If you follow me on Twitter (if you don’t, why don’t you?), you’ve probably guessed I’m at least a little obsessed with Nier: Automata. I got the game mostly on a whim. Things are pretty slow on the FFXIV front now with the expansion pack coming to a close and the handful of goals I’ve got remaining not being especially pressing (most of them can be completed with weekly caps and little else), so I thought now would be a good time to, for once, play a console game. And of course, that meant buying a new game, instead of playing one of the large stack of games I’ve bought and never finished.

I was expecting to get a good eight to twelve hours of fun out of the game and leave it at that, but Nier: Automata pretty much blew me away. I’m still playing it, even after going through and getting all of the endings, working toward a Platinum Trophy. That’s something I’ve only done for two other games: Final Fantasy XIII (which is honestly one of my favorite Final Fantasy titles) and Mass Effect 2. Not since ME2 came out for PS3 has a game had such an effect on me—and I’m not being hyperbolic when I say Nier has re-instilled my sense of faith in non-MMO video games, something that had suffered greatly after years of releases that ultimately disappointed me.

And so, even though 2B glamours were all the rage a couple months ago, I couldn’t help myself.

Glamour Components
Head: Prototype Midan Goggles of Scouting | Body: Oschon’s Mail of Aiming (Jet Black) | Hands: Hemiskin Gloves of Aiming (Pure White) | Legs: Bridesmaid’s Tights (Pure White) | Feet: Bogatyr’s Thighboots of Aiming

Honestly, when I decided I was going to do a 2B cosplay, I didn’t want to go the standard route. Oschon’s Mail does do a great job of capturing the essence of her primary outfit, but everyone’s seen it already, and it’s only available to Ranged DPS. Ideally, I wanted to do something for a melee class (with a preference for Ninja, since it has its own version of the Midan Goggles), but I couldn’t figure out any body pieces for Ninja, Monk, or Dragoon that worked. I wanted to use either the Astrum Mail or the Adamantite Mail of Maiming, but they metal plating doesn’t dye on them, and it’s too prominent to really work.

So, I went for a Ranged glamour anyway, which proved to be trickier than I thought, anyway. 2B’s boots aren’t strictly thigh-high (and they also have heels), so I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get an exact match here. The Oschon’s Sollerets seemed too subdued in shade, so I stuck with the usual Bogatyr’s ones. The really hard part was the gloves, though, as I’m sure anyone who’s put together a 2B look knows. The Oschon’s Mail is doesn’t have wider sleeves like 2B’s dress does, so it was hard to find a pair of gloves that really kept the same sort of profile there.

The ones I settled on, in the end, aren’t ideal, but they were the best I could find. The Hemiskin gloves have some black on them, which works well since 2B’s gloves do, on the fingertips. They’re a bit wider in the cuff than I would have liked, but none of the various Fingerless Gloves (which have a profile that better matches 2B’s gloves) really stood out to me in terms of textures and patterns.

I’ve been running around with the look in Palace of the Dead lately and enjoying myself, so I suppose that means I’m happy with where it ended up. I’d like to revisit the idea if I can find a body that works for a melee class at some point, since I think that’s more fitting. I also had a lot of plain fun putting this together. It’s my first attempt at a cosplay glamour (at least that I can remember), which ended up being a bit like solving a puzzle in a way that normal glamour work isn’t. I might mess around with things like this a little more often in the future.