The remastered version of the firstNieRgame,NieR Replicant Ver.1.22474487139, released to great reception among fans eager to return to the world first established eleven years ago in 2010. While its “sequel"NieR Automatais still one of the most popular RPGs out there, the original nonetheless deserved to be brought to modern systems.
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Thegame is oppressively discouragingin terms of its narrative, though, and beats down the player with its overarching feeling of existential dread. The best way to recuperate after playing through a depressing story is to laugh, and what better way to do that than to look at memes related to one of the darkest fantasy series ever made.
10Are You Winning, Son
TheNieRseries is known for a few things: itsanime-inspired character designs, its detailed narratives, and of course its overwhelming sense of existential dread and misery that it inflicts upon the player. This is thanks to two things: its depressing stories, and the fact that there are so many endings to each of the games.
WhileNieR Replicanthas five endings, the “sequel"NieR Automatahas over 20. Players who want to “win” at aNieRgame will spend months and months replaying the game just to see a new ending cutscene.
9We Have Grimoire Weiss At Home
The Grimoire Weiss is the floating magicaltome that contains Words, attacks, upgrades, and more for Nier, and appears as a face inscribed into an ornate book face. The Grimoire Weiss is easily memed, though, thanks to its blank expression.
The “we have X at home” meme format is a relatively new one, but it checks out. Plus, it’s always funny to see abstract characters like the Grimoire parodied by abominations from the Uncanny Valley.
Each of theNieRgames is connected in a number of small ways, but they both share one common theme: a depressing narrative.NieR Replicanttakes place during the twilight of the existence of humanity, whileNieR Automatabegins long after the practical eradication of the human species.
Therare uplifting momentsthroughout both games are heightened because of the constant feeling of hopelessness that the rest of the game instills in the player.
NieR ReplicantandNieR Automataare not the only two games that take place in the same universe; the PlayStation 2Drakengardgames are prequels to theNieRseries, and are just as comedically bad for players' fragile mental states as the latter two games.
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InJoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind, Narancia, Mista, and Abbachio all turn on an innocent man who they suspect to be a stand user after something they possess. This meme shows Drakengard represented by Abbachio, which makes sense considering he is the oldest of the Gangstars inGolden Wind.
6Unfortunate Input Glitches
As with all new games, the remastered version ofNieR Replicanthad some issues on launch. One issue was that the game wouldn’t recognize a controller or keyboard inputs on the PC version of the game as a white screen was displayed.
The IT Crowd, a well-known British sitcom, amplified this common phrase heard in IT help centers across the world. The meme was created by gosunoob.com for an article on these glitches.
5Kaine’s Salvation
Kaine’s Salvation is a beautiful instrumental and vocal piece that plays at the end of the game, and was also featured inFinal Fantasy XIVand inNieR Automata. It’s becomean icon of the seriesand is easily one of the most beautiful songs inNieR Replicant.
Rage comics are old news, but recently they’re coming back ironically. Even players who haven’t touched the game since its initial release will relate to the emotional feeling of listening to this song again.
The Silent Protector meme format has quickly become one of the most-parodied on the internet, andNieR Replicanthas its own version.This meme shows Nierstanding above Yonah, absorbing red orbs associated with the Dark Gluttony skill.
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The original image shows a soldier standing above a child protecting them from an assortment of weapons. The low quality of the image, paired with the in-your-face metaphor, had something to do with its infinite memeability.
3Spiderman Sees Things Clearly Now
In the originalSpider-manmovies featuring Toby Macguire, there is a scene the day after his power-inducing spider bite that shows him looking through his old glasses. Kaine is shown as the “post-glasses” version of Spider-man trying to make out the definition of “perfection” in the dictionary.
While he actually sees worse through his glasses (thanks to newly enhanced senses) the meme format makes it look like he’sgetting a better lookat the meme’s subject, in this case, Kaine.
2Protect Yonah
Brooklyn 99came out of nowhere to become one of the most-watched sitcoms on TV, and spawned countless meme formats thanks to its absurdist humor. Yonah has the Black Scrawl, a Replicant body malfunction, and is under Nier’s guardianship.
She’s one of those video game characters that players can’t help but feel protective over, and the “if anything happened to her” format fromBrooklyn 99perfectly describes how most fans feel about Yonah.
1Replicant vs. Gestalt
A way that replicants work inNieR Replicantis hard to describe briefly, but essentially, they are the data-recreation of that person’s soul, called a Gestalt. The Gestalt is taken out of the Human to be preserved while its data is transferred into a replicant, but there were a lot of issues.
As part of Project Gestalt Nier has his soul removed from his body, which became the Shadowlord and main antagonist ofNieR Gestalt. The Shadowlord, though, is more impressive in a number of ways, and the Virgin vs. Chad meme format sums up a lot of these differences.
