Nioh 2

[SayMyName]

Bizarre statement considering Nioh 2 is hellbent on making you refight every single boss in the optional mission after (which you might as well do since your objective is grinding skills and gacha drops).

I don't bother with most of the optional missions on NG and I skip all of them on NG+ and just rush to highest difficulties. If you are grinding optional missions for drops when you could just go to higher level missions for higher level drops it seems to me it's your own fault. I see no reason to farm shit in this game until Depths, which most people won't ever reach. And sure, picking missions to do or skip from map screen is just as tedious and time wasting as riding that fucking horse around big empty fields in ER, looking for piece of meaningful content to do next.

No, riding an horse takes 5 minutes to get anywhere and set ups a sequence of locations and game progression, you get to dungeons, a lot of which have unique layouts and not literally the same maps with different starting and finishing lines (or no differences at all like Wo Long). Everything feels much more like a cohesive world, with the added bonus of invasions and optional bosses having additional attacks and enemies placed in a different level design.
Choosing the same missions from a map only add to bloat of leveled loot. It certainly does help that in Elden Ring you regularly feel like you are unlocking piece by piece interesting tools or weapons for you character to use or components of your build, while in Nioh 2 it feels like you are going through the motios of filling a skill tree that exists to gatekeep cool moves from you. Even if I enter a dungeon of enemies seen before, with assets seen before, and I come out of it with a talisman that will mae my build stronger, that's far more pleasing than running mission number #76, sorting through loot, and advancing in a skill tree by merely killing stuff. This is by far the weakest part of Nioh games, and what normalfags actually refer to when they say Nioh has bad "atmosphere" or "level design".

If it's genuinely bizzare to you why some grown up might prefer mission based structure of Nioh 2 over dealing with open world in ER you might be a child or a retard.

The way Elden Ring does open world is a lot more interesting than being an overglorified mission selection using the overworld as menu. Even fighting enemies under unique landmarks or choosing the order of progression dependig to builds adds a lot more than choosing main mission or 2 side missions. When I kill a boss or clear a duingeon in Elden Ring I'm certain to get useful or unique loot alongside loot universally useful, when I clear stage in Nioh 2 I play the actual skill or piece of set drops at the end boss because the core gameplay loop is gambling. Overworld also gives me the actual chance of bypassing or sidestepping content and leans into the woldbuilding archeology aspect, but of course that's something not for Nioh devs which is why they made Bakumatsu Assassin's Creed with quest markers when they made an open world.

From already made an excellent stage based game, Armored Core 6. It does NG+ changes and stage progression without being bloated.

And redoing bosses is not something I mind in this game

Good for you, because most of them are low quality and have pitiable movelist and are consistently worse than fighting mooks and Yokai. Team Ninja can't make bosses to save their lives but fighting samurais and normal yokai is actuually more fun than Code Vein tier bosss roster

 

[Silverfish]

since your objective is grinding skills and gacha drops

Grinding in Nioh.

It certainly does help that in Elden Ring you regularly feel like you are unlocking piece by piece interesting tools or weapons for you character to use or components of your build

"Thank goodness I went through the 75th iteration of the crypt. Now that I've acquired 5 mushrooms, a longsword, 3 rowa fruit and the spirit ashes of the basic zombie enemy, I'm pretty much unstoppable."

 

[SayMyName]

since your objective is grinding skills and gacha drops

Grinding in Nioh.

Yes, even if we ignore the at least handul of skills per each weapon and armor sets bosses drop, even if we ignore any side mission, it's necessary to grind the skills of your weapons, and you end up running a lot more main missions than there's content for

It certainly does help that in Elden Ring you regularly feel like you are unlocking piece by piece interesting tools or weapons for you character to use or components of your build

"Thank goodness I went through the 75th iteration of the crypt. Now that I've acquired 5 mushrooms, a longsword, 3 rowa fruit and the spirit ashes of the basic zombie enemy, I'm pretty much unstoppable."

Again, Elden Ring doesn't have more than 2 dozen catacombs including DLC, with a lot of asset diversity and unique gimmicks to a lrage part of them, and yes, getting an actual weapon, a talisman, upgrade and crafting maetrial and an ash is way more organic than getting arbitrary XP to arbitrarly unlock skills. 100 hours in and you are not anywhere close to half the skill trees unlocking bs because Yasuda is musou-brained and loves colored loot.
You are really desperate to spin this as Elden Ring being the one rehashing content when in Nioh there's actually dozens of missions for each map, with the same exact buildings, assets and topography. I would rather get the talisman for my multi-hit bonus than grind the skill point to unlock it, it does certainly justify the game size better.

When Elden Ring tries to spice up a dungeon, it has chariots running through it, traps the invaders can also use, enemies that require being exposed to light to actually hit and more
When Nioh 2 tries to spice up a level, it pulls a bullshit searchlight that spams homing balls at you

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

Nioh 2 still has far better level layouts and enemy placement than Elden Ring. Also you don't have to travel for 10-20 minutes to stumble upon any meaningful content, you're constantly engaged.

One thing ER definitely has over Nioh 2 is visuals, there's no denying artists and designers did an excellent job there, if only their talent wasn't wasted on such mediocre content.

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

Also, I don't remember if I ever had to grind in Nioh 2 (only in the beginning when I was getting used to combat). I only did side missions because I wanted to. I guess it's similar in ER, you can skip most of the side content if you want (an acquaintance of mine managed to complete ER in less than 40 hours on first playthrough, though he's a Souls veteran of sorts, played DeS at release and all that). But still I find level layouts and enemy encounters in Nioh 2 better thought-out than ER. I only liked Crumbling Farum Azula out of all locations, I feel like it's the only one that presented that DeS/DkS1 level of quality.

 

[Silverfish]

it's necessary to grind the skills of your weapons

It's not. Do you know how many sword players end up at "paralyze, then Iai"?

You are really desperate to spin this as Elden Ring being the one rehashing content when in Nioh there's actually dozens of missions for each map, with the same exact buildings, assets and topography.

I think both games rehash content, but that Nioh does a better job of it.

One thing ER definitely has over Nioh 2 is visuals

I'd argue that Nioh's animations are a lot more fluid, but fair enough.