This game is the reason why a guy [the legendary u/-YoRHa2B-] started working on dxvk, to make this game compatible on linux after it released. Valve hired him and made Proton out of it. The result is the Steam Deck, this remains one of the best games for the SD.
I guess I’ll be the token naysayer and say that this game was pretty disappointing. The combat is… fine. Nothing special. The story is also unexceptional. There is a twist that flirts with greatness, but they pretty much just throw it away in favor of something more generic. And, without spoiling: there is an infamous long section that is extremely repetitive, and the payoff is not at all worth it. Most people disagree with me on that, so your mileage may vary. People also like to talk about how philosophical the game is, but aside from certain characters being named after famous philosophers, there’s not really much to grapple with. The flirty plot twist I mentioned could have been leveraged for some great introspection, but… just isn’t.
All that being said, the game is still fine, just unremarkable. Honestly, if the primary protagonist wasn’t a babe in a cute dress, I don’t think anybody would have given N:A a second glance.
Did you play past ending A?
I get where you’re coming from, but I think it tried some really interesting stuff. The way it mixed genres, seamlessly transitioning from hack and slash to bullet hell during different scenes for one thing.
Other things that come to mind:
-The soundtrack with it’s strange, ancient sounding vocals
-Just generally how odd and mysterious everything is - it felt like it tried something different during a time when a lot of games were becoming quite samey.
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Making the player question their choices on subsequent playthroughs. How ‘meta’ it was (obviously I have to mention the credits)
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The way the story doesn’t pull its punches. And the general nihilism of everything - the machine children dying comes to mind, and the two girls programmed to feel endless guilt
The whole package just stuck in my mind more so than any other game of that time.