So how about that Nier finale?

[ItMe]

What are everyone's thoughts on the final Nier raid and overall storyline now that its come to a close (other than the weekly quests)?

[Eloah]

Confusion, utter confusion. Though given that this is a Nier raid I guess that makes sense. I never played the games so I don't understand the intricacies. Maybe someone can explain.

[Bright-Flower]

Just like the last two, I thought that the raid itself was pretty good. Fun fights, great music, neat glamours.

However, just like the last two, the story is bare bones and making no effort to integrate the Nier stuff into FFXIV.

Confusion, utter confusion. Though given that this is a Nier raid I guess that makes sense. I never played the games so I don't understand the intricacies. Maybe someone can explain.

While the Nier games themselves can be a bit convoluted, there's not much to draw from them to help here.

I haven't done the post raid quests yet but the story itself so far has done very little to explain anything.

Now, in the Nier games one does need to do multiple playthroughs to get the full context of everything. Nier gave you additional cutscenes and translated more dialog from enemies to give more context to what was really going on on new game+. Automata did something similar in its 'route B.' So maybe these weekly quests will flesh things out more or something. But as of now, the story has been very disappointing.

[Stepjam]

Not as good as orbonne, but it was fine. Kinda wish there was more going on during the last boss. Ultima was pretty hectic in comparison

[FangsBrightclaw]

It was really hard on my motion sickness at some points, especially in the 5th encounter when you're riding up the elevator. The mechanics to the fights themselves are neat, but I dread the thought of having to do this for a few weeks for the coin.

[TaleraRistain]

Very underwhelmed as a non-Nier fan. I'm sure Nier fans were quaking in their boots. However, they relied WAY too much on Nier recognition for their context and impact. The resolution of the Eorzea-related pieces was....not resolved? I have no idea what the hell was going on with Anogg. I'm disappointed because that was the one part I liked.

Contrast this with the Ivalice raids which did have a lot of easter eggs for those who knew Tactics and XII, but had a base story connected firmly to Eorzea and a plot that was understandable on its own, without the backstory of the Ivalice games. Being familiar with those was just icing on the cake. And the entire CT series. They fully integrated that into this setting, but had all those shoutouts for those who had played III. A lot of references to Final Fantasy games in XIV are like that. They are much more integrated into the world and connected to Eorzea itself. The Nier raids didn't even try. Yeah, some might argue that it was supposed to feel foreign but there's feeling foreign but still having those tendrils that connect it back and just feeling like they plopped a completely different game into some instances in XIV. The Nier raids feel like the latter.

So for me, the finale just fell on its face. Yoko Taro is regarded as a good storyteller and I was waiting for something to bring it all together. It never happened. If this was supposed to inspire me to now go out and play those games, they failed completely. There's this weekly quest that's supposed to continue the story. I hope we don't get the "true" ending there because that would be akin to the current trend in some single player games (like SE's good friend Ubisoft) in finishing their game's story in DLC.

I'm glad they're going with an original story for the alliance series in Endwalker. Then at least we know it will feel like it belongs on Eorzea.

[EdenArchangel]

As someone who has fully completed Nier, Nier Automata, and the Drakengard series...
One will have a ton more understanding from playing those games than someone who has not.
Bosses and references, symbolism, the machines, the white androids, the Red Girl, Anogg's origin and decision... (basically another Adam and Eve situation...)
The overall plot regarding them in the FFXIV universe is actually very, very simple. But really you couldn't appreciate the entirety of this without knowing the entirety of Nier/Drakengard lore well.

[Khalithar]

Gameplay:

First raid was really fun. I really enjoyed the music and different boss mechanics.

Second raid was alright. Not as fun to me as the first one but I thought it was alright.

Third was my least liked one. I didn't have any fun on any of the bosses, didn't like the mechanics, and didn't care for the music at all.

I hoped the third raid would go back to being as fun as the first one but no luck.

As for the storyline, the initial story was intriguing and then it got weird. Then by the third one? I more or less got it and what they were hinting at.

Once I finished all of it I saw the weekly become available to rebuild Komra but at the thought of running the 2nd and 3rd raids again? I noped right out of there. Sorry dwarves, I'm never running those two raids again.

[E4EO]

The difference with this and literally every other collab event is that I don't need to play a whole bloody series of games to understand the nuance. FF14 will come with that nuance, even if a collab has nods to other things you're still like to get most of the nuance, but you HAVE to play Nier and Drakenguard to even understand what's going on behind the scenes.

It's such piss poor story telling, having to rely on a completely different game series to understand, its like going into a sequel and not understanding things, normally you'd watch the previous movies or play the previous games, but here those sequels are a completely different game series with quite a few games. Return to Ivalice had nods to well, Ivalcian games, but if you didn't play the majority of them you wouldn't leave them going "tf even was that about?"

Oh and the raid is fun, but I'm not gonna be as hyped to play it weekly as I will be for the other two just cause of how much it relies on non 14 source material.

Inb4 "dude whines about collab cause it's a collab" see my first two sentences

[Iscah]

The overall plot regarding them in the FFXIV universe is actually very, very simple. But really you couldn't appreciate the entirety of this without knowing the entirety of Nier/Drakengard lore well.

That is exactly the problem here, and why it makes for a poor crossover even if it's a great instalment of the NieR/Drakengard canon.

Without knowing that canon, everything that happens in this entire third act is cryptic and meaningless. It doesn't reference anything that came before; it doesn't explain anything at the end.

There's a degree of not understanding what's happening that makes you intrigued, and there's a degree where it makes so little sense you just don't care, and these raids have been in the second category from start to finish. (The complete lack of emotional engagement with the characters doesn't help.)

People kept saying "oh, of course you won't understand yet, it'll all become clear in the third act"... but it hasn't at all.

This is ultimately a story in FFXIV. The core story should be comprehensible and enjoyable by players of FFXIV.