10 Greatest JRPGs Of All Time
2. NieR: Automata
The Nier/Drakenguard series has always struggled to find an audience in the west, due to a mix of bad advertising as well as a lot of the games just being kinda hot garbage. But all of that changed when the mad lads at Platinum Games got their beautiful hands on it.
Nier Automata is nothing short of a masterpiece, taking the tightrope act of being complex while also being accessible to a general audience and making it look easy. The story takes place an indeterminate (but no doubt VERY high) number of centuries after the last game in the series, centering on a pair of androids named 2-B and 9-S.
The two are soldiers of an army of other androids created by humans to battle an invading army of machines. A war that has been going on for a very long time. When it looks like the machines might be evolving in their behavior and thought processes, the two are sent to investigate. They are not ready for what they will find.
To say literally anything else would be spoiling a story you should be going into blind. Just know that in between the philosophically dense plot and emotionally crushing character beats, is some of the tightest combat you will ever play in your life. Kingdom Hearts 2 will feel like it's moving in slow motion after a playthrough of Automata.
With fast and responsive gameplay, great characters, side-quests more beautiful than the main stories of some entire games, and so many different endings players are STILL finding more to this day, one would think this game would be tough to beat.
But there is another.