I can't rate this yet since I played this years ago and I haven't actually finished it, hence the shelved mark, but this was REAL boring from what I can remember. I don't even mind the old and occasionally weird "real-time action combat" sorta style but this one just wasn't working for me, and the story was so barebones I'm actually kinda shocked it came AFTER the Baldur's Gate duology, which were and still are praised for their narratives to this day, and even Icewind Dale, a game from Black Isles that while definitely more combat-oriented, still had some cool sequences from the little I dabbled with. Maybe one day when I get a hankering for a Bioware deep dive, finally going beyond the Dragon Age, KOTOR1, and Mass Effect shackles I grew to fall back on, I'll give it another go, but even then Jade Empire and the previously mentioned BG Duo seem to be more my speed.

More like Nioh 1.5, Nioh 2 is generally an improvement over the first game but the flaws mostly remain the same. I like that I can make my own character this time around since William being a set main character didn't do the first game any favors. The story is a little better but still an uninteresting mix of japanese history and characters you have very little reason to care about. The level design is better but Nioh 2 retains the problem of lacking enemy variety and you generally fight the same things 20 hours in that you fought in the first 2 or 3 hours. The loot system is still completely unnecessary and decreases the value in exploring the levels. The co-op is practically nonexistant but that's more likely the fault of there being so few people helping others out. The AI companions are some of the most incompetent I've ever seen in a video game and serve absolutely no purpose in anything besides a 1v1 human boss fight. The combat system is still fun at its core, but the enemies are radically unbalanced and do far too much damage. What caused me to drop the game was the process of spending 10 minutes fighting a boss or going through a level without any incident, then dying immediately after making one or two mistakes because every enemy can 2-shot you. A ton of enemies and bosses also happen to have extremely powerful grab attacks which is very annoying considering how poor the telegraphing is on most of the attacks in the game. The difficulty just left me feeling tired even when I pulled through in a desperate situation and I just wasn't having a lot of fun. The weapons, while fun to use, have very large skill trees with very few actual useful skills. The fact that they're still each tied to a different stat is also annoying because it basically means you have to build for about 2 weapon types at most, while in something like dark souls you can switch between many different types of strength or dexterity weapons any time throughout the game. The yokai abilities are cool enough but the snake ability is so powerful there's very little reason to use anything else, especially when a good amount of them have lengthy animations that don't make you invulnerable.