Nioh: Complete Edition Review (ຊคrtนrคēl)
Phenomenal game
The first thing you should know about this game is that if you do not like and enjoy difficulty in games, avoid it. This is a very unforgiving and difficult game, with only one difficulty setting, and it will absolutely throw a lot at you from the very beginning.
This game is very similar to the Dark Souls games and Sekiro, but it’s also different in a lot of ways. You acquire Amrita (which is basically souls) and you use it to level up stats of your choice. If you die, you lose it all, unless you retrieve it. However, unlike in the souls series, you can’t get away with simply over-leveling to tackle stuff. In this game you could be an entire 50 levels above the zone level, and even the simplest common mob could still murder you easily if you’re not paying attention.
The gameplay feels amazing, it’s very smooth and satisfying, but it’s also very complex. There are several weapons you can use, each of which comes with a different move-set and things you need to know. Then there’s also three possible stances you can activate – low, mid and high – and every one of them further alters the move-set and abilities of the weapon. Each weapon also has separate talent-trees with additional active and passive abilities. You can have four weapons equipped at a given time, two of which are ‘main’ weapons and two are ranged options. The available main weapons in the game are: Swords (basically katana), Dual Swords, Spears, Axes, Kusarigama, Tonfa, and Odachi. The ranged options are: bows, rifles and hand cannons. You can also acquire stealth (ninja) and magical abilities (jutsu) as well. I’m playing dual swords and katana, with bow and rifle as ranged options, but I also experimented with some of the others. They’re all very fun and serve different playstyles, so you should definitely try them out a bit before you commit. You will also absolutely need to learn how to use a weapon properly and effectively if you want to progress in this game.
The bosses in this game are hard, and at times very unfair. For most of them, learning their move-set or exploiting some weakness they have will let you tackle them in a few attempts. There are some bosses that are just plain insane though, the amount of bullshit they throw at you, which you can neither properly anticipate nor counter, is astonishing, to say the least. So be prepared for moments of extreme frustration sometimes. Defeating them feels super rewarding because of that though.
Gear in this game is, surprisingly, very similar to games such as Diablo or ARPGs in general. You can also craft gear and alter/reforge the stats and get entire item-sets. I should mention that you absolutely have to understand what the stats do and how the gear works, because even with a good understanding of those things, the game can still be challenging. Without it, you'll just get absolutely obliterated. In general, the game encourages “dancing” around bosses more than tanking hits, so you won’t be able to face-tank no matter how good your gear seems to be. You’ll have to adjust your gear and stats to the weapon you’re using and to your playstyle.
The only negative points about the game, in my opinion, are two things. First, you get locked in place in most cases when you’re taking damage (similar to Path of Exile for example), so you can easily get stun-locked by chained abilities and attacks, which in 99.9% of cases means instant death. That’s extremely annoying when tackling more than one mob, and on bosses with extremely fast multi-chain attacks. You can spam the dodge button and abilities, but you still just end up locked in the damage chain, which means one mistake = dead. Second, the sheer number of controls in this game is also a bit insane, and in case you’re using mouse and keyboard, this port didn’t really include a display for PC buttons, so the UI will show you controller button prompts for the hundreds of available controls and moves, and you have to figure it out. But once you learn what everything does and adapt the controls, this issue does become irrelevant.
The story is not very detailed, but it’s actually quite good. You play as a Samurai, who is actually an Englishman, and you come to Japan pursuing a bad guy who stole a guardian spirit from you and is causing major chaos. The game focuses a lot on those guardian spirits. They are basically spirits with animal themes, so you have stuff like cat spirit, bull spirit, fox spirit, rabbit spirit, etc., but there are also some more ‘fantastical’ spirits. Most stronger characters in the game have their own spirit. You can equip one spirit to accompany you at any given time, and different spirits buff different stats and alter gameplay. You can also activate ‘spirit mode’ when your gauge reaches full, which is basically a short boost of super power based on whichever spirit you’re using (it’s highly amusing beating stuff with a rabbit as your companion, let me tell ya). As you progress through the game, you can find and unlock more guardian spirits. It’s a very good system, kinnda feels like you’re basically collecting different Pokémon at times. The spirit you equip will also be your login screen every time you enter the game, which is an extremely nice touch.
I’m loving this game very much, so I absolutely have to recommend it. I’ll also be moving on to Nioh 2 once I finish this, and I’ve seen that Nioh 3 got announced recently, so if you're into this series, there’s much to look forward and much fun to be had without a doubt! However, as I said, just be aware that the difficulty is absolutely brutal, so if that’s not your thing, don’t torture yourself.
幸運を祈ります! 🐦🔥