Finally finished the game on normal, even did all of the side missions. Really great game, surpasses Nioh 1 in pretty much every way. The only thing that's kind of disappointing is that after mid game the game becomes a bit too easy. One of the reasons for this is good - the game is better balanced than Nioh 1 and I have never been 100-0 in one hit/combo in the entire game, something that was common in Nioh 1, which contributed to a large share of my deaths.
However, another reason is something I hope the devs will look at if they ever make a Nioh 3 or a similar game of this type is that it becomes super easy to stunlock enemies due to all the yokai abilities that drain a lot of enemy stamina and shit like burst counters. I'm sure all of you who played this game have noticed that the more you hit demonic enemies, the lower their maximum stamina becomes. Yokai abilities and burst counters drain it even more. Once their stamina reaches 0, normal mobs spawn a pool underneath and bosses enter the dark realm phase and fully restore their stamina. However in this new phase they will have less maximum stamina, so it takes less time to drain them to 0 again, after which they enter the normal phase again with even less stamina, after which you can bring them back to 0 in a few attacks, and after that they are usually already dead. Many yokai abilities also give you stagger immunity/damage resistance/grab immunity while dealing damage.
I think if the maximum stamina of demons didn't decrease in combat and burst counter was harder to pull off (there were some enemies with super quick red attacks that I couldn't counter, but most were very slow even for my boomer reflexes), I think the difficulty would have been perfect.
Also, the DLCs were great. The first one was weak, but 2 and 3 more than made up for it. They added so many new interesting enemies and cool bosses. I think the 3 DLCs combined added as many new enemies as the entire base game, if not more. Meanwhile, the DLCs in Nioh 1 only added the long necks, butcher demons, 4-armed demons and aggressive kappas.
I can already see this game being my GOTY of 2021, unless Pathinder WOTR comes out in a playable state and is a significant improvement over Kingmaker, or Elden Ring comes out this year and somehow manages combine the best elements of Sekiro and Dark Souls, both of which are extremely unlikely.
Now who knows how long we'll have to wait for another good 3rd person hack & slash. I've heard about Ninja Gaiden trilogy coming to PC, so that's pretty exciting, but after that it's just cricket noises and maybe Elden Ring in 2050.
For now I'm gonna keep playing NG+ until I grow bored. I hope to make it to the difficulty level where enemies start using new moves.
