NieR:Automata™: story appears 3.9 times more often than usual
Story, scenario, writing appears 3.9 times as often as in a typical game among these reviews. The count covers 1,941 Japanese-language reviews written from 2017-03-17 to 2026-10-23.
Own research by 648 News. Every figure in this article was counted by us from 1,941 Steam reviews written in Japanese, collected between 2017-03-17 and 2026-10-23.
Collected reviews match Steam's total closely
This analysis counted 1,941 Japanese-language reviews for NieR:Automata™. Of those, 1,571 recommend the game, or 80.9%. The 95% confidence interval for that share runs from 79.1% to 82.6%. All 1,941 collected Japanese-language reviews were classified into topics. Steam's own all-time figures, read on 2026-10-29, list 1,940 Japanese-language reviews, 1,570 positive reviews, and an 80.9% positive rate. Steam labels the whole history as Very Positive.
The numbers
Story, music, and characters exceed the usual share
Against 103 other followed games, story, scenario, writing appears in 37.5% of classified Japanese-language reviews. The baseline comes from the other followed games. The usual share is 9.5%, so this game's share is 3.9 times as high and 28.0 percentage points higher. In reviews that recommend the game, story appears in 39.6%.
ここ数年で一番心に刺さった物語でした。
The story was the most heart-striking in recent years.
Reviewers who recommend the game often describe the story as memorable and emotionally strong.
Music, sound, voice acting appears in 8.9% of classified reviews, 4.5 times the 2.0% baseline and 6.9 percentage points higher. Reviewers link music to the ruined atmosphere and say it strengthens presentation.
また音楽も情景に合っていて素晴らしくサントラを買ってしまう出来です。
The music also fits the scenes and is good enough to prompt a soundtrack purchase.
Characters, character design appears in 18.4% of classified reviews, 2.6 times the 7.0% baseline and 11.4 percentage points higher. In reviews that recommend the game, it appears in 19.2%. Reviewers praise distinctive android figures and costumes.
Amount of content, length, replayability appears in 12.1% of classified reviews, below the 25.8% baseline. The ratio is 0.5.
Performance and gameplay divide the two sides
Performance, optimization, bugs, and crashes appear in 14.6% of classified Japanese-language reviews. The topic splits reviewers: it appears in 10.0% of reviews that recommend the game and 34.1% of reviews that do not recommend it. The gap is 24.1 percentage points, and reviews that do not recommend it raise it more often.
Gameplay, combat, and core mechanics also split the two sides. It appears in 38.6% of recommending reviews and 56.8% of non-recommending reviews, a gap of 18.2 percentage points.
大きな難点はハッキングを前提とした戦闘とストーリー
The big drawback is combat and story built around hacking.
Story, scenario, writing also stands out among complaints. It appears in 28.4% of reviews that do not recommend the game, against a 7.3% baseline for negative reviews. That is 3.9 times as high and 21.1 percentage points higher. Characters, character design appears in 15.4% of reviews that do not recommend the game, 3.5 times the 4.4% baseline and 11.0 percentage points higher. Some reviews that do not recommend the game mention fullscreen display problems, crashes, and camera behavior.
Longer play time goes with more recommendations
The least-played quarter contains 485 reviews written with play time up to 15.0 hours. Among that group, 66.8% recommend the game. Its most mentioned topics are gameplay, combat, and core mechanics at 34.4%, graphics and art direction at 24.5%, and performance, optimization, bugs, and crashes at 22.1%.
The most-played quarter contains 485 reviews written with play time from 55.8 hours. Among that group, 91.5% recommend the game. Its most mentioned topics are gameplay, combat, and core mechanics at 47.0%, story, scenario, and writing at 46.2%, and characters and character design at 21.9%.
The difference between the two groups is 24.7 percentage points, with p < 0.001. The median playtime behind these Japanese-language reviews is 34.8 hours.
Methodology and sources
Data
Steam user reviews, retrieved with Steam's public review listing between 2017-03-17 and 2026-10-23: 1,941 written in Japanese. Steam's own all-time totals for NieR:Automata™ were read on 2026-10-29.
How the reviews were classified
Every review was read by a language model, which rated how positive it is, how much concrete detail it gives, and which of 15 fixed topics it talks about. The counts and percentages in this article were then computed from those labels in ordinary code, not by the model. Automatic classification makes mistakes, so single percentages should be read as approximate. Reviews of fewer than 15 characters were not sent to the model; they count as positive or negative from the reviewer's own recommendation and carry no topic.
Limits
People who write a Steam review in Japanese are not a representative sample of everyone who plays in Japan, and the language of a review does not establish where its author lives. Steam's default filter for off-topic review activity was left on, so periods Steam marked as review bombing are excluded from the counts in this article. Reviews that arrived after the retrieval date are not included.
Links
Data from Steam. Steam and the Steam logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Valve Corporation.