Dad Simulator 2010 - Let's Play NieR

:siren:NO SPOILERS.:siren:

NieR is the story of a Dad who would do anything to help his sick little girl get better. It’s an action-adventure game with some RPG elements released in 2010 for PS3 and Xbox 360, developed by Cavia Inc., to lukewarm reviews, but has since become a cult classic. Unfortunately, this game did not do very well financially on launch and it became Cavia’s swan song before the company went under. Until very recently, this was also considered director Yoko Taro’s magnum opus; it has a phenominal soundtrack, the writing is superb and the cast is wonderful. The localization was also done by 8-4, who’ve done some of the best localizations in the industry; you may know from projects like Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Fire Emblem: Awakening. Their work on this game is also considered some of their best. The game itself isn’t anything to write home about; it’s a little clunky, tedious and Cavia itself was not a very good developer, which makes this one of those games that’s better to experience in any way except actually playing it for yourself, which is why we’re doing this LP.

This will be a mostly casual stream LP where Faerie Fortune, Artix and I will just go through the game at a mostly leisurely pace. We’re not going for 100% completion because this game’s sidequest design can accurately be described as “spiteful” and I don’t hate myself that much. We’ll show off as much as we can and we’ll do our best to hit all of the game’s endings, at the very least. This LP will be done with Uncut and Cut commentary; the Uncut versions will have us talk over pretty much everything, while Cut commentary won’t have us talk over cutscenes and voiced dialogue. We’re doing this as a series of streams as well, so we’ll announce in this thread when we go live, usually at my Twitch account. You can also follow me, Fae or Artix on Twitter for live tweets about our content or other things that may have our attention.

Before we actually get started, let’s talk about spoilers: Fae is going in blind and we would really appreciate keeping it that way as we go through, so no spoilers at all. This game’s story is really well done and we want anyone who doesn’t know how the story plays out to have an unspoiled experience. We’ll post snippets of the data book, Grimoire NieR, when appropriate as well. No spoilers for the sequel, NieR: Automata either! We’re not here for that game! While we’re at it, let’s not talk about Drakengard either. This game is a weird sequel of sorts and the connection between the two games actually factors big time into the backstory of this game, so we’ll discuss that game when it’s appropriate.

Session 01 - Prologue

Session 02 - Grimoire Weiss

Session 03: Junk Heap

Session 04 - Facade

Session 05: The Forest of Myth

Session 06: The Letter

Session 07 - Return of Dad

Session 08 - The One After Fae Went to the ER

Session 09 - Endgame


Session 10 - Kainé’s Story

Session 11 - Meet Tyrann

Session 12

Session 13

Session 14 - How it all Began


Session 15 - The Final Preparations

Finale - Existence

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These are links to Clyp, where I’ve set the songs to listen-only. If you want the songs for yourself, you can grab them off of iTunes for $17 or so.


1. Snow in Summer
2. Hills of Rdiant Wind
3. The Incomplete Stone
4. Blu-bird
5. Cold Steel Coffin
6. Grandma
7. Song of the Ancients / Devola
8. The Wretched Automatons
9. City of Commerce
10. Song of the Ancients / Popola
11. The Prestigious Mask
12. Temple of Drifting Sands
13. Gods Bound by Rules
14. The Ultimate Weapon
15. Deep Crimson Foe
16. Dispossession / Piano Ver.
17. Dispossession / Strings Ver.
20. Yonah / Piano Ver.
23. Yonah / Pluck Ver. 2


1. The Dark Colossus Destroys All
2. Song of the Ancients / Hollow Dreams
3. Kainé / Salvation
4. Kainé / Escape
5. His Dream
6. This Dream
7. Repose
8. The Lost Forest
9. Song of the Ancients / Fate
14. Emil / Sacrifice

Reserving this too

The NieR Notebooks

Hi! I’m coming into this game completely blind and I’ve been told from the start that the story is…a little messed up. This being a Yoko Taro game I also happen to know that the plot is kinda complicated, and a lot of the finer details are in inference and references to things that happened several hours ago that you wouldn’t possibly remember.

I really want to truly understand and appreciate this game so enter The Notebook.

I’ll be taking notes during each session to help me keep track of the characters, plot and occasionally sidequests of this game! These notes will also contain random ass doodles and my personal thoughts on current events that are quite frankly, too stupid to actually say during recording – from what we’ve recorded so far I am in love with this game and my commentary is a lot more focused than what you’re used to from a Fae recording, so my silly off-hand thoughts go into The Notes instead of my audio.

I’ll be posting the NieR Notes from each session as the final episode from that recording session is posted so that folks going in blind with me aren’t spoiled also. So look forward to that!

Fae out!

The NieR Notes
Page 1: Episodes 1-3
Page 2: Episodes 4-7
Page 3: Episodes 8-11
Page 4: Episodes 12-14
Page 5-Page 6: Episodes 15-18
Page 7 - Page 8: Episodes 19-22
Page 9 - Page 10 - Episodes 23-26
Page 11 - Page 12 - Page 13 - Episodes 27-30
Page 14 - Page 15 - Page 16 - Episodes 31-35

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I’ve never seen any of Yoko Taro’s games, but considering he seems like a fantastic storyteller and all-around pretty great dude, I’ve been wanting to check out NieR.
So this is just gonna be a game about a Good Dad running to the store to get medicine, right?

Yoko Taro is very very much an acquired taste. His games are often extremely weird, push the boundaries of what you might call “acceptable” (in ways that are not always good), and until Nier: Automata, were almost always a pain in the ass to actually play as games. That said, if he clicks with you, there’s literally nothing else like him out there. Swery65 is maybe the closest you can you get, and he’s also a super specific acquired taste auteur.

E: Like, to be more clear about what I mean by “acceptable”, your party in Drakengard 1 is a mute sociopath who enjoys killing way too much, his sister who wants to fuck him, a blind pedophile, a cannibal child-eating elf, a blowhard racist, and a six year old who is literally stuck in time and never ages. The pedophile is the best and nicest party member.

That said, Drakengard 1 is far and away the most outlandish and dark game Yoko Taro has done, so his other games are far more approachable.

How does Kojima stack up?

Kojima’s games have a lot of references to things he may or may not be interested in at the time of production and oftentimes there’s not a whole lot of substance to back up his ideas, such as realistic ice cube physics for the sake of having realistic ice cube physics for one or two rooms in all of MGS2. On the other hand, Yoko Taro can be super outlandish, but one way or another, his ideas end up tying into his themes in really weird ways, like the final battle of Drakengard 3 being a rhythm game battle that both references Drakengard 1’s weird as shit joke ending and is a thematic conclusion to a game about murderous songstresses.

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I think the only Kojima game that actually fits his interests into the themes of the game was Policenauts which was basically “Living in Space would be shit”, half the characters are either corrupt or dying from health conditions exacerbated or caused by living in an unshielded glass bubble in space.

Yoko’s stuff is great and Nier is also really great and I’m definitely looking forward to this thread.

Hey Artix is this game Nier and Dear to your heart?

I think Taro’s GDC talk where he points out he values the experience of the player over the game itself is very telling of the points above. For all their warts things rarely get added to the game without some way of emphasising what is going on ion the narrative he is trying to tell, unlike say the Tech oddities of Kojima in MGS (like the way to kill the end, the various ice cube things) which are just neat side things?

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We’re gonna see how well I can handle updating this twice a week.

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aaaaand here’s my NieR notes for this session! Not much this session since nothing much happened but still, have my observations on the plot so far!

Oh shit! I was hoping someone would do this since JordanKai’s excellent attempt was cancelled.

Yoko Taro is probably my favorite person in all of video games, but I’m not enough of a masochist to actually play any of his pre-Automata games.

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Grimoire Weiss is immediately my favorite character.

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NieR runs off after an extremely vague prophecy about twenty minutes after having to save his daughter whom he told about a cureall on a whim. Like daughter, like father.

I’m a bit late to the party, but I’m enjoying the playthrough so far. I finished Automata not too long ago, and I felt I needed to experience some of the other Taro works (without actually playing them, because yeah, they’re very rough to play), so I’m glad this is happening.

Looking forward to more Dadventures!

I was just reminded of this; I meant to post music as the videos went live, but it completely slipped my mind! You can buy this game’s OST off of iTunes, so I’m not going to link to downloadable versions of the music, so if you want the songs for yourself, please support the official release. Let me know if I’ve missed anything!

Disc 1
1. Snow in Summer
2. Hills of Rdiant Wind
3. The Incomplete Stone
4. Blu-bird
5. Cold Steel Coffin
7. Song of the Ancients / Devola
10. Song of the Ancients / Popola
15. Deep Crimson Foe

Disc 2
3. Kainé / Salvation
8. The Lost Forest