izigame.me

Nioh 2 exists. Go play that. I only needed 75 minutes to realize this combat system would get stale after a few hours, with constant parry spam/baiting bosses. It's such a huge step back from Nioh 2 in terms of flow, customization, and style that I'm downright confused. 13 weapons means.. only a simple x-x-x combo at most, with maybe putting in a martial art (which are random drops for weapons btw, instead of being able to pick what you want lol), magic feeling slightly better but with it being completely locked behind morale it makes some of them absolutely unusable until you clear enough of the level, missing transformations from Nioh 2/1.
I understand that it's trying to be a different game from Nioh 2, but when the combat is this much of a disgrace with lack of complexity that the previous games had makes me question if getting 3 more weapons (a total of 13 weapon varieties compared to Nioh 2's 10 weapon varities) was worth losing almost all of their skills/skill trees with temperable buffs that can be changed at will (skills can't be lol). With that, inputs cannot be cancelled in ANYWAY from my knowledge. You input a martial art but get hit stunned out of it by the boss? You bet your fucking ass you're going to be using it after your not stunned anymore. You see an attack coming after you attack twice? Too bad, the half a second to second delay to block means you got hit. This isn't as prevalent as in Nioh 2. Magic/Ninjitsu felt much better in Nioh 2 compared to the magic system here. Only 4 at once? Nioh let you have up to 12 all hot barred. I understand limiting magic if it's super strong, but here it doesn't feel that strong, perhaps because I didn't spec into it, but even then magic in Nioh 2 had it's usages even if you didn't specialize into it..
The Story? Non existent. Fucking trash, couldn't tell you what happened because of simply how bad it was. It didn't excite ot interest me with constant time jumps, character jumps and a disjointed story.
Transmog for weapons/armor is a huge step back, you can't see what it looks like b4 applying it for.. Some reason I suppose.
Parry system is cool, but even their last major game didn't overly rely on 1 mechanic to deal with bosses. It may be a major point for their bosses I suppose, but there's not flexiable. If they wanted to be like Sekerio, they failed.
Basically, this game took a few things from Nioh 2, DS, and Sekiro and tried to copy them but failed ultimately. Sekiro's parry system felt enjoyable and the bossfights felt tight compared to these bosses that either never use parryable moves (first boss has a common issue of not using Red attacks when NEEDED to defeat him other than getting a few hits as possible) spam them, or act as they finally should.
Asked for a refund, but if I don't get one I'm going to at least try and get my money's worth from this disappoint of a game coming after Nioh 2. It was simple a follow up, and they somehow fumbled it.
EDIT
Decided to play Nioh 2/Sekiro to compare. Holy shit does the combat feel much better in both games. Parrying/dodging is a separate button, my inputs aren't fighting between the two (thank christ, one of the worst things in Wo Long is parry/deflect on the same button). Boss fights that don't rely on certain attacks to parry to be able to do damage, running around waiting for a certain attack ain't fun guys. The loot, albiet it so fucking spammy as I'm NG+2, feels much more rewarding when I get green drops that I can combine into stronger weapons and then being able to temper almost every single thing in their applications. No weird ass Morale system that gate keeps you from fighting certain enemies in a level. Bosses although can be stance broken easily, don't rely on me spamming parry on them (punishing the red attack that hopefully they attacked with) waiting for max spirit hitting triangle and then repeating. No annoying companions that are little more than eye candy getting in the way of combat. Bosses that don't seemingly rely only on parrying as a core mechanic and no other way of interaction, With that, enemy variety is really important; however both games fail at this imo. Enemy variety remains a team ninja problem though, Nioh 2 wasn't exempt from this and playing Nioh 2 showed me that these devs really didn't learn from their lack of variety in their first and second Nioh games.
Something I didn't touch upon was builds. Wo Long, builds? What are those? I didn't get super far in the game, but even a few hours in to Nioh 2 you can start building injitsu/Magic/ki attack builds on your items to help you in combat. In Wo Long, they copied this same idea but with lack luster weapon trees, magic/ninjitsu cbominations combined WITH soul cores it feels as though a big part of what made Nioh 2 so successful was completely ignored. Loot itself is worthless in Wo Long, with most gear being the same no matter what other than special effects/martial arts minus looking baller as fuck compared to Nioh 2's armor.
Onto why I played Sekiro as well. I take back what I said about them copying DS, because they really didn't even try to. They tried top copy Sekiro and then sprinkle in some elements of Nioh 2 to attract fans from that series but failed horribly. Sekiro is overall a better game in terms of graphic fidelity, combat, story, sound design and music. Sekiro may be a game build around it's parrying mechanics, but they felt responsive, sounded simply fantastic and even then did not only rely on abusing it's posture bar for victory in boss fights compared to Wo Long; where the only thing I felt like I was doing was just filling a bar, parrying and then hitting triangle.
Seriously; this game is good if you've never played Nioh 2 or Sekiro. My recommendation is play this game if you haven't played either but even then get it on sale. Otherwise you aren't missing much, just a failed rehash of game concepts done much better in previous games. Game is worth it on Game pass, or 25-50% on sale. Thank you steam gods for the refund of this disappointing spiritual successor.