Nioh 2

[Silverfish]

Is this soulstard in the room with us now?

 

[Multidirectional]

Tonfas were easy to get into. Started using them when entered Underworld. Wanted to see which floor I can reach rushing with single kodama per room before things started getting hard. Floor 88 now and still mostly stomping things. High stance is so good on this weapon, that's pretty much all I am using. I can just keep doing strong attacks -> Heavenly Chain -> Demon Dash -> Pulverize combo over and over in most situations. Soon will be switching to Sword, I guess. One of the boss fights gave me Kurama Sword Dance yesterday, so that's nice.

 

[Multidirectional]

Ended up doing all 108 Underworld floors and then first 5 floors of Depths with Tonfas. Then switched to sword. First use was in the Damned Scroll from those first floors of Depths. Was doing ok with it, died only few times in the scroll. Then redid the scroll to see what tweaks can be made to it and off to Depths again. Floor 6 went ok but floor 7 boss Azai Nagamasa just makes me feel hopeless. Damaging him very slowly while he can delete me in couple hits. I cannot charge up my Anima bar anywhere near as easily as I could with Tonfas and Yokai Abilities were a huge part of my damage output when going through Underworld. And feathers on zero ki enemies, which was also much easier to achieve with Tonfas. Plus weapon damage is lower in general as I do not have any stats that sword scales with past 50 and with Tonfas there was Constitution which is the only stat I took past 100. I'm guessing I'm already at the point where damage scaling is actually needed. So I don't think I will be learning sword, or any yet unlearned weapons, on this run anymore. Maybe I should check if Fists still feel OP at this level, or even bring back good old Odachi.

 

[Multidirectional]

Grabbed my Tonfa again and went up to Depths floor 9 just now. Looks like this is where bosses stop being fun. Tate Eboshi in this floor one shots me with grab attack. Some other attacks also delete my health real fast, can kill me in less than a second. That's with over 10k HP. While I'm forced to kill it slowly. And this is with all 4 Kodama bonuses gathered. None of the floors in Underworld before Depths made me feel like I need more than 1 Kodama so I enjoyed that fast progression through floors. I guess this is the part of the game is where I'm actually supposed to grind for strongest equipment possible and I'm not into it. Not sure if I'm gonna bother going to higher floors. Depths are probably intended for ultimate tryhards and I ain't that. Oh well, had enough fun up to this point.

 

[Silverfish]

Tate Eboshi in this floor one shots me with grab attack. Some other attacks also delete my health real fast, can kill me in less than a second. That's with over 10k HP. While I'm forced to kill it slowly.

You have to admit that there's something funny about playing through so much of the game to ultimately end up in a similar position to a brand new character.

 

[Multidirectional]

You have to admit that there's something funny about playing through so much of the game to ultimately end up in a similar position to a brand new character.

I don't see how it's a similar position though. Balance is fun with a brand new character. It isn't in Depths, not past first 5 floors. And I've just found out that on higher floors you actually have to do more than one boss in a row. Fuck that. Some of the cursed enemies already felt almost like boss fights starting floor 7-8, but they were still enjoyable. Bosses, however, are buffed to retarded levels.

 

[Silverfish]

I don't see how it's a similar position though.

Getting 1-2 shot is a common occurrence and bosses have a ton of health, relative to yourself.

 

[Multidirectional]

Getting 1-2 shot is a common occurrence and bosses have a ton of health, relative to yourself.

Clearly you haven't played Depths. You wouldn't be doing something so retarded as comparing early game bosses to those in Depths otherwise.

 

[Silverfish]

"How's it different?"

"It just is."

Looks like we found something else you can't do.

 

[Multidirectional]

Came back after break and took a look at shit in my inventory. Certain grace caught my eye and it turned out I could already equip enough of it to get 5 piece bonus.

Grace of Oyamatsumi

I left depths and went to blacksmith for all the tempering and shit and then restarted from floor 6. That damage halved at full health was a major game changer as with my fast life recovery build I am at full health most of the time. Doing floors 6-10 was enough to get me full set. Stopped at floor 16 today. Boss balance is weird as some bosses don't seem that much buffed but others are really hard and take way too long to kill for my taste. But at least no more one shots from full health so far. Double boss fight at floor 14 was Enenra followed by Obsidian Samurai. Ended up dying 15+ times to Enenra because that bitch was dying super slowly, despite me keeping Confusion up, blasting it with water feathers on zero ki and throwing Kasha wheels at it almost non stop. But once I finally killed it Obsidian Samurai was just a helpless stunlocked bitch that went down fast. It feels like it's 50/50 chance whether I get an overbuffed boss. So I guess I will at least do 20 floors. Whether I am up for doing triple boss fights past that I am not sure, but I'm glad I at least pushed past 10.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

Finally got round to finishing my 1st NG run up to the DLCs. Feels like a solid enough place to leave it for now, nearly 100 hours already.

Combat loop remained tremendous the whole way through. Still not enamoured of the loot system, but at least it works. Hope to revisit it some day and do the DLCs.

Special mention to Nurikabe for being a great clutch boss smasher. So handy when a Ki or Health bar needs a little extra push at the end of a combo.

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

I'm yearning to start another playthrough, but..............I already have 2 playthroughs in progress, stuck on the same mission (where you fight Shuten Doji), which I grew to hate. It's overly long and the shortest path to boss still has you travelling for a few minutes (or perhaps I haven't yet discovered the shortest one). If I do snap and start a new playthrough, this time around it will be fists and light armor, or maybe sword and medium armor. But I'm not sure whether I want to go with ninjutsu or onmyo.

 

[Multidirectional]

With all my hours in this game I'm yet to go for non heavy armor. Hard to imagine light armor not being objectively worse, unless you are a massive dodgefag I guess. And I also always end up going for both Ninjutsu and Omnyo, not doing that seems like just crippling your character.

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

With all my hours in this game I'm yet to go for non heavy armor. Hard to imagine light armor not being objectively worse, unless you are a massive dodgefag I guess.

Light armor is pure misery, is what I learnt when I tried to stop relying on ninjutsu in my first playthrough. And I kind of fail to see the benefits, the mobility it gives you means little when most of the time you are in close quarters pitted against quick striking enemies (by this I mean yokai primarily). Like, Shuten Doji boss that I mentioned can take like 70% of your hp with a single hit. But I still want to properly try it to hone my skills with the game.

 

[Multidirectional]

Well, I prefer playing improperly. I'll use shit that is actually strong and makes things easier for me. Even then it's still not strong enough to carry me through entirety of Depths.

 

[HumanTotemPole]

I already have 2 playthroughs in progress, stuck on the same mission (where you fight Shuten Doji), which I grew to hate. It's overly long and the shortest path to boss still has you travelling for a few minutes (or perhaps I haven't yet discovered the shortest one)

There is a shorter path to Doji - look for the mechanism at the bottom of the central tower. Such a boring mission though, all the more annoying given that Doji is such a fun boss.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I already have 2 playthroughs in progress, stuck on the same mission (where you fight Shuten Doji), which I grew to hate. It's overly long and the shortest path to boss still has you travelling for a few minutes (or perhaps I haven't yet discovered the shortest one)

There is a shorter path to Doji - look for the mechanism at the bottom of the central tower. Such a boring mission though, all the more annoying given that Doji is such a fun boss.

That fucking mechanism is so hard to find for some reason. On my NG+ run I knew it was there and still took me like 15 minutes to find the damned thing after I'd killed basically everything in the level.

 

[Multidirectional]

Ok so I found DLSS4 from Cyperpunk posted on reddit and decided to try it Nioh 2, because all the previous versions were bugged in this game. Some missions had very awful visual bug, earliest of them being second main mission. Also map screen in between missions was shimmery as fuck. Not really usable. Though it was more of an excuse to start a fresh run to try out Dual Swords really, as I've been meaning to do that. Really did not expect for it to be actually fixed with DLSS4, but it is! Nice, lack of AA was one of issues I had with visuals as I don't have good enough GPU to downsample from 4k at 60 FPS, only 1440p. And that still left a good bit to be desired. On top of that this new DLSS version is just better looking, the little bit of aliasing that was still visible at 1080p rendering res if looked closely is completely gone now and things look sharper in motion. So this game finally has great AA now, at least based on first two missions.

 

[Multidirectional]

I just found out I never used Flux II in my 500 hours playtime, nice.

 

[Arthandas]

Damn, imagine Elden Ring with Nioh combat

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

It would still be shit

 

[SayMyName]

Damn, imagine Elden Ring with Nioh combat

We already had Rise of the Ronin
It sucked

 

[Multidirectional]

Shitty pacing due to open world is my main problem with Elden Ring. It ends up feeling more like work than fun to me. Game is a massive time sink for no good reason. Gameplay loop in general in Nioh 2 is just way more consistently enjoyable to me than in ER. Not just combat. I can play this over and over while ER burned me out with a single run.

 

[SayMyName]

Shitty pacing due to open world is my main problem with Elden Ring. It ends up feeling more like work than fun to me. Game is a massive time sink for no good reason. Gameplay loop in general in Nioh 2 is just way more consistently enjoyable to me than in ER. Not just combat. I can play this over and over while ER burned me out with a single run.

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).
Something makes me believe you have agenda or bias when Nioh 2 is infinitely more bloated than ER.
As if Nioh 2 didn't you grind 3 missions of the sane assets for 5% more ki restored on a double flux (this is one skill point for the katana skill tree, now do that for 9 more skill trees)

 

[Multidirectional]

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. 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.
And redoing bosses is not something I mind in this game considering I love fighting majority of them and there's only single one I genuinely dislike, the shitty gimmick Osakabe fight. Nioh 2 combat is at least 10x more enjoyable to me than ER combat.