The recent rating of the NieR Automata review on Steam drops to mixed as users bombard the score thanks to the Microsoft Store port

In the past two weeks, Microsoft has made a series of surprise announcements of several RPGs coming to the Xbox Game Pass service, including a surprise Octopath Traveler port, next door Yakuza 6, several Bethesda titles, as well as EA Play finally arrive at Game Pass for PC. NieR Automate The arrival on the Microsoft Store on March 18 initially seemed like a small footnote in a flood of high-profile titles on the Microsoft subscription download service – it was originally launched on your computer via Steam in the same month as the 2017 global launch and been available to play for years.

However, a surprising lack of parity between the new version of the Microsoft Store and the original Steam port left the original buyers feeling a little rejected.

A beaten port, without support

First of all, a little history lesson. The original NieR Automata port on Steam was (and still is) a mixed bag at best, with players reporting stuck mouse cursors, cropped cut scenes, bug fixes, stuttering, and a lot of other issues. Fortunately, shortly after launch, community modder Kaldaien launched Fix Automata Resolution or FAR mode, designed to solve these many problems. At the time, Kaldaien was creating fan patches for PC ports, such as Tales of Berseria, among others, using them. K special modding framework and is currently pursuing the future port of NieR Replicant.

Square Enix itself initially promised an investigation into the reported issues and asked users at the time to stay informed:

Thanks to everyone who supported NieR: Automata.
We are happy, so many are enjoying the game. We wanted to let you know that we appreciate all your feedback and that we are investigating the issues that have been reported.
Please stay tuned for updates.

However, apart from a few news outlets urging players to update their graphics card drivers, there have never been any fixes. Even a refreshment in 2019 with the launch of the “YoRHa Edition Game” did not provide any relief. If you wanted to play NieR Automata on Steam, you used FAR mode – that’s how it was and is.

In Comes QLOC

Last week, NieR Automata became available on the Microsoft Store and also as part of the Microsoft Pass Game for PC subscription. On the same day, the Polish port company QLOC reported that it was working on the new port for the 4-year game. QLOC, previously credited to PC ports for the Yakuza series with Mortal Kombat 11 and Dark Souls Remastered, did not work on the game’s original Steam release. For the new store version, QLOC supported the new port with a borderless video setting, FidelityFX and HDR support and UI Textures upscaled to 4K. Players who tried the new port also reported significantly fewer problems with stuttering and split frames. I’m not sure how many times I’ve heard that the icon on the taskbar for computer games doesn’t matter, because in this case it certainly seems to be.

This made it obvious, of course, that Steam players were blocking the store page due to lack of support, they were denied, because a better product appeared unannounced a few years later. Review bombings have been the subject of several controversies before, including Valve having to intervene to declare certain raids “off-topic”, such as the Borderlands 2 case, when Gearbox announced an Epic Games Store exclusivity period for Borderlands. 3.

So far, Nier Automata’s review bomb has not been marked by Steam’s off-topic review activity and for seemingly well-founded reasons. A quick analysis of recent negative reviews was read as severe disapproval rather than total anger. “Although I like the game, I can’t recommend the Steam version.” one review complains, another states “I can’t recommend it in its current state. At this point you shouldn’t install a way just to solve the basic frame rate issues.” A third is simply happy to point buyers to the new version of Microsoft with a simple statement: “Don’t buy this version. Get the GamePass version instead. ”

Of course, the time spent by NieR Automata on Steam means that the current port has been pushed and pushed for years, and Kaldaien himself admits that the new version of the Microsoft Store is not perfect especially in terms of post-processing effects, such as bloom and ambient occlusion. Moreover, the existing texture changes and other changes mean that when combined with FAR mode, the Steam version of the game is still probably the one you can get, if you don’t mind throwing a bit. However, as it is, the new port of Automata works out of the box and I understand the frustration that Steam owners felt they had to set up the game themselves since 2017, only to find out that staying up to date has not yet paid off. .