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As is the case with many people, I have my parents to thank for my taste in video games.

Thankfully my mother - herself a gamer - has excellent taste and many games she picked out for me as a child turned out to be gems. Digimon World, Jade Cocoon and Drakengard are not generally beloved titles, but they remain to be some of my all-time favourite video games.

Drakengard, directed by Yoko Taro, was an action role-playing game that featured genre-bending gameplay, regularly switching between hack-and-slash, aerial combat and role-playing elements, with a somewhat dark and convoluted story.

Neither it nor its sequel sold in great numbers and they were received as being repetitive, but both remain to be two of my favourite PlayStation 2 games.

Eventually, a second sequel was released, as well as a spin-off called NieR. Unfortunately, despite being incredibly intrigued by NieR: Automata's trailers, I hadn't played these latter two games and that prevented me from getting terribly excited about this one.

Upon obtaining the game, I decided to catch up with what I missed out on. Although Automata is a standalone title that doesn't require prior series knowledge, you can watch the same video that caught me up to scratch here. Don't let its complex story scare you away!

I felt it necessarily to both illustrate NieR: Automata's own history and my history with it as a preface to my review. Now we're all caught up. Fantastic.

NieR: Automata is another action role-playing game from the mind of Yoko Taro, who publisher Square-Enix teamed with action game masters PlatinumGames (Bayonetta, MadWorld) to help make the gameplay as well-received as the original NieR's story had been.

Set after an initial invasion of Earth by a proxy robot army, Automata tells the story of how humanity fled to the Moon and eventually sent down combat androids to fight the robot invaders in a proxy war on Earth.

Playing as YoRHa No. 2 Model B (or simply "2B") and accompanied by reconnaissance model "9S", you must meet up with the android Resistance and complete missions on Earth to help drive back the machines and, via the wonderful replayability of multiple endings, discover what has really happened.

It's difficult to explain how this fairly basic premise evolves into the wonderful RPG story that it does without spoiling anything, but it eventually grips you with its twists and turns and is a real highlight for the game.

Although the protagonist does indeed come across quite robotic and emotionless, the same cannot be said of the game's other inhabitants. Despite the open world's rather empty appearance, it is teeming with life and personality. A real sense of charm can be found in everything from the locations to the non-playable characters - the sort of charm that sticks with you.

Seriously, I want some little robot figurines for my work desk.

(Image: Square-Enix)

Automata proves itself to be as genre-bending as the original NieR, with an opening sequence that has players control a ship in shoot-em-up style gameplay. This pops up several times during the game, but never outstays its welcome - nor does the occasional shifts to top-down or side-scrolling platformer gameplay throughout the game.

At its core, this is an open-world hack-and-slash game with RPG elements. Accompanied by your AI friend, Automata is host to the sort of tight combat you'd come to expect from PlatinumGames' previous work. With a customisation system that may at first appear clunky, you can equip all kinds of abilities for combat and to assist in traversing the vast world.

The combat may appear rather plain to be begin with, but it evolves into the beautiful kind of action that you've come to expect from PlatinumGames. With the addition of one of gaming's best dodge mechanics and an upgradeable Pod, which hovers beside you and can fire at enemies, combat feels more enjoyable than it does repetitive. I found myself wanting to grind enemies as I enjoyed the combat so much.

With no auto-save feature and the effect of losing customised chips if you fail to retrieve them from your corpse, dying has serious consequences. You'll want to be armed with plenty of healing items and chips, especially in the earlier half of the game. You may even be wise to complete some of the side quests on your first playthrough in order to rack up your level.

I presumptively say first playthrough because following playthroughs - which carry your level and items forward - are so vastly different that it is required if you want the full story experience.

(Image: Square-Enix)

Not even the very best video game is flawless and NieR:Automata is no exception, of course.

Sprinting, although usually a fast and very effective way of traversing the world, is often halted by sand, rubble and rocks on the ground, and having to restart your sprint each time this happens is a minor nuisance.

Running low on health creates a screen effect that saps all the colour from the game, leaving you with a greyed-out world. This may be a personal gripe, but I've never been a fan of low-health screen effects as I find they suck away some of the game's beauty. Although I understand this is meant to instill a sense of urgency, on several occasions I lacked access to healing items and was stuck with an ugly screen effect until I returned to the Resistance camp.

Oddly, it would seem that the development team are aware of some of these problems. In a fourth-wall breaking exchange with a tutorial character, a direct reference is made to how unintuitive the world map can be for the player. Albeit charming, I'm not sure that referencing issues with your game makes those issues any better. Heck, I could easily argue that this makes it worse.

(Image: Square-Enix)

Of course, none of my favourite video games are without flaws, and NieR:Automata now stands among them.

With one of the grandest, most memorable soundtracks this generation, enthralling combat, a memorable world and an engaging storyline, so long as you're not turned off by RPG or hack-and-slash games in general, NieR:Automata is an absolutely unmissable game.

This is one of those games where in many years to come, I'll fondly reminisce about its world, its soundtrack and its characters, and I'll smile.

NieR:Automata is one of the finest games I have ever played. It is a genuine masterpiece.

Oh - and you can ride a moose. So there's that.

Platform: PS4 / PC

Price: £42.99

A PlayStation 4 copy of this game was provided to us by the publisher for review purposes.