Over the past few weeks, Microsoft has made a slew of surprise announcements of several RPGs that have come to Xbox Game Pass service, including a surprise Cruiser harbor, next door Yakuza 6, several Bethesda titles, as well as EA Play that finally arrived for Game Pass for a PC. NieR Automata Arriving at the Microsoft Store on March 18, it initially looks like a small footnote in a deluge of high-profile titles on Microsoft’s download service – it was originally released on Steam via Steam in the same month as the global release in 2017, and has been available for years.
However, a surprising lack of equality between the new Microsoft Store version and the original Steam port has left original buyers a bit neglected.
A broken port without support
First, a little history lesson. The original NieR Automata port on Steam was (and still is) at best a mixed bag, with players reporting mouse pointers, turbulent tracks, erroneous resolutions, stuttering, and a host of other issues. Fortunately, shortly after its release, Kaldaien, community modder, released the Fix Automata Resolution, or FAR mod, which aims to solve these numerous problems. Kaldaien had previously made fans of computer ports such as Tales of Berseria, among others through his Special K mud frame, and is currently looking forward to the upcoming port of NieR Replicant.
Square Enix originally promised an investigation into the reported issues and asked users to stay up to date:
Many thanks to everyone who supported NieR: Automata.
We are happy, so much enjoy the game. We want to let you know that we appreciate all your feedback and are investigating the issues.
Stay tuned for updates.
Except for a few news reports urging players to upgrade their graphics card drivers, however, nothing came of it. Even a refresh in 2019 with the release of the ‘Game of the YoRHa Edition’ provided no relief. If you wanted to play NieR Automata on Steam, you used the FAR mod – that’s just how it was and is.
In Kom QLOC
Last week, NieR Automata also became available in the Microsoft Store, and also as part of Microsoft’s Game Pass for PC subscription. On the same day, the Polish gatehouse QLOC reported that he was working on the new port for the 4-year-old game. QLOC, previously credited on PC ports for the Yakuza series with Mortal Kombat 11 and Dark Souls Remastered, did not work on the original Steam release of the game. For the new version of the store, QLOC supported the new port with boundless video setting, FidelityFX and HDR support, and UI Textures was scaled up to 4K. Players who tried the new gate also reported significantly fewer problems with stuttering and awkward frame rates. I do not know how many times I have heard that the icon on the taskbar for computer games does not matter, because in this case it certainly seems.
This, of course, led to the obvious, with Steam players blocking the store page due to the lack of support they refused because a better product appeared unannounced a few years later. Previously, there had been several controversies over revision bombings, of which Valve had to step in to declare certain raids as ‘off topic’, as was the case with Borderlands 2 when Gearbox announced a period of Epic Games Store exclusivity for Borderlands 3.
Kidney Automata’s review bomb has so far not been noticed by Steam’s out-of-topic review activity, and for seemingly good reason. A quick review of the recent negative reviews reads like a serious disapproval rather than a clear anger. “Although I like the game, I can not recommend the Steam version.” one review regrets, another states: “I can not recommend it in its current state. At this point, you really do not need to install a mod just to resolve basic issues”. A third is simply happy to point buyers to the new Microsoft version with a simple statement: “Do not buy this version. Get the GamePass version instead.”
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Of course, NieR Automata’s time on Steam means that the current port has been poked and stuffed and dusted for years, and Kaldaien himself admits that the new version of the Microsoft Store is not perfect, especially with regard to post-processing effects such as flowering and environment not. occlusion. On top of that, existing texture tweaks and other changes mean that the Steam version of the game, when combined with the FAR mod, is still the one you can get if you don’t mind tampering a bit. As it looks now, the new gateway to Automata is working out of the box, and I understand the frustration that Steam owners have felt since 2017 that they had to upload the game themselves, only to find that it remains to be updated stay.