FRUSTRATED Zelda fans prepare to smile for the first time since the Game Cube was in fashion. Nier is the best role play game from the Zelda school of gaming to emerge for a long time.

Our hero is Nier who is working for a small town as an odd job man and defender from the threat of the Black Scrawl disease.

Unfortunately your beloved daughter Yonah has got the disease and as everyone else in the entire town is an idiot or coward it is up to you to save her and the world.

 As ever with such games there is a large amount of running around and chatting to the same people over and over again about the state of the world and later you will be needing the same people to access missions.

However this game is highly playable – even if it is a tad predictable and been done before. I was put off by the front cover and if truth be told I was about to switch the game off after a strange opening sequence which saw me fighting in what appeared to be a school playground with a broken drain pipe.

However, I am glad I persevered because after I got past all the corny stuff that you associate with such RPGs I found Nier to be a very good game indeed.

You are totally dependant on strengthening your magic skills and beefing up as a character to ensure this pretty crazy world does not gobble you up.

Along the way you do actually manage to find company and the stage trained voice of Liam O’ Brien as a talking book provides some light hearted moments.

There are plenty of puzzles and enemies to get around and although it does take some getting used to the controls do eventually make sense.

It is hard to heap too much praise on this game because an RPG on the PS3 should definitely be a five star.

However, I could not give Nier the maximum rating because after all it was not quite as good as Zelda which made its name on an inferior format over a decade ago.

RATING: 4/5