Nier 1... I tried to play it but it's way too generic. And not fun to play at that. Unless you come from Drakengard and earlier, I don't see reason to play it. Automata was made by Platinum, which means they'll deviate from the series formula to deliver non-stop action (think Metal Gear Rising).
Nier is alright, but the main reason why people like it is because they haven't played many JRPGs. It's pretty generic in almost all respects if you have.
@Mr SP: It is not necessary, but there are some important things. There are backstories to characters and explanations of the current state of the world, which is important stuff in my opinion.
Time to shill Automata?
It's a 3rd person character action bullet hell You play android fighting machines left by aliens You don't need any experience with Nier or drakengard games to understand the story
at some point half the game becomes a bullet hell shooter often Has platinum games dodging.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the absurd quantity of fetch-quests in Neir. So many sheep died to feed that village. Bit of gardening (actual date related, not just in-game time) to, which was kinda weird given the game type.
@Tk: Nier was about people killing because they think they're right, then pulling away those justifications, based on the producers impression of the recent Iraq war. It wants you to think about why people kill others (in games, if not otherwise). Though Automata is a bit different.
@Shellhit: It's not absolutely necessary to view all of those works mentioned. In fact, it's not even necessary to play Nier 1. Drakengard and Nier's plots are only roughly mentioned in Nier Automata. There are some interesting things in them, but nothing necessary.
No not a statement of critique. I mean the situations and the world for the characters. Especially as you do game+ playthroughs which reveal fresh horrors to old experiences and terrible revelations. Then it gets worse and worse in game++ and onwards.
The whole series is pretty insane with it's plot. There are important plot details in original Nier, Drakengard 1, side stories, drama CDs and stage plays. A lot of this stuff is available only in Japanese language.
Nier 1 was action RPG, the worst part of it was the action and horrible merge between 3rd person shooter and melee fights, Platinum fixed that, in a major way.
Still undecided which had the better soundtrack.
First Neir was a lot of things. It was action RPG (real time battle) but there were parts that played like old school top-down shooters, a part that was a simplified text adventure (literally just text on screen for an entire section, though it was a good section) and boar riding.
