As you battle your way through the many shades, robots, and animals littered across Nier Replicant’s post-apocalyptic dystopia, you’ll be able to call on more than just melee weapons to overwhelm them. Here’s how to shoot and use magic in Nier Replicant if you’re unfamiliar with the system.
How to Shoot and Use Magic in Nier Replicant
As mentioned above, in addition to conventional weaponry, Nier Replicant players can also use magic attacks – called Sealed Verses – to destroy enemies. This requires magical energy to cast, which refills automatically.
You’re actually taught how to use Magic almost immediately as part of the opening sequence of the game, which functions like a tutorial. Once the game starts properly though, you’ll only have your melee attacks to rely on. Magic needs to be unlocked by reaching the final room of the game’s first dungeon.
Upon reaching this point, you’ll gain access to Grimoire Weiss, the companion character/tome that serves as your source of magic.
From then on, to shoot and use magic in Nier Replicant, you can either press or hold L1 or R1 on PlayStation 4, or LB and RB on Xbox One. Doing so will fire off whichever magical attack you currently have assigned to these buttons, which you can change via the Magic/Abilities section of the main menu.
As a frame of reference: The first magical attack you’ll have access to will be assigned to R1 or RB. It can fire rapid blasts of energy when tapped or held down, and will release a burst of homing blasts when charged up and released.
Since there’s only so much magic energy to draw from, you’ll need to ease up every few seconds and wait for the blue bar in the top right corner of the screen to refill before using magic again.
There are, of course, different magical attacks to use besides shooting, and you can actually perform an alternate magical attack by pressing/holding down and releasing L1, depending on which attack you have equipped.
You will unlock new Sealed Verse spells throughout the game as you take on and defeat various bosses. Here’s a list of spells in the game (some of which you will have used during the tutorial):
- Dark Blast
- Dark Lance
- Dark Hand
- Dark Phantasm
- Dark Gluttony
- Dark Wall
- Dark Execution
- Dark Whirlwind
That’s all you need to know about how to shoot and use magic in Nier Replicant. Be sure to search for Twinfinite or check our guide wiki for more tips and information on the game.
