Nioh had a lot of buzz going about it for a damn long while, since it's one of the most overt attempts to make a game in the style of Dark Souls. I was missed being able to play the demos last year but I heard it was insanely hard, arguably too hard. Team Ninja seemed to agree since they supposedly toned down the finished product... at least the parts of the game that you see initially.
First off, the story is exceptionally bad and confusing. Having a game based on historical events is fine, but the way the narrative is told makes it hard to follow for anyone unfamiliar with the rise of the Tokugawa shogunate, with characters dropping in and then out of the story as they do that One Thing they were historically famous for and then forgotten about. And William himself is completely forgettable, with hardly any arc or character. And that's not getting into the trainwreck that is the DLC's plot, with a villain built up so damn much to just fuck off and deny us a satisfying conclusion.
But the thing that always gets brought up as Nioh's strength is the combat. The gameplay. And I will be honest, it's pretty great... while the game still has new enemies to throw at you. Between all weapons of one type sharing the same moveset, recycled stages, recycled enemies, and even recycled bosses, Nioh quickly becomes a tired chore to play. Very, very rarely are things mixed up by including full-blown new enemies with their own unique abilities and gimmicks, and this is a serious problem because the game instead evokes a sense of escalation by just arbitrarily buffing the stats of pre-existing enemies you fight in future stages. Depending on the quality of your gear you can go from shredding mooks en-masse in one stage to running for your life from just one or two because somehow now they absolutely overwhelm you if you're not chugging your elixers after every hit.
And what's worse is that after a point, stat leveling more or less just stops mattering, with the emphasis instead switching to your gear. And to be fair it's a fairly lenient system for upgrading armor and rerolling to get different buffs, but again, it's all just a very monotonous experience by the end of things. And with each new difficulty level they bring in another brand of bullshit.
That's what the finished Nioh product feels like at the end of the game; they don't know how to make a satisfyingly challenging experience. Kill an enemy once, then do in the next stage where it's stronger for REASONS. Over and over. Fuck, if you want to tackle the DLC on the starting difficulty, better hope you were already grinding the NG+ difficulty for better gear or otherwise it's going to be a dull slog.
It's got a fandom, sure, but it's a half-hearted imitation of the Souls franchise with blatant misunderstanding of what made those games memorable, on both gameplay and narrative levels. Stick with the originals or Salt and Sanctuary.
VideoGame Falls very short of Dark Souls, no reason to celebrate it being on PC
Nioh had a lot of buzz going about it for a damn long while, since it's one of the most overt attempts to make a game in the style of Dark Souls. I was missed being able to play the demos last year but I heard it was insanely hard, arguably too hard. Team Ninja seemed to agree since they supposedly toned down the finished product... at least the parts of the game that you see initially.
First off, the story is exceptionally bad and confusing. Having a game based on historical events is fine, but the way the narrative is told makes it hard to follow for anyone unfamiliar with the rise of the Tokugawa shogunate, with characters dropping in and then out of the story as they do that One Thing they were historically famous for and then forgotten about. And William himself is completely forgettable, with hardly any arc or character. And that's not getting into the trainwreck that is the DLC's plot, with a villain built up so damn much to just fuck off and deny us a satisfying conclusion.
But the thing that always gets brought up as Nioh's strength is the combat. The gameplay. And I will be honest, it's pretty great... while the game still has new enemies to throw at you. Between all weapons of one type sharing the same moveset, recycled stages, recycled enemies, and even recycled bosses, Nioh quickly becomes a tired chore to play. Very, very rarely are things mixed up by including full-blown new enemies with their own unique abilities and gimmicks, and this is a serious problem because the game instead evokes a sense of escalation by just arbitrarily buffing the stats of pre-existing enemies you fight in future stages. Depending on the quality of your gear you can go from shredding mooks en-masse in one stage to running for your life from just one or two because somehow now they absolutely overwhelm you if you're not chugging your elixers after every hit.
And what's worse is that after a point, stat leveling more or less just stops mattering, with the emphasis instead switching to your gear. And to be fair it's a fairly lenient system for upgrading armor and rerolling to get different buffs, but again, it's all just a very monotonous experience by the end of things. And with each new difficulty level they bring in another brand of bullshit.
That's what the finished Nioh product feels like at the end of the game; they don't know how to make a satisfyingly challenging experience. Kill an enemy once, then do in the next stage where it's stronger for REASONS. Over and over. Fuck, if you want to tackle the DLC on the starting difficulty, better hope you were already grinding the NG+ difficulty for better gear or otherwise it's going to be a dull slog.
It's got a fandom, sure, but it's a half-hearted imitation of the Souls franchise with blatant misunderstanding of what made those games memorable, on both gameplay and narrative levels. Stick with the originals or Salt and Sanctuary.