It helps that her bluntness is often genuinely funny, and Yoko gives her some truly savage put-downs. Zero may be irredeemably horrible, but at least she's consistent. Dozens of games have us controlling sociopaths who think nothing of gunning down or slicing up hordes of opponents that lie between them and their goal, but then they expect us to empathise with these so-called heroes.

Many will find her abrasive personality repellent, and I can't blame them, but for me there's something refreshingly honest about playing a mass-murderer whose actions aren't excused or justified. 'I don't hate you,' she tells one sister, 'I just want to kill you.' Soldiers cry out in terror and her sisters beg for forgiveness, but Zero slices them apart without pause. She's hostile to everyone she meets - even poor, put-upon Mikhail - and ignores any and all pleas for mercy. Assisted by a juvenile (and oddly incontinent) dragon named Mikhail, she tackles them in reverse numerical order, cutting a bloody swathe through each deity's armies.

That's chiefly down to our protagonist Zero, who is on a single-minded quest to kill her five magical sisters, ostensibly to steal their powers and become the world's only remaining goddess. Drakengard 3, by contrast, plays more like a jet-black comedy and is much colder to the touch. Nier was a tragedy with a viciously cruel streak, but it was also surprisingly warm-hearted, particularly in the developing bond between its protagonists.

Much of that, of course, could also be said about director Taro Yoko's Nier, which, with the benefit of hindsight, I rated rather harshly in our 6/10 Nier review. At the very least, it's flawed in interesting ways, and it will surely find a niche audience that is prepared to defend it to the hilt. And yet at the same time, it's weirdly fascinating for all its faults, this is a game that tries something different - several things, in fact - and comes close to pulling them off. It's baggy, inconsistent, repetitive, scrappy, tonally iffy and beset by a litany of technical failings.

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