Re[in]carnation is the story of a young girl who awakens to find herself in a massive tower known as “The Cage.” Unable to speak and without any idea of who she is or how she arrived there, she encounters Mama—a creature that looks like a ghost under a sheet… though one will two creepily long tentacle arms that slither out from time to time. From Mama, the girl learns that if she gathers the memories stored in the weapons held by the “scarecrows” spread across the many floors of the cage, she will get her own back as well.
To obtain these memories, she must first enter them and experience the past held within. But that’s the easy part. Each of these memories has been corrupted by a haunting darkness that warps the story and brings it to an untimely end. To prevent this, the girl commands the souls of those whose memories she has collected—having them battle the darkness in her stead and cleanse the memory from within. This done, the girl is able to collect the memories within herself and proceed through The Cage.
Within this framework, numerous narratives are woven together. Each floor of the tower contains another person’s fragmented memories. Some have a medieval setting. Others are more science fiction in nature. Many of the characters cross paths—appearing in each other’s stories. And outside of each independent tale is the girl’s story tying them all together. But, as you’ve probably come to expect from past NeiR games, there is far more going on than meets the eye.
In general, gameplay exists across three levels. On the outer level is the girl and Mama, running around and exploring the ruined temple in full 3D. The second layer is that of the memories, a 2D side-scroller with an art style using only solid colors and little detail.
The final layer is comprised of the battles against the memory-corrupting darkness. In these, the player does little beyond choosing when their three characters use their special attacks—as they attack normally on their own as well. In fact, as is somewhat normal for mobile games of this type, you can just set everything to auto and go do something else while losing very little combat power. That said there is a fair amount of customization that radically alters your strength in battle.
To put it another way, there are a ton of different ways to strengthen your characters. The most obvious is their weapons. Each character can equip three weapons. The main weapon alters which skills can be used in battle as well as which magical element (water, wind, fire, dark, and light) the character is strong and weak against. The other two weapons simply boost a character’s stats.
Next, each character can equip a familiar to aid them in battle. Each has their own special attack corresponding to one of the five elements. Beyond that, each character can equip three memories. These memories can be paired with others from the same person to grant special bonuses in addition to their normal stat boosts. And if all that wasn’t enough, you can simply level up each characters’ base stats through battle and items and level up their individual skills.
Of course, as is par for the course for games like these, you can also gain items through battle and the various in-game stores, that allow you to raise the max level of any and all of the above.
One good thing about the game is that it doesn’t through all this at you in one big chunk. Instead, each different way of powering up your characters is a reward for getting past some notable point in the story. Along the way, you also unlock extras like side quests, a free daily gatcha, and a bullet hell shooter that grants a ton of player exp—and which often levels you up and gives you a ton of stamina so you can keep playing.
All in all, it only took me three days of playing to reach the current end of the story. At the moment, there is about an arc and a half to experience (8 floors of The Cage). You reach your first big climax—watch as everything you know is overturned—and then do about half again as much within the new status quo.
Honestly, I greatly enjoyed the plot—both the memories and the story of the little girl. It is exactly what I expected and wanted from a NeiR game. I don’t feel cheated at where it left off—but can’t wait for more story to be added to the game. In the meantime, my characters are far from max level and there are hard modes (and very hard modes) for almost every mission giving me plenty to do while I wait.
I should also mention that, while the game does have a gatcha system, I am playing it completely free to play. Without having paid a cent—just by doing the story/sub quests/events—I have gathered enough gatcha gems to draw from it over 400 times. This has granted me more than a dozen super rare characters/weapons and thrice as many rare ones.
But make no mistake, you don’t need super rare characters to progress with the story. Their base stats just grow a bit faster (like 2 or 3 levels faster than their more common counterparts) and have a higher max level to start. Difficulty-wise, there’s currently no reason you couldn’t easily clear the story with common rarity characters and weapons—it just might take a bit more time and grinding. (And with special versions of NeiR:Automata’s 2B, A2, and 9S in the gatcha there’s really no excuse for not drawing from it as often as possible.)
All in all, how much you’ll enjoy NieR Re[in]carnation is completely based on how much you like NeiR and/or Yoko Taro’s storytelling. The gameplay, while it works well enough, is basic at best. And while it gives you tons of stuff to do, it’s all time-wasting (and addictive) grinding.
Going forward, I expect to get at least one team of my characters to the level cap—along with a set of elemental weapons for each. Once that happens, I’ll probably stop the daily grind and move on to something else. However, make no mistake: the moment the next story chapter is released, you can bet I’ll be back for more.
NieR Re[in]carnation was released for iOS and Android in Japan on February 18, 2021. Word of an international release is currently pending.
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