NieR:Automata™ Androids, machines and a story that keeps unfolding

You fight through hordes and bosses with light and heavy attacks, switching weapons mid-combo and dodging clear at speed. Your Pod hovers alongside, firing on manual aim or lock-on, and it can lift you into a glide outside combat. You level up, pick up new weapon types and combat skills, and tune chips and loadouts toward your habits. Controls stay tight and readable for newcomers, with room to push speed and style once you learn the timing. Auto Mode can handle attacks and evasions if you want to focus on the road ahead.

Humanity has fled, and android soldiers were sent back to destroy the invaders from another world. What you find is a machine-driven dystopia: flooded streets, deserted cities, forests growing through concrete, rendered with no loading between areas. The map holds the main war plus a wealth of small sub-events, notes, and strange machine settlements. You cross open fields between objectives, pick up side work, and piece together a long-forgotten truth about who built whom, and why the fighting never stops.

You follow 2B, 9S and A2 through the same collapsing conflict from different angles, with the story continuing past what looks like an ending. Missions shift between close combat, shooting with Pod support, and bullet-hell patterns where the screen fills and positioning matters more than force. The tone is dark and mournful rather than heroic, and the plot turns on memory backups, orders from a distant humanity, and machines that imitate feeling. Let it run its course; it makes more sense the further you go.

The soundtrack is a highlight, moving from soft vocals in empty cities to sharper themes in boss fights. You hear it change as you move across ruins, desert, and machine villages, and it marks story turns without spelling them out. Combat stays fluid throughout, with new Pod attack methods and upgrades to find. Side events add texture rather than noise: odd requests, lost records, machines trying out ideas like family, fear, or faith. It is a strange, sad place, and the score keeps you company in it.