Ghost of Christmas Past, nope, it’s just the Nier review I wish I would have had it in me to write when I wrote about it all those months ago…

The game opens up with the usual studio/publisher logos, which are nicely done on either black or white backgrounds depending upon the color used for each respectively. The last shown before the game is ready to go is for Square Enix, which shows up on a black background.

Before too much time passes a voice rings out and begins berating someone - not necessarily using the most child-friendly language to do so. This leads to a cinematic that will give players a head’s up as to what can be expected of Nier.

This, of course, leads to being asked to press START, and of course leads to the game’s main menu, which resides on a black background with white font with “NIER” being placed in the center of the screen and the menu itself being beneath. Menu items include: “New Game,” “Continue,” “Options,” and “Downloadable Content.”

Opening the options tab from the main menu will take players to a menu that looks like one side of an open book. The color scheme used is a black font on a light colored background. The font itself is a fair-sized pretty plain one. Menu items, when selected, don’t make any drastic changes, it just becomes highlighted in white. This doesn’t do much for contrast, but it is enough.

Options menu items include: “Game Settings,” “Difficulty,” “Install,” and “Return,” the game settings option will take players to another screen that has the appearance of the previous screen. This list includes the ability to turn subtitles on/off, a lot of camera control options like sensitivity, control, auto-follow, and “Camera Delay.” Also included on this list are about half a dozen options that don’t really apply to the accessibility of the game.
Clicking “Return” will take players back to the first page of the options menu where they’ll be able to install the game to their HDD, switch up the difficulty (easy, normal, hard), or return to the main menu.

When ready to begin a new game, do just that and be asked what difficulty to play the game at (easy, normal, hard) - my limited play through was on “easy,” and I didn’t make it very far into the game.

Much like my X360 play-through, my PS3 play-through ended with fishing for a Shaman Fish. I was really hoping the SIXAXIS control mechanic would have been integrated into this part of the game, but sadly it hasn’t been, and there wasn’t so much as a patch.

There’s a lot of inaccessibility in fishing; first issue is the thin fishing rod on any of the background surroundings - not very easy to see, and a large part of fishing is dependent upon the player to see the rod bend indicating that there’s a bite. As soon as players have their bite, the struggle is on to land the fish. This is done by moving the stick in the opposite direction the fish is pulling. If all of the above is done successfully, players will have a war of attrition on their hands because before landing a fish, the fish’s HP will need to be lowered, and that could take some time.

On other gameplay fronts, Nier is a button masher. Magic can be used, but as far as I was able to get in the game, using magic as a primary weapon wasn’t really an option.
Outside of its gameplay mechanics, Nier is a pretty accessible game; The subtitles appear at both the top and bottom of the screen, and pretty much everything a character says in the game is subtitled.

The dialogue appearing at the bottom of the screen comes in the form of a white font on black letterboxing, though sometimes there’s a bit of a design to it, and sometimes they’re slightly see-thru.

Dialogue is also captured along the top of the screen, mainly in the upper left corner of the screen, but sometimes the dialogue sprawls further. These too come in the form of white font on a black background.

Visually, the game looks really good. Armed with the knowledge I now possess, I haven’t really seen a problem with Nier, aside from the fishing pole being as thin as it is.
Nier even affords players the opportunity to re-map some of the buttons on the controller. This doesn’t really lend a hand to one-handed gamers, but it does make combat slightly more comfortable.

At a glance

Visual
The only issue really prevalent in the game that I could see was the thin line that was the fishing pole. This would be less of a problem if fishing were optional, but as it is necessary to fish to make it through the story, the score takes a bigger hit. (-1 point)
All menus and subtitles appearing in the game are high contrast, the fonts are large enough, and reading is just a pleasant experience.

Recommended score of 9 out of 10

Mobility

Slightly remap-able controls - shoulder buttons only. (-0.5 point)
No schematic of the control scheme. (-0.5 point)
Button masher. (-1 point)
Even starting a fight with a fish is tough, and once that’s done, it takes a significant amount of time to wear the fish down so that it can be landed successfully. (-2 points)
Game would be hard to keep up with using just one hand. (-1 point)

Recommended score of 5 out of 10

Hearing

The subtitles in this game are fantastic - white font that isn’t too small inside black letterboxing which takes place at both the bottom and top of the screen.
All speech in the game is captioned whether it be standing there talking to someone or in passing.

Recommended score of 9 out of 10