It’s been exactly 16 years since the release of the original NieR, which only got the papa Nier variant in the west, though I have a sneaking suspicion Square Enix just wants to retcon that version in favor of the brother Nier variant who — let’s be real — is much more appealing. Anyway, the point is that it’s been 16 years, and Square Enix is only now releasing the 15-year anniversary celebration video for the series. Hooray!
You can check out the video for yourself down below. It’s pretty sick, but beware of spoilers for Replicant, Automata, and even Reincarnation.
The NieR 15-year anniversary video was first shown off at the Unerasable Records held in Ikebukuro, Tokyo in Aug. 2025, but Square Enix has only just made it available on its YouTube channel this week. You know, on the day of the original game’s 16th anniversary, which is weirdly appropriate for a game series as strange as this one.
The video goes through all the Greatest Hits moment of each game, complete with Keiichi Okabe’s excellent soundtrack that continues to make me feel things to this day.
NieR was originally a spinoff of the Drakengard games — specifically the first one, and more specifically, the joke ending of the first one — but it’s since become its own thing. The series really only gained popularity with the release of 2017’s NieR: Automata, which featured the iconic 2B, 9S, and A2. They’re really iconic, I promise. Don’t let the generic android names fool you.
Needless to say, Automata ended up being my Game of the Year in 2017. That was the year of Horizon Zero Dawn, Breath of the Wild, and Persona 5, so the competition was stiff as hell. But Automata stood out to me for doing something that none of the other games did: it told a story that could only possibly be told through the video game medium. It does this in a few genius ways, including multiple endings and changing the camera perspective to get its point across. It puts you in control of key characters during specific moments of the story to invoke a certain feeling from you, and also adds on layers of increasing complexity to the music as the narrative progresses.
And on top of all that, the story itself is pretty damn compelling, especially in a year where we had two other major games that also dealt with post-apocalyptic worlds and robots. And I won’t deny that I sure do love stories with protagonists who are forced to suffer. There’s some primo suffering in all of the NieR games. I love it.
At the time of writing, neither Yoko Taro nor Square Enix seem to have any plans for another NieR game, but I’m certain we haven’t seen the last of this series considering how well it’s performed. For now, though, both Yoko Taro and Keiichi Okabe are working on a new Evangelion series which is basically NieR-adjacent if you think about it, which means I am now an Evangelion fan despite having never watched a single episode.
