What was the Japanese reception to Nier crossover?

[Jojoya]

"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.

While I'd agree "completely nonsensical" is a stretch, the story did feel jumpy and disjointed to me.

I'd like to read your synopsis of the story to see how you consider it quite understandable without going into Drakkengard/Nier references that those who never played those games would know. Every other synopsis I've read or listened to has to resort to talking about the other games to try to explain what was happening.

If you have to talk about another game to make sense out of what has happened in this one, then it doesn't fit into this game's world.

[MorionQ]

I think the best comparison is too look at how the Ivalice Raids played out for those who know nothing of the original FFTactics or FFXII. That series is densely packed with info and references from both titles but didn’t require any knowledge of either to have a good experience.

The Nier raid was pitched as an Automata crossover, only for it to gleefully dig through Yoko Taro’s entire creative catalogue with no time to explore anything. The Ivalician themed stuff is still being referenced with Bozja and Gunbreaker and I feel like the Nier stuff wasn’t meant to be built into the canon. It’s just too much and too complex of a universe to make a good story with the strict limitations of the raid series.

Honestly I WISH it had been the theory of leftover creations from the Ancient Ones going nuts since it would’ve been tied cleanly to what’s established and had opportunities to build what we have with all sorts of cool Nier flavored areas and gear.

[Balmung_Griffin]

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.

O_o
Night is the shadow caused by Earth blocking the sunlight? Literally,the biggest shadow of them all lol

[ItMe]

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

O_o
Night is the shadow caused by Earth blocking the sunlight? Literally,the biggest shadow of them all lol

You're right.
Is the night technically us being in the shade? Yes.
Did the Yorha Dark Apocalypse raids technically have the promise of an apocalypse in them? Yes.

[StriderShinryu]

Frequently the Nier raids get called out for not really being connected to FF14 lore, which I can certainly understand and agree with. But what I find funny is that, outside of the Nier raids, it feels to me like most of the other side content we've received in ShB had been notably more lore connected than similar bits of extra content were in the past. Things like Bozja with Castrum and Delubrum, the Ishgard Restoration, the Eden trials, Sorrow of Werlyt series, etc. are all very hooked into the world and lore. So, intentionally or otherwise, we may have exchanged directly lore connected 24 man raid content for a bunch of directly lore connected other stuff.. yet everyone just loves to call out the Nier raids without acknowledging the rest.

[linayar]

While I'd agree "completely nonsensical" is a stretch, the story did feel jumpy and disjointed to me.

I'd like to read your synopsis of the story to see how you consider it quite understandable without going into Drakkengard/Nier references that those who never played those games would know. Every other synopsis I've read or listened to has to resort to talking about the other games to try to explain what was happening.

If you have to talk about another game to make sense out of what has happened in this one, then it doesn't fit into this game's world.

Keep in mind that I have terrible memory recollection (especially on details), and I've only played the story on one character without having done NG+.

On a remote area in Kholusia, the lives of a group of dwarves were changed forever(?) when what appeared to be the body of a female hume was discovered within a mining(?) site, surrounded (attacked?) by what appeared to be moving machineries. The WoD and twin dwarves who cannot contain their curiosity saved the hume, discovering that she is still "alive," and she told them that there are more of these living machines further "in" through the mining site.

After defeating a few more machines and blasting open the way through, they found themselves in a clearing that leads to what appeared to be an abandoned factory of some sort, but it was not totally abandoned. Fighting their way through more machineries, they finally met what appeared to be a male hume that somehow has control of these machines. After a battle occurred, ending with a fight between the two humes, the male hume fell off the edge and the female hume fell unconscious.

They figured out she was some kind of machine as well and went on to "fix" her with spare machine parts they found within the factory. In the factory, they also found some data (which I did not bother reading).

In the meantime, the village was getting ready for a festival and everything seemed to be looking up for them.

After the female hume became conscious (though the use of a device, which may have also affected her knowledge/memory and also became a signal), an explosion occurred that revealed more parts of the area (mountain?) near the village of the dwarves, followed by an attack on the village itself, revealing the female hume to be the enemy all along. One of the twin dwarves was attacked, only to be saved by another female hume that looked identical to their once-ally-now-enemy.

They chased after their enemy through new pathway in the mountain and found themselves in another area, battling more enemies through a bunker that led to a ship. There, they fought and defeated the girl.

(Here, my memory really fails me, but up to this point, I don't think the story felt disjointed.)

They came back to the village still suffering from the attack and the villagers are looking for people to blame, and the twins were an easy choice for "digging" up things they should've left alone.

(Thing happened that I don't remember. I believe one of the twins went missing around this time or after defeating the female enemy and then the WoD had an echo vision of that same twin having fallen in the past and meeting a white sphere.)

(OMG, I don't remember what happened in this latest patch. I think I was out of it when playing. They either found some clue about the missing twin or their new female ally, along with the male hume that was recovered, told them something.)

They went off and found the missing twin (or the missing twin appeared before this) and head out to finally deal with the origin of this attack. After fighting through more enemies in some weird environment, it was revealed that this attack was from a different universe/dimension(?) and that the missing twin had been sent there. In the end, the missing twin sacrificed herself to seal the gateway to this other world and the two hume allies also left (or cut themselves somehow from this world) in order to not leave any connection between the two worlds.

The remaining twin could not accept what happened and decided to leave, hoping to find more clues about the incident.

Meanwhile, the villagers still want someone to blame, but one dwarf who had a connection with the twins disagreed with their desire to put blame on scapegoats on something that no one in the village could've knowingly prevented beforehand. Instead, he decided to focus on rebuilding the village with the help of the WoD gathering materials both from the discovered factory and bunker areas. At the same time, the traveling twin also had been keeping in touch. Meanwhile, the village chief seems to have an uncontrolled moments of suspicion and anger(?) while some dwarves had began to change their minds about finding a scapegoat to blame.

To be continued...

So, missing memories aside, I think the story has been mostly straightforward in terms of letting me be able to follow through a path in the story narrative without knowing anything about Drakengard/Nier. That said, if I know them, I may have picked up on things that I currently do not, assuming my memory does not fail me in regard to those references.

[Erendis]

"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.

Completely nonsensical is very accurate imo. It has nothing to do with the world, we also have no idea wth happened there... I'm only going to repeat them when they add weapon upgrades for coins. And unfortunately it will count towards people "who do it because they like it"...

[linayar]

Completely nonsensical is very accurate imo. It has nothing to do with the world, we also have no idea wth happened there...

You have no idea what happened where? Do you really think nothing at all about it makes any sense whatsoever?

[VirusChris]

Tell me, for the Nier Raid content and story... what did we have more story and character development for? Dwarves or Nier?

That's why I agree the Nier story was disjointed and disconnected. It was kinda there. You barely got to know 2P, 2B, and 9S.
I honestly wanted 2B and 9S to explore parts of the world with the WoL for this crossover for a bit, but we got the Dwarf twins instead.

And the archive data you collect for story bits don't count. Say what you will, but at least the past Raid stories were consistent and self-contained with their premise. I got to fight Nier/Drakengard enemies... neat... but that was mostly it.

[Alaray]

nier raids kinda blew

cool music, cool atmosphere but none of it felt particularly well connected to the world of XIV and, while I didn't really care about the Ivalice Raid Series for the Tactics bits, it did expound a little upon the lore of the world and did feel relatively connected to the game's history and setting.

mechanically I didn't really enjoy the raids that much, 9s operated whatever was prolly the coolest one and that had a long, boring intermission. Puppet bunker ozma was kinda fun, and uhhh... for the last one Red Girl was neat but that one triggers epilepsy something fierce. Looking under the arena for the building was neat, though, on the last one.

but they were all very "oh cool" the first time (except the first boss of Paradigm he sucked and was a let down and we basically just fight him again as a trash mob on the motion sickness elevator), but don't feel fun to do more than the 1 time. None really did anything interesting, anything that new.

The story was more forgettable and less interesting than Eden's raid story, at least from someone who never played Nier (and I mean, Omega's story was pretty bland for someone who doesn't really care who tf Kefka is, but Kefka was at least fun to fight).

just felt like one big ad. which it was, but it had no soul.

Maybe the actual games are more interesting and more well-written, but this raid series kinda killed what little interest I had in Nier to begin with.