Nier is a solid game, with fluid combat, a great story, and interesting game mechanics/characters. It also, however, has a terrible PC port that is pretty much unplayable.
There are unofficial patches, "work-arounds", and all sorts of advice you can find online, but after days of tinkering, I simply cannot play the game without crashes. I was able to bite my tongue and progress through the first playthrough (there are multiple endings requiring multiple playthroughs), but during the second playthrough, I rage-quit and simply gave up. The game is good, but it simply isn't worth the stress of not knowing when the next crash is. This issue is -exacerbated- by the fact that the game isn't forgiving with its Save feature. In other words, you better be near a savepoint, because there are only a few segments of the game that allow quick saving.
In short, most of the time my fear of crashing was a greater threat than any in-game enemy I had to face. It was always a rush to the next savepoint. I tried unofficial patches, downgrading drivers, removal of core-hyperthreading, windowed-mode, and more. Pretty much every trick in the book recommended on the web, and it still can't run. The game basically started giving me crash-PTSD, which was a sign to quit it altogether.
According to friends, for the game to really shine, you really need to reach the third playthrough, and given that the second playthrough is largely grinding (replaying the first playthrough), in conglomeration with the crash issue, I simply cannot recommend this game. That is, unless you have some way of guaranteeing that the game will run, and good luck with that.
Despite its poor performance, the game -itself- deserves a decent score, so I'll average it at a score of -7-. I respect the game itself, but shame on the group responsible for this terrible PC port!