Ni-Oh

I figured William was too focused on the chase to really think about how exactly he would catch up to Kelley right until he actually ended up in Japan. Only then did he realize that he had no real idea what to do next and that he was completely alone in hostile foreign territory in the middle of a civil war. Which would be bad enough even if there weren't also amrita-related supernatural shit going on.

Edited by M84 on Jul 23rd 2020 at 12:48:49 AM

Ni-Oh 1 does also suffer heavily from a case where cutscenes will dramatically reveal a character, who will say one line, and then the next scene is William in a mine while the mission description is like "As lengthily and plot-relevantly discussed, just off-screen, we need to clear out this mine to get Kobayakawa Hideaki, whose significance we don't even need to allude to, on our side". Ni-Oh 2 does something similar, where characters' decisions are largely influenced by what the state of the war was at the time in real life, rather than the state of the war being influenced by characters' decisions (I'm thinking largely of Hide defecting to Akechi Mitsuhide's side immediately after Nobunaga's death.)

Yeah the games definitely expect you to have very thorough knowledge of the Sengoku era.

They ain't winning any writing awards despite how desperately they seem to want to be taken seriously.

I do enjoy the fact that it doesn't pull any punches regard how shitty the time was despite all mystical crap and lionization of assholes it certainly can't claim to glorify the warfare.

I think Nioh 2 does a better job of its writing (I've finished the... third area of Nioh? I don't know how many there are), because at least the bulk of its missions, whilst disjointed, are placed in the context of a military campaign. You don't need to know more than that, and it furnishes the rest of the details needed to place it in context—plus unexpectedly going from one end of the Oda domain to the other is also pretty appropriate for what a military expansion when surrounded on all sides is like. Nioh I'm left wondering how much of what's going on so far has anything to do with history; I know Sekigahara comes up later but the missions are just... why am I doing this? Is this important? Is it based on anything? Is this really the time for me to be randomly looting a castle for a tea kettle? At least it finally hit the point where things are pressing enough that someone needs to deal with them.

As for the above spoiler: Hide doesn't immediately defect after Nobunaga's death, they stick with Tokichiro in pursuing Mitsuhide's army. The defection happens after Tokichiro stabs Yoshimitsu without remorse, which is extremely out of character for the guy they've spent some... 15-20 years with at this point? "This is wrong, maybe Mitsuhide can explain." It's not spelled out but Hide says absolutely nothing, ever, so like most of their stuff it's a matter of working out facial expressions and reading between the lines. Still, in total, we don't defect until after that mission. Plus there's the whole "why is Tokichiro using a youkai army", and you see Yumehami with him—something that you last saw with Kashin Koji after defeating Nagamasa. There are plenty of reasons for Hide to jump ship THEN.

Though I do feel it suffers a bit from Doomed by Canon: Mitsuhide must survive to be in Nioh as Tenkai, regardless of the fact that he has managed to kill: A) our liege lord, and B) almost everything that's left of our family. Got to settle for symbolically declaring him dead as a samurai, I guess.

It also feels like Nioh 2 tries to limit the number of "here is random important person" moments. I still have very little idea who the guy in Nioh in region 2 is... someone to do with the Mori? Why are we helping you? When did we meet you? <_>

I also wonder if this is partly because in Nioh, you're working to bring people onto the Tokugawa side†... without context for who they are (not that William would know either) or why this is. Nioh 2 you're not there to make friends in the main missions, you're off to win a siege or finish a battle, so the lack of full detailed context is much less important.

† Apparent success rate: 0%.

Edited by RainehDaze on Jul 23rd 2020 at 5:30:40 PM

It took me a few more days, but I finished the main storyline of Nioh (and most of the sub missions; I skipped the ones that unlocked after the penultimate mission for now), and... well, this is something I've been thinking about whilst I've been going through this, partially covered in the above post. On a purely story level, when comparing Nioh to Nioh 2...

The pacing in Nioh sucks.

It establishes your goal right off the bat and the overarching conflict. That's fine. Then it completely stalls. William might need to make friends in Japan, but the plot goes absolutely nowhere as each region basically foists a random subplot on you for most of the game, whilst occasionally having Kelley show up so William can be angry and chase him. The actual plot of the game gets totally subsumed by the buildup to Sekigahara, only it's completely decontextualised. Warrior of the West, Kobayakawa, random Kyoto cleanup, Okatsu, and then we finally get to Sekigahara.

But despite being this major climactic battle, it doesn't really... feel like it's progressing anywhere? There's nothing to really show that this time Kelley is actually doing something because it's important. But you finish the battle, and then go onto the final non-DLC region and... the missions still don't feel that impressive or like you're building towards an end. You have a rural area that's so lacking in identity it got carved up for a bunch of Nioh 2 submissions (it's nice, but it doesn't really scream anything) and basically serves the purpose of saying "we're doing the plot now" right at the end of the mission. That gets followed by... a miserably cramped and uninspiring mess of corridors that only barely makes up for it with the final few rooms and a confirmation that the plot is coming to a climax. The last two missions actually do look their narrative role and there's no illusions what they are. But they're the last two missions, after an entire game full of waffle where the only way you can really tell that it's going anywhere in main plot IS a knowledge of Japanese history... and an assumption that later events (covered in DLC) aren't going to need to happen first.

Now compare this with Nioh 2. Even without the knowledge of Japanese history, the cutscenes—short as they are—do a good job of story pacing. Kanbei's death at the end of the Hongan-ji mission is the signal, and then we get Honnoji, which puts a firm end to the "vassal to Nobunaga" side of the plot and build up. This gets followed by a mission that essentially devotes itself to justifying why Hide changes side, showing how far Tokichiro is falling, and setup for Nioh itself. After that there's a bit of a lull... and then a false climax. And then after the timeskip the story missions are all about the plot. Pastthe mid-point where it's still doing scene-setting and foreshadowing, the sequel actually does a good job of keeping the plot in mind and showing that it is actually progressing.

Or in very succinct form: the only reason I had a clue I was anywhere near the end in Nioh, and not just set up for another Team Rocket scenario, is because I had seen a list of bosses before.

Hopefully Nioh 3 will even things out by at least just making complete sense. XD

I thought Nioh 2 made perfect sense. There's maybe one story mission that's decontextualised (why are we going to Katsuie?), but even that can be explained because of course we were going to go after Ouchi again. Hide's a loyal sort.

An odd thought I have is that Hide's silence does tend to, on average, lead to better characterisation than William. Though something both games do really good is expressions and framing.

Yeah the actual cinematography of the cutscenes is actually really well done. Even if the story can get a bit vague about the whys the events are certainly "Filmed" to have a lot of weight behind them.

Link to the official japanese livestream talking about the dlc.

Editing:Theres also an update that also went live with this stream. No idea what was added.

Edited by mega-dark on Jul 29th 2020 at 8:46:14 AM

DLC is live at 10 AM JPN Standard Time. For me, its 9 PM EST.

Patch 1.11 is live too, and adds new Demon Scroll missions, randomized missions with Yokai that have really good drops. The Equipment level cap for Dream of the strong is now 180+10, 20 above the previous normal level cap of 160 +10.

Edited by Demongodofchaos2 on Jul 29th 2020 at 11:34:47 AM

To add, scrolls are random drops that add a new equipment slot once you clear the mission (which is a bunch of enemies plus 1 boss, my first scroll unfortunately for me has Shibata as the boss). You have a limited number of times you can beat the scroll mission but beating it allows you to change one of the stat bonuses on the scroll. Unfortunately you have no control over the bonuses but you can refuse to take a bonus but it will use up an attempt. Overall a new buff to the player that costs nothing but time and luck.

Finish Nioh or go do Nioh 2... This is a hard decision.

Current status: wondering what is with all the human bosses that don't act like human characters because of the infinite Living Weapon. So glad Nioh 2 doesn't lock you out of special attacks like that when repeatedly fighting human enemies (ie still generating Anima and from there Amrita). I also spent a few hours farming the Glory to get the Okatsu skin.

I ought to get back and download the patch. Can't recall if I got the season pass or not.

Nioh 1's DLC, while not important, is referenced a lot in Nioh 2, at least in terms of characters and Guardian spirits.

if you bought the game and it came with a steel case (special edition) then you likely have the season pass.

I've already finished Nioh 2 and read all the stuff about the ninetails and Yasu-dono, I am aware.

Yodo-dono lived a pretty shitty life, yeah.

Anyway, slight rant about both Masamune and Maria and how human bosses are badly implemented in Nioh: they perfectly exemplify the bad side of the ki implementation. Holding block sometimes feels like too valid a strategy with the majority of default weapons, as the same weapons cannot punish blocking—e.g. the only thing a sword can do is Sword of Meditation fully charged, which is obviously pretty damn limited. Sword Ki? Doesn't do that much damage†. Normal attacks? Don't do that much damage and things like kicking as a followup rely on not being blocked etc. The parts of the fight where they're not using Living Weapon just wind up criminally boring because either it's the slowest dodge-and-whack ever, or it's parry after parry. They will otherwise turtle as hard as a DS 1 player fishing for backstabs. It's just so... passive, because they're built like players with super high health pools and ki regen—actually, that also goes for that one temple mission in Tohoku which ends with fighting three revenants (only two at a time) with the same sort of problem; they regularly have too much ki to break and it's a slow drawn-out pokefest.

The other problem with them is that they apparently chose to compensate for normal attacks being something you can parry by then going the infinite living weapon route. Can't block, can't parry, got to either wait it out or engage in an absurd chip fest (or shoot them in the face... but that just reveals the problems with Nioh and ammunition limits). Maria regenerating her ki in that state is just cheap on top of it. It feels particularly taunting because human bosses you can't even get Living Weapon off yourself. It's not like they didn't already have enough advantages with armour-piercing grabs and amazing hyper armour.

They exemplify being challenging without really being fun, or engaging. They're the sort of fight I get bored doing.

† This is part of what I love about the odachi; that mid-stance followup that crushes blocks.

Edited by RainehDaze on Jul 29th 2020 at 5:45:44 PM

I didn't like fighting human bosses for the reasons above. They would also just arbitrarily ignore the mechanics there supposed to be following. For example, tanking combos with no ki left and then one or two shotting you.

The Human bosses in 2 are easily superior (I don't count Shibata as one due to being a Yokai at that point) to the ones in 1, even in the DLC for 1, yeah.

What helps for certain is that no matter how strong the Nioh 2 bosses are or become (looking at your absurdly OTT buffed odachi damage, Toshimitsu) or their reliance on active skills, you're not stuck trying to fight endless special attack spam and buffs using only sword skills. You will always be able to get anima by attacking, and youkai skills will generate amrita, so you can get to youkai shift eventually.

Now it just needs buffs to be useful as something other than an ability platform.

From what I'm told Yokai shift got buffed in the most recent patch (today's in fact) problem is there aren't any patch notes up right now so I can't tell you what was changed.

I'm hoping that it's making the attack options more relevant and less vastly draining.

DLC is out.

Edit: but maybe not in the USA???

The boss of the first mission is basically another go at Umi-Bozu and it felt a lot better? I'm sure part of that is levelling—but then there's all the new game mechanics. I think it's technically MORE dangerous, we just have better tools in this game.

Edited by RainehDaze on Jul 29th 2020 at 3:56:37 PM

Split Staff will take some getting used to but when you do, I can see the potential of this thing. I think it might be up there with some of the higher damaging weapons if not for the usual hp damage bonuses but the elemental damage bonuses in the skill tree which I think is a first. Now if those elemental damage bonuses transfer over to using spells while it's your main weapon this thing is going to get busted real quick but even without the possible buff to magic the passive buff to all elemental damage is still good in my honest opinion.