NiER was a fantastic game. Effing amazing characterization, but the gameplay and recycled graphics were really mediocre and terrible, respectively, and major gaming review sites pretty much panned it across the board (6s and stuff).
If it had just a bit more budget, it would have been a superb game, but instead, it had to deal by mashing together multiple genres of gameplay and use crappy pre-rendered cutscenes. Such a shame.
Also, in regards to Final Fantasy, IV and VI are much better than VII. In fact, I like XIII more than VII. And I don't like anything about Final Fantasy XIII except the battle system and graphics (which are holyshit amazing, imo). I actually enjoyed battling in XIII, if nothing else.