Ni-Oh

I'm surprised Koei's ambitious vaporware project Ni-Oh doesn't have its own thread, considering it is finally going to be released in a few months worth. For the uninitiated: The game is based on an unfinished script by filmmaker legend Kurosawa Akira, and had been in development hell for over ten years now. Last year it was announced to be finally in production at Team Ninja, and first footage has revealed what seems essentially a mix of Onimusha and Dark Souls.

edited 5th Mar '16 10:54:25 AM by TAPETRVE

That certainly does sound very ambitious.

The gameplay video has piqued my interest enough for me to get this if/when it makes it stateside.

Alpha Demo was released. Go play it on the PSN until May 5th.

This isn't as hard as Dark Souls or Bloodborne.

Its Harder. Like an unholy blend of Dark Souls combat meets Ninja Gaiden levels of you being a glass cannon harder.

Its brilliant.

Yeah, it's almost closer to something like Bushido Blade, only without the limb-specific damage.

After playing the demo for about 2 hours, and not even having got past the starting area, I do have a bit of food for though about it.

It looks very good for an alpha, and I'm sure it will look better.

The game, however, needs to balance out its difficulty a bit. I can appreciate a game trying to be harder then Soulsborne and Ninja Gaiden combined, but it needs to be more balanced. For instance, give Willam better starting level 1 stats, like 10 for all of them instead of 5, because unless you manage to get the better armor, Willam is a glass cannon on par with old NES and SNES characters in platformers and Action games, even with a health bar.

A single mook with armor and an axe not only can attack through your overhead Katana heavy moves, but One-Hit Kill you with just one Axe swing without having better equipment.

Also, they need to make the stamina bar last a bit longer and regenerate at a bit of a faster rate, because the stamina management is almost too ridiculous.

Also, the game should give you the chance to backstab after sneaking behind enemies.

I think people need to learn the hard way not to play this game like Dark Souls. Again, the combat system is supposed to be more like Bushido Blade, which also means that one-hit kills are to be expected. That said, it could certainly communicate its limb-specific damage better. It makes sense that getting an axe to the face will immediately kill you, but since the game doesn't exactly go out of its way to tell you that both you and your enemies have different damage zones...

edited 27th Apr '16 5:30:45 PM by TAPETRVE

Still, the starting stats should be more then 5 at least.

either way, this is an alpha test to gauge feedback, so they might give a better explanation for the limb based damage system in a later version of the game, maybe for a beta demo.

It's also highly important to learn that Ki in this game is not the same as stamina in Souls. You run out of Ki as fast as you run out of hit points, and exhaustion results in several seconds of vulnerability to crits, grabs and even stuff such as losing your balance on uneven ground. You need to manually recover Ki by swapping stances mid-combo. In other words, uncoordinated button mashing or spamming of single attacks repeatedly will exhaust you quickly. You're forced to play skillfully. That is even reflected in the enemy AI, which acts by the same rules. The bandits you run into early on in the game are essentially complete noobs who just hack away blindly and thus run out of breath every few seconds.

edited 27th Apr '16 6:30:12 PM by TAPETRVE

The samurai are hard as hell.

Though can someone help explain the stance system. I'm having a hard time properly utilizing it.

edited 27th Apr '16 6:41:22 PM by slimcoder

Well, low stance attacks from below, mid stance attacks on chest level, high stance attacks from overhead. Low is also generally faster, whereas overhead attacks are slower. As such, low and middle are better for applying pressure or counter-attacking, and high is more effective when while backing off.

edited 27th Apr '16 6:49:40 PM by TAPETRVE

Another thing they need to fix is how easily breakable Weapons and armor are, especially since their durability doesn't refresh at shrines at all. An Item shop and weapon smithing shop at the shrines would be nice, too.

Time to revive the thread, because the Beta just came out today.

The beta is pretty great! I shot through it in a few hours, but I had a friend who played the alpha helping out a bit. Loved the atmosphere and level designs.

The fact that none of the equipment have a break meter helps, too. Still balls hard, but it's much more fair.

Okay, the Natsuki Cavern's section is easily the hardest part of both demos released. It's completely nuts once you get to the oni invested depths.

I don't think i'll forget The Door.

One thign I have to say.

Demon induced paralysis (Where you are completely frozen instead of just slow movement) is complete, utter bullshit, and needs to be nerfed.

Why? two words, Hino Enma. Jesus christ, she wouldn't be so bad if her paralysis attacks were such bullshit to leave you wide open to be comboed by her into oblivion.

The one bit of relief about them is that you can use the acupuncture needles to cure yourself. Otherwise, it is a pain. I will say, I think Tachibana's shock ailment is worse, since that goddamn pup he sends out becomes nigh impossible to dodge when it gets enhanced, and shock gimps you in such a way that you can barely touch the guy as he whips out one of his death combos.

I wonder. If the game does well, will we ever see William as a Guest Character in any of Koei's Musou games?

To add to that, have Musou versions of someone like Oda Nobunaga be a secret boss.

I found Tachnibana to be not as bad as Hino enma. At least he plays relatively fair.

No that means William is gonna become a meme because of how similar he looks to Geralt of Revia.

edited 3rd Sep '16 1:38:07 AM by YoKab

Played the beta, beat the Warrior from the West. Good god that was a pain. REALLY makes you have to get good at dodging and knowing how to parry. BTW, does anyone else feel like parrying and dodging feels extremely strict and a little inconsistent? It feels like each of the different parries have a different timing window, and I swear there's only ONE invincibility frame when you do a dodge.

I'm actually interested in this game but the way everyone talks about it makes me feel like it's like the unfun kind of hard.

After playing through most of the beta, I do think it's pretty fun, in a very challenging way, but I swear the bosses and the tougher enemies absolutely must be fought in a hit and run style. There are very few opportunities to put them in a stun state, and they don't last long when you get them. You have to be very patient when waiting for an opening, but maybe that's just me. My strategy is usually slow, but powerful strikes or counters.

The alpha was like that.

The beta is far more balanced, though they make up for it with the Twilight difficulty level.

TGS trailer: