Changing the difficulty settings in Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139… is rather obtuse, but it can be done. Here’s a quick guide on how to do so.
First, you can’t change the difficulty from the regular menu screen while in the game. The options don’t provide a way to do so. However, you can change the difficulty by exiting out of the game and heading back to the title screen.
How to Change the Difficulty in NieR: Replicant
Go down to “Options,” and then scroll down to the “Difficulty” tab. Then select your desired difficulty!
Easy mode allows you to toggle on and off auto-battle, which is exactly as it sounds. The game will actually fight for you while you only have to move around. You can also configure specific actions too, such as auto-attack or auto-item use.
If you don’t want Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139… to automatically use an item when you’re low on health, feel free to toggle this specific option off.
Auto-battle is great if you’re just farming enemies for resources to upgrade your weapons or if you’re trying to breeze past a playthrough to see a certain ending. Enemies have much lower health pools as well. The specific actions for auto-battle can be changed in the actual game menu rather than having to go back to the title screen.
Hard mode is exactly what it sounds like. Enemies are beefed up and take much longer to kill. They take more hits and have higher health values. You’ll take more damage from hits as well. This is a good difficulty for anyone who’s looking for a challenge.
Additionally, it’s been speculated that Hard mode increases the drop rate for certain rare materials needed to upgrade weapons, but that hasn’t been exactly proven yet. However, it might just be a better option to set the game to easy for the auto-battle option so that you can kill more enemies quickly and hope that they drop the material you need, rather than taking a long time to kill them and even then your desired material isn’t guaranteed to drop anyway.
That’s how you change the difficulty in Nier Replicant ver.1.22474487139! Remember that the difficulty can be changed at any time, and there are also no difficulty-related trophies and achievements in the game.
