What was the Japanese reception to Nier crossover?

The crossover was pretty much bog standard mobile gacha fare in terms of story telling, and that's usually something like, "Otherworldly element appears for random reason, you team up with the good guys to defeat their themely bads, and then they just disappear with no long-term pertinence to the rest of the game's plot." And to that end, it can unfortunately be seen as a long-term advertising campaign for Replicant for this reason alone, which just (re)launched recently. The only thing missing was some P2W mechanic or DLC class like unlocking a YorHa job that'd do more damage in the raid to tempt people into buying. The timing of Final Fantasy: War of the Visions also having a Nier crossover on its Global servers shouldn't be discounted for this reason, as well.

One thing that confuses me is why they didn't use voice acting in fights to the same effect as Orbonne Monastery. I feel like that really made things more memorable and was hoping that it would become a trend going forward.

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Originally Posted by GrumbleBeard

One thing that confuses me is why they didn't use voice acting in fights to the same effect as Orbonne Monastery. I feel like that really made things more memorable and was hoping that it would become a trend going forward.

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They kind of did with the talking at the beginning of the Copied Factory, but then didn't bother to voice over the rest.

The "dodge middle" and "dodge side" mechanics are seriously overused in this tier.

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Originally Posted by Neri

The "dodge middle" and "dodge side" mechanics are seriously overused in this tier.

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Yet a ton people fall for it.

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Originally Posted by GrumbleBeard

One thing that confuses me is why they didn't use voice acting in fights to the same effect as Orbonne Monastery. I feel like that really made things more memorable and was hoping that it would become a trend going forward.

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Orbonne Monastery slapped you with a sniper meca at the beginning saying "You show promises, but promises can't save you from what comes next."
Voice lines had a huge impact. But I believe there was presentation aswell.

Mustadio, Agrias and Count Cidolfus Orlandeau The Thunder God were reimagined, adapted to XIV, modeled in XIV, while Nier was Yoko Taro straight up injecting Nier into XIV.
The last one, you had 3 kind of reactions:
1) "Oh no, it's Count Cidolfus Orlandeau The Thunder God"
2) "Oh no, it's Ozma map"
3) "Oh no, it's an OST from Vagrant Story"

Here, if you didn't played Drakenguard, it was just 2B with flowers and a blank city you, at most, saw in Drakenguard videos.
One thing well presented was the hacking minigame, that was good and unique, surprising. But it was the only thing of its kind and I wish there was more of it. The elevator was disappointing compared to the original.

And then, you have the Nier fanboys claiming it's the best 24 man raid, that it cannot be improved and anyone saying the opposite is absolutely wrong.

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Originally Posted by Neri

The "dodge middle" and "dodge side" mechanics are seriously overused in this tier.

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Seriously, I think there is a sigle boss that doesn't use those.
I'm repeating myself but every mechanics went into Red Girl and all visuals effort into the final boss.

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Originally Posted by Saidosha

The crossover was pretty much bog standard mobile gacha fare in terms of story telling, and that's usually something like, "Otherworldly element appears for random reason, you team up with the good guys to defeat their themely bads, and then they just disappear with no long-term pertinence to the rest of the game's plot." And to that end, it can unfortunately be seen as a long-term advertising campaign for Replicant for this reason alone, which just (re)launched recently. The only thing missing was some P2W mechanic or DLC class like unlocking a YorHa job that'd do more damage in the raid to tempt people into buying. The timing of Final Fantasy: War of the Visions also having a Nier crossover on its Global servers shouldn't be discounted for this reason, as well.

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Oohh now that you mention it, yes it does! It reminds me of crossover events from FFBE.

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Originally Posted by Saidosha

The crossover was pretty much bog standard mobile gacha fare in terms of story telling, and that's usually something like, "Otherworldly element appears for random reason, you team up with the good guys to defeat their themely bads, and then they just disappear with no long-term pertinence to the rest of the game's plot." And to that end, it can unfortunately be seen as a long-term advertising campaign for Replicant for this reason alone, which just (re)launched recently. The only thing missing was some P2W mechanic or DLC class like unlocking a YorHa job that'd do more damage in the raid to tempt people into buying. The timing of Final Fantasy: War of the Visions also having a Nier crossover on its Global servers shouldn't be discounted for this reason, as well.

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Yeah. While I enjoyed the raids themselves (the fights, the music, some of the glams) the story was bad. It was like a throwaway crossover event story like the FFXI or Monster Hunter crossover events, except stretched out over an entire expansion.

Some of the dwarf stuff was interesting but not enough to carry it. The android part of the story had no effort put into it.

And it's not even a matter of 'you need to have played Automata to get it.' There's just nothing there. Playing automata, Nier, even Drakengard does nothing to make this story better, it only increases the number of references you can pick up on.

Unlike crystal tower and ivalice which made attempts to incorporate things into FFXIV's lore, this was just lazily tacked on. And as much as I love Nier I will not give them a pass on this. They dropped the ball big time. Which is frustrating because there's no reason it couldn't have gotten the CT/Ivalice treatment and worked this into the actual lore and story of FFXIV. They just deliberately chose to go for the lazy crossover story instead.

I genuinely enjoyed it, from the theme, boss fights, and music. Story was somewhat so-so at parts but I can't complain. Most people I know enjoyed at least the raids themselves if not the story.

You just see more complaints as more people are inclined to come to a forum to complain about something than to praise it. Those who are happy with something are usually content with that, with the occasional person wanting to share how happy they are about it.

Those who aren't happy are more likely to go public with it.

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Originally Posted by LaylaTsarra

No one said it's a fan page and people are certainly allowed to state their feelings and opinions good or bad on anything here. They certainly do. It's just when they try and use their opinions as if they represent the community as a whole I have a problem with it. There is certainly no evidence that the majority of the NA community didn't like the content. I'm not going to belabor the issue I've made my feeling known on the matter and repeating it doesn't need to be done. It's the only reason why i responded to this thread to begin with. I personally enjoyed the series and hope we'll see more with the weekly quest.

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And yet in a lot of complaint threads that are mostly about personal opinions we have people coming in complaining about those complainers and some love to post the sentence about how NA or the forum just loves to complain. I guess it just gets a bit tiring over the time especially since the other side also wouldnt want to be called white knights (for example) if they say something positive. (And yes I know that sadly people exist that call anyone that just enjoys content a white knight)

In the end the OP at least worded it that it "seems" to be mostly negative and just wanted to get some answers about the JP side. I guess it would be more fine if she said "seems mostly positive" even if she could not know that either?

But thanks to those that are able to read JP and found a few answers to her question. So they barely have any discussion at all but most seems to be at least more towards the positive side. Ugh now I really want a ingame poll for this for all languages, not only for an answer but also to see how different the countries are.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

Unlike crystal tower and ivalice which made attempts to incorporate things into FFXIV's lore, this was just lazily tacked on. And as much as I love Nier I will not give them a pass on this. They dropped the ball big time. Which is frustrating because there's no reason it couldn't have gotten the CT/Ivalice treatment and worked this into the actual lore and story of FFXIV. They just deliberately chose to go for the lazy crossover story instead.

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I don't really want it to integrate itself into the rest of the lore, but the simple thing it needed (and failed) to do was tell an internally coherent story. Maybe you don't get every reference but it should still be an enjoyable story with characters who have personalities and motivations, and the third act should resolve the ideas introduced in earlier ones instead of being completely out of left field.

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Originally Posted by GrumbleBeard

One thing that confuses me is why they didn't use voice acting in fights to the same effect as Orbonne Monastery. I feel like that really made things more memorable and was hoping that it would become a trend going forward.

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I wouldn't be surprise if they feared some sort of backlash considering they most likely wouldn't of been able to get a hold of the LA-based voice actors that were the voice actors for nier in both regards. It would of meant no Kira Buckland or Kyle McCarley for their respective characters. Personally, I wouldn't care as long the voice acting was good but I've seen the flame wars that can result in different casting or maybe those two had different obligations at the time and couldn't voice their characters. Who knows but the developers.

Very small sample, but from talking with FC and LS friends (in Japanese on a Japanese server) about the final Nier raid after it was released, a couple things came up a few times:

- The story was a bit anti-climactic or seemed somewhat disjointed, especially if you didn't play the Nier games (most people had not). We're hoping that more of it will make sense with the ongoing weekly content that was unlocked.
- They were hoping for armor styled more after A2 as rewards from the 3rd raid, so there was some disappointment with what we got.

Otherwise, most of my friends were just enjoying the fun and chaos of running newly released content and I haven't really heard real complaints. Then again, complaining openly isn't such a thing here.

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Originally Posted by Areic

I genuinely enjoyed it, from the theme, boss fights, and music. Story was somewhat so-so at parts but I can't complain. Most people I know enjoyed at least the raids themselves if not the story.

You just see more complaints as more people are inclined to come to a forum to complain about something than to praise it. Those who are happy with something are usually content with that, with the occasional person wanting to share how happy they are about it.

Those who aren't happy are more likely to go public with it.

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I understand the logic, but you can't hide all Nier flaws behind a "Yes but the happy people don't talk".
How about we take it the other way and try to find people who didn't liked Ivalice, Shadow of Mhach or Crystal Tower?
I tried to find topic about complains on Ivalice and Shadow of Mhach but all I found was complains about Ozma difficulty and how players were wiping in Weeping City, how they were giving up.
I also found complaints about how Orbonne Monastery was confusing for those who absolutely didn't touched FFT, how Ultima was badly introduced, you see her, you kill her. Also the glamours were not great.

But those are the only complaints I could find, if someone else can find more, we'd have a much better metric when it comes to feedback.
I even found praise topic aswell.

But Nier is the only raid series so far with such a conflict and negative feedback.
In short: There was much less complaint about previous raid tiers and Ivalice was more praised than negatively criticized.

Apparently the raid actually explained a tiny plot hole/loose detail from Drakengard??

Remember when people were theorizing that maybe the androids were left-over creations of the Ancients? I believe there was even a quest that hinted at it.

Would have been nice if that'd gone anywhere.

I'm more disappointed we didn't get to interactive with 2B and 9S that much. THAT'S what I'm most upset about. I didn't mind my Dwarf buddies, but I came for the Androids! Not them!

I even hoped for A2 to show up somehow. I love the raid, it's great fighting them and I haven't played the Drakengard series (I have brought Drakengard 3 with all DLC, but I haven't started it yet) and haven't finished Nier: Automata, but I got the reference in the fights.

However, that was it. References. Even if there's subtle hints for those invested greatly in the Drakengard/Nier lore.

I honestly, think if the story had more Quests to do and and expanded on the Nier characters it might've been a better experience overall. However, in the end... I was barely a crossover. I never got to learn more about the characters being in the FF universe or how they react to others.

The bloody FFXV crossover had better interaction as Noctis hanged out with our WoL and other NPCs and learned about his friends and fight enemies from his world.

So, far the 3rd week of the Rebuild Village Quests sheds a bit more light. However, I'm angry we learn what 2B and 9S did behind the scenes... via messages left behind from another character.

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Originally Posted by CKNovel

I understand the logic, but you can't hide all Nier flaws behind a "Yes but the happy people don't talk".

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I feel it's extra relevant here because the initial response was so extremely negative that a lot of happy people dont wanna voice their joy only for it to get attacked by a mob.
I'm thoroughly satisfied with the raid, and yet this is my first post even indicating that because I just don't wanna get into it.

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Originally Posted by Jandor

Remember when people were theorizing that maybe the androids were left-over creations of the Ancients? I believe there was even a quest that hinted at it.

Would have been nice if that'd gone anywhere.

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How could that have remotely been lore consistent?
Do you remember what this quote is?
How could it have gone anywhere if it was just a theory the community generated?

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Originally Posted by ItMe

How could that have remotely been lore consistent?
Do you remember what this quote is?
How could it have gone anywhere if it was just a theory the community generated?

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Responsible Creation sidequest: "... I've been credited with a few popular concepts, I'm proud to say. I'm hoping that my latest will be equally well received: autonomous figures. ... Autonomy notwithstanding, these creations know no fear. They are wholly devoid of emotion, and will without hesitation or resistance engage in any dangerous activity─even if death is assured."

People took the above quotes to mean the Nier androids. Personally I always figured the simpler explanation would be golems or any of the other already extant autonomous creations already present in the lore.

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Originally Posted by Wyssahtyn

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I had no idea people were connecting that line with Nier.
I'm with you here, I figured it referred to some kind of Allagan tech.
Thanks for the information~

Back in 5.0 it seemed like a solid guess. We had no idea what the NIer raid in 5.1 was going to be like story wise, and the 'dark apocalypse' title of the raid series could have tied in with lore from the final days, so it seemed like a possibly clue, and a reasonable one to speculate on. Though it turns out it wasn't in the end.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

Back in 5.0 it seemed like a solid guess. We had no idea what the NIer raid in 5.1 was going to be like story wise, and the 'dark apocalypse' title of the raid series could have tied in with lore from the final days, so it seemed like a possibly clue, and a reasonable one to speculate on. Though it turns out it wasn't in the end.

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All of my questions are answered.
This is valuable context and now I know where the other poster was coming from.
Thanks~

Hmm yeah, the "dark apocalypse" of the title (or even the clear threat of one) doesn't seem to have eventuated either.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Hmm yeah, the "dark apocalypse" of the title (or even the clear threat of one) doesn't seem to have eventuated either.

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I'm pretty sure the promised "dark apocalypse" would have been at the hands of the invasion of alien killer robots from another dimension.

It could have, but then the 'dark apocalypse' turns out to just mean one attack on a single dwarf village that did some damage but didn't wipe it out.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

It could have, but then the 'dark apocalypse' turns out to just mean one attack on a single dwarf village that did some damage but didn't wipe it out.

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Which, ironically, is still a heavier consequence than what some other antagonists and villains have achieved.

I'll admit, I was expecting something more emotional, tragic and hard hitting given everything I've heard about Yoko Taro's style of storytelling. The boss fights, raid aesthetics and music were all pretty solid...but the story could have used more work, I think.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

I'm pretty sure the promised "dark apocalypse" would have been at the hands of the invasion of alien killer robots from another dimension.

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Using it as the title, though, suggests the apocalypse isn't a potential future event but actually underway.

Outside of a brief attack on one isolated village, there was no sign of it being a world-ending threat until five minutes before the end. And the raid didn't feel "dark" to me - it was all very mock-heavenly with the heavy choral music and ascending the tower to a white-themed final boss.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Using it as the title, though, suggests the apocalypse isn't a potential future event but actually underway.

Outside of a brief attack on one isolated village, there was no sign of it being a world-ending threat until five minutes before the end. And the raid didn't feel "dark" to me - it was all very mock-heavenly with the heavy choral music and ascending the tower to a white-themed final boss.

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Cuz we stopped it.
The title works better than the title for the expansion at least.
We're supposed to be "shadow bringers," but we don't bring shadows, we bring the night, which if anything means there are less shadows after ending the endless day.
It just sounds cool.

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Originally Posted by Theodric

Which, ironically, is still a heavier consequence than what some other antagonists and villains have achieved.

I'll admit, I was expecting something more emotional, tragic and hard hitting given everything I've heard about Yoko Taro's style of storytelling. The boss fights, raid aesthetics and music were all pretty solid...but the story could have used more work, I think.

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Consequences? What are those? The good guys ALWAYS win, through the power of friendship!

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Cuz we stopped it.
The title works better than the title for the expansion at least.
We're supposed to be "shadow bringers," but we don't bring shadows, we bring the night, which if anything means there are less shadows after ending the endless day.
It just sounds cool.

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We were definitely bringing shadows/darkness/opposite-of-light. That's just being picky with the wording, despite the concept.

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Originally Posted by ItMe

Cuz we stopped it.
The title works better than the title for the expansion at least.
We're supposed to be "shadow bringers," but we don't bring shadows, we bring the night, which if anything means there are less shadows after ending the endless day.
It just sounds cool.

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What is night but the shadow of the entire planet? The sun is the light source and night is the world's shadow.

Back on topic I feel like they didn't try too hard to make NieR feel like it fit in the world. But even as someone who eats up the lore, I think it's kind of dumb to complain about it. They've had cross-overs with non-FF games since the beginning and they've all felt a little awkward and out of place, but the game is an MMO theme park experience and not a super hardcore RPing one. Yeah it's a little weird, but I didn't let that bother me too much and the raids themselves were fun with new mechanics and a lot of nostalgia, which was the point.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

What is night but the shadow of the entire planet? The sun is the light source and night is the world's shadow.

Back on topic I feel like they didn't try too hard to make NieR feel like it fit in the world. But even as someone who eats up the lore, I think it's kind of dumb to complain about it. They've had cross-overs with non-FF games since the beginning and they've all felt a little awkward and out of place, but the game is an MMO theme park experience and not a super hardcore RPing one. Yeah it's a little weird, but I didn't let that bother me too much and the raids themselves were fun with new mechanics and a lot of nostalgia, which was the point.

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The difference is those other crossovers were one off events. Not storylines spanning an entire expansion and the expansion's entire alliance raid story, plus even having story in the .2 and .4 patches between raids. The other crossovers are extra bonus events, not a big part of the expansion's content cycle.

If someone didn't like monster hunter event for example they could just ignore it, this is something spanning from 5.1 to 5.5.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

The difference is those other crossovers were one off events. Not storylines spanning an entire expansion and the expansion's entire alliance raid story, plus even having story in the .2 and .4 patches between raids. The other crossovers are extra bonus events, not a big part of the expansion's content cycle.

If someone didn't like monster hunter event for example they could just ignore it, this is something spanning from 5.1 to 5.5.

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As much as I thought it was weird and out-of-place, skipping a whole part of the game because you don't like the aesthetic is a little childish. I hope they do original content in the future for alliance raids since I find that much more interesting and engaging, but covering your eyes and pretending it doesn't exist is a bit extreme.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

The difference is those other crossovers were one off events. Not storylines spanning an entire expansion and the expansion's entire alliance raid story, plus even having story in the .2 and .4 patches between raids. The other crossovers are extra bonus events, not a big part of the expansion's content cycle.

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This. It's not just that it was "out of place" or a bad crossover, it's that we got it not as a bonus on top of our regular scheduled content but replacing a whole chunk of whatever other story could have been told in the one-per-expansion alliance raid slot.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

As much as I thought it was weird and out-of-place, skipping a whole part of the game because you don't like the aesthetic is a little childish.

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Firstly it's not that childish to choose to engage with things you enjoy and avoid things you don't, at least in the context of what you do with your free time, but in any case I think it's the opposite problem. The average player will do the alliance raids because they give upgrades or glamour or it came up in the roulette. And every time I'll be reminded again how completely nonsensical and disappointing it was.

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Originally Posted by MikkoAkure

As much as I thought it was weird and out-of-place, skipping a whole part of the game because you don't like the aesthetic is a little childish. I hope they do original content in the future for alliance raids since I find that much more interesting and engaging, but covering your eyes and pretending it doesn't exist is a bit extreme.

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I'm not pretending it doesn't exist. I like the actual raids I just think they dropped the ball on the story.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

And every time I'll be reminded again how completely nonsensical and disappointing it was.

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"Completely nonsensical" is a pretty extreme description. Even without knowing everything (yet?), the story itself is quite understandable for the most part and still fits within the world of FFXIV with everything that we know about it.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

We were definitely bringing shadows/darkness/opposite-of-light. That's just being picky with the wording, despite the concept.

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And you're being similarly picky about what capacity an apocalypse was involved.
It doesn't need to have literally happened for us to struggle against the threat of one.

Complaining about shadowbringers feels like nitpicking to me. YoRHa: Dark Apocalypse however I feel is kind of a laughable name in hindsight because of how quickly and easily it was nipped in the bud. Like it's a name they came up with before actually settling on the story.

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Originally Posted by Iscah

Firstly it's not that childish to choose to engage with things you enjoy and avoid things you don't, at least in the context of what you do with your free time, but in any case I think it's the opposite problem. The average player will do the alliance raids because they give upgrades or glamour or it came up in the roulette. And every time I'll be reminded again how completely nonsensical and disappointing it was.

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You can still say something similar about literally any part of the game depending on how you feel about it.

I really didn't like the Seventh Astral Era, Heavensward warriors of darkness, pretty much all of Stormblood, half of Eden, and all of Werlyt. But it's just a video game and the creators aren't out to please me specifically so I move on. It's really not worth my time to get upset about it every time I do E12 for a sword or when I make another attempt at a trial for a dumb looking gwiber mount. Are there lessons the dev team can learn for this? Yes, definitely. Is it going to kill my enjoyment of the game? No.

It feels like whenever something happens that can be complained about, people like the OP go to the forums to make a post about it with blatantly wrong blanket statements in order to get people to agree with them and validate their feelings for it.

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Originally Posted by Bright-Flower

I'm not pretending it doesn't exist. I like the actual raids I just think they dropped the ball on the story.

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Yeah I agree with you on that, my comment was saying just in general and not targeted at you.

Idk at least SE can continue the two minion per alliance raid thing at least. Loved the raids and the look.