So, this game was my first ever interaction with a soulslike, although its not really a souls game, its more like a crossover between Ninja Gaiden X Dark Souls with tons of loot and very loot-based like Diablo.
At first i didn't like it and left it only to pick it up 2-3 years later and i actually liked it.
Man oh man, i have a love-hate relationship with this game. Sometimes i'd be like: "man this game is badass!" and sometimes: "man this game sucks big time!"
Its definitely a great game, loved the style, the atmosphere, the gameplay, how its based on historic battles and real people.
Very fast paced, and very loot based from a point onwards. So the platinum is quite easy, like a 5/10 difficulty. But the 100% is a different breed. You need to complete every mission in this game on the Way of the Demon difficulty which is pretty much NG+2.
The game has 5 difficulties:
-Way of the Samurai
-Way of the Strong
-Way of the Demon
-Way of the Wise
-Way of the Nioh
Some of the missions are very hard, I had to go to WotNioh to farm gear and amrita to have a chance at the harder WotDemon missions.
What i hate about Nioh is... some missions are just bad, repetitive and unfair. It might sound like skill issue but idk, when you die in any souls game you know it was your fault 99% of the times. In Nioh.... sometimes shit happens:)))
All in all, great game, way harder than any souls game.

STOP DOING ARPG ELEMENTS
ITEMS WERE NOT SUPPOSED TO BE GIVEN RANDOM STATS
YEARS OF GAMES yet NO REAL-WORLD USE FOUND FOR +3.5 Water Resistance
Wanted to do more damage in an action game? We had a method for that: It was called "GETTING GOOD"
"Yes please give me -4% Backstab Damage Taken. Please give me -8% Quick Attack Ki Usage"
-Statements dreamed up by the utterly deranged
LOOK at what gamedesigners have been demanding your Respect for all this time, with all the computersoftware WE built for them
"Hello I would like +3.8% Yokai Close Combat Damage"
They Have Played us for ABSOLUTE FOOLS...

Challenging but fantastic Soulsbourne action RPG.

You play the role of William, an Irish pirate imprisoned by the English after his usefulness was up on their quest to gain hold of Amrita, a spirit stone granting great power they wish to use against the Spanish in their current war. On his attempted escape William has his personal spirit stolen by am English agent called Edward Kelley who then heads to Japan to fuel a civil war and gain more Amrita, William obviously then gives chase to find a country of spirits and demons.

The story is....not good. It's ham fisted with a pretty ridiculous almost anime villain though I found it interesting they are based on real historical figures who did indeed travel to Japan in the 1600s (William Adams was actually declared a Samurai by the Shogun of Japan Ieyasu Tokugawa for his help). The story is mostly there just to push William from mission to mission which frankly is fine because it's the gameplay where Nioh shines.

Nioh has a mission screen that allows the player to choose which areas to go, either main missions or side quests depending on William's strength and equipment at the time. Each level is full of various enemies from normal samurai to oni (demons) including horned creatures, sentient parasols among others. The battles are excellent though tough, a lot of the enemies will hit hard and if you just hack and slash in, you will die. Nioh, like it's influence Dark Souls, requires a little bit of strategy to make the most of it such as learning enemy attack patterns, knowing when to block, dodge or attack as well as taking advantage of the huge amount of items and skills available to win.

What really separates it from Dark Souls though are...well several things. Firstly there is a large amount of weapons such as swords, spears, axes and some more unusual like the ninja's Kurasigama (Like a hook and chain). Each weapon has upgradable abilities like extra moves which you can customize to suit your playstyle I rather like. Regardless of weapon though, each has three stances you can swap between on the fly. High stance deals more damage but is slower, low is faster for dodging but deals less damage and of course the middle is the best of both worlds. The fact that every weapon can swap between these stances depending on what you are fighting is a fantastic addition.

Secondly is that when players die they leave a bloody grave in other players games in the same location. If you so choose, you can then summon an AI version of the player to fight in the chance to get some of their gear which is a great take on the Dark Souls death messages. (There is a really clever enemy tied to this as well) Speaking of gear, the amount of flexibility with it is great. It seems to be mostly random loot but each gear set has bonuses as well as abilities that boost William. Most of which can be changed or even moved from piece to piece when fused together allowing players to really efficiently optimize their equipment for a certain style. Want to go full ninja throwing shuriken everywhere? Or use full magic powers? A little of everything? No problem.

Lastly is Ki. This is your stamina, everything you do from blocking to attacking takes away Ki, in Nioh though after you finish an attack you can Ki pulse to get a lot of it back after you attack. The timing takes some getting used to but in certain fights it can really help to keep you alive if you can master it.

Aside from combat, visuals and audio to Nioh are also great. It's quite a dark game with Japan in a war with demons roaming around but it gives a fantastic atmosphere with period Japanese buildings, shrines and themes everywhere. The graphics wont blow you away but they do look great and the game even has options on prioritizing framerate or resolution which is pretty neat and rare for a console. On the audio side the voice acting is mostly in Japanese but its very good and the music is excellent fitting with the period and the action....except for the end credits theme which is one of the worst songs ever and so out of place with everything else it's crazy. Seriously look it up on youtube, it's awful.

So with all this praise why only four stars? Well it does have a few issues. There are some really cool enemies in Nioh that are fun to fight for sure. There simply aren't enough. The variety is sorely lacking and I found myself fighting the same enemies in the final mission as I was fighting in the very first I would have thought would be phased out by that point which can be a bit boring. My biggest gripe with Nioh though is the bosses. They are hard, now I'm fine with that, I love challenging games but I didn't think they were balanced. A lot of them can just one shot kill you regardless of heavy, medium or light armor and they generally have pretty huge range and are incredibly aggressive sometimes barely giving a chance to heal. There is no back and forth learning their attacks even if they hit hard and fighting them solo without a co-op companion to by you a few breathing seconds can be pretty frustrating.

These complaints however don't ruin the game, I would highly recommend it to both action fans and some RPG fans, especially Dark Souls players. The game took me about 90 hours to beat overall going for the platinum trophy. It has a ton of content with a lot of missions, co-op multiplayer, bosses and different weapons and styles to try out so it's certainly good value for money and well worth your time. Looking forward to trying announced Nioh 2.

Recommended.

+ Characters based on historical figures is a nice little touch.
+ Combat system is brilliant.
+ Different stances and Ki pulsing are a great implementation.
+ Great value for money.
+ Great art, graphics and audio....

-.....except the end credits theme song which is strangely abysmal.
- Story is pretty bad.
- Needs greater enemy variety.
- Bosses aren't greatly balanced.

person who has only played dark souls playing their second action rpg: getting real dark souls vibes from this one

yeah yeah its taking some inspiration its got a corpse run and checkpoints but the guy at koei who loves excessive numbers got his hands on it and its so much more obviously inspired by monster hunter in terms of structure (or even...dare i say it...dynasty warriors?? the game that koei is famous for????) that i think its done a serious disservice to a video game that is way more fun and engaging than at least 2 of the 3 dark souls games.

Very glad this game came out, helped me put Team Ninja on my radar. It’s a really cool “souls-like” that very much distinguishing itself from the souls series. So much that I would say it’s not even really a souls-like. I adore the yokai designs and history setting, the environments look really nice, and the art direction is good. Core gameplay is very fluid and feels good when it clicks. The stance system is one of the coolest combat mechanics I’ve seen, allows the player to weave in and out of combos with style. I’m not a big fan of the level design, most of it feels very same-y. The enemy variety is also a bit lacking, though not to an extent where it’s a big damper on the game. The difficulty can feel a bit bs at times due to some enemy placements but the player can usually handle anything in the game. Very nice 8/10

Uma das maiores decepções que eu tive nesse ano, me lembro de ter começado a jogar no ano passado e dropado, só que não sabia o motivo. Quando fui rejogar, imediatamente descobri o porque. Até hoje não sei por que diabos platinei esse jogo, mas enfim, o que já foi feito não pode ser desfeito.

Do início ao fim do jogo, ele é totalmente repetitivo, entediante e desbalanceado. As áreas são muito lineares, com pouca exploração, essa sendo feita de maneira preguiçosa, assim como seu level design, que é um dos principais fatores do jogo ser desbalanceado e entediante. O jogo é desbalanceado devido ao fato da dificuldade dele ser baseado em quantidade e não qualidade, então ao invés de termos espalhados pelo mapa inimigos diferentes, com padrões de movimentação e ataque, em menos quantidade porém bem posicionados de maneira a surpreender e punir o jogador, temos áreas entupidas de inimigos idênticos, com nenhuma ou quase nenhuma variação, em que o jogador tem que, frequentemente lidar com um gangbang de 4 a 6 inimigos. Os inimigos em si não mudam em nada de aparência e movimentação/padrão de ataques, que para tentarem um "balanceamento" inventaram de escalonar o dano desses monstros a um nível colossal que, mesmo você estando com o mesmo nível de personagem e equipamento da missão, te dão hit kill. Isso tudo acaba sendo refletido nas batalhas contra chefes que, ou são ridiculamente fáceis, ou ridiculamente difíceis, com quase nenhuma curva de aprendizagem.

Por outro lado, a história do jogo é boa, a narrativa é agradável com o pacing certo para seu desenvolvimento. Gostei como foi pensado o plot, misturando fatos e acontecimentos históricos do Japão com mitologia e fantasia e o modo como isso foi feito encaixou muito bem com a narrativa. Os personagens em sua maioria são meio sem sal e esquecíveis, mesmo sendo personagens históricos japoneses acabaram fazendo um mal trabalho com isso.

I was already Souls'd out when I booted this up. Credit where it's due though, Nioh is much more technical with the way the ki-pulse system and stances work. I just didn't, and still don't, feel like managing RPG-stats and dealing with loot. Those 2 things had already soured Transformers Devastation for me. I wasn't willing to play it, but I don't think it's bad. I also like the mission system. I'd give it the rating I'd give any other game I was willing to sit through even though I dropped it, 2/5.

I overuse the word maximalism. In its general definition it's that catch all for something so loud, fighting for your attention with different patterns, total excess. I often use it to describe something like say Doom Eternal, where the mechanical complexity of it fights for your attention with a lot of hooks and leadins to extremely ridiculous never-ending flowcharts. That game felt so functionally designed from start to end even at its lowest moments.

I really WANT to say Nioh is similar, but this is the example where nothing is really designed together as much as it always genuinely feels like things were thrown hastily. But it sparks the same flow point, right? When you're in the thick of it in a fight and you have a handle over your ki pulse, stance change, flux, weapon swap even, etc. you can make a turn on the enemy and turn them to bloody paste. And then to cap that off they drop a bunch of flashing lights that reminds you once again every time of this game's extremely EXCESS loot system. Of course, immediately after that is the repeated sigh. You're always attacked with so many systems around that loot bullshit to count, and you have to parse your way through all of it to find what matters. If you're lucky or just strictly that observant (god help you) you'll find the tutorials. You'll find a point where you can simply dump 95% of what you find to keep your current gear set and realize that yes there is a completely optional rpg component with tangible benefits the further you get into it, but if you're even slightly less lucky and also lazier, you'll just trade small for big number. Did that sound like a lot? Because I left out like 85% of all the other stuff you can do with loot there in those two options.

Nioh is like that. It's so burning with fat that it is pain on the eyes and my patience. But still I somehow loved it, completed it without much issue, and that was always a hard thing for me to reconcile. It's not exactly the most aesthetically pleasing and honestly the more time goes by the less I find its particular carving of the sengoku period interesting or unique in identity. I get carried a lot by sound and its music is forgettable for a good deal. Its souls blood is so tacked on that its similar levels amount to 'here's your useless shortcut you'll never use' with that design frame. It even repeats a lot of enemies in encounters that don't strictly test new things from you for a good deal ESPECIALLY if you do sidequests that hate you and even more of your time.

It's so much noise! How does one stockholm themselves into that? Was I so functionally lacking in enjoyment that I needed the closest nourishment of something that borrowed from Souls, wasn't Souls, but also gave me more of Ninja Gaiden?

I suppose so, because during a very brief replay I once again went into a moment where I said, flat out, "fuck what they all say that kicked ass." I'm that weak to well, the 'maximalist' game design, the adrenaline rush of pressing multiple buttons to play footsies with enemies that will brutalize my next move in ways that are for the most part, way better telegraphed than a lot of its peers. You know on my first playthrough I only bothered using dual swords? I fucked around with the tonfas and kusarigama this time and I swear I saw god for a moment. There's so much stuff you can just do that all feels 'so' good to pull off. Flux is an ecstasy game design call, being able to give such forethought to making sure you have to plan so many actions in a row. There's 'just' enough enemies that ask for you to use it to great effect and 'just' enough bosses that feel SOOOOOO good for breaking their ki into two.

Somehow one of my favorites still, absolutely bizarre. No I am really unsure if I'm still going to go over and finish Nioh 2 I forever feel attached to my broken busted ship that I get to fight giant crabs on.

really ass game with an ridiculously artificial difficulty, 100000000 times worse than the WORSE thing in the entirety of the From Software games. I'm not elaborating tho lol.
It's not DS, i know it, but still, it's simply not fun (and i played what, 10 hours? the last boss that i smashed was that thunder-tiger in the raining stage)

I'll mark this one as abandoned, but i MAY try once more in the future, although i think this is highly unlikely.

1 star for the gameplay and aesthetic. i really like samurais and games with japanese swords.

The funniest thing about Nioh to me is just how pancake-flat the difficulty “curve” is. You are just fighting the same 5-10 dudes over and over for 20-30 hours, and your numbers are bigger-ing at more or less the same rate theirs are, so not only are you fighting the same enemies in the same environments, but the experience of fighting them, how quickly you kill them and they kill you, is almost exactly the same every time. Occasionally you will get a nice drop and you will kill Dude #3 in 5 hits instead of 6 for a mission or two, but then it goes back. Less occasionally, one of the enemies will get a new twist which means they have one more move, or you will get a new skill to try out, but it's all a wash, it doesn’t change the texture of any encounters much at all.

This was genuinely humorous to me and I would kind of object personify the different enemy types as they inevitably showed up every level, but I obviously don’t think this is good and I don’t think I have it in me to do it again, so here’s to hoping Nioh 2 has maybe 15 or even 20 enemies!