It's the summer of 2049 and things aren't going so well. The game's main character, Nier, is saddled with a sick daughter, named Yonah, and some kind of evil book he implores her not to touch as he goes out to find food. Suffering isn't limited to Nier and his daughter -- the world at large is reeling from the effects of a pandemic. A cure was developed, but unfortunately that led to even more problems because its implementation somehow spawns even more powerful disease.
Called The Black Scrawl, this new plague is paired with the appearance of monsters known as shades which tend to lash out and attack others. They attack Nier in this early game sequence as he's looking for food, which serves as a sort of basic tutorial for how the combat system works. Nier will come across numerous types of weapons as he ventures through, but in this case he exclaims that he needs more power and reaches for a book.
This allows him to access a range of magical powers. The book itself hovers at his hip, and can do things like blast out strings of magic bullets reminiscent of those that fire from a ship in a top-down scrolling shooter or summon a large arm to fist smash enemies (charge it up for more damage). The enemies themselves look like humanoid clusters of digital leaves, if that makes any sense. You can see them in the screenshots.
After the short scuffle, events then skip 1300 years into the future and Nier is still trying to find a cure for his sick daughter. The reason for the dramatic shift in setting was not revealed in the interest of avoiding spoiling plot points. I was told that this game is meant to be as much of a role-playing game as it is an action game, something highlighted by Nier heading to a nearby town and interacting with other characters who served as weapon vendors and quest givers.
Among the choices of weapon types are two-handers, which tend to do big damage but take longer to swing, one-handers, which are faster with lighter damage, and spears. Proficiency with these weapon types can be upgraded a number of times, and your book, called Grimoire Weiss, can be tapped for boosts as well. Your special attacks are built upon a system called "Word Edit." As you kill enemies in the field, they'll periodically drop words. In your inventory, up to two can then be applied to weapons, martial arts skills, and spells to augment their functionality, and I'm told there'll be over 100 words in the game, so it seems like there'll be plenty of ways to customize your fighting style.
The majority of the game takes place from a third-person perspective and appears to play like standard action games with a similar perspective. I didn't actually get hands-on time, so I can't say for sure. There are the occasional interesting shifts of perspective, however, including 2D platforming sequences and boss encounters with sprays of projectiles that look similar to bullet hell shoot 'em ups.
I can't really say if it'll be as challenging as a bullet hell game, but that's what it looks like as bosses emit giant fans of energy pellets you're challenged to dodge. Standard enemies will come at you in numerous forms and sizes and will occasionally be protected by armor. It's clear the boss sequences are meant to be impressive in scale, as one section we saw featured a giant that clamped itself onto the ramparts of a town and straddled the entirety of the public courtyard. It was a multiple stage battle where Nier had to hop all over the environment to knock the beast down from its perch, then try to dispatch it on the ground before it was able to smash into a structure where all the villagers were hiding.
This was only a small portion of the overall game experience, but what I saw wasn't particularly exciting. Maybe that impression will change after some hands-on time. If it sounds interesting to you, Cavia's Nier is currently scheduled to be released sometime this spring for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 platforms.