HEY THERE, HANDSOME...
Beware of unmarked spoilers below!
- The intro to the Onryoki boss battle. You walk into what appears to be a torture chamber when suddenly, you hear a cacophony of ghostly wails issue from the instruments of torture. Mist forms and from the fog, this giant Oni formed of the restless souls of those who were sent to be tortured lurches out, roaring all the way.
- The vampire-like Yokai Hino-Enma, pictured above. You find her consuming blood from one of the countless desiccated corpses she keeps around her lair, slurping it up with a disgusting black tongue and making very suggestive noises. The horror only worsens when the fight begins: she's your first real taste of what Nioh has to offer, bringing a variety of nasty moves like her paralyzing energy blast, and one where she grabs you to suck out your blood (healing herself in the process), and her face opens like a lamprey revealing some disgusting tentacles instead of some dainty vampire fangs.
- There is some hidden horror in this particular monster. Coming back and defeating her again gives her new post defeat lines which imply she has an obsession with William. Her dialog implies he's the one man she doesn't want to kill, instead she just wants to keep him forever.
- The Nue's Nightmare Face.
- Spider Web Castle: on top of being an arachnophobe's worst nightmare in general, anyone versed in Yokai lore can probably guess exactly what's waiting for them at the end.
- One stage that some quests take place in is the very edge of the Sanzu River itself. However, the effects of the river have turned it into a straight-up Hell, with a massive number of pikes sticking from the ground and bodies impaled upon them often at multiple points in the background.
- The final boss. You find out he's some historical but easily-forgotten OH GOD EYES DO NOT BELONG THERE! Then in battle mode, he multiplies the number of mutations he has by twenty-five.
- One mission has you searching for three children that went exploring in a cemetery that's been overrun by Yokai. You find them having been transformed into One-Eyed Imps, and have no choice but to cut them down. Furthermore, it seems they were deliberately put there by their parents for some reason.
- Finally taking place in the Battle of Sekigahara, showing how absolutely brutal the war was as you'll likely get cut or shot down before you land your first swing. Even with the skills, magic, and ninjutsu you've probably gained by this point, the game makes a point at how even that won't save you against overwhelming numbers. Suddenly, unrealistically slicing soldiers single-handedly doesn't seem so bad anymore.
- The Gasha-Dokuro. In a desperate move by Ishida, Kelley slaughters three hundred of their own troops and amass the thousands of corpses to summon this skeletal six-armed abomination. Even its skull is deformed, merged with another skull halfway through. And through summoning this monster, Kelley's also turned the entire battlefield into a Yokai Realm, with demons now stomping around with patches of the corruption automatically summoning powerful Revenants to fight you when you get close. The Gasha-Dokuro itself thrashes about, trying to kill you whenever it notices. However, the truly horrifying thing about it is how its movements seem less like a mindless rampage, and more like absolute pain.
- To a lesser extent, the kappa's Ass Shove technique. To quote Gaijin Goomba
, "[Kappa] will actually fist you for your soul". - If the Yokai from the base game scared the hell out of you, the Dragon of the North expansion will make you shit yourself.
- One of the most common new Yokai you'll run into is the Rokurokubi, humanoid monsters that blend in with the other soldiers. They start off looking physically no different from the other soldiers, until you lock on to them and see that they instead have a purple stamina gauge. This is especially the case when you encounter your very first Rokurokubi. A lone soldier in front of a gate. Piece of cake, right? Suddenly, BOOM! His neck elongates 7 damn feet and he's spittin' poison and breathin' fire! Finally, Nioh cranks up the grotesque factor by their actual design. It isn't just a 7 foot neck, but for some reason, there's a pair of hands holding the freaking head!
- Date Shigezane's form is similarly horrific. Half of his body is merged with a giant centipede demon, taking up his right arm and sprouting the rear half from his back. Even worse, the way he moves make it seem like his body is almost absorbed into the centipede demon.
- Kelley and Dee's plan for the Amrita has much more horrifying consequences if it succeeded, if you think about it, their plan was to stockpile and spread it throughout the British army to Take Over the World, thing is, as evidenced by William having an Irish guardian spirit, Amrita wouldn't just be limited to Japanese mythological creatures, that means if Kelley and Dee had been successful, the world would literally become each regions version of Hell on Earth.
- The horror in the fact that Kelleys "enochian" spell actually worked, In history Kelley and Dee made the language up, claiming it was the language of the Angels, but here it seems to be a real thing, Tying into the above example, if Japanese myths exist, whose to say Christian ones don't too? and if that is the case, Considering the effect and sacrificial requirements of the mentioned spell, One has to wonder exactly Which Angel taught them that spell...
