though it were a citrus fruit. Please avoid speaking in broad strokes- Especially about games you've only made a passing mention on. It ruins your credibility as a game reviewer.
It's funny how he makes it seem like Nier Automata got popular because of all of its good aspects when most people genuinely only checked the game out to check out 2Booty (and yes, I am one of those people). He keeps acting like the game is so good it makes all the previous Yoko Taro games not even worth mentioning when in reality, those games are just as good in everything except the gameplay.
I actually know him from Drakengard.... but I didn't play any of them myself. I just read/watched Let's Plays. The impression I get is that he has a very off-beat, creative way of writing stories, but creating something that can be profitable depends more on the developers he's working with. The gameplay of Nier Automata is definitely credited more to the studio that made it. They have a history of very strong action games.
Starting off your game by showing a teen dragon shitting himself in the mud pool he was just tumbling in is certainly "off-beat" i'll give you that. Peak fiction
@@jojomicheldu59 you are clearly the insane one. Automatas combat was similar in kind to games like devil may cry/bayonetta. And those games are the benchmark for high end action combat gameplay. Incidentally, platinum games the creators of Bayonneta and Metal Gear rising Nano machines worked on Automatas gameplay.
The question of where I first heard of Yoko Taro, is impossible to answer genuinely: games prior to Automata, were not available on PC until very very recently. (and I only decided to play Automata when I found out that it has non-3rd-person sections)
I wish the companies who's making gacha games should make the game playable offline after end of service, we already saw few companies does this but why aren't many companies doing this?
@@aure0521 It doesn't cost more money if you're expecting it and develop around it. Gambling costs lives but I don't see anyone talking about that side of gacha.
My first experience with Yoko Taro's works was Nier Gestalt. A let's play of it by Liam and Woolie of former Super Best Friends fame. Long before Automata was a thing. Liam was the series veteran with Woolie as his newcomer copilot, I may have just been a viewer but I fell so deeply in love with the game's world and characters that I decided that Grimoire Weiss was probably my favorite in the series and immediately deep dived into the Drakengard games with Mr. Clemps' retrospective on them. It's also thanks to Clemps that I got to learn about the Nier books and stageplays, with his and Yoko Taro's confirmation that all of them are canon. Drakengard 1 gets special attention here because its something that can't physically be made today without either being censored ever worse than it already was back in 2006, or being region-locked entirely with Western journalists flooding in to slander Yoko Taro and his fans as "incel super diddys" or something. Drakengard 1 is one of the first grimdark stories I've experienced - even if vicariously through a series of essay videos - but I still hold it in high regard for how unapologeticlly twisted it is. Don't expect a remake for it or the other Draken games. I was disappointed to the core to hear that Reincarnation would be another Gacha after getting burnout from SINoAlice (I was a Gretel main) but BluffMeister's longplays are enough, you don't need to have played them either. I honestly think that Nier Reincarnation could be the last game in the franchise, given all the loose ends it tied into as shapely of a bow as it could before it's closure. It even referenced the termination of SINoAlice as a plot point. To end my ramble, I've seen some others in the comments deride you for not having played the older games but don't listen to them. Liam, Clemps, and I all contest that Cavia couldn't make a good game to save their company. It's Yoko Taro's stories that carried them and the DrakeNier superfans at Platinum deserve an award for playing them in the first place, having created Automata as a love letter. You really shouldn't be expected to purchase or play them, Hell I didn't either. I just gotta pick up the SINoAlice manga someday.
I really wish that this guy would stop pretending that Automata is the only game Taro is known for. The Drakengard series still exists and its a good example of his writing style.
As a fan of both Drakengard 1 and the first Nier, it's not like Automata was his only good game ever, I think Yoko Taro still has it in him. I wonder though if this path he took was because of being afraid of the expectations people have after Automata's insane success. He also quite frequently talks about how he doesn't think Automata is that good, might be part of that. It's a very real fear especially in japanese culture. There have been multiple other japanese developers who tried new projects and "failed" like Koji Igarashi and Keiji Inafune, even Shinji Mikami to some extent. It puts into perspective how amazing someone like Hidetaka Miyazaki is, dude pumped out like 5 great games, some regarded as masterpieces, in the span of basically 10 years. Maybe Taro is procrastinating because he doesn't think he can do it again, well, I don't even know if the decision is up to him really. SE will probably just force another Nier out when they feel like they need the money.
What is crazy about Miyazaki is even he says he hasnt created his ideal game yet even after elden ring. Dude has a lot more in store in the future and is crazy to think he is still creative and with such excitement and determination after all these years.
Echoing everyone elses thoughts that you should play his older games (especially Replicant), and that calling him a hollow shell is very silly. But also, throughout the video you talk like yoko taro is making the entire game, and these arent giant teams hes just a leader of. Its always a silly way to talk about games, and youre definitely falling victim to it here. Your video's are usually excellent, so i hope this video just ends up being an exception to that.
Whilst I admit that the newer stuff made by Yoko Taro isn't that impressive, I also have to admit that fans of Automata may be getting their hopes up over a man who admittedly struck it lucky with Automata's success. And I say this less as a way to criticise Taro, but rather the fanbase. As someone who was introduced to him through Nier Gestalt when I was 10, I love his characters, story telling and brutal world building. Almost everything about the game called out to me and made me grab the case off the shelf and beg mum to buy it. It's these same reasons I like most of his games before Nier too. However, I don't think fans of Automata are of a similar cloth. Fans of Automata aren't necessarily fans of Yoko Taro and that's fine, because Automata was a masterclass in gaming. If people really just wanted more Yoko Taro, they'd be able to play backwards through previous titles and experience more of his creativity, but hardly anyone can even stand to play Nier replicant, despite it being extremely close to the style of Automata and with an updated combat system to mirror it.
I think the combat is part of it. I have played the Nier Replicant but cant play continously after the first ending (second ending is basically the same as the first with even more heartbreaking shadow story. Idk happened to me too after Nier Automata, probably it's just hard for me to play after credits). It's just the combat doesnt feel the oomph. Getting every weapon for new story ending is just crazy
As someone who played 404 Game Reset the entire time of the game's run. It had so many non Sega IPs in it from the very start, with big collabs within the first half a year. That is where i am thinking the game had the budget issues since they had to collab with SNK, Capcom, Taito, Bandai Namco for the events let alone for the non Sega games that were just part of the main story. At least they let us keep the game's data that we experienced on our phones in full as long as we had it unlocked. By the time the game ended service they were also starting the localization process which honestly is the real sad part, since the game in the final chapter showed that the dev team were sad it was ending so soon.
i think it's worth noting that in this day and age, it's next to impossible to launch a gacha game and have it last longer than a couple of years, even if it's based around a popular, pre-existing franchise. the quality of the game itself doesn't always have anything to do with it, and in my experience i've found that it rarely does. it's extremely rare for a new gacha game to find success unless it's something like mihoyo's genshin impact and honkai star rail. unless you launched your gacha game in the early to mid 2010s and have already found tons of success, your game will announce end of service within a few years (if it's lucky). sinoalice i feel was just too far gone and no amount of rebalancing and patches could have fixed its p2w issues, but you have square enix to thank for that. sinoalice was running when square enix hit peak greed and suffered the consequences for it. nier reincarnation i can't speak on because i never got to play it since my phone couldn't handle it, but it launched when square enix was in peak greed so i'm sure that also played a part in it. i've never played or even heard of 404 game reset but i think the concept and gameplay is a bit too outlandish so i'm not surprised it ended service so quickly. regardless, companies just don't want to put in the effort to build up a playerbase anymore. they always expect immediate success and returns, and if they don't get that, they deem the game a failure, shut it down, and move on to the next one without even really giving that last game a chance, rinse and repeat. this is just the state of the overall games industry right now. of course this isn't to say that all those games were even good, but they weren't ever given the chance to _become_ good. also, the game that put yoko taro on the radar for me was in fact not nier automata, but the game automata is a sequel to: nier gestalt on the ps3. i played it and loved it _before_ automata was announced, even.
Played sinoalice religiously when it released on global. Was drawn to the concept of twisted fairy tale characters and the overall aesthetic and character designs. Can vouch for how the guild/arena fights were tied to how much classes you've unlocked and max'd since they contributed to the overall character stats making ot heavily p2w. It became part of my daily routine to stay up until 10pm for the guild fights even though we were essentially gonna lose...
Guild wars were fun until the game started to remove time slots and becoming overall more p2w with must haves every new banner. Gradually became a chore since there weren't enough gacha currency for f2p to keep with the meta. Guild wars was the only way to acquire tons of gacha currency which only the whales will keep obtaining, leaving f2p helpless.
@weihaolee2937 our rank/grade/bracket had so few active guilds that we were a shoehorn for the grand guild battle/tourney. We got the currency, but by the end of it I mostly went for Snow classes and some Alice classes. The support classes also made or break the guild fights.
This man buries lore in stage plays, live concerts, cds, art books, anime, crossovers, and yes, now defunct gacha. Even his public persona is a performance. I think your appreciation for his art is surface level and should reconsider your perspective. At least play Nier Replicant..😅
I don't think any of this can be pinned on him. It's a lot easier and faster to pitch a mobile game in Japan than a big budget console release that needs to cook for longer. It's definitely harder and longer to do so than when Yoko Taro started working in the games industry.
I think the bad parts of the games that got EOS are mostly fault on the services and companies that made these games p2w/ gacha. Yoko only has power over the story and it’s fundamentally different from him killing the games
nier automata and it's soundtrack get gassed up so much but the one i have 100+ hours on and soundtrack on repeat is replicant. all i kept hearing was "automata this and that" from this video and my eyes just glazed over. i've never played one drakengard game and i know everyone thinks the gameplay is ass but everyone that has played it thinks it's worth it just for the experience of having played it.
YES yes yes thank you. Someone else knows the truth. the song Grandma was how I taught myself to play piano, just obsessing and playing that song over and over. The original Nier OST actually transcends being a game soundtrack and is just straight up excellent music.
Hearing Nier Automata is 7 years old already is giving me a huge amount of whiplash. I feel like it was only couple months ago when this game was released on the ps4. The Nier franchise is long overdue for a sequel (no I don’t include reincarnation) that can be played on consoles again. At this rate I’d sooner believe that persona 6 will come out than a proper Nier game.
Reincarnation’s ending ties up NieR as a trilogy, so I don’t think we’ll be getting a NieR 4. As for Reincarnation, I’d recommend reading through a fan project called Project Birdcage, which preserves the entire main story, most of the non-collab side-content, and even includes tidbits about how the gameplay was like from a seasoned veteran. In terms of total runtime as a VN, it’s about 60 hours.
I think you need to research JUST a little more about yoko You see he will do anything for money (he literally says that almost every month) and he's chained to square enix (he also says that whenever he can) As much as i hate when a good videogame or gacha shuts down you gotta understand that 2B exists thanks to yoko taro but square enix can decide what to do with her...
Do think he still a creative genius, but he throws ideas and see what works. I played Voice in the cards, and they are great games. But they feel very indie in nature. And that the thing for YT, his ideas work best as smaller project or aiming at a niche audience. Automata work because he was working with people that can match his madness while working with one of the best action game companies at the time (Platinum games.) So I don't think any of his games were meant to blow up to go mainstream. Hells, I consider Nier A to just be perfect strike of lightning when that game blew up. He makes niche games and that his strength. I don't think he should aim to make big titles as that not his strength. Niche projects with reasonable budget will get you your best Yoko Taro out of Yoko taro.
the ultimate goal yoko taro wants to achieve is drinking beer all day. it's that simple. everything else is a bonus/side track, be it good or not. tbh nier automata is still the best game among his involvements in games. nier replicant ver 1.22 is second best (i think the way it's polished as a remake is the best approach that every other remake should do the same). i didn't play the older games like DOD so i can't comment on them. i don't particularly like those gachas tho i've played them. i think gachas in general doesn't fit well with yoko. if only those gachas were actually single-player console/pc games would they thrive. like you said, excellent concepts but poor execution (the fact that they are gachas already ruined the concepts and hypes in the first place) then again, the nier automata anime is one of those anime adaptations of games. can't be more shittier. the interview about rejecting the seggs scene in the anime is more like a yoko's joke/troll to me all in all, i think yoko has achieved his peak career in the form of nier automata and he can comfortably "retire" from game production (at least) and his legacy in nier automata will surely still survive for another 10 years, that he doesn't need to create new things, only to eventually ruin his reputation, besides occasionally writing plots on mangas and stuff
In regards to name, probably was Automata, but even back in the day I was aware of the titles that preceded it - like Drakengard 3 and Nier Gestalt (the Xbox version with Papa Nier). I feel with every entry that this man gets involved with, I'm only more fascinated with "why make it a Gacha?" rather than a stand alone game that you can purchase until copies no longer exist? Maybe it's naive of me, but I feel like blaming more Square or Sega for the blunders because those guys, despite having good content, have shown a track record of fumbling the ball on projects either because they aren't profitable, or because they believe the name alone will be enough to push the fabled 6 Billion Units they wish to ship. Other than that, these games did seem like fun or interesting - especially the one with the Sega IPs, which I probably would have loved to try out - it's just a shame it never made it to the West.
I heard about him from the first release of Nier. back in 2010-2011. The biggest thing that drew me in was the fact that it was a rated "M" Square Enix game, which we all know, seldom happens. So I had no idea what I was getting into when I first dove into it. Yes, there was the stereotypical JRPG fetch quests, but when I actually explored the plains area outside the maid city? I was drawn in and captivated by the soundtrack. There were times when I didn't even play the game and just listened to the soundtrack as it played. Then I got to the story. I was instantly drawn into it, and Kaine? I didn't know someone could curse that much and still be attractive, but holy fuck, she pulled it off. Grimoire Weiss, Kaine, Emil, (Love that kid) and the MC, (I named him after myself) I love all those characters. AND THE ENDING. I was sad that I had to do that to get the true ending, just like with Nier Automata, but I'll do it every single time, because those characters mean that much to me. I will DIE on this hill. Yoko Taro has created my favorite game franchise, with only Metal gear Solid being a VERY close second.
honeslty i feel like neir reicarnation was good but i felt the same it killed it a bit for me cuz the combat wasnt really engaging to me, and also its a GACHA. a gacha doesnt make this game justice, i wished it was single player like nier automata i agree its sad when a live service game goes eos cuz u can never play it and u only get to experience once, and sometimes private servers dont exist for said games cuz sometimes its not popular enough.
I picked up Nier: ReIncarnation as soon as I saw the trailers. I enjoyed Automata and Replicant, so I was excited to see its story. The music was phenomenal! The monster designs were bottom of the barrel boring. And the overall story was fine. With the knowledge of his previous game's multiple endings and story continuations, I kept playing because I was intrigued by where Yoko Taro could take the story. I was disappointed that upon launch, when I found out that the game only didn't even have the first half of Flo's main story. Most of the game's side stories were interesting to me and kept me engaged. I stuck around until the final part of Flo & Monster's story was released but dropped the game after that. The gameplay, however, was what really lost me. Auto-battlers can be kinda fun with team building or mid-game strategies. ReIncarnation, as you noted, was literally hit GO and hope your numbers were bigger than the enemies. You could manually activate abilities and ultimates, but that was truly the only interction you had. And I can't overstate just how grindy the game was! Battle rewards came in a trickle, so at higher levels, I had to let my phone run for hours on the same mission to get enough resources to level up just one character or get enough currency for an event shop. That's not even mentioning getting the resources to level up their gear too. It didn't help that all the in-game events were too small, their stories didn't add anything to the overall narrative, they never lasted long enough, and had terrible rewards compared to event shop prices. And don't get me started on healing. At launch there were like, 2 characters out of the whole game's roster who could actually heal (more were added later in limited event banners), and you could only get one of them via the Gacha. Let's not forget the gacha. The characters you pulled for were either reskins of the current characters with different elemental affinities, or a Nier tie-in character. Weapons and equipment were their own separate banners too. It's an odd feeling I have for the game. On one hand, it was a canonical continuation to the Nier series with some cool narrative elements and ideas that I enjoyed. On the other hand, it was a boring, grindy mobile game. In short, if you're really interested in the game, just watch a story recap video. You really weren't missing out on the gameplay.
Games don't have to be "fun", nor do movies, or books, or music, in order to be engaging, to have meaning worth offering your time to. Side note, SinoAlice also deserves criticism for making Hansel & Gretel into an offensive DID stereotype.
Nah. Gretel is a beautifully written character and it's heavily implied that Hansel is just fabricating the gretel personality to escape responsibility for killing his sister.
I think you would have a different opinion of yoko if you looked into the drakenier verse a bit deeper. I understand that your channel is mostly gacha talk and I enjoy your content a lot but I can’t help but think that you’re kinda looking at the sky from the bottom of the well with just the gacha and nier automata. SQEX def has more money and gameplay power over yoko and it feels like you’re shooting the messenger for trying to deliver stories. Of course nier is the first game that pushed him to fame but bc of how good it was it pushed me to look into replicant and drakengard lore which I think you would change your opinion
Also we missed out in the gacha but also yoko made an theatrical nier lore expansion so like he just really likes to experiment with different ways to present his stories and art
Nier Automata was a Perfect combination of Good Director with a Good team. Yoko Taro for story & Platinum games for gameplay these were the perfect pieces to making a good game. Just like how it was with Metal Gear rising. Tho with that game it was more 5% Hideo Kojima and 95% platinum games, but not many people knows this. In my opinion Yoko Taro has the vision but he needs the correct team to make that vision a reality. Hes good at making and writing stories but not at making video games. If there ever was a combination That I would love/wish to see is Yoko Taro and Capcom RE team Or DMC now that would be a game I would want to see.
As a Nier Reincarnation gal I wish it will come back as an offline game every day cause it's such a good game and had a lot of lore about the Nier world not to mention 10H TvT and FREAKING ACCORD WAS IN IT TOO and a lot more serious please SE please release it as an main game The battle part could be improved (if they made it brawler im sure it would have been more enjoyable) story and characters like so good and they lovable, the side stories also were very interesting it gives like some clues about before replicant and automata too, soundtrack was freaking great! Still waiting for SE to release PEOPLE AND THE WORLD 2 OST! the map and design of the world and wapons and the costume variety are hella good, also no to mention I LOVE PICTURE MODE TVT Reincarnation will always be special to me! Also I WANT THE ART BOOK SO FREAKING BAD
As someone who had the pleasure of playing 404 Game Reset it was a very good game and I’d do anything to play it again the Gacha was pretty stingy but honestly I didn’t mind it because I got at a good spot before EOS with the lower rarity characters I have.
Sinoalice is still stood out as one of my best gacha experiences, not because it was good, but because it was so easy to fall apart as a guild in global. You struggle with the content without whales helping out, you merge with other guilds because there weren't enough newbies, you do all things just to survive desperately. I played the game 3 years right from release and loved the family I made there. Though I think it was a game was designed to fall apart one day given how they handled the ending. No gacha games will make me experience the same thing ever.
I know Yoko Taro from the Drakengard 1 walkthrough (as I don't have console), it wasn't really 2B that attract players back then than you think, it was his vision of games, the deranged fantasy shake up the definition of fantasy games. That was what won the hearts of many fans,... ever since Drakengard.
A SINoALICE fan here Im fan of the game since it's JP release, i have waited for the en release and got really excited when it came. I played it for the story and music only but found myself in the daily hell of guild war. Long story short, the game is fuking awful for F2P, the story difficulty spikes stupidly, the gatcha rate is not good, and the guild war is P2W demolishing F2P... Im very sad that the story and the visual with the great music turned into this miss.
Jokes on you, my first was drakengard 3! The only real difference between dod/replicant and nier automata is polish. Taro's previous game are unpolished as heck while automata is a complete package. That's why automata became an icon when the others did not. This is especially true for replicant which genuinely has a better story and characters than automata, that's not a very a controversial opinion btw. The yoko taro fandom agree replicant's writing is absolutely legendary.
My first Taro game actually was Gestalt back on the 360. It was an incredibly profound experience that Automata didn't quite match for me. Then i later found out the drakengard game my friend from high school had on ps2 was from Taro as well. Taro does not need to be making gachas, it's the companies wasting his creative abilities thinking it will make easy money. His gachas are all dead and had horrible monetization but they also had incredible stories, lore and world building which is what Taro does. He is an artist in an industry where artists are being shoved aside in favor of profits. If his next game is a full scale release then i think there's a lot to look forward too.
Brother, I have been playing this games since way before you even imagined Yoko Taro existed, and to be frank, this whole video would do much better if actual research was involved. Didn't you ever give some thought as to WHY Yoko ended up at Square even though Nier Gestalt was a commercial failure? Well, I will tell you why: Square knew he was a creative genius but the technical part of his games needed work and funding. He says in Grimoire Nier that the reason the book was made to finish the story was because he had no money left to put the rest of the story in the game. Yoko is a creative DIRECTOR. His job is to CREAT STORIES AND DIRECT THEM, not make gameplay. You yourself said all these games have good ideas but bad gameplay and the gameplay was by third parties - that is true for Automata as well. The reason that game has such refined gameplay has nothing to do with Yoko Taro, but with Platinum Games, the legendary studio behind Bayonetta that Square hired for this purpose. Also, Yoko Taro didn't make 2B - Akihiko Yoshida did. He is a fantastic artist working under Square's wing for decades. Yoko Taro doesn't know how to hold a pencil and most certainly could not make such an iconic design by himself.
This might be a hot take but Nier: Gestalt (i.e. Replicant in JP or the remake) is better than Automata in many ways. Automata is one of the best games ever made imo but the original Nier surpassed it in many ways. I remember when I started that game, I sat by the fountain in town and just sat there for 10 minutes, listening to the song playing (Song of the Ancients, Devola). The music is FANTASTIC - I really can’t overstate how good it is. It's the OST I have listened to the most over the years, and it isn't even close. Unfortunately, the music was slightly changed in the Replicant remake and is a downgrade (another hot take I'm sure). They tried to make it more like Automata in some places and it just didnt need those changes. I also think the story was stronger (if anyone reads this they are going to hate me). Seriously I love Automata but there was a weight to the story in the original game that is just not matched. I won’t spoil things but the second play through is just an experience you can’t find elsewhere, and I was emotionally destroyed with some of those bosses like the wolf boss. The only thing Automata does better is the seamless variety in gameplay, and of course the gameplay itself. Automata was just a phenomenal action game with captivating and addicting gameplay/game systems. Really I can’t praise Automata enough but there are plenty of people to do that. The original Nier, though, is too slept on and I think more people need to play it. e: never forget papa Nier
13:30 Touhou Gensou Eclipse tried that. Helps that it's made by CAVE. The problem is that it counts as an IP Gacha Game. Made by the same guys who made Gomaotsu.
19:00 Funny as you said that, but I was exposed to his name with Drakengard 3. And I freaking love Drakengard 3, and the music! I'd choose Zero over 2B any day.
I liked nier reincarnation but unfortunately i didnt finished the story, you see the story was releasing in chapters, when the game released there was just chapter 1, I played it to the end and then deleted the game becasue there was no more story at the time, then forgot about it, when I remembered about it it was already shut down =/ I didnt had much trouble playing trought it, you know because of the gacha and all, it was fine, also in the battle I was expecting like a turn based or brawler, not an auto battle, but it was fine in my opinion, the visuals of the battle were pretty cool, so sad i couldnt complete it, at least there is a really cool video on youtube explaining the story, that is really cool btw, if you like the nier universe I recommend you watch it
To be honest, I was very fascinated on the stories of the stuff he worked on. Sadly, I didn't play a lot of said titles because 1.) I am poor, and 2.) some of the gameplay of some of this games didn't click with me or I don't have much time to play it, due to how poor I am that I need to work most of the time, that I feel like I can't focus on it.
I miss SinoAlice. Was hooked for a good few weeks before I had to switch phones and was locked out of my account because it didn't use Google Play or FB logins. I don't know why gacha titles like that still exist..
I think it's fair to say Yoko stated early that Nier Reincarnation would not be going forever. I do not have the link because it's been way over 3 years since I read about this and, yeah he was in it for the money but Reincarnation was also about the short stuff he wanted to try out. He is quite straightforward about it as you said, he knows he'll not get in trouble and he pushes that way past it's limits and yet people will still look for him. I think it's a shame that people can't experience some stuff on their own time, but you miss a lot of things in life, and that may be why the clown loves to "ruin stuff" early. I don't see him stopping that any time soon, as he's probably unburdened by any guilt, the way I see.
I'm a fan of the sinoalice but just never liked the gameplay itself so I didn't play much but I had friends ho I talk about its lore when we were still always free way back 2022, never knew it had a movie that just showed this year and it looks awesome. Thanks for making this video and sharing your resources and glad i can watch the movie 😍
Honestly I accepted that yoko taro would never create something as significant as nier automata when he told the the creator of stellar blade that that was the game he wanted to actually make
I miss sinoalice so much. its got so much of my high school memories. i remember palying the guild war after dinner every day and getting my ass kicked. it was fun.
My first Yoko Taro games was the PS3 Nier, then Drakengard 3 because of the awesome JP trailer, then went back to play Drag-on Dragoon 1 & 2, then Automata. After player a few of his game I have a strong belief that he just got lucky with Nier Automata, Drakengard 1 was OK but 2 was "eh" and 3 was dog shit other than the characters. I haven't played Replicant but Gestalt was also a "meh". The word I'd describe his work is... too ambitious.
My first game of his is the jank fest that is Nier Replicant on the 360, later on Drakenguards 3 and then Automata. Although I do agree that Automata is his most well know works, To me his one of those game creator that managed to make overal very good game but then manage to add sth that bothers me so much that its made me like the game less in the end. I like Automata, it a good game, but the entire 9S segment is super tedious that to me prevent it from being a great game.
My answer to the question of what put Yoko Taro on the radar for me is weird since my first taste of Yoko Taro was watching the dragon pissing scene of Drakengard on youtube. Still hilarious.
I played Nier Automata like 6 years ago and even then I felt like people glazed it too hard. Story and themes are good, but not the best I seen and 9s playtrough was pain. 8/10 game for me. Really good, but not a masterpiece
Super dismissive over Nier Reincarnations. If you played the game you could tell that the game wasnt made to make a whole lot of money, instead it was used as a vehicle to tell a lot of stories, brilliant stories with a ton of depth. This whole video seems poorly researched and its a damn shame since I was starting to get into your videos. While the game had a lot of flaws, you could tell the team behind it wasnt in it for the money. If they wanted to make money off it there were a lot of methods they could have done. Also just glaringly ignoring Yoko Taro's other works and even Replicant that came out not too long ago was very strange.
I see it more as being dragged down by corporate greed. You could spend years coming up with a deep PC/console singleplayer game... or you can make a gacha for phones on 5 months and get like 10x the money. No "prophet" can resist that offer.
I've told many people this, when it comes to Nier Reincarnation, I have always seen that game more of an overglorified visual novel than an actual game and when I treaded it as such I had a much better time.
I feel like he just failed to transition somewhat. With gachas having as a necessary step "catch the most people you can" it clashes with what he usually does imo. Limbus Company is an interesting comparison imo, as Project Moon also made quite weird games. Lobotomy Corporation is nothing but sheer masochism "thats part of the ludonarrative". I dont even want to begin talking about Ruinas gameplay as the dice still haunt me. They *somehow* managed to stay rather true to themselves with a pooular gacha, and all that with the horrible mismamagement from inexperience. I do think yoko taro has potential, but he might not have found the best way yet.
imagine telling a creative person what to create. "no no don't make another Drakengard that game is for weirdos, make another Nier Automata because everyone loved it and its the only thing you'll be known for." if you are a fan of someone you don't disrespect him by demanding him to play the hits.
SinoAlice got my attention back way back after they launched in JP. Global launch, it good for some while, but after you realize it, this game is heavily rely on “Guild” and “PvP” content. it gives single player hard time to get resources and even Gem (currency) to do gacha. *Mobile Game should be fun both Single Player and Multiplayer if player desire to do so. But dont gatekeeping out between them. Nobody denied that these games have great concept, and storytelling. But how handle it as Gacha game are, disappointed and unfortunate. Nier Reincarnate, I heard lot of good thing about it story. But I play 3 gacha games I dont want another in my life. It’s sad to see it’s gone, with good story with it.
A lot of people praise Nier's OST without knowing it was made by a pretty common anime OST studio, it's not unique to Nier or Square or Taro. Doesn't mean it's not super good of course
Yoko Taro is always up front too he likes money. So it's not weird he want to make mobages, and I feel like it's a bit delulu to think his only way forward will be he's making another Automata, not when currently no studio want to pay him for it, and he himself see no need to. Not saying it means his mobages are faultless, like, Sinoalice was a P2W mess, and none of his games actually got promotions they need, just saying if he's going to make another mobage, who are we to judge. And, in a way, you can't really argue he didn't always put his whole ass in these games (from concept/design side). From Sinoalice to Reset, his stupid goofy weird charm is always in there in presentation, and that's merit in of itself.
Yoko taro is definitely better as a writer rather than a game director. His games often have great concepts but poor execution. Sinoalice wouldve worked much better with traditional action rpg combat while still keeping the dark lore.
I definitely look at it more like Mr Yoko taro had the ideas and concept just 1 Tiny problem Making it to live service/gacha game, which unless you either make it japan only that make the game somewhat live longer or have a dev/team that have good experience on making one and can keep up with Yoko taro experimental nature on making weird game But since i see him just accepting every single Collab request now he look more like someone who throwing ideas without knowing whether it'll stick and gather audience or completely missed for the sake of being weird
![เป็นไปได้ไหม - WanMai [Performance Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Eh5hItD4Mr0/mqdefault.jpg)
Bro's so busy playing gacha games that he skipped Replicant. Some of people might not take your opinions seriously anymore.
I really don't like how dismissive you were of Yoko Taro's earlier works. For the majority of his modern audience, sure, 2B's fat ass is what got them into his games. Yoko Taro wouldn't have kept getting hired if no one believed his games had merit though. Even in the example you gave of Drakengard where you showed the metacritic numbers, the user score was positive. Art isn't meant for everyone. A lot of the best art is hostile or divisive. Unfortunately game development is a business. It's difficult to say what decisions Yoko Taro did and didn't have control over. If I'm a starving artist I don't think it's unreasonable to take a job offer that's going to put money on the table. If you watch interviews Yoko Taro is always playing a character. It's rare to find footage of him without the Emil mask. I don't think he's completely serious when he says he's only doing this for the money. If he was, he wouldn't keep making weird ass games.
When was his last actual game though exactly
@@azeria1 replicant
i was going to make a comment similar to this until i saw this comment, and you worded it far better than i ever could have. this video was incredibly frustrating to watch for how dismissive it was toward yoko taro's pre-automata works, including nier gestalt/replicant which is not acknowledged at all outside of briefly mentioning that yoko taro directed the remake (which yeah, he directed the original too, but the original wasn't even acknowledged once), and then boiling his legacy down to 'wishywashy mobile games'.
Then why is there only fat a$$ participating in collabs and not Cain or Zero? 🤡
I agree, If he wanted more Yoko Taro games he could've played his older works instead.
A few bits of context you are missing because you are a westerner:
- Drakengard was quite successful in Japan, in fact it was quite a meme in their online communities (especially on Futaba Channel, aka 2chan, which is the japanese predecessor to 4chan; getting something viral on one's internet cesspool is pretty much an instant reputation boost). It had an enduring viral status hence why Yoko has such a reputation prior to his western exposure.
- NieR Automata had extremely unconventional origins, even compared to Yoko's later gacha games. Namely, it started out as a J-Pop music group called "YoRHa" which was then made into a stage play series (also called "YoRHa"), and THEN later was made into a video game at the recommendation of Yosuke Saito (which became NieR Automata). In the beginning, the YoRHa multimedia project had absolutely zero connection to NieR other than being the group that made Drakengard 3's bizarre boss battle music. Even the initial pre-Automata stage plays had correspondingly little connection to NieR (the YoRHa stage plays literally ran for 3 years before Automata came out!). It was only when Yoko decided to make a game based on "YoRHa" did he decide to also mix it in with the rest of Drakengard/NieR universe. Such a decision was absolutely a profit consideration from Yoko's point of view. So I see little strength in the argument that Yoko lost his way due to trying to turn a profit. YoRHa was literally just a non-game-related pet project of Yoko's until his manager friend at Squeenix told him he should make it into a game
"Hollow shell" when you've play a single game from him
Blud legit didn't even play replicant
replicant and automata was good because he had other people to work with him and correct his mistakes its platinum games we are talking, give him too much creative direction and you got drakengard and many manga where he is part of the directors. He suck balls at writing long story, nothing cant deny that.
@@r3zaful Insane cope
This dude is the equivalent of Dragon Ball fans who didn't actually watch/read Dragon Ball, and if they did, they probably completely ignored the og Dragon Ball with Kid Goku.
how can you say you need more yoko taro after automata and dont play any of his previous games
the fact he didnt acknowledge replicant as successful but just propped up automata was WILD, just insane of this guy.
I don’t understand how someone can be THAT into automata and not want more Nier...when there is a Nier that came before Automata lol just wild
Kinda like persona 5 fans who refuse to play other persona games.
@@PaulHofreiter Maybe he just likes the particular aesthetic of automata as opposed to the other nier games.
@@popcultureoverdosed or play smt games
0:00 bro hasn't played replicant
Lol fr.. replicant is better imo
I have accepted most people will never experience drakengard 1 and 3 because the games *suck* but being a nier fan and not playing replicant which is an ok game is punishible by a fate worse than death: replaying drakengard 3's final boss for all eternity
This cannot continue
@@pougetguillaume4632 drakengard 1 awaken something inside me,and not a good one
@@pougetguillaume4632 Branch D final boss Is unironically my favorite boss ever, like im not exaggerating.
I'm so glad I played Replicant before Automata. I'm glad people enjoy Automata as a standalone experience but imo having the context of what happened to the humans made it hit me so much harder.
From what I know, creative directors are responsible for the creative vision (story, character designs, art direction, music) and not the gameplay, monetization or promotion. Not sure if those games failed because of insufficient creative direction or just bad gameplay and/or monetization (or both).
exactly. i dont know how someone would read the title "creative director" and think the person would be responsible for how the game is handled. creatively, all of his games stand out with that signature yoko taro style. the story and art of these games (the creative aspects) have never been questioned by anyone. this is like blaming the artist for the mishandling of their manager.
@@_mako he did direct some manga where he is main story director, as it stand he always fail to deliver a long term story, he is simply not built to direct live service game due how he relied on shock factor but terrible at directing the story once it get past the comfort zone.
Just like manga artist that work get adapted by shitty studio...
>I think the mobile games devalue him as a creator
>Give me another Automata for broad appeal and profit
yikes bro
drakengard is well...shit
He was probably referring to a console game instead of a gacha one.
@@LIGHTANGEL_EX Yeah, because Nier Automata is totally the only console game Yoko Taro worked on 💀
@@thegamerfe8751 what are you waffling about?
@@LIGHTANGEL_EX drakengard is as awful as the mobage he worked on, as its stand, yoko only succesful ip is nier automata. He dont excel in writing long term story unlike nasu and jun which both are succesful in writing live service game, he is only good at first impression+presentation and fall flat later if the story dragged into visual novel, maybe he is not that great after all.
In my opinion, Yoko Taro seems to have very eccentric ideas that he can't really mold into something appealing to a wider market. Nier: Automata was a lucky stroke, in the sense that he got just the right people to make it work. Platinum Games was still riding the high tide of admiration from their work on Bayonetta, Squenix was still interested in appealing to more limited markets (and was caught off-guard by Automata's massive success), and Yoshida and Okabe managed to turn Taro's ideas into something striking and unique.
In all other cases, Taro's involvement results in crazy games that clash between their ideas and presentation, and I get the feeling that this might be Taro having too much freedom. Kinda like Kojima during his work on Metal Gear, the team surrounding him made his insane ideas more digestible. I think Taro needs people around him that rein him in when he gets too absorbed in his craft, or things just come off as random and pointless. With Nier: Reincarnation, the team at least had two prior Nier games to use as blueprints, but SINoALICE was confusing in its presentation, and feels like hundreds of different approaches to the same concept thrown together at random. And 404 is just one funny gimmick severely overstaying its welcome while employing a dying genre. Taro is a creative man, but not a good planner or game designer.
In a way it reminds me of Peter Molyneux (without the going crazy apshit part the later years).
I do not second this, gimme more slop please!!! I love genuinely awful experiences!!!
he needs the right people around him make something good, the Original Neir was good game but it had issues, Dragnard which is tied to neir series was good at start but got later with other entries. i feel he has interesting ideas, but again without right people around the guy game either be good or bleh.
replicant is just better
@@CrobatmanIamthenight amen brother. it's way too underappreciated
A good game is not always a monetary success. This is especially true when we talk about mobile games. The fact that Yoko Taro's games were closed doesn't mean that they were bad games, at least, not in the parts that were his competence (story, artistic direction, etc.).
It takes more to a game than just storytelling, plus your first statement doesn't apply for gacha games
yoko wishes that he can write better than nasu or jun, they were bad the only "good" franchise he had is nier, even drakengard is as atrocious as 404 in terms of gameplay.
bro geniunely hasnt played replicant lmao
i dont think he realises replicant exists, complete fail in topic research
He’ll revise hes pretty good bout that
@@CrobatmanIamthenight he did mention it off-handedly
After playing NieR Automata I learned about Replicant. Which was peak and definitely recommended to play if you enjoyed Automata
Watching that Library gacha animation just gave me the thousand-yard stare. As a SinoAlice vet, I can attest that the gameplay was absolutely ptw since the end-game content mostly focused on guild PvP and raids. Even story content could feel impossible if even your sub stats weren’t boosted properly. And there was ALWAYS something to grind.
However… I genuinely miss the game. I still have my inventories saved as screenshots and I have what little merch was available in my personal collection. The music was haunting yet beautiful (simple enough that it did not become too repetitive as it washed into white noise), and the aesthetic was much of the same. The stats systems were as simple as pressing “Auto” when you wanted that quick setup, but surprisingly in-depth if you wanted to take your time to get gud.
The story was overly simple (some say effectively none existent in its presentation), yet also dark and just as brutal as the aforementioned grind. Ironically, this game had an incredibly effective way of telling you how much it does not care about you - I may have read a bit into it but I give Taro credit that it was an intention air about the presentation.
SinoAlice was a story that was effectively an ergodic experience that will delight in your failures… and it kept me coming back for me.
I've played a decent amount (not much) and felt it had potential if it wasn't an auto battler
As you mentioned that it's insistance on PVP is what turned me off too, I liked it's dark twist on fairy tale characters
Same. Holy shit was guild pvp annoying. Once in a blue moon we had an interesting (or as exciting as the game would allow) battle, but most of the time it was my guild getting wrecked by chinese leviathans for a whole session.
I quit when my guild disbanded. The story was fun but boy was it dark and I loved it for it. I am not one to complain about gameplay in a gacha, since I'm usually there for the waifus, so really what killed it for me was the p2w.
How much I hate peoples only talking about Automata and ignoring the better game Replicant…
Yoko is a story teller. Not a game maker. For me, it was Drakengard. The gameplay was pretty bland but the story sucked me in.
please stop saying automata is his "one big hit" its just factually untrue
I really don't think his reputation has been effected by some gacha games he wrote concepts for, let alone have been heard by most at all. You are just trying to sound big by going over some of his small projects.
For me, I heard him from drakengard3 around 2014, then heard about nier but never got to play them due to their console exlusive nature. But, I did consome a lot of media about these games and learned that his games had some interesting ideas going on, even if they were agreed universally to have bad gameplays. Even in here that you agree these games have good ideas and stories, yet you somehow still find him as a "hollow shell".
Now a "gacha" channel gives his "adult" opinions about him and deeming him not good as before. If anything, this is the most popular he has been during his whole career, and yet to have released another pc game after reincarnation which is another success. Not really a good idea to criticize him like this from some gacha games he worked for.
I may have sounded like some white knight fan about taro but I just don't think this is a fair video.
My first exposure to Yoko Taro was with Drakengard 3. Yeah that game was rough around the edges but I enjoyed it. I quickly went back and played Drakengard 1 and Nier. Loved those too. Did all this before Automata was even announced. I think what let Automata appeal to a wider audience was having well put together gameplay. The story and characters weren’t that different from what Taro normally did, aside from a more hopeful ending. I bet if Drakengard 3 had gameplay on par with Automata we’d have seen Zero and her sisters showing up everywhere like 2B is.
I also played Sinoalice for about 2 years and the pvp stuff is what made me quit. The story moved really slow and it just made me wish it was a normal single player game. I hope the next Yoko Taro game is that whether it’s Nier, Drakengard, or something else entirely
Exactly. The success of Automata was the art and story that was always there in his previous games + actually good gameplay. I do think the writing in D3 isn't the best (God, the dialogue sucked) but the presentation was definitely there that I can see it being a success if it had Platinum gameplay. Same with D1, very dark story and characters, but still quite on brand with Nier.
Was D3 even released in the west?
Yes, about half a year after both its japanese release and the launch of the ps4. The english version had a rough translation. It was especially confusing to longtime fans since they translated some terms differently from drakengard 1. They also charged extra for japanese voices.
Man, SINoALICE. There is a game that is deeply special to me. I played it since a few months after its release in JP and god I have a lot to say about it.
I don’t think there was or ever will be a game quite like it again, especially in how it tended to insult the player (I don’t mean in terms of monetization, or mechanics. I mean the game literally made fun of you). The dolls (Gishin and Anki to JP, Parrah and Noya for everyone else) rarely had anything nice to say to you, to the point where the game had a selfie rater that could be about as insulting as you’d expect. The gameplay wasn’t anything amazing, but we weren’t there for the gameplay. We were here for the horrifically awful characters we got attached to. It was fun to see them interact and bounce off one another. Events were either heart-wrenching or the biggest shitpost you’ve ever seen. It was fun.
That being said, it was not free of problems. Powercreep did become a major problem in the last few years of the game’s life once they added a new evolution tier and two new elements (light and dark) to the game. It became more expensive to max things out and optimize your build. Pokelabo, the company doing development, was always kind of a mess (tbh good luck to anyone looking at that new Madoka game, they’re a lead dev on that). There could be a lot of bugs. Some of them were really bad like locking people out of Colo if you weren’t in Japan (which did get fixed), but others were funny, like a stat that got tuned incorrectly on something. There were so many apologems for stupid things. I also feel like the story didn’t really end when it was supposed and if you were a fan of an unpopular character the content you got for them wasn’t always great.
Yet, I kept coming back. I played through the JP version’s finale and I ugly cried at the end. The finale itself broke the fourth wall and we got to literally destroy the game from the inside out. Characters talked directly to the player, thanking us for breaking the cycle of despair the game created. And the game still exists as an archive of sorts. I still have it on my phone.
It was a messy game, but again, I don’t think there will ever be a game quite like it, although honestly, Limbus Company comes VERY close.
An old SinOAlice global player here, and I agree with you, game was painful, but it was fun too, and I think Limbus Company(I also play the game) gives the same vibes bcuz both are book based games, SinOAlice being fairy tale, while Limbus Company literature books. Both also have small cast and dark setting, although imo I prefer Limbus more, both in story, presentation and gameplay
This "downfall" of Yoko Taro is funny to me, because its also happening with the studio that made the other aspects of Automata, Platinum Games. And its a shame, considering that Platinum made some great games in the past.
Its crazy they went from banger after banger to completely losing the plot after Astral Chain
We may be too harsh on Platnium as given their status as a freelance studio, sometimes you take what gigs you can between the big ones
@@Fishman465yeah but they have been doing that for way too long and have been just throwing darts around to see what sticks. I mean people forget that before the Souls games FromSoft was sort of like Platinum going around freelancing for different publishers and trying different genres to see what sticks until Demons souls. Heck that was meant to be nothing but a cash grab attempt by Sony and contracted to From to make an Elder Scrolls clone at the time until Miyazaki took over and focused the project with his creative vision and the rest is history with Souls games bringing From to new heights with each new game. Platinum needed someone like that and they have the talent and experience but no visionary leader to make that happen.
@toledochristianmatthew9919 not as much as some think as armored core as a series predates souls by a decent margin and there was king's field
@@Fishman465 I am not saying that Miyazaki created everything. He obviously took a lot of inspiration from FromSoft's past games with so many references and ieads from King's field to the lock on feature and third person perspective of Amrored Core (specifically 4 and for answer since those were the game he was first time as director) to even their obscure horror games. It is just that after reading interviews of their past, it is crazy From was such a mess back then and didn't know what would stick. He tried to reinvent themselves a lot and following trends of the time but found their niche and built upon it.
I stopped watching when it became clear you didn't play Nier Replicant. It's way better than Automata and yet you don't even acknowledge it.
This video flip flops between “financial” success and “creative” success, often treating them like they’re the same thing. I’m not a big fan of gachas, but I do think every one of them was a creative success. Like you said, the last one had a unique gameplay style for a gacha. Would that not show that Yoko Taro isn’t “creatively hollow”? It’s important to understand that most of his games have subpar gameplay. That’s never stopped him from doing crazy things though. He’s even said he’s fine with an experience that can only be experienced once. You don’t have to agree with that mindset, but that’s just how he operates. I feel like this video is trying to say too much yet also not enough, while missing crucial information.
Yeah I agree, he brought up some good points, but that last sentence where he was like "make me something profitable, give me another [insert popular game here]" made me shrivel up a little.
But now that I think about it I guess it's natural for someone who mostly plays gacha and live service games to care more about the financial success and popularity - since gacha games live and die by player retention and mainstream appeal while regular games don't have those same pressures. It sucks when a gacha game you like and have spent time and money investing into gets shut down because no one else is playing or because the company goes under, but by contrast I don't have to give as much of af if, for example, Horizon Zero Dawn wasn't as successful as it could have been, since I can still just play it whenever I want
I think the first two games were considered successes. Gachas aren't intended to run forever and they ran their courses. I think they completed their story arcs and summarily wrapped up.
SinoAlice was definitely a success, at least in Japan. It saved the company.
8:00 I get that fear of mainline gachas. If they last long, they build lot of lore for the series that will one day vanish. Limbus company is doing that to project moon's story, can only hope for a plan for an offline client.
Limbus has a better chance of becoming offline and likely pretty easily too. (Barring programming issues) They mostly just need to remove the gacha and timed/stamina systems, add in option to select mirror dungeon canton and reflection railways, and maybe rebalance some ID's and grind for threads, exp, and shards.
@ Doing kinda Ruina book burning for IDs as a new player progresses story.
Project Moon I'd say has a decent chance of doing that
@@Fishman465 Community already has an effort of preserving the game through modded servers. An official offline will still be best.
My dude, wouldn't it be fair to judge Yoko's work not only by mobile cashgrabs, but by other 3 games he was involved in? I've played them. For small games, they are "Yoko Taro" alright. "Hollow shell" is such a dramatic expression, that is sounds like a bait (which I have, supposedly, taken, shame on me).
These mobile cash grabs are his most recent things though maybe he should start working on a new game
This channel is about gacha games, and it was in the disclaimer that this was about his games in the gacha market, even mentioning that he had worked on games outside of it and name dropping some.
@@azeria1 are you willing to fund those games? publishers are willing to hire him for mobile gachas (since that's where the real money is sadly...) so he makes them
Play Drakengard 3 and NieR.
Calling every other game he made niche is overgeneralizing to a fault.
You can't just say "Nier Automata was his only good game" but not touch anything else. You'd just be parroting everyone's reviews instead of making your own independently.
This stinks of "I put my expectations on this one game, and have decided to judge every other game he made under the same criteria." Which is even funnier when you bring up "They're niche". That's like acknowledging that apples and oranges are different, but when presented with an apple, you judge it as though it were a citrus fruit.
Please avoid speaking in broad strokes- Especially about games you've only made a passing mention on. It ruins your credibility as a game reviewer.
It's funny how he makes it seem like Nier Automata got popular because of all of its good aspects when most people genuinely only checked the game out to check out 2Booty (and yes, I am one of those people). He keeps acting like the game is so good it makes all the previous Yoko Taro games not even worth mentioning when in reality, those games are just as good in everything except the gameplay.
@@thegamerfe8751 Mm, yes.
When you come for the "plot" and stay for the plot.
Nier is a really good game, but drakengard 3 is hyper niche
I actually know him from Drakengard.... but I didn't play any of them myself. I just read/watched Let's Plays.
The impression I get is that he has a very off-beat, creative way of writing stories, but creating something that can be profitable depends more on the developers he's working with. The gameplay of Nier Automata is definitely credited more to the studio that made it. They have a history of very strong action games.
True it is difficult for "Platinum games" to fumble action combat gameplay
Starting off your game by showing a teen dragon shitting himself in the mud pool he was just tumbling in is certainly "off-beat" i'll give you that.
Peak fiction
@@pougetguillaume4632 was it though?
I can still remember that very first thing Zero did when the game start was to stab the narrator.
Is everyone insane or am I insane? Automata's gameplay was really bad. Replicant's was way better in every way
@@jojomicheldu59 you are clearly the insane one. Automatas combat was similar in kind to games like devil may cry/bayonetta. And those games are the benchmark for high end action combat gameplay.
Incidentally, platinum games the creators of Bayonneta and Metal Gear rising Nano machines worked on Automatas gameplay.
The question of where I first heard of Yoko Taro, is impossible to answer genuinely: games prior to Automata, were not available on PC until very very recently.
(and I only decided to play Automata when I found out that it has non-3rd-person sections)
I wish the companies who's making gacha games should make the game playable offline after end of service, we already saw few companies does this but why aren't many companies doing this?
It costs money
@@aure0521 It doesn't cost more money if you're expecting it and develop around it. Gambling costs lives but I don't see anyone talking about that side of gacha.
@AuthorityCat many companies can't be bothered to do that much, though the trends have slowly been changing, mainly with non-JP companies
My first experience with Yoko Taro's works was Nier Gestalt. A let's play of it by Liam and Woolie of former Super Best Friends fame. Long before Automata was a thing.
Liam was the series veteran with Woolie as his newcomer copilot, I may have just been a viewer but I fell so deeply in love with the game's world and characters that I decided that Grimoire Weiss was probably my favorite in the series and immediately deep dived into the Drakengard games with Mr. Clemps' retrospective on them. It's also thanks to Clemps that I got to learn about the Nier books and stageplays, with his and Yoko Taro's confirmation that all of them are canon.
Drakengard 1 gets special attention here because its something that can't physically be made today without either being censored ever worse than it already was back in 2006, or being region-locked entirely with Western journalists flooding in to slander Yoko Taro and his fans as "incel super diddys" or something. Drakengard 1 is one of the first grimdark stories I've experienced - even if vicariously through a series of essay videos - but I still hold it in high regard for how unapologeticlly twisted it is. Don't expect a remake for it or the other Draken games.
I was disappointed to the core to hear that Reincarnation would be another Gacha after getting burnout from SINoAlice (I was a Gretel main) but BluffMeister's longplays are enough, you don't need to have played them either. I honestly think that Nier Reincarnation could be the last game in the franchise, given all the loose ends it tied into as shapely of a bow as it could before it's closure. It even referenced the termination of SINoAlice as a plot point.
To end my ramble, I've seen some others in the comments deride you for not having played the older games but don't listen to them. Liam, Clemps, and I all contest that Cavia couldn't make a good game to save their company. It's Yoko Taro's stories that carried them and the DrakeNier superfans at Platinum deserve an award for playing them in the first place, having created Automata as a love letter. You really shouldn't be expected to purchase or play them, Hell I didn't either.
I just gotta pick up the SINoAlice manga someday.
I really wish that this guy would stop pretending that Automata is the only game Taro is known for. The Drakengard series still exists and its a good example of his writing style.
As a fan of both Drakengard 1 and the first Nier, it's not like Automata was his only good game ever, I think Yoko Taro still has it in him.
I wonder though if this path he took was because of being afraid of the expectations people have after Automata's insane success. He also quite frequently talks about how he doesn't think Automata is that good, might be part of that. It's a very real fear especially in japanese culture. There have been multiple other japanese developers who tried new projects and "failed" like Koji Igarashi and Keiji Inafune, even Shinji Mikami to some extent. It puts into perspective how amazing someone like Hidetaka Miyazaki is, dude pumped out like 5 great games, some regarded as masterpieces, in the span of basically 10 years.
Maybe Taro is procrastinating because he doesn't think he can do it again, well, I don't even know if the decision is up to him really. SE will probably just force another Nier out when they feel like they need the money.
What is crazy about Miyazaki is even he says he hasnt created his ideal game yet even after elden ring. Dude has a lot more in store in the future and is crazy to think he is still creative and with such excitement and determination after all these years.
Echoing everyone elses thoughts that you should play his older games (especially Replicant), and that calling him a hollow shell is very silly.
But also, throughout the video you talk like yoko taro is making the entire game, and these arent giant teams hes just a leader of. Its always a silly way to talk about games, and youre definitely falling victim to it here.
Your video's are usually excellent, so i hope this video just ends up being an exception to that.
Whilst I admit that the newer stuff made by Yoko Taro isn't that impressive, I also have to admit that fans of Automata may be getting their hopes up over a man who admittedly struck it lucky with Automata's success. And I say this less as a way to criticise Taro, but rather the fanbase.
As someone who was introduced to him through Nier Gestalt when I was 10, I love his characters, story telling and brutal world building. Almost everything about the game called out to me and made me grab the case off the shelf and beg mum to buy it. It's these same reasons I like most of his games before Nier too.
However, I don't think fans of Automata are of a similar cloth. Fans of Automata aren't necessarily fans of Yoko Taro and that's fine, because Automata was a masterclass in gaming. If people really just wanted more Yoko Taro, they'd be able to play backwards through previous titles and experience more of his creativity, but hardly anyone can even stand to play Nier replicant, despite it being extremely close to the style of Automata and with an updated combat system to mirror it.
I think the combat is part of it. I have played the Nier Replicant but cant play continously after the first ending (second ending is basically the same as the first with even more heartbreaking shadow story. Idk happened to me too after Nier Automata, probably it's just hard for me to play after credits). It's just the combat doesnt feel the oomph. Getting every weapon for new story ending is just crazy
As someone who played 404 Game Reset the entire time of the game's run. It had so many non Sega IPs in it from the very start, with big collabs within the first half a year. That is where i am thinking the game had the budget issues since they had to collab with SNK, Capcom, Taito, Bandai Namco for the events let alone for the non Sega games that were just part of the main story. At least they let us keep the game's data that we experienced on our phones in full as long as we had it unlocked. By the time the game ended service they were also starting the localization process which honestly is the real sad part, since the game in the final chapter showed that the dev team were sad it was ending so soon.
i think it's worth noting that in this day and age, it's next to impossible to launch a gacha game and have it last longer than a couple of years, even if it's based around a popular, pre-existing franchise. the quality of the game itself doesn't always have anything to do with it, and in my experience i've found that it rarely does. it's extremely rare for a new gacha game to find success unless it's something like mihoyo's genshin impact and honkai star rail. unless you launched your gacha game in the early to mid 2010s and have already found tons of success, your game will announce end of service within a few years (if it's lucky).
sinoalice i feel was just too far gone and no amount of rebalancing and patches could have fixed its p2w issues, but you have square enix to thank for that. sinoalice was running when square enix hit peak greed and suffered the consequences for it. nier reincarnation i can't speak on because i never got to play it since my phone couldn't handle it, but it launched when square enix was in peak greed so i'm sure that also played a part in it. i've never played or even heard of 404 game reset but i think the concept and gameplay is a bit too outlandish so i'm not surprised it ended service so quickly.
regardless, companies just don't want to put in the effort to build up a playerbase anymore. they always expect immediate success and returns, and if they don't get that, they deem the game a failure, shut it down, and move on to the next one without even really giving that last game a chance, rinse and repeat. this is just the state of the overall games industry right now. of course this isn't to say that all those games were even good, but they weren't ever given the chance to _become_ good.
also, the game that put yoko taro on the radar for me was in fact not nier automata, but the game automata is a sequel to: nier gestalt on the ps3. i played it and loved it _before_ automata was announced, even.
Played sinoalice religiously when it released on global. Was drawn to the concept of twisted fairy tale characters and the overall aesthetic and character designs. Can vouch for how the guild/arena fights were tied to how much classes you've unlocked and max'd since they contributed to the overall character stats making ot heavily p2w. It became part of my daily routine to stay up until 10pm for the guild fights even though we were essentially gonna lose...
Guild wars were fun until the game started to remove time slots and becoming overall more p2w with must haves every new banner. Gradually became a chore since there weren't enough gacha currency for f2p to keep with the meta. Guild wars was the only way to acquire tons of gacha currency which only the whales will keep obtaining, leaving f2p helpless.
@weihaolee2937 our rank/grade/bracket had so few active guilds that we were a shoehorn for the grand guild battle/tourney. We got the currency, but by the end of it I mostly went for Snow classes and some Alice classes. The support classes also made or break the guild fights.
I'd forgotten that I'd played SINoAlice. Didn't play for long, but I remember playing it.
This man buries lore in stage plays, live concerts, cds, art books, anime, crossovers, and yes, now defunct gacha. Even his public persona is a performance. I think your appreciation for his art is surface level and should reconsider your perspective. At least play Nier Replicant..😅
I don't think any of this can be pinned on him. It's a lot easier and faster to pitch a mobile game in Japan than a big budget console release that needs to cook for longer. It's definitely harder and longer to do so than when Yoko Taro started working in the games industry.
I think the bad parts of the games that got EOS are mostly fault on the services and companies that made these games p2w/ gacha. Yoko only has power over the story and it’s fundamentally different from him killing the games
nier automata and it's soundtrack get gassed up so much but the one i have 100+ hours on and soundtrack on repeat is replicant. all i kept hearing was "automata this and that" from this video and my eyes just glazed over. i've never played one drakengard game and i know everyone thinks the gameplay is ass but everyone that has played it thinks it's worth it just for the experience of having played it.
YES yes yes thank you. Someone else knows the truth. the song Grandma was how I taught myself to play piano, just obsessing and playing that song over and over. The original Nier OST actually transcends being a game soundtrack and is just straight up excellent music.
Exactly. Automata's OST was really boring to me. Repicant's is an absolute masterpiece without a single miss.
Hearing Nier Automata is 7 years old already is giving me a huge amount of whiplash. I feel like it was only couple months ago when this game was released on the ps4.
The Nier franchise is long overdue for a sequel (no I don’t include reincarnation) that can be played on consoles again. At this rate I’d sooner believe that persona 6 will come out than a proper Nier game.
Reincarnation’s ending ties up NieR as a trilogy, so I don’t think we’ll be getting a NieR 4.
As for Reincarnation, I’d recommend reading through a fan project called Project Birdcage, which preserves the entire main story, most of the non-collab side-content, and even includes tidbits about how the gameplay was like from a seasoned veteran. In terms of total runtime as a VN, it’s about 60 hours.
I think you need to research JUST a little more about yoko
You see he will do anything for money (he literally says that almost every month) and he's chained to square enix (he also says that whenever he can)
As much as i hate when a good videogame or gacha shuts down you gotta understand that 2B exists thanks to yoko taro but square enix can decide what to do with her...
Do think he still a creative genius, but he throws ideas and see what works. I played Voice in the cards, and they are great games. But they feel very indie in nature. And that the thing for YT, his ideas work best as smaller project or aiming at a niche audience. Automata work because he was working with people that can match his madness while working with one of the best action game companies at the time (Platinum games.) So I don't think any of his games were meant to blow up to go mainstream. Hells, I consider Nier A to just be perfect strike of lightning when that game blew up. He makes niche games and that his strength. I don't think he should aim to make big titles as that not his strength. Niche projects with reasonable budget will get you your best Yoko Taro out of Yoko taro.
the ultimate goal yoko taro wants to achieve is drinking beer all day. it's that simple. everything else is a bonus/side track, be it good or not.
tbh nier automata is still the best game among his involvements in games. nier replicant ver 1.22 is second best (i think the way it's polished as a remake is the best approach that every other remake should do the same). i didn't play the older games like DOD so i can't comment on them. i don't particularly like those gachas tho i've played them. i think gachas in general doesn't fit well with yoko. if only those gachas were actually single-player console/pc games would they thrive. like you said, excellent concepts but poor execution (the fact that they are gachas already ruined the concepts and hypes in the first place)
then again, the nier automata anime is one of those anime adaptations of games. can't be more shittier. the interview about rejecting the seggs scene in the anime is more like a yoko's joke/troll to me
all in all, i think yoko has achieved his peak career in the form of nier automata and he can comfortably "retire" from game production (at least) and his legacy in nier automata will surely still survive for another 10 years, that he doesn't need to create new things, only to eventually ruin his reputation, besides occasionally writing plots on mangas and stuff
Nier Automata's influence is only felt in the grander scheme of video games cause of 2B lmao
Yeah, pretty much
She's appeared in more collabs than her own series
In regards to name, probably was Automata, but even back in the day I was aware of the titles that preceded it - like Drakengard 3 and Nier Gestalt (the Xbox version with Papa Nier). I feel with every entry that this man gets involved with, I'm only more fascinated with "why make it a Gacha?" rather than a stand alone game that you can purchase until copies no longer exist?
Maybe it's naive of me, but I feel like blaming more Square or Sega for the blunders because those guys, despite having good content, have shown a track record of fumbling the ball on projects either because they aren't profitable, or because they believe the name alone will be enough to push the fabled 6 Billion Units they wish to ship.
Other than that, these games did seem like fun or interesting - especially the one with the Sega IPs, which I probably would have loved to try out - it's just a shame it never made it to the West.
Unironically? I actually knew about him through the original Drakengard. I fell into the original NieR and fell in love with it.
I heard about him from the first release of Nier. back in 2010-2011. The biggest thing that drew me in was the fact that it was a rated "M" Square Enix game, which we all know, seldom happens. So I had no idea what I was getting into when I first dove into it. Yes, there was the stereotypical JRPG fetch quests, but when I actually explored the plains area outside the maid city? I was drawn in and captivated by the soundtrack. There were times when I didn't even play the game and just listened to the soundtrack as it played. Then I got to the story. I was instantly drawn into it, and Kaine? I didn't know someone could curse that much and still be attractive, but holy fuck, she pulled it off.
Grimoire Weiss, Kaine, Emil, (Love that kid) and the MC, (I named him after myself) I love all those characters. AND THE ENDING. I was sad that I had to do that to get the true ending, just like with Nier Automata, but I'll do it every single time, because those characters mean that much to me.
I will DIE on this hill. Yoko Taro has created my favorite game franchise, with only Metal gear Solid being a VERY close second.
404 GR getting gadooshed still upset me till this day,it got so much potential man...
It was Drakengard 3 for me! Drakengard3 is technically a prequel for Nier and I wish there were more dragon riding games in general.
There's a SinoAlice manga...
Reincarnation’s final arc was pretty great. I just wish there was an online version for others to play :(
honeslty i feel like neir reicarnation was good but i felt the same it killed it a bit for me cuz the combat wasnt really engaging to me, and also its a GACHA.
a gacha doesnt make this game justice, i wished it was single player like nier automata
i agree its sad when a live service game goes eos cuz u can never play it and u only get to experience once, and sometimes private servers dont exist for said games cuz sometimes its not popular enough.
I picked up Nier: ReIncarnation as soon as I saw the trailers. I enjoyed Automata and Replicant, so I was excited to see its story. The music was phenomenal! The monster designs were bottom of the barrel boring. And the overall story was fine. With the knowledge of his previous game's multiple endings and story continuations, I kept playing because I was intrigued by where Yoko Taro could take the story. I was disappointed that upon launch, when I found out that the game only didn't even have the first half of Flo's main story. Most of the game's side stories were interesting to me and kept me engaged. I stuck around until the final part of Flo & Monster's story was released but dropped the game after that.
The gameplay, however, was what really lost me. Auto-battlers can be kinda fun with team building or mid-game strategies. ReIncarnation, as you noted, was literally hit GO and hope your numbers were bigger than the enemies. You could manually activate abilities and ultimates, but that was truly the only interction you had. And I can't overstate just how grindy the game was! Battle rewards came in a trickle, so at higher levels, I had to let my phone run for hours on the same mission to get enough resources to level up just one character or get enough currency for an event shop. That's not even mentioning getting the resources to level up their gear too. It didn't help that all the in-game events were too small, their stories didn't add anything to the overall narrative, they never lasted long enough, and had terrible rewards compared to event shop prices. And don't get me started on healing. At launch there were like, 2 characters out of the whole game's roster who could actually heal (more were added later in limited event banners), and you could only get one of them via the Gacha.
Let's not forget the gacha. The characters you pulled for were either reskins of the current characters with different elemental affinities, or a Nier tie-in character. Weapons and equipment were their own separate banners too.
It's an odd feeling I have for the game. On one hand, it was a canonical continuation to the Nier series with some cool narrative elements and ideas that I enjoyed. On the other hand, it was a boring, grindy mobile game. In short, if you're really interested in the game, just watch a story recap video. You really weren't missing out on the gameplay.
Games don't have to be "fun", nor do movies, or books, or music, in order to be engaging, to have meaning worth offering your time to.
Side note, SinoAlice also deserves criticism for making Hansel & Gretel into an offensive DID stereotype.
Nah. Gretel is a beautifully written character and it's heavily implied that Hansel is just fabricating the gretel personality to escape responsibility for killing his sister.
I think you would have a different opinion of yoko if you looked into the drakenier verse a bit deeper. I understand that your channel is mostly gacha talk and I enjoy your content a lot but I can’t help but think that you’re kinda looking at the sky from the bottom of the well with just the gacha and nier automata. SQEX def has more money and gameplay power over yoko and it feels like you’re shooting the messenger for trying to deliver stories. Of course nier is the first game that pushed him to fame but bc of how good it was it pushed me to look into replicant and drakengard lore which I think you would change your opinion
Also we missed out in the gacha but also yoko made an theatrical nier lore expansion so like he just really likes to experiment with different ways to present his stories and art
These game ideas are really interesting! I wish I could have played these games fully when they were live service.
Nier Automata was a Perfect combination of Good Director with a Good team.
Yoko Taro for story & Platinum games for gameplay these were the perfect pieces to making a good game.
Just like how it was with Metal Gear rising.
Tho with that game it was more 5% Hideo Kojima and 95% platinum games, but not many people knows this.
In my opinion Yoko Taro has the vision but he needs the correct team to make that vision a reality.
Hes good at making and writing stories but not at making video games.
If there ever was a combination That I would love/wish to see is Yoko Taro and Capcom RE team Or DMC now that would be a game I would want to see.
With MGR, it was more the team behind it (they were big MG fans), Kojima just gave the okay
As a Nier Reincarnation gal I wish it will come back as an offline game every day cause it's such a good game and had a lot of lore about the Nier world not to mention 10H TvT and FREAKING ACCORD WAS IN IT TOO and a lot more serious please SE please release it as an main game
The battle part could be improved (if they made it brawler im sure it would have been more enjoyable) story and characters like so good and they lovable, the side stories also were very interesting it gives like some clues about before replicant and automata too, soundtrack was freaking great! Still waiting for SE to release PEOPLE AND THE WORLD 2 OST! the map and design of the world and wapons and the costume variety are hella good, also no to mention I LOVE PICTURE MODE TVT Reincarnation will always be special to me!
Also I WANT THE ART BOOK SO FREAKING BAD
3 years ago is crazy
As someone who had the pleasure of playing 404 Game Reset it was a very good game and I’d do anything to play it again the Gacha was pretty stingy but honestly I didn’t mind it because I got at a good spot before EOS with the lower rarity characters I have.
Sinoalice is still stood out as one of my best gacha experiences, not because it was good, but because it was so easy to fall apart as a guild in global. You struggle with the content without whales helping out, you merge with other guilds because there weren't enough newbies, you do all things just to survive desperately. I played the game 3 years right from release and loved the family I made there. Though I think it was a game was designed to fall apart one day given how they handled the ending. No gacha games will make me experience the same thing ever.
I know Yoko Taro from the Drakengard 1 walkthrough (as I don't have console), it wasn't really 2B that attract players back then than you think, it was his vision of games, the deranged fantasy shake up the definition of fantasy games. That was what won the hearts of many fans,... ever since Drakengard.
A SINoALICE fan here
Im fan of the game since it's JP release, i have waited for the en release and got really excited when it came.
I played it for the story and music only but found myself in the daily hell of guild war.
Long story short, the game is fuking awful for F2P, the story difficulty spikes stupidly, the gatcha rate is not good, and the guild war is P2W demolishing F2P...
Im very sad that the story and the visual with the great music turned into this miss.
SinoAlice PVP was some of the funniest stuff I ever saw. RIP that funny game
Jokes on you, my first was drakengard 3!
The only real difference between dod/replicant and nier automata is polish. Taro's previous game are unpolished as heck while automata is a complete package.
That's why automata became an icon when the others did not. This is especially true for replicant which genuinely has a better story and characters than automata, that's not a very a controversial opinion btw. The yoko taro fandom agree replicant's writing is absolutely legendary.
My first Taro game actually was Gestalt back on the 360. It was an incredibly profound experience that Automata didn't quite match for me. Then i later found out the drakengard game my friend from high school had on ps2 was from Taro as well.
Taro does not need to be making gachas, it's the companies wasting his creative abilities thinking it will make easy money. His gachas are all dead and had horrible monetization but they also had incredible stories, lore and world building which is what Taro does.
He is an artist in an industry where artists are being shoved aside in favor of profits. If his next game is a full scale release then i think there's a lot to look forward too.
Brother, I have been playing this games since way before you even imagined Yoko Taro existed, and to be frank, this whole video would do much better if actual research was involved. Didn't you ever give some thought as to WHY Yoko ended up at Square even though Nier Gestalt was a commercial failure? Well, I will tell you why: Square knew he was a creative genius but the technical part of his games needed work and funding. He says in Grimoire Nier that the reason the book was made to finish the story was because he had no money left to put the rest of the story in the game.
Yoko is a creative DIRECTOR. His job is to CREAT STORIES AND DIRECT THEM, not make gameplay. You yourself said all these games have good ideas but bad gameplay and the gameplay was by third parties - that is true for Automata as well. The reason that game has such refined gameplay has nothing to do with Yoko Taro, but with Platinum Games, the legendary studio behind Bayonetta that Square hired for this purpose.
Also, Yoko Taro didn't make 2B - Akihiko Yoshida did. He is a fantastic artist working under Square's wing for decades. Yoko Taro doesn't know how to hold a pencil and most certainly could not make such an iconic design by himself.
This might be a hot take but Nier: Gestalt (i.e. Replicant in JP or the remake) is better than Automata in many ways. Automata is one of the best games ever made imo but the original Nier surpassed it in many ways. I remember when I started that game, I sat by the fountain in town and just sat there for 10 minutes, listening to the song playing (Song of the Ancients, Devola). The music is FANTASTIC - I really can’t overstate how good it is. It's the OST I have listened to the most over the years, and it isn't even close. Unfortunately, the music was slightly changed in the Replicant remake and is a downgrade (another hot take I'm sure). They tried to make it more like Automata in some places and it just didnt need those changes.
I also think the story was stronger (if anyone reads this they are going to hate me). Seriously I love Automata but there was a weight to the story in the original game that is just not matched. I won’t spoil things but the second play through is just an experience you can’t find elsewhere, and I was emotionally destroyed with some of those bosses like the wolf boss. The only thing Automata does better is the seamless variety in gameplay, and of course the gameplay itself. Automata was just a phenomenal action game with captivating and addicting gameplay/game systems.
Really I can’t praise Automata enough but there are plenty of people to do that. The original Nier, though, is too slept on and I think more people need to play it.
e: never forget papa Nier
13:30 Touhou Gensou Eclipse tried that. Helps that it's made by CAVE.
The problem is that it counts as an IP Gacha Game. Made by the same guys who made Gomaotsu.
19:00 Funny as you said that, but I was exposed to his name with Drakengard 3. And I freaking love Drakengard 3, and the music! I'd choose Zero over 2B any day.
I liked nier reincarnation but unfortunately i didnt finished the story, you see the story was releasing in chapters, when the game released there was just chapter 1, I played it to the end and then deleted the game becasue there was no more story at the time, then forgot about it, when I remembered about it it was already shut down =/ I didnt had much trouble playing trought it, you know because of the gacha and all, it was fine, also in the battle I was expecting like a turn based or brawler, not an auto battle, but it was fine in my opinion, the visuals of the battle were pretty cool, so sad i couldnt complete it, at least there is a really cool video on youtube explaining the story, that is really cool btw, if you like the nier universe I recommend you watch it
To be honest, I was very fascinated on the stories of the stuff he worked on. Sadly, I didn't play a lot of said titles because 1.) I am poor, and 2.) some of the gameplay of some of this games didn't click with me or I don't have much time to play it, due to how poor I am that I need to work most of the time, that I feel like I can't focus on it.
I miss SinoAlice. Was hooked for a good few weeks before I had to switch phones and was locked out of my account because it didn't use Google Play or FB logins. I don't know why gacha titles like that still exist..
I think it's fair to say Yoko stated early that Nier Reincarnation would not be going forever. I do not have the link because it's been way over 3 years since I read about this and, yeah he was in it for the money but Reincarnation was also about the short stuff he wanted to try out.
He is quite straightforward about it as you said, he knows he'll not get in trouble and he pushes that way past it's limits and yet people will still look for him.
I think it's a shame that people can't experience some stuff on their own time, but you miss a lot of things in life, and that may be why the clown loves to "ruin stuff" early.
I don't see him stopping that any time soon, as he's probably unburdened by any guilt, the way I see.
I'm a fan of the sinoalice but just never liked the gameplay itself so I didn't play much but I had friends ho I talk about its lore when we were still always free way back 2022, never knew it had a movie that just showed this year and it looks awesome. Thanks for making this video and sharing your resources and glad i can watch the movie 😍
I played reincarnation from start to termination. Still have that OST as well. Quite a few interesting stories
Honestly I accepted that yoko taro would never create something as significant as nier automata when he told the the creator of stellar blade that that was the game he wanted to actually make
Thanks for making these videos. I really enjoy them.
I miss sinoalice so much. its got so much of my high school memories. i remember palying the guild war after dinner every day and getting my ass kicked. it was fun.
My first Yoko Taro games was the PS3 Nier, then Drakengard 3 because of the awesome JP trailer, then went back to play Drag-on Dragoon 1 & 2, then Automata.
After player a few of his game I have a strong belief that he just got lucky with Nier Automata, Drakengard 1 was OK but 2 was "eh" and 3 was dog shit other than the characters. I haven't played Replicant but Gestalt was also a "meh".
The word I'd describe his work is... too ambitious.
My first game of his is the jank fest that is Nier Replicant on the 360, later on Drakenguards 3 and then Automata. Although I do agree that Automata is his most well know works, To me his one of those game creator that managed to make overal very good game but then manage to add sth that bothers me so much that its made me like the game less in the end. I like Automata, it a good game, but the entire 9S segment is super tedious that to me prevent it from being a great game.
My answer to the question of what put Yoko Taro on the radar for me is weird since my first taste of Yoko Taro was watching the dragon pissing scene of Drakengard on youtube. Still hilarious.
I played Nier Automata like 6 years ago and even then I felt like people glazed it too hard. Story and themes are good, but not the best I seen and 9s playtrough was pain. 8/10 game for me. Really good, but not a masterpiece
Super dismissive over Nier Reincarnations. If you played the game you could tell that the game wasnt made to make a whole lot of money, instead it was used as a vehicle to tell a lot of stories, brilliant stories with a ton of depth. This whole video seems poorly researched and its a damn shame since I was starting to get into your videos.
While the game had a lot of flaws, you could tell the team behind it wasnt in it for the money. If they wanted to make money off it there were a lot of methods they could have done. Also just glaringly ignoring Yoko Taro's other works and even Replicant that came out not too long ago was very strange.
I see it more as being dragged down by corporate greed. You could spend years coming up with a deep PC/console singleplayer game... or you can make a gacha for phones on 5 months and get like 10x the money. No "prophet" can resist that offer.
He only made the concept. He had little control over the gacha games because he didn't own the IPs. Same reason why 2B is almost everywhere now.
I understand your point of view with Yoko Taro. My only question is don't you think square enix has already been asking for a profitable game.
I've told many people this, when it comes to Nier Reincarnation, I have always seen that game more of an overglorified visual novel than an actual game and when I treaded it as such I had a much better time.
I feel like he just failed to transition somewhat. With gachas having as a necessary step "catch the most people you can" it clashes with what he usually does imo.
Limbus Company is an interesting comparison imo, as Project Moon also made quite weird games. Lobotomy Corporation is nothing but sheer masochism "thats part of the ludonarrative". I dont even want to begin talking about Ruinas gameplay as the dice still haunt me.
They *somehow* managed to stay rather true to themselves with a pooular gacha, and all that with the horrible mismamagement from inexperience.
I do think yoko taro has potential, but he might not have found the best way yet.
imagine telling a creative person what to create. "no no don't make another Drakengard that game is for weirdos, make another Nier Automata because everyone loved it and its the only thing you'll be known for."
if you are a fan of someone you don't disrespect him by demanding him to play the hits.
SinoAlice got my attention back way back after they launched in JP. Global launch, it good for some while, but after you realize it, this game is heavily rely on “Guild” and “PvP” content. it gives single player hard time to get resources and even Gem (currency) to do gacha.
*Mobile Game should be fun both Single Player and Multiplayer if player desire to do so. But dont gatekeeping out between them.
Nobody denied that these games have great concept, and storytelling. But how handle it as Gacha game are, disappointed and unfortunate.
Nier Reincarnate, I heard lot of good thing about it story. But I play 3 gacha games I dont want another in my life. It’s sad to see it’s gone, with good story with it.
Nier: automata release 7 years ago just reminding me how time fly and how I should get my ass a job
A lot of people praise Nier's OST without knowing it was made by a pretty common anime OST studio, it's not unique to Nier or Square or Taro. Doesn't mean it's not super good of course
I remember playing sinoalice, it was super p2w but guild vs guild live battle was so fun in discord vc every night
Yoko Taro is always up front too he likes money. So it's not weird he want to make mobages, and I feel like it's a bit delulu to think his only way forward will be he's making another Automata, not when currently no studio want to pay him for it, and he himself see no need to.
Not saying it means his mobages are faultless, like, Sinoalice was a P2W mess, and none of his games actually got promotions they need, just saying if he's going to make another mobage, who are we to judge.
And, in a way, you can't really argue he didn't always put his whole ass in these games (from concept/design side). From Sinoalice to Reset, his stupid goofy weird charm is always in there in presentation, and that's merit in of itself.
Yoko taro is definitely better as a writer rather than a game director. His games often have great concepts but poor execution. Sinoalice wouldve worked much better with traditional action rpg combat while still keeping the dark lore.
I definitely look at it more like Mr Yoko taro had the ideas and concept just 1 Tiny problem
Making it to live service/gacha game, which unless you either make it japan only that make the game somewhat live longer or have a dev/team that have good experience on making one and can keep up with Yoko taro experimental nature on making weird game
But since i see him just accepting every single Collab request now he look more like someone who throwing ideas without knowing whether it'll stick and gather audience or completely missed for the sake of being weird
He loves money and he's been pretty upfront about that