Nioh is more indicated for fans of Ninja Gaiden than it is for the fans of Dark Souls it is marketed towards, as it only displays a cursory understanding of soulslike mechanics.

The Good:

Deep, varied combat system as befitting of Team Ninja - Quality soundtrack - Occasionally good level design

The Bad:

Soulslike mechanics are mostly just cosmetic additions to ride the fad - Mission based structure instead of connected world - Looter mechanics are gruelingly boring to deal with - Randomized item pickups means exploration is pointless - Farming healing items is tedious - Exploitable enemy AI allows acquisition of overpowered loot way too early on - Bosses are unreasonably difficult and yet too easily exploited, making them trivial unless you discipline yourself - Obtrusive, uninteresting story - Overlong, overstays its welcome

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As a Dark Souls fan I am always starved for more in the genre which has become known as soulslike: you name it, I either played it or own it and have to get around to it. It's not that difficult to please me either: all I ask is for the game to show basic understanding of the formula that From Software invented and perfected, and to stick to it albeit with its own spin on it. It is no surprise then that I eventually wandered in the direction of Nioh, enticed by the glowing reception it received and expecting the soulslike experience I am constantly on the lookout for. Little did I know, despite the game's very deep and multifaceted combat system that one has come to expect from the people behind the Ninja Gaiden franchise, that I was going to be sorely disappointed. The reason is that underneath its façade, Nioh is a standard action game masquerading as a soulslike and with a very weak grasp of the core features of the genre.

To start with, the plot and the overabundance of it: Nioh tells the story of William Adams, an Englishman loosely based on a real navigator and adventurer of the same name, who visited Japan in the late 1500s. The game opens with William staging a daring escape from the dungeons of the Tower of London, slaying beefeaters on his way to freedom, before embarking for the far east in order to evade the law. Arriving in Japan he becomes entangled in a web of magical conspiracies involving gods, warlocks, Oda Nobunaga and other warlords engaged in war with one another. This plot is presented with very long, very verbose cutscenes, the first red flag indicating the fundamental divergence from the style they purport to copy: where most games in the soulslike genre forgo cutscenes in favor of subtle environmental storytelling (a true staple of even the most indie exponents), Nioh decides to drown the player in exposition fro start to finish. It's not an interesting story either, despite being presented with good production values and a really well composed soundtrack, its trite yarn about magical stones and evil gods is unlikely to keep you enthralled, try as it might.

What really makes or breaks a game like this, however, are the level design and the gameplay: after all, uninteresting cutscenes can be skipped to get to the meat, but unfortunately Nioh drops the ball even harder when it comes to that. Simply put, this is not a soulslike game, it is something much more similar to Ninja Gaiden and Devil May Cry with a thin Dark Souls coat of paint and a whole lot of Diablo mixed in. If that sounds good to you then great, but for me this was a huge problem.

To begin with, gone is the interconnected world that is the pride and joy of the genre. Where Dark Souls and its spawn delight the player by unlocking shortcuts that link previously distant areas to one another for ease of access, gradually creating an organic, cohesive feel to the world, Nioh throws that out the window in favor of a mission-based structure in which you pick which level you want to play from a map screen and then proceed to play it in a vacuum. It is not unheard of even for the cream of the crop of the genre: originator Demon's Souls offered a very similar approach but while that was done due to technical limitations and From Software not having the formula all figured out yet, Nioh just does so out of convenience, disregarding one of the finest aspects of this category of games. The most that Nioh does is having the typical gates that have to be unlocked from the other side in order to reach a previous shrine (Nioh's equivalent of a Dark Souls bonfire), but that's all it's got as far as interconnection goes.

Second is the equipment; with some variation due to high and lows in quality between games, item placement in soulslikes is extremely deliberate: it is in fact designed in such a way as to prevent the new player from acquiring overpowered equipment before it's appropriate, but at the same time carefully tailored for the expert player and speedrunner to take huge risks and sequence break in order to obtain strong gear early on and engage in entertaining challenge runs. A chest always contains the same item and that shiny pickup perched on top of that dangerous crenellation always holds the same useful ring. It is easy to imagine the amount of planning and careful consideration put into a system such as this, which is so well balanced that dedicated players have item locations down to a veritable science and can calculate exactly how many seconds it will take to acquire a certain one.

Nioh does none of that; you will find shiny pickup icons representing objects but as opposed to the aforementioned soulslikes, here they are completely randomized: you can, if you want, walk along that narrow ledge and fight those two dangerous demons in order to reach that enticing glittering goodie, but your reward will likely be procedurally generated trash loot you do not need in any way. A such the nearest pickup you can find at the start of a level is just as likely to yield the same loot as the most dangerous one to reach, making pursuing the latter completely pointless. It's like Team Ninja studied the aesthetics of Dark Souls levels and decided to replicate the looks of them, but without considering why they are laid out the way they are. And it's a shame because the levels are generally well designed, with some of them being really well made, but it just feels empty when you know there is nothing worth finding.

The result of this is that exploration is utterly meaningless unless you particularly want to find hidden kodamas: tiny gnome-like creatures which, when found as a complete set in each area, confer special buffs for that zone only. All well and good aside from the fact you will never need this, and the hours spent looking for them are hardly worth the effort. There are unique items scattered around the levels in fixed locations in the form of locks of hair which provide points to spend on magic skill trees, but you will be showered with those very points just by normally playing the game to such an extent that it renders the pickups absolutely redundant and not worth looking for.

Similarly to analogous mechanics in most soulslikes, in Nioh you drop your entire unspent experience pool upon death, which then needs to be recovered without dying again or it is lost forever. This is a great mechanic that forces the player to play conservatively after a death in order to avoid suffering permanent losses, but like most things in this game it is half cooked, if not entirely raw: where most games of this kind save progress automatically the second you die, eliminating the possibility of abusing saves to negate adverse consequences, Nioh only autosaves after the (fairly long) loading screen that follows a death, meaning the player can simply Alt+F4 out of the game during loading and avoid losing any of the experience he has dropped, which will still be there upon loading the game again. Of course this leaves it up to the player whether or not he intends to abuse this undercooked mechanic, but it should not be left to the player to discipline himself to avoid exploiting the cracks of an unpolished game: a game should be designed to prevent being exploitable.

The loot mentioned above is another big issue: just like in your average Borderlands-style looter game or Diablo clone, Nioh is fond of dropping trash loot that is of no use to you whatsoever. Unlike those games however, Nioh has no strict carry limit forcing the player to regularly manage his loot: Nioh lets you pick up seemingly hundreds of items before the carry limit is reached, which means you will eventually hit that "you cannot carry any more" point and be forced to stop and sift through dozens of semi-identical swords and boots you have no need for but which might be marginally better than what you have and as such have to be checked. As a result you you will spend a considerable amount of time weighing the pros and cons of a piece of armor that offers 1.25% more physical damage reduction but 1.28% less fire protection than what you have, or deliberating whether that 8.2% magic bonus from that helmet is worth losing your 8.4% sword damage full set bonus over. The game mercifully allows you to protect favorite items so you don't accidentally sell or scrap them when you head to a shrine and mash a button for several seconds to dump all your loot in the recycling bin for cash or materials without having to think about it. This shaves a good amount of busywork from your chores but the bulk of them still remains intact.

The good news is that you can skip all of that if you only exploit one of the game's biggest oversights, which is the online integration, in order to acquire outlandishly overpowered loot as early as the first area after the tutorial level. In a similar way to Dark Souls you will find bloodstains around the levels, representing the spot where another player has fallen in combat. However, unlike Dark Souls, where touching a bloodstain only displays a ghost re-enacting how the player has died, serving as a warning of dangers to come, in Nioh these are used to summon the ghost of the dead player for a duel against a challenging AI opponent, whose reward for defeating them is a piece of their equipment, which you can see before deciding to challenge them. If, for instance, you find a bloodstain decked in purple gear (the highest normal tier available) you will fight a very strong enemy who will drop equipment you should be getting several hours into the game. The excessive challenge of the foe should balance it out, but it is not so since the enemy AI is very stupid and extremely easy to trick into chasing you blindly past a corner when you break line of sight, at which point you can smash them with your strongest attack and quite possibly kill them in one fell swoop, reaping the rich rewards of their equipment you weren't supposed to have. Some players will in fact travel to starting areas of the game and deliberately die there just so beginners can exploit this trick and make the game trivially easy with a moderate time investment.

Bosses can be exploited in similar ways, turning them from hair-pulling tests of patience to a complete joke. The way this is achieved is by unlocking one of several completely unbalanced skills, of which I will mention one that is the sloth spell, which slows down any enemy, including bosses, of 50%, making fighting them an absolute triviality. You will feel bad for these previously relentless enemies, now absolutely powerless to even turn around to face you as you mercilessly shash away at their sore behind. If that weren't enough, you can equip multiple charges of that same spell, which means you will be able to do the entire boss fight that way. Same as before, it's up to you whether you want to trivialize the game or not, but one cannot blame the player for wanting to use the most efficient way to win if the game allows for it.

And do it you will want to, since Nioh features some of the most infuriating boss fights you are likely to see in any game: many are a ceaseless flurry of AOE attacks, while others possess unfair one-hit-kill or immobilizing moves they use with excessive frequency. Of course practice makes perfect and you might think that with a little patience you will overcome without losing anything, except that isn't true: where Dark Souls handles healing via a non-consumable item that replenishes itself upon death, meaning you spend no resources no matter how many attempts you make, Nioh uses consumable healing poultices that are dropped by enemies during the stages. The problem with this is that the items you use to heal yourself will not be returned to you upon death, so unless you use the aforementioned Alt+F4 trick, you will lose every health item you expended. Not a problem if you can master and beat a boss in a reasonable amount of time, but if you become stuck on one for an afternoon, as it is likely to happen, you will quickly run out of your stock of healing items and will have to farm more.

This is not a problem per se, since Demon's Souls and Bloodborne also feature healing farming... only that in those games it is easy to find carefully designed farming spots that hand out the needed items with mathematical consistency, as such you can replenish your stock in the time it takes to play a song or two from your favorite band and then be ready for more attempts on the boss. Not so in Nioh, where the drop of healing items is entirely aleatory, with the result of sometimes playing for ten or fifteen minutes without dropping a single one, when you need dozens. It's absolutely aggravating.

To add insult to injury, Nioh also mishandles its ultimate abilities, called living weapon: these are very powerful fury modes you can activate as long as they are charged and which give you a significant edge in combat for several seconds. After use they are replenished by killing standard enemies, which is fair enough... except you don't get the charge back after dying, meaning that if you use it against a boss and die, you will have to spend a number of minutes farming out the living weapon charge every time. This, in addition to the aforementioned healing farming, is simply a waste of the player's time when he's likely to want to take another crack at the boss as soon as possible.

This is also an overly long game: a standard first run with take 35 to 40 hours (about 10 of which likely spent faffing with the inventory), which by the end will likely see you absolutely exhausted and wishing for the game to just end. Of course the final boss is also a frustrating, poorly designed mess that will cause you no small amount of grief.

Nioh is a disappointing title: it is perfectly suited for people looking for a fast and frantic action romp, but not so much for those looking for the careful, deliberate rhythm of a soulslike, which this most definitely is not, despite being marketed and trying real hard to appear as one.