Theres a Way to Save Kaine but Theres No Easy Price

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/Nier

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• Adorkable: After he gets more comfortable with both Nier and Kainé, Emil is downright endearing. Of note is how excited he gets at the prospect of romance while the rest of the party is groaning over it.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is Nier a good dad/brother? He travels to hell and back searching for a way to save Yonah's life, but in doing so he spends so much time away from home that it borders on Parental Abandonment. It's achingly clear that Nier's absence hurts Yonah far more than her illness, but at the same time he needs funds and medicine to help her, so if he remains home, there are risks that could arise.
  • Whether the protagonist (both versions) is good or not, seeing that he ultimately has a hand in subjecting humanity to extinction just to save his family. On one hand, he was genuinely doing what he thought was right based on the information he had, and was never even told the truth about the Shades until it was far too late to back down. On the other hand, he also showed a clear propensity towards dehumanizing his enemies and insisted on killing Shades even when they showed signs of rational thought or didn't fight back. See the entry for Applicability below.
  • Nier's deceased wife/mother. Her diary entries heavily imply that she knows what happened to the world, what Shades actually are and the details of Project Gestalt. But did she know this as a result of the Black Scrawl or was there something else going on with her?
  • Popola and Devola. Are they morons who could have solved everything in act one by just saying "merge the two grimoires and it will permanently cure the black scrawl?", or alternatively, could have walked into the castle alongside the heroes, translating for the sane gestalts to have a negotiation with the Shadowlord? Or, are they second-law-compliant and are under absurd orders that prevent them from any of the simple solutions?
• Americans Hate Tingle: While Brother Nier from Replicant version isn't exactly hated, western fans vastly prefer Father Nier from Gestalt version (which was the only version of the original game released in the west) over him, with a lot of people being disappointed that only Replicant received a remake.
• Angst Aversion: The bleak and oppressive atmosphere is a major turn-off for a lot of gamers, which may explain the game's poor commercial performance in the West.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: Weiss becomes somewhat annoying during some parts of the game, such as the final phase of the battle against Wendy where he might keep repeating the same thing over and over again: he also tends to get annoying during the mandatory part of the fishing minigame by repeating the same hint over and over again instead of asking whether you're even at the right location, which is an easy mistake to make since there's a beach right next to the person who gives you the fishing equipment which is where most people would try out fishing instead of slavishly staring at the map to follow the destination marker elsewhere, only for them to end up thinking that they suck too much at the mini game to proceed since all the fish found on the beach next to the fisherman are far too strong to be caught right away.
• Applicability:
  • Upon playing the game most players seem to agree that its Central Theme is an exploration of what it means to be human through the lens of various different tropes. According to the game's director Taro Yoko, he thinks that interpretations of the game's narrative are awesome but that he didn't really have any of them in mind when working on the game.
  • In fact, Taro Yoko, in another interview, explained, at the least, the theme that was in his head. Namely, "Is it right to kill for Justice?" Followed by, "What is Justice?"... as he was inspired by post 9/11 attitudes.
• Ass Pull: Tyrann's way of saving Kainé in ending D straight up comes out of no where. Somehow he is able to restore and save Kainé if Nier sacrifices his existence which somehow saves her with no issue. It never is explained in any way how or why he can do so. For his part, Yoko Taro admitted as much in an interview, saying it was done (sarcastically) through the The Power of Friendship and The Power of Love.
• Author's Saving Throw: The Replicant remaster took the opportunity to address some flaws with the game beyond the obvious facelift to graphics and combat:
  • The World of Recycled Vessel content, which was paid DLC for the original game, has been added to the base game, meaning that players can access its costumes and rare upgrade materials for free and without having to download anything. It also throws a bone to fans of father Nier, as it's the only place in the remaster where he's playable.
  • While you still have to play the second half of the game at least three times total to see all the endings (and unlock the new Ending E), a few new scenes and changes were added after Ending B to make the replay less dull, such as new conversations between Popola and Devola, a new Emil text segment, and a different outcome for the boss fight in Seafront.
• Awesome Ego: Weiss. He is VERY full of himself but he's so charismatic most people find his arrogance comical or charming as opposed to grating.
• Catharsis Factor: The opportunity to fight and kill Hook, for example. Not only did he kill Kainé's grandma, he used her voice as bait - which contributed to Kainé distrusting Shades altogether, and accelerating the conflict between Gestalts and Replicants until they were all dead. The chance to impale Hook on a pole, and then have the butt-kicking Kainé team up with a memory of Weiss to unleash Rapid-Fire Fisticuffs on his ghost is nothing but sweet payback, especially for how he represents Kainé's guilt, and is key to recovering Nier in Ending E.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Step One: Get the Phoenix Spear. Step Two: Upgrade it. Step Three: Dive-attack everything in the game to death.
  • Even easier, by doing a few sidequests in act 1, you can get the Sunrise spear almost immediately when act 2 starts, and the spear hold-light-attack, is an effective spin attack that will stop almost everything. This means you can beat most of the game walking up and holding the left mouse button until everything dies.
• Cry for the Devil: The Shadowlord's only wish was to live together with Yonah, just the same as Nier. Most of the evil goings-on were the fault of Grimoire Noir or the twins.
• Cult Classic: Has this reputation nowadays. While the gameplay is generally considered bland, its soundtrack and art design are well-liked, and its plot and characters have been well-received for providing something fresh and interesting in the JRPG genre. Averted with the 1.22 remake, where the gameplay gets a substantial upgrade overall, making it a way more beloved game by everyone.
• Designated Hero: It's revealed that Kainé, unlike Nier, is very well aware of fact that Shades are sentient, however she never drops a hint or tries to stop the merciless slaughter. It's revealed that she's trying to convince herself that they aren't human when Tyrann mocks her numerous times for killing innocent souls, and she yells at him to shut up. In her defense, the lizard Shade taunted her by pretending to be her grandma earlier, so she might not trust what the voices says. That, and she does feel some regret for attacking the larger Shades in the first place.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: While some people do enjoy the gameplay, even most fans agree with critics that the gameplay is serviceable at best. Many simply found the original 2010 title to feature substandard and monotonous combat and mission structure. Averted with NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139..., as the remaster overhauled the combat and movement to turn the game into a more enjoyable experience (although the sidequests are as monotonous as they were back then).
• Ensemble Dark Horse: The Lighthouse Lady, remembered fondly for her cantankerous demeanor and being the central character in what's considered one of the few standout sidequests of the game.
• Fan Disservice: The "Lust" track on the drama CD. Shades attack Nier's village, and a casualty is a man Kainé recently completed a Shade-killing job for. Mentally, she's in a horrible place as something is "missing" after Ending D, but prior to Ending E, yet her lust from killing remains unquenched. As a result, she unthinkingly has sex with the man's corpse while the man's horrified sister watches and then runs for help. When she realizes what she's done and flees and encounters a Lunar Tear, she loses it. It's anything but erotic not only due to the necrophilia, but also given how much Kainé is suffering.
• Fanon:
  • A relatively minor one among fans is the idea that both versions of Nier are part of the same family, with Brother Nier being the son of Father Nier, and whichever version you pick is the one who survived and takes care of Yonah now. There is some amount of evidence in the game to this idea as well if you play as Brother Nier; The World of Recycled Vessel, which is written from the perspective of Nier's wife or mother depending on the version, has them transform into the other version while reading it. While Father Nier looks like Brother Nier, and likely did so when he was younger, Brother Nier turning into Father Nier makes more sense if he's turning into his father to read them.
  • That Red Eye is somehow related to Caim, given its Homicidal Maniac tendencies. Word of God has debunked this according to some sources, but it remains a popular theory and accepted part of the community.
• Game-Breaker:
  • The Phoenix Spear. Without upgrades, it is the best combination of speed and raw attack power, and can one-shot most enemies by the time Nier gets enough money to acquire it, making the rest of the game trivially easy.
  • The Beastbain, which is sold by the blacksmith in Nier's village, may count too. It's expensive, but if you save up enough through farming materials to sell or simply being dilligent by doing sidequests (many of which give you a good amount) and get lucky with drop rates, you can get both enough money, and enough items to upgrade it, to make the first part of the game pretty easy.
  • In the remake, the Nier: Automata DLC weapons are this.
• Genius Bonus:
  • Got an intricate knowledge of DNA code and the celestial language? Then you might have picked up on the Black Scrawl and Shades being composed of broken strings of DNA.
  • Those seemingly random numbers for the remake, Ver. 1.22474487139? Actually not so random. They are the square root of 1.5.
• Ho Yay: Emil has very starry-eyed reactions when it comes to Nier, but considering Word of God is that Emil canonically falls in love with him, it's to be expected.
• Idiot Plot:
  • The backstory. Project Gestalt was designed to reunite Shades (the actual humans) with their Replicant selves. However, once that failed thanks to Nier killing the Shadowlord and Grimoires Weiss and Noir dying, it doomed humanity itself. Oddly enough, despite the goal being to preserve mankind, the Hamelin Organization didn't include any backup plans or counter measures in case the project failed. They only hinged on that one plan, and it ended up blowing up in everyone's faces. Though, given it was the post-apocalypse, it's possible they didn't have any resources for backups, as this was the final, desperate plan after everything else had failed.
  • Secondly, most of the game could have been averted if the twins had been open and honest (or even communicative and deceptive) with Nier. Since they could communicate with the shades, simple diplomacy could explain everything, and if they explained that Noir and Weiss merging would cure the black scrawl permanently, Nier would have gone along with the plan without question. Instead, the Shadowlord approached Nier in the middle of battle, nearly killed him, and then tried to forcefully merge the grimoires.
• Iron Woobie: Replicant Nier. Both of his parents died before he was ten, but he forbids himself from mourning them in fear of making Yonah sad. Instead, he focused on earning money doing odd jobs in the village, but when Yonah became sick with the Black Scrawl, he couldn't afford her medicine. Nier eventually had to resort to prostitution to provide this (he developed a phobia of people touching his hair from these experiences, which led to him tying it up), but even then he bears it silently, believing that it's for Yonah's sake. Later on, it's even implied that he killed the sex buyer in a Shade-slaying job. Since this is never mentioned in the actual game, you can't even tell from his general positivity that these things even happened.
• It Was His Sled:
  • The fact that the final ending requires the player to delete their save file is one of the most well-known parts of the game due to the sheer audacity of it. So it's a bit of a shock that Ending E in the remake lets you un-delete your save file.
  • Emil's transformation is this, especially considering that Emil in his No. 6 form has essentially become the series mascot.
  • The game's status as a Stealth Sequel to Drakengard's Ending E.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • The image of Taro Yoko appearing on stage wearing a mask of Emil during the announcement of Automata quickly spread due to the bizarreness of it all.
  • Kainé's profanity-laden tirade that is played every time you boot up the game. It really comes out of nowhere and it's such a bizarre thing to put there, especially without context, but it remains memorable for that very reason.
  • Papa Nier's new model revealed in the Replicant remake pre-order theme, which makes him look younger and more attractive compared to his original appearance, leading to many cries of "OH NO HE'S HOT" and calling him a DILF.
• More Popular Spin Off: A lot of people were not even aware of the game's connection to the Drakengard franchise when they first played it, since the marketing didn't mention it and its references to Drakengard are vague. Even now that this connection is much more well-known, people are far more likely to be familiar with this game and especially its sequel NieR Automata than the original Drakengard games.
• Narm:
  • Nier telling Kainé they're friends after the battle with Hook is supposed to be an emotional moment that allows Kainé to open up. However, the scene is hampered in Gestalt by the age of the protagonist and how he says it, because Father Nier is older and has a deep voice, making the scene look silly compared to the Replicant version where Brother Nier is younger, and it makes sense for him to act the same way.
  • Devola's reaction to meeting Weiss, who she knows the legend behind, is to say "Wow, so cool!" in a mildly excited manner. Its funnier than it was intended to be since it comes across as Devola being only a bit impressed that the supposedly legendary Grimoire Weiss is before her.
  • During the finale of the game, Weiss pulls a Heroic Sacrifice so the Shadowlord can be beaten. The scene is well written, voiced, and is handled perfectly. Then the game cuts back to gameplay with a text prompt saying you've lost your magic powers, only for Weiss to let a large death cry out. The cry is intentionally funny because of how sudden and jarring it is and makes the moment a bit harder to take seriously.
• Narm Charm: Kainé's infamous verbal lashing to Weiss comes during what is otherwise a dramatic moment. However, many have found her Cluster F-Bomb rant so funny, that they feel that it actually makes the scene more enjoyable to watch.
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • Of note are the labyrinth dream in the Forest of Myth, and the paintings in Emil's mansion.
  • A few of the bosses count. No. 6 is especially creepy.
  • The masked woman who turns out to be a Shade in disguise creeping across the desert and toward Façade is a bit chilling.
  • The Knave of Hearts, the giant Shade that attacks Nier's village. It's huge, incredibly strong, and Nigh-Invulnerable, both in gameplay and cutscenes. In cutscenes, ripping its arm off with Dark Hand and bisecting it with Dark Phantasm only slowed it down for a moment. In gameplay, once it starts marching towards the library, it becomes unstoppable. You can destroy the attack gauges on its feet and even empty its health bar, but it will not stop. Even when Nier and Kainé finally topple the beast, it rips its own head off to follow you into the library, and has to be sealed in the basement.
  • If you explore all the rooms in the shipwreck in Seafront, you discover that it was actually a slave trafficking ship. You even discover iron instruments of torture there that were presumably used by the crew on the slaves, much to Weiss and Nier's horror. You also find a diary written by a crew member who details how a monster aka Louise ate all the crew members and how they eventually went mad from the fear and isolation (including pages that were written in their own blood).
  • Popola slowly going berserk with grief and vengeance, upon witnessing her twin sister Devola dying in her arms, is both this and a Tear Jerker. Especially notable when throughout the entire story, Popola was mostly seen as the quieter and more reserved of the two.
• Older Than They Think: Spec Ops: The Line and Nier take the same blowtorch to two game genres that rely on the same paradox - saving people by killing people. Nier pre-dates The Line by two years.
• Pandering to the Base: The existence of the older version of Nier is an example of this that proves that Tropes Are Not Bad. When Square Enix of America executives saw the game, they felt that western players wouldn't be able to take a young boy carrying a giant sword very seriously (at least as the tone of the game required) and asked that the devs create a version of the game with a grown man as the protagonist, leading to there being two versions of Nier (Japan had the original version of Nier on PlayStation 3 and the older Nier on Xbox 360, everyone else had the older Nier regardless of console). It turns out that those executives were right on the money, as the older Nier is beloved by the western fanbase, and some see him as the superior version of the character.
• Player Punch:
  • Can't get much worse than the haymaker that is the forced deletion of ALL your save games you've put 30+ hours into in order to see the ending D, complete with each page of Grimoire Weiss being erased one by one, finishing it off by deleting the save files themselves.
  • Although maybe not as strong a punch, learning what happened in the prologue counts, namely that the Nier we spent the opening ten minutes playing as becomes The Shadowlord, and will spent the next 1,312/1,412 years trying (and failing) to save and reunite with Yonah, only for his Yonah to essentially commit suicide by stepping into bright sunlight, causing him to allow himself to be killed by the Nier we have been playing as for most of the game.
  • Killing each of the Shades despite clearly knowing their tragic backstories. The second boss of the Junk Heap gives quite a shocker on your second playthrough by revealing that the little Shade the boss was guarding was a little kid who's mother just died. And just like before, once the boss is down, the Shade has to be killed to finish the fight. Good luck mustering the strength to continue after that.
  • Ending B goes on to twist the knife just a little bit more by showing all the completely blameless boss shades you pointlessly killed fading out of existence in the afterlife, behind the Shadowlord who totally failed to save them. Well done!
• Polished Port: NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139... improves upon the combat of the original game by taking inspiration from NieR: Automata, making it faster and more fluid, in addition to other quality-of-life improvements and a visual upgrade, while making sure to keep things as close to the original game as possible, averting Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game.
• Porting Disaster: The PC version of the remake on its initial release, much like Automata, had a number of issues. The game had no built-in framerate cap and was built at 60 with the game logic tied to that, meaning people with displays higher than 60hz will have the game running in super speed, requiring an external solution to cap the framerate and have the game play normally. The game also has poor implementation for controllers, meaning some people using them will experience lower framerate, requiring a mod to fix it. Some people also experience white-screen bugs related to running the game fullscreen, meaning the game won't open at all and one needs to mess with config files to get the game to run. A patch was eventually released that addressed some of these issues.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: While Brother Nier was never widely disliked in the west, most of the fanbase preferred Father Nier over him due to the unique aspects his character brought to the game (such as the novelty of playing as a grizzled middle-aged man in a JRPG and the father-daughter dynamic being considered stronger). By contrast, Brother Nier was often criticized for seeming like a much more straightforward JRPG protagonist who doesn't fit the gritty world. After the remaster released, many still prefer Father Nier, but there is now a lot more acknowledgment of the strengths that the brother version brings to the story, with multiple aspects of the game such as the romance with Kainé and the timeskip working much better with him (due to him being the original vision for the game).
• Scrappy Mechanic: Needing to replay the second half of the game multiple times to get the endings past the first one (A). This isn't a huge deal for Ending B as you get many new scenes and information that make the replay worthwhile, but on your third playthrough there isn't any new content until the very end, and only if you have collected all weapons, making it feel very repetitive (and having all weapons when you get to Ending B doesn't stop you needing to replay the second half again afterwards, no matter what). The Replicant remaster improved things slightly by adding a few more new scenes here and there on playthroughs after Ending B, but it still largely remains a slog. It's not uncommon to hear people say they got bored after Ending B and just went to YouTube to watch endings C, D, and E.
• Signature Scene:
  • Ending D, where the player is required to delete all of their save files and any evidence of Nier's own existence to save Kainé.
  • Kainé's Get a Hold of Yourself, Man! speech to help Weiss snap out of being brainwashed by Grimoire Noir, which also serves as the opening monologue to Gestalt's opening movie.
• Speedrun: One particularly bizarre speedrun category in ver.1.22474487139... is called "NG++", which involves playing Route E up until you take control of Kainé, then, exploiting a Good Bad Bug with a specific invisible wall, access a door you aren't supposed to be able to get to in Route E. This causes the game to think you are playing as Nier after the Time Skip, and puts you back on Route A with the main difference being Nier has Kainé's Sword, which you aren't supposed to get until completing Route E and turns Nier into a walking WMD since he is definitely not supposed to be fighting Route A enemies with a 999 Attack weapon.
• Spiritual Adaptation: A number consider this the best video game adaptation of I Am Legend.
• Stoic Woobie: Especially after the time skip, Nier and Kainé are usually too busy killing things to complain about their problems.
• Superlative Dubbing: NieR had a peculiar development cycle where the scripts for the Japanese and English versions of the game were written side-by-side, fundamental translations aside since it IS a Japanese game. This led to a pretty good script, with some pretty cool bouts of Woolseyism. The voices of Jamieson Price, Zach Aguilar, Ray Chase, Liam O'Brien, Laura Bailey, Julie Ann Taylor, and Eden Riegel are all very memorable and bring their characters to life.
• That One Achievement: Forging Master, due to the MASSIVE amount of item farming it requires.
• That One Sidequest:
  • Speaking broadly; any sidequest that involves delivering a "fragile package" tend to be annoying and tedious sidequests. This is because if you roll or get hit, the package instantly breaks and you have to go back and get another copy. As a result, any time you get one, the only real solution is to just run past all enemies and go straight for the target, but in some places this can be difficult to do and requires an understanding of how to get to the target as optimally as possible.
  • The Runaway Son. You have to run about half-way around the world to bring the little bugger back! And then it turns out you were being scammed the whole time. Worse yet, you get no reward for completing it.
  • The Pride of a Lover. It's not a particularly difficult sidequest, once you trigger it. The problem is finding it. It can only be completed before the Time Skip. Devola won't tell you about it. To find it, you have to talk to a man in Seafront with a sidequest icon over his head, leave town, talk to him again, leave town again, and talk to him a third time, and then he'll send you on a Fetch Quest. Without a guide, you'd have to basically go back and forth on a whim just to even guess that he might offer another.
  • Life in the Sands. You have to get 10 pink moonflower seeds. Trouble is you can't find them anywhere, and the only moonflower seeds you can buy are red, gold, and blue. To get pink seeds, you have to hybridize gold and blue moonflower seeds by planting them next to one another to have a small chance to get indigo seeds, then hybridize those with red seeds to get pink seeds. Oh, did I mention that it takes about 36 real-time hours to be able to harvest these seeds unless you screw around with the system clock? And that after all that time, there's no guarantee that you'll get the hybrid seeds? And that the game never even gives you anything resembling the vaguest of hints that you can even hybridize plants to begin with? and that the end result of the seeds is determined when you first plant them to make it impossible to get them easily via Save Scumming?
  • A good number of other less important sidequests also count and some of them seem to be specifically tailored to piss off the player by forcing them to gather a ton of rare items for a ridiculously mundane purpose (such as 10 rare metals just to make a single kitchen knife or 5 sharks for a dish that's ultimately decreed by both the chef and Nier to be better without any), especially considering how much more reasonable the sidequests with actually useful rewards are. Thankfully you don't miss anything by just ignoring them, except for one near the beginning of the game that unlocks the farm, and even that is difficult to miss. Mind you, for 100% of the achievements, you only need to do 50% of the sidequests. They largely seem to exist to taunt obsessive completionists about their percentage being lower than 100%. The banter you get for each one is nice to hear regardless, even though for most of them it's not worth the trouble.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Grimoire Rubrum, especially after reading And Then There Were None from Grimoire Nier. Before her and Weiss became Grimoires, they shared a history, so one would think that it would illicit something of note from the latter (ex. An offhanded comment about Rubrum seeming familiar). And even if people didn't read Grimoire Nier, the fact that there's another magic-wielding book and the revelation that she was created to serve a supporting role to Grimoires Weiss and Noir implies that she would have an interesting role. Instead, she's killed off as quickly as she's introduced and is only mentioned again when investigating her statue in Popola's trophy room.
• True Art Is Angsty: The game was overlooked on the whole, selling poorly in the west and greeted with mixed reviews. However, a few critics and a number of the people in the game's small fanbase consider the game unusually well-written and interesting, not just for a JRPG but as a game in general. It's also easily one of the most depressing and oppressive games in recent memory.
• Unfortunate Implications: The achievement "Daredevil" from the remake Nier Replicant has been criticized as being transphobic as it requires the player character to try to peek into Kainé's genitals, which not only sends the message that intersex and transgender people's bodies are inherently to be ogled at but draws parallels to real-life cases of intersex and transgender people being assaulted, harassed, or even murdered after having their genitals exposed. This is only slightly alleviated by Kainé kicking and then killing the camera (and by extension, the player) as punishment.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • The Shades who want to take the bodies of the Replicants, completely disregarding that these are sentient beings that they would be dooming to an And I Must Scream situation (as seen with the two Yonahs). Although Grimoire Nier explains that aside from the direct members of Gestalt like Noir and the Shadowlord, the other Shades originally took the bodies of consenting Replicants with androids playing mediators. The twins simply found the process too long and less effective than having Weiss and Noir fuse.
  • Popola can be seen as this with her anger after Devola's death at the hands of Nier. Considering Popola and Devola have been actively manipulating Nier from the start of the game, and were the ones to start the fight with Nier (who never wanted to fight them in the first place) her anger at Nier for asking to stop the fight feels a bit shallow.
  • The Shades in the Aerie (who've possessed some of the villagers) claim that they want to avoid needless conflict and live in peace among the humans, but are afraid that Nier will come for them and kill everyone. However, their own actions are directly responsible for the bloodbath that ends up ensuing. For starters, they're the ones who lure Nier to the Aerie by forging a letter from the village chief, and even then Nier isn't the one to draw first blood. The Shades reveal themselves and attack him in a panic after he and Weiss state their intention to defeat every last one of them (which shouldn't surprise them in the least). Given the unpleasant reception Nier had always received in the Aerie, it's highly unlikely he would've come there of his own volition had the Shades not tried to entrap him, giving them ample time to live in hiding or plan their escape without having to resort to violence.
  • Speaking of the Aerie, the villagers themselves. While the scene where Emil unintentionally wipes them out does garner sympathy for him, it's hard to feel the same for the people he killed, as throughout the game they were nothing but unpleasant to Nier and his friends (especially Kainé).
  • Roc and his wolf pack. You're meant to feel bad for them because the forest they called home was destroyed, and they are killed on sight by the people of Façade... when they've been shown to attack people who cannot defend themselves, children included, ultimately making them no better if not even worse than the people of Façade. The people of Façade, the King of Façade especially, have no reason to believe that the wolf pack are attacking for any reason other than pure bloodlust, especially considering that Roc himself is a friggin' gigantic Shade. Roc's words about "fighting with honor" ring hollow when he's shown ambushing the wedding and murdering the innocent Fyra, and then he later hangs back and lets his own pack get slaughtered by Nier before joining in.
• Vindicated by History: When it first came out, the game was left to rot on store shelves by uninterested gamers and was largely forgotten. Nowadays, it is generally well-regarded. For just one example, Joystiq initially slapped the game with a zero, only for them to later acknowledge it as one of the best games of the last decade. Its passionate cult following helped pave the way for a sequel, NieR Automata, and the subsequent acclaim and surprisingly strong sales that followed has only drawn more attention to its predecessor, to the point that it received a remake that drastically improved its visuals and combat, with new arrangements of the soundtrack and new content added to the game. The remake was then met with far better reviews than the original release and sold over a million copies worldwide, definitively vindicating the original.
• The Woobie:
  • Emil is one of the most optimistic and positive characters by the end of the game despite having a pretty shitty life, being turned into a human weapon whose only purpose is to kill his sister (another human weapon) if she goes rogue, being treated like an outcast by everyone but Kainé, Nier and Weiss once he actually finds friendship, etc.
  • Kainé's whole life has been nothing but a stream of abuse, both physical and mental, from the people in the Aerie. She readily admits to hating herself as a result, suffers persecution due to being intersex and later being possessed by Tyrann. She's horribly lonely, full of hate and sadness and gets put through the wringer over the course of the game. Seeing her finally reunited with Nier and Emil in Ending E is extremely cathartic, given how they're some of the few people who treated her like a human being.
• Woolseyism:
  • Due to the Japanese language lacking traditional curse words, Kainé's Sir Swears-a-Lot habit was done through Cluster Bleep-Bomb to give the idea that whatever she was saying had to be bad enough for the game itself to censor it. When localized, since the English language does have curse words, they were free to let Kainé go all out and say whatever was likely intended by the meaning of it.
  • In the Japanese version, a number of the characters and concepts have simple, archetypal names that are meant to reflect the game's nature as a commentary on JRPG's and action-adventure games like Zelda. This probably wouldn't have worked nearly as well in English since translating these names more literally would simply make them sound generic and uninspired instead (partly due to localizations over the years translating many of these names wildly differently leading to the West not having a standardized vocabulary for these terms to the degree Japan has). As a result, "mamono" (monsters) became "Shades", "maou" (dark lord/demon king) became "Shadowlord", "White Book" became "Grimoire Weiss", and so on.
  • In the original Japanese version, the confirmation (in game) of Emil being gay is him stating that he wants to be "his (Replicant Nier's) bride". Since it would sound awkward in English, the dialogue leading to that point stays relatively the same, but when Nier leaves, he comments something to the effect of "Yeah, thats not really it.." which conveys that their assumption he had been mistaken about getting married and dressing like Fyra incorrect better.
  • In the Japanese version, Tyrann simply calls Kainé by name throughout the game. The localization team had him call her Sunshine instead, which helps play up the creepiness of Tyrann and helps make the rare moments where he does call her by name more noticeable.

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Source: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/YMMV/Nier

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