Unpopular (probably) opinion about the Nier raids...

The biggest insult with the Nier raids is that instead of getting relevant content that built on the lore of the First (something Ronkan would have been amazing), we get a thinly veiled advertisement for another Square game that doesn't even try to relate itself to the game's world.

To be fair, the actual gameplay of Nier was also good, while the background story itself was rather "meh". Fairly par for the course for Nier.

Nier, in a nutshell:

Main Core Story: You are androids trying to take back the planet, ultimately to learn the whole thing was meaningless; that your characters were suffering for essentially no reason: Good existential crisis stuff. Lots of good questions asked.

The awful background story: So a dragon magically came to Tokyo, bringing a world-ending virus. Humanity "transitioned" to androids. (NieR 1); At some point Aliens came with little robot dudes. Humanity and the Aliens are wiped out thousands of years before the game starts, but the androids and robots are still at war. For no real reason. (Nier 2)

What I expected: The heroes were actually the creations of the Aliens all along (Twist), the crude robots the human defense.
What I got: A hot mess where a lot of the conflicts could really have just been talked out.

(Disclaimer: I do like the game very much if you ignore the nonsensical background story/lore; basically anything that happened before the actual in-game story).

Sucks to be me, I guess. I didn't like Nier's gameplay or its story.

OP, I don’t think yours opinion is unpopular.

I found these Raid the worst among all alliance raid. Both story wise and gameplay wise. I just couldn’t get it to blend into FFXIV world setting. Story feel flat, the mechanic I found it is actually the easiest (compare to other alliance raid when they first came out) and only difficulty is the pale/whiteish background making some AOE marking or visual clues difficult to see
The glamour/gear design are also quite “meh” for me (same could be say about ivalice raid, just a reference of FFT)
The music is good but the environment and overall aesthetic just don’t feel Final Fantasy XIV

Gameplay wise they were fine, fun even.

Story wise... they were so bad they retroactively made Nier: Automata worse for me.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kaynide

To be fair, the actual gameplay of Nier was also good, while the background story itself was rather "meh". Fairly par for the course for Nier.

Nier, in a nutshell:

Main Core Story: You are androids trying to take back the planet, ultimately to learn the whole thing was meaningless; that your characters were suffering for essentially no reason: Good existential crisis stuff. Lots of good questions asked.

The awful background story: So a dragon magically came to Tokyo, bringing a world-ending virus. Humanity "transitioned" to androids. (NieR 1); At some point Aliens came with little robot dudes. Humanity and the Aliens are wiped out thousands of years before the game starts, but the androids and robots are still at war. For no real reason. (Nier 2)

What I expected: The heroes were actually the creations of the Aliens all along (Twist), the crude robots the human defense.
What I got: A hot mess where a lot of the conflicts could really have just been talked out.

(Disclaimer: I do like the game very much if you ignore the nonsensical background story/lore; basically anything that happened before the actual in-game story).

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That's.... All wrong.

The Queen Beast transported itself and her surrounding to another planet/dimension the Dragon was caught in it, they teleported to modern Tokyo where they fought and beat the Queen, the Queen as a last ditch effort spread itself creating the virus and the dragon and its rider were shot down by jets. By entering our world they introduced a new element, magic. To combat this humanity used the dragon's corpse to create weapons.

9 thousand years later humanity has gone completely extinct except for Emil, one of the weapons created. There were also androids, they used to be the caretakers of any remaining "humans". During this time aliens invaded and Emil fought them off by cloning himself. The aliens somehow captured one of the clones and created the machine life form based on the clone. Turns out the aliens were related to the Queen Beast all along in a digitized form.

Who knows how many there are and it's the one we fought in the Nier Raids, it's capable of summoning other Queens and merging with them too.

I agree with you op. The story was too self contained, it added absolutely nothing to the game as a whole. In fact the whole raid could be removed tomorrow and nothing would change. It's pretty disappointing. The new alliance raid with Endwalker seems a lot more promising though, so I'm looking forward to that at least.