"NieR:Automata - Nagai Hanashi" (Long Story) by Eishima Jun. The story of three robots in a world without humans. This is a novelization of the game NieR:Automata.
The story starts with the premise that humans no longer inhabit the earth, and these androids are sent to earth to fight on behalf of mankind to take control back from machine lifeforms. Readers got to observe the various personalities of these androids, and also how the machines they are fighting against learn over time and become superhuman lifeforms. While there is continuous progress on the main plot of reclaiming earth with lots of twists and conspiracy backstories, the highlight of this story is really the various episodes that show what might happen when machines became really intelligent. I am generally a fan of these type of emotional robot stories, and NieR:Automata is another great instance of that genre.
For people who have not played the game, this is a fairly accurate novelization that captures most of NieR:Automata's story without tens of hours of fighting and dizzying 3D effects. But it can't compress everything into mere ~300 pages: some scenes were cut very short, some dialogues were dropped, almost all the subquests were cut and Emil doesn't appear at all. Some of these will probably make it to "NieR:Automata - Mijikai Hanashi" (Short Story), to be published in October. Still, it would be a good idea to watch some playthroughs of this game, the visuals and music are worth the time and can't be easily conveyed in printed medium.
For people who have played the game or at least watched all of it, this book covers endings A through E, so all the "good" endings are covered. Some details didn't make it to the book, but in exchange we get more of the inner dialogues that were not present in the game. Also, the game made the correct decision to remain as interactive as possible, thus most of the story and dialogues went on in the background while plenty of running and frantic fighting absorb much of player's attention. This book is better medium for people who wanted a coherent view of just the main story, to be read at a leisurely pace. I might not recommend this book to people who have not played the game, but I would definitely recommend it for people who have played it.
Looking forward to the second half of the NieR:Automata novel.
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