Nier

Once talking spellbook Grimoire Weiss is recruited, these physical assaults are backed up with a bevy of magical attacks too. Initially there's just one: the pew-pew space laser of the Dark Blast, a continuous stream of magical projectiles spewed from Weiss' pages as he floats beside Nier, allowing you to whittle down enemies and interrupt their attacks. Because the blasts shoot in the direction which the camera faces rather than that which Nier himself faces, it also allows some crowd management whilst the hero concentrates on another foe with his sword.

Soon, Weiss unlocks the powers of Dark Fist and Dark Lance (sensing a theme here?) which crush or pierce monsters respectively. These, like melee attacks, can also be charged, going into quasi-bullet time as they do so, to be released for a more devastating effect. Each magical attack consumes a portion of a rapidly recharging mana gauge, which is restocked even more quickly by absorbing the blood which sprays from the corpses of enemies as they fall.

Large boss encounters are multi-staged battles, often requiring a main health bar to be depleted before an area-specific target is opened for attack. These are strictly time-limited in classic boss-battle style; failing to capitalise on their appearance will mean another round of beatings before they appear again. It's never too frustrating, though, a reflection of a generally well-balanced difficulty curve.

What does occasionally grate is the fact that there's no period of invulnerability after being knocked down, meaning that the large mobs of 'shades' which Nier sometimes encounters can easily surround and bully him into submission, sapping health with no chance of reprisal.

But what of the RPG elements? Levelling up is handled in a very lightweight manner. There are no stat increases here, no classes or magic choices, just a simple line of white text which pops up whenever you slip the noose of another XP boundary. In this sense, Nier's progression appears to be very linear, preordained. Where you will get the chance to flex your spreadsheet skills is in the weapon and skill upgrade systems.

Broadly speaking, weapons are upgraded via the collection of various random resources, spawned at shiny points across the various maps. Skills and magic utilise 'words' obtained from monsters, which are applied to Nier's abilities as buff-inducing equipment. We can't really go into too much detail about them, as developer Cavia is still fine-tuning the system, but there isn't currently a huge amount of meat on their RPG bones.

This mention of resource gathering brings us to the the third spoke of Nier's wheel: the Japanese obsession with fishing and farming. There are definite traces of Monster Hunter here, especially in the gathering points, although we didn't see enough of these systems to know how the end products will be used. Both are handled competently enough in terms of the mini-games which they represent, however, as basic fishing equipment and a market garden are picked up fairly early on.

It continues to amaze me that I'm still such a sucker for a nicely implemented fishing mechanic, especially when the products of it are usually tertiary to requirements. Nier's take is fairly unforgiving to begin with, but had already worked its compulsive magic on me by the time I'd finished playing.

A strange mix of ingredients, and an ambitious one, but it remains to be seen whether they can be made to gel. The closest fit I can currently suggest is Final Fantasy spin-off The Crystal Bearers, although Nier's narrative drive doesn't fit with that game's focus on exploration and experimentation.

There's certainly a fair bit of tidying up to be done before Nier's proposed 23rd April release, not least on the bizarrely Vaseline-smeared visual style of our build, but Cavia could well pull something special out of the bag if the studio gets the balance right.