Today was supposed to be a good day. An extra special, long awaited day. A day that I have been longing for since the curtain finally fell on the 24th ending of 2017’s sensational NieR: Automata. Today is circled in red magic marker on every available calendar at Olly S HQ. Today of course, was the scheduled release date of NieR Replicant ver. 1.2247448139.
This game, previously unseen on British shores, is the highly anticipated, reworked prequel to NieR: Automata. It would be my first taste of the game. My mouth literally salivating at the thought of the sumptuous delights awaiting me. I simply couldn’t wait to take one more trip into the uncharted mania of Yoko Taro’s crazy, beautiful mind.
But as I skipped out of bed in my jimjams, taking steps two at a time in my excitement, I had no idea that only the taste of bitter disappointment lay ahead. Having set up my green screen, ready to kick ABGs next Let’s Play into action, something on Steam didn’t seem right. Not right at all. It seems that Replicant launch has been pushed for 24 hours, on Steam at least, and as far as I can tell just in the Uk.
The difference a day can make – NieR steam release seems roughly 24 hours wrong
I quick perusal of the internet confirmed that no, I was not going mad and yes, the confirmed release date for NeiR was supposed to be today. That’s Friday 23rd of April 2021, which is absolutely not Saturday the 24th of April 2021. Further searching proved fruitful, with several news outlets posting articles on poor performance on PC. PC Games N notes,
“Unfortunately, the PC port comes with plenty of problems. There are no options for VSync and framerate limit, which is important because running it above 60fps speeds Replicant’s animations up, making boss fights much harder than they should be. A regular stutter, which seems to be linked to a controller issue on Steam, is equally annoying – mine would periodically disconnect during these stutters, so I suspect it has something to do with how it’s handling controller detection with Steam rather than poor optimisation. Whatever the culprit turns out to be, it’s not much fun to deal with in the middle of a fight.”
PC Gamer confirms,
“The technical aspects are much improved over the original, which struggled to maintain 30 fps, but they’re not quite up to contemporary standards. There are no options related to framerate, and it appears to cap at 60 fps. You can bump up or down texture filtering, shadows, reflections, and LOD, but there could have been so much more here. I ran into a few odd technical problems, too, like serious frame drops when I accidentally unplugged my controller, or a persistent issue where my mouse point kept reappearing on my screen during cutscenes, which was not great for the game’s sense of gravitas.
Frame rate issue have led to needless added difficulty in some boss encounters
In short, it seems there are a few technical issues. These seem to stem from a lack of frame rate management options, and no VSync capability. Unfortunately it seems this is causing artificial difficulty spikes for certain combat sequences, particularly bosses. There also appear to be some controller issues. But whether these problems are related to the UK Steam delay is as yet unconfirmed.
Either way, I’ll be downloading as soon as the clock strikes midnight (if that’s how release dates work on Steam?). A few technicalities are not going to impose any real barrier on my unmitigated excitement pushing me right back into to the NeiR universe. I can’t wait. Unfortunately, however, due to this latest delay I guess I’m going to have to.
Sources; Steam, PCGamesN, PC Gamer
“Video games are great. I should know, I’ve played some.”
Olly S, July 2020