Nioh owes a lot to Dark Souls. You hear that phrase a lot these days, but in this case, it's more accurate than usual — from its demanding but rewarding combat to its labyrinthine levels full of thrilling danger and secrets, the influence of FromSoftware’s action RPG series undeniably forms the foundation for Team Ninja’s latest endeavor.
But Nioh also boldly carves out its own space in the genre, asserting its unique identity with a gracefully layered combat system that allows for just enough customization to determine your own style while still adhering to the interesting constraints of its stamina-based framework. A welcoming variety of foes to face, clever bosses to take down, problems to solve, and secrets to find makes every step in Nioh’s long journey consistently fresh and surprising.
Even at 30 hours in, I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface of what Nioh has to offer, namely its online features, challenging Twilight missions, and of course, the remainder of its campaign — an amusingly strange tale of a Westerner caught in the midst of warring clans and supernatural threats in 17th century Japan — which is supposedly anywhere between 40 and 70 hours in total.
That’s why we’ve decided to do a review in progress: we finish games before finalizing a review whenever reasonably possible, and the end of Nioh seems within reach. I aim to have it completed well before Nioh comes out next week, but for now, these are the impressions it’s left me with.
Some of the freshest and deepest melee action in recent memory.
With effectively two tutorials and myriad systems, menus, and enough skills and item shortcuts that you need to hold down R1 to access them all through the controller’s face buttons, you’d think Nioh would seem overwhelming at the start, but the way its opening acclimates you to each mechanic is a thing of beauty. The Tower of London, where we first see our almost comically unremarkable hero, William, breaking free from prison, teaches you the very basics of combat and movement, while the standalone and conveniently skippable Dojo tutorial runs down the more complex stuff involving stances and managing your Ki meter. That’s where things get interesting.
Nioh’s combat combines the slow-paced and position-based nuance of Dark Souls and the calculated, combo-executing thrill of a fighting game to create some of the freshest and deepest melee action I’ve experienced in recent memory. I’d put it right up there alongside Dark Souls and Bloodborne — what it lacks in the purity that makes those games so strong, it makes up for with an even more demanding tactics-based approach that allows it to stand boldly on its own. That’s owed entirely to its Ki system and the compelling dynamic it produces with its weapon options and stance-based fighting styles.
Ki makes every combat encounter a tense game of careful calculation.
In the world of Nioh, Ki is your attack force — effectively a stamina bar that drains when attacking, dodging, blocking, and taking damage. What makes it unique is your ability to execute a timing-based move called a Ki pulse to regenerate stamina mid-fight, reminiscent of Bloodborne’s rally system for health, but much more urgent. The more perfectly timed the pulse, the more Ki you have the opportunity to gain back. Executing a perfect pulse has other advantages, too — just one of the many ways individual mechanics in Nioh play off of multiple others in strategic harmony. Certain yokai (demons) can create what’s called a Yokai Realm, which is an area-of-effect spell that significantly slows your Ki regeneration and adds an extra challenge to fights. The only way to regain Ki in a Yokai Realm is to do a Ki pulse, and if you can pull off a perfect one inside the realm, it will disappear.
The ability to manually regenerate stamina sounds like it might be ripe for exploits that would have you fighting without rest, but because of how fast your Ki can drain when up against formidable foes, regeneration is a vital responsibility that makes every combat encounter a tense game of careful calculation. Because you can get stunlocked when an enemy’s attack drains your Ki, this system also punishes you for being greedy with your attacks and forces a much more strategic approach that is even more fleshed out thanks to Nioh’s clever multi-stance system.
Interesting enemies make for an abundance of compelling combat encounters.
Instead of individual weapon types being the sole dictator of style and agility, there are three combat stances you can take no matter what you choose to wield. These stances are easy to access and switch between mid-fight, which is good because learning when and where to implement them is key to mastering Nioh. The high stance lets you pull off stronger attacks that deal more damage, but are slower and cost more Ki. Mid stance is great for handling groups of enemies and playing evasively thanks to its wider sweeping attacks. Low stance attacks are the quickest, deal the least damage, but also cost the least Ki, making them ideal for punishing enemy attacks or quickly shaving off the last of a tough enemy’s HP. The subtle complexities of each stance, the way they work in tandem with Ki, and even their interactions with the types of weapons you decide to use reveal themselves as you play. That has made my time with Nioh a constant learning experience, ripe with opportunities to hone my skills and perfect newly discovered techniques.
And if all my well-timed, carefully paced efforts still can't take a particularly tough enemy down, I can occasionally rely on my Guardian Spirit to take over, granting me the power of a Living Weapon and allowing me to perform strong special attacks during a brief period of invulnerability. It sounds overpowered, but because it takes time for the ability to build up power, employing my Guardian Spirit felt more like a special reward for my accomplishments than a crutch — a rare opportunity to go wild after toiling through a rough patch.
A good combat system wouldn’t be much without interesting enemies to face, but Nioh has plenty. Thanks to intricately designed levels that are dense with everything from quick but frail zombies and skeletons to hulking yokai that can crush you in a single move, I never felt a shortage of situations in which to put my skills to the test. I’ve executed my share of sneak attacks on unsuspecting bandits, sniped patrolling soldiers with a rifle or a bow, done battle with a cyclops in a muddy cave, fled from giant spiders across the rooftops of a wrecked village, and been ambushed by sea-dwelling demons; suffice it to say, the fatigue of repetition has yet to set in.
Bosses impress with their designs, challenge, and inventive use of arenas.
Another mechanic that borrows heavily from Dark Souls is in its Revenant system, Nioh’s take on bloodstains, which lets you summon and fight (rather than just view) NPC versions of fallen players at gravestones scattered throughout every level at the place they died in their own games. It’s an extra and constantly changing layer of activity that ties neatly into the lore. But even if you ignore the Revenants, well-placed enemies that respawn every time you save at a shrine keep Nioh’s moment-to-moment gameplay exciting, especially mixed in with quality-of-life elements like the little Spider-sense-like sound that plays when you aggro a hostile, giving you a fair warning of the danger to come without reducing the danger itself.
Bosses have been especially impressive, ranging from ultra-challenging face-offs with swift-moving humanoids to slow-paced brawls against lumbering demons. Some fights are significantly tougher than others, but even the ones that go by quickly are memorable for their design, like a shrieking, lightning-encased chimera or a towering gelatinous sea creature that spits up the remains of shipwrecks at you, for example. Some even make inventive use of the boss arena, like a horrifying skull-faced centipede that chases you up and down the creaky walkways of a poisoned silver mine.
Unexpected charm and comedy mixes well with an otherwise dark tone.
Nioh’s story, on the other hand, is not much to comment on so far — it’s secondary to everything else there is to offer. To its credit, I do enjoy the tone it sets for your adventure: a quirky mix of real historical figures like Hattori Hanzo and Tokugawa Ieyasu and the bizarre, sinister, and sometimes even comical elements of Japanese folklore and mythology. It's a mix that occasionally brings an unexpected lightheartedness to what would seem like an overly straightfaced action game.
In between stretches of ruthless demon-hunting, you’ll occasionally come across an adorable Kodama tree spirit to guide back to your shrine, which acts as a save point. Find enough of them and they’ll pile onto your shrine every time you go back to save, dancing and whistling a tune with little cracked bowls on their heads. It’s a silly bit of respite after an exhausting run from checkpoint to checkpoint. (More than just cute collectibles that reward you for exploration, finding enough Kodama also grants you some useful perks at the shrine.) I didn’t expect Nioh to be charming, but its nonsensical brand of comedy in the face of overwhelming odds and terrifying enemies was a nice surprise that makes me feel attached to the lore of Williams’ journey even if his character is sadly underdeveloped so far.
I haven’t yet talked about everything there is to do and see in Nioh, but so far it’s all been consistently engaging and fun: its online features, sub-missions, and all its myriad details and quality-of-life elements that make it such a solid and polished experience. I need to spend more time to complete the main campaign to honestly evaluate it as a whole, but if I had to score Nioh now, I would give it a 9.0.
If all goes well I hope to have this review completed by Friday, well ahead of the February 7 release date, so check back then.
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