NieR Replicant ver.1.22474487139… NieR Replicant Beginner Guide

Difficulty

NORMAL

 
Normal is easy once you start upgrading weapons, youll be blasting through enemies in no time.. If you just care about seeing the story, this is the best option. 
 

HARD

 
Hard increases enemies HP and DMG, making them bullet sponges and hurt you lots. 
 
This mode requires you to upgrade your weapons, be diligent not to get hit, and actually use different Sealed Verses. 
 
Do hard if you do want the game to be a lil’ more difficult, albiet an artificial difficulty raise. 
 
 

Sealed Verses

 
I know I know, Dark Blast is the best one to spam around. But the other Sealed Verses are very helpful. 
 

• Lance – Best long range for a specific target. 
• Hand – Great damage, big radius, and armor breaker. 
• Phantasm – Both can be used as a quick slash, but it’s charge has a large radius too. 
• Gluttony – Absorbs the red orbs, throws em back as big Laser. 
• Wall – Blocks red orbs, make sure to charge up too. 
• Execution – Not only great for AoE, but once a shade is spiked, you can launch them into the air to do a combo. 
• Whirlwind – Can be used in combination with words to cause status effects. Or to destroy incoming orbs.

Weapons

QUICK SWAP

 
Once you unlock more weapons, you can quick swap between them in real time. PLEASE go into your options and change Quick Swap from HOLD to TAP. 
 

WEIGHT

 
All the weapon stats are pretty straight forward… except Weight. WTF does weight even do? 
 
Well, to put it simply; 
 
HEAVIER – It can naturally break armor and guard better. Thus, effects armored enemies better. 
 
LIGHTER – The attack animation is faster. So better DPS. 
 
This is mainly relevant for HARD mode. On Normal you can knock over all enemies quite easily, plus they have little hp. While on HARD they have more hp and you can’t just slap em over. 
 

AIR

 
Pressing [Jump] then [Heavy Attack] launches enemies into the air. 
 
And with followup, you can do [Light] and [Heavy] attacks in the air to combo them. 
 
For Hard mode, it’s harder to launch foes. BUT, after using Execution enemies can be launched into the air. 
 
 

Words

 
Remember to always apply words to all your stuff. If you don’t care what the words do, just do Auto Apply. 
 

WEAPONS

 
So of course for DPS sake, increasing Attack would be the most useful. 
 
But once you get multiple weapons, I actually suggest experimenting with them a little. Remember, you can switch between 3 different weapons at once so you can specialize them a bit. 
 
DRAIN MP– I would say is probably one of the most important words cus it means you get MORE Sealed Verse attacks! 
Armor OR Guard Break UP– If you have lighter weapons, you can get the effects of a heavier weapon by applying these. 
 
Drain HP – If you wanted to a no-item playthrough, this would be the only way to get health. Just wanted to point this out heh. 
 

SEALED VERSES

 
Increase Magic Attack Damage & Decrease MP Cost are the no brainers here. 
 
But depending on the Verse, rather than DPS you can apply a Status Effect to it. Like Poison, or Paralyze. To increase the Status Effect level you need to use both Slots. Also note, I’m not sure if bosses get effected by Status Effects. 
 

DEFEND & EVADE

 
Something you may not realize but, placing words on Defend and Evade means the words become PASSIVE abilities. As in, they are applied all the time. 
 
MP Recovery especially useful for DPS, cus it means more Sealed Verses! 
 
Magic Defense, Guard Resistancenice for defense of course. 
 
Physical Strengthmakes your weapons lighter universally. See the Weapon>Weight section to understand this more. 
 
 

—STORY—