Nioh: Feudal Era Dark Souls

[sullynathan]

 

[Hobo Elf]

It's looking good, although Ninjutsu still looks to be pretty weak.

 

[Lyric Suite]

Comments in the video say they scaled down the difficulty from the beta. WTF why? What kind of Dark Souls rip off is this?

 

[Hobo Elf]

Comments in the video say they scaled down the difficulty from the beta. WTF why? What kind of Dark Souls rip off is this?

The beta was brutal and overly so. That said, the comments just clueless people raging against the machine. What they actually did was smooth the beginning experience because it fucking sucked. You had no armor and you got 2 shotted by everything until you grinded for random drop loot from the enemies so you wouldn't get two shotted anymore. They smoothed out that experience, which is good. The game is plenty difficult enough since there are no i-frames when you dodge and evade. The one thing that does truly count as dumbing down, perhaps, is the removal of weapon durability. Don't remember if they removed durability from armor as well. Weapon durability ceased being a problem an hour in the game so it's pretty much a non-issue I suppose. And weapons kept dropping like candy so it's not like you had a problem with choice. OTOH they toned down the item drop rate so that will make the game a bit harder in that regard.

 

[Corporate_Jew_Master]

Not buying a ps4 for any reason.

 

[Explorerbc]

It's Koei Temco so there is a chance it will eventually make it to the pc as a shitty port.

 

[duanth123]

It's Koei Temco so there is a chance it will eventually make it to the pc as a shitty port.

What?! Koei Tecmo would never release a shitty po-

 

[Matador]

You can play free beta on PS4 right now.

I'm going to test a bit, but try to not spoil so much, because I have good feelings about this game and I want to play it freshs when it release.

Mayor changes:

- Weapons don't broke anymore.
- Improved lock on.
- Better image quality and performance.
- And I read in neogaf that the hitboxes are improved, and other minor stuff.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Downloading

 

[Dyskolos]

It seems a good sign that they've released two demos in an era where a single one is almost unheard of, especially given their response in changing different issues people apparently had with the first. Plus I missed the first release so I'm glad there's something to try by way of preview.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Played a bit of it today, got close to the end of the first area. Pretty cool game thus far. A bit extreme with occasionally getting oneshot or stunlocked do death from full health, but the combat itself is very enjoyable and thus far much better than any Souls game. Giving the player an active way to regain stamina (ki pulse) and having enemy enemy stamina not only be visible but matter a lot in combat are really cool changes that seem like a natural evolution of Souls-style combat (as opposed to just making everything faster ala Bloodborne). There only seem to be like five or six weapon types, but each has three stances and a lot of unlockable moves and combos, so I'd guess that evens out.

On the minus side, level design seems rather pedestrian at the moment, and the game isn't particularly good looking, nor is the atmosphere anything to write home about. Enemy design seems good enough, though not exceptional, although the designers should be commended for making them play by the same rules as the player does. I think I even saw an enemy's spear bounce of a wall, a truly mindblowing experience after From being unable to achieve this through 5 games and counting.

Will update further as I progress, but thus far, I am very entertained. I also feel like I'm slowly mastering a relatively complex combat systems, as opposed to memorizing enemy attack patterns.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Game has changed quite a bit since the Alpha demo. I'll write up some changes tomorrow when I have time as I'm about to hit the sack. I think all the changes are for the better. One thing that I noticed that is pretty much confirmed now is that William Adams is not the only playable character, as many people had been guessing was the case (there's a character selection menu in the main map). My guess is that Hattori Hanzo and a female samurai (forgot her name) are going to be the two other playable characters.

 

[Latro]

I like it a lot. Very fair combat system, the movesets (plus skills) seem heavily based on understanding the stance system, and I'm pretty sure you can even work in weapon switching if you practice enough/find the right skill that allows you to (I'm assuming the one that stuns people).

It's like Dark Souls without the atmosphere...but with better combat. No rolling around mindlessly or memorizing singular weapon type movesets, feels much more skill based than memorizing attack patterns Souls.

Tips: Spear is fun as fuck, but is legit an issue in tight spaces, it'll clink and block your stuff everywhere, so it encourages you to have a real secondary. I like this quite a bit.

 

[Hobo Elf]

For those who are interested to see what Nioh gameplay could look like if you want to put the effort into really learning its complex systems

It pretty much turns from Souls into Ninja Gaiden

Edit: Welp I've beaten the demo now and unlocked Mark of the Strong. These boss fights are pretty crazy. Now that I've played through the game in Hard mode (Dexterity with Swords) I'll make a new build using something that's actually good, like Spears.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Ok here are some eclectic thoughts and observations on the Beta:

-Ninjutsu is still disappointing.
-Swords are still awful
-Ranged weapons like the bow and flintlock rifle are still nothing but a glorified pulling weapon, with the way how fast some enemies are it's going to be almost impossible to kill them with ranged attacks. Don't even try to think that you can build your character to be a ranged attacker. Everyone is going to be full melee or melee with some light ranged support.
-Gameplay has been tuned down a bit. It's not as fast paced as it was in Alpha. It's still fast paced, but it feels like there's more of a delay between combos. But the same goes for enemies as well. They aren't as aggressive now, especially the tougher enemies, like the Oni.
-The removal of durability is excellent. It was fucking awful and didn't add anything to the game.
-I think level design is going to be very bad in this game. The two levels in the Alpha were nothing impressive. The 3rd new area in this Beta is not very good either. Don't go in expecting to get a satisfying dungeon crawling experience.
-They changed the skill trees. Gone are the boring passives that reduce Ki consumption while blocking / attacking in High - Mid - Low stance (each weapon had these 2 passives and they were all stance specific so you had to level up the same passive for each stance separately). They have been squashed and moved to the Ninjutsu tree where you have passives that give Ki consumption reductions for all weapons and all stances. The weapon skill trees have been repopulated with more meaningful skills, actual skills, and less passives.
-After beating the demo you unlock a Twilight version of the two stages. Kinda like a NG+, I guess, but they replace all the enemies with Oni shit. I hope you like fighting Oni, a lot. The purpose of the Twilight versions of the levels is to give you better loot and more Amrita (Souls). And boy do they give a ton of it.
-If the Beta 2nd stage boss is anything to go by, the boss fights are going to be brutal and extremely punishing to mistakes in this game. Be prepared.
-Combat system is the main focus of this game, and it's really fun.
-Grinding for good weapons and armor isn't going to be so much of a big deal in this game like some people thought it could've been, due to random loot drops. A lot of tools are given to the player to upgrade your items to make them stay relevant and competitive without spending time looking for an otherwise identical piece of armor but with better stats. I had a sweet 150 damage sword that also did 19 lightning damage. I found a Sword that did 184 damage. I combined them to make a Sword that does 184 physical and 14 lightning damage. Each time you do this, the extra passives go down in value, so keep that in mind, but it's still a good system as the tradeoff isn't much in the short term, but it will be in the long term. And you can reroll the individual passive abilities that your weapons and armor give, so you can potentially make one with good def or ot atk value, crap abilities (but a lot of them) into a really good one.

I'm a bit drunk now so hopefully some of the explanations aren't too difficult to follow.

 

[sullynathan]

Just got the beta and The game is actually pretty good. It isn't as much like DS as I thought but more like Ninja Gaiden. I haven't fought any bosses yet but I have two questions about where I can find more healing items and what happens to the souls I collected once I die? Seems like they disappear, I haven't leveled up at all though and it seems like my character is weaker for it.

 

[Severian Silk]

It would be cool if the attack animations changed based on your skill level. You should have to fumble a bit with weapons at low levels.

 

[Hyperion]

This game is looking better and better by the minute, and more like Dark Souls 1 and 2 than 3. By that, I mean every enemy you come across doesn't have some ridiculous attack to their side that negates the purpose of dodging to the side and countering. Challenging through punishing mistakes, as opposed to deliberately fucking you over. And that video you posted, Hobo, of the guy who pretty much mastered the first few stages is MESMERIZING. I'm amazed the devs will allow permastunning a boss like that. Had to give it a second watch. I don't remember Ninja Gaiden being that exhilarating to watch, let alone play.

I know this game has been in a bit of a development Hell, so to speak, is there any reason to believe it has the same issues as FFXV where the couple of stages we keep seeing is all there really is, or should we be getting a pretty sizable game + twilight stages?

Any knowledge about other playable characters if the rumor turns out to be true? Will each character be unique in stats and playstyle, or will they just be for different looks?

Is there much of a point to summoning other people's corpses to fight, or are they just additional sources of amrita / souls for you to level up?

 

[Hobo Elf]

The Revenants have a chance to drop the loot they have equipped. That's the primary reason to summon them. If you see one equipped in rare gear then you have a chance to get some of that fat loot for yourself.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Well, I finished everything there was to do in the demo, mostly playing as a light armored dude with a katana. Also ran through the first level as a heavy armored dude with an axe out of curiosity. Liked the game a lot, it doesn't really scratch the same itch as Souls for me - exploration overall is rather limited - but I enjoyed the combat a lot. It remains to be seen whether it all comes together for release, but at the moment I'm very much expecting to buy it at full price. Will write a more elaborate tldr post about this once I find some time.

Hyperion Permastunning a boss like that is a consequence of general stamina (well, Ki, but whatever) mechanics for Yokai, this is how they all work, bosses included, and this seems very intentional. You typically can't stunlock them indefinitely, but you can get a lot of damage in if you do it right. Also, in terms of difficulty, the game is not very difficult to play as long as you don't fuck up - you're quite powerful and enemies aren't too crazy in the Beta at least - but it punishes mistakes very harshly. In particular, the kind of sloppiness games like DS3 and Bloodborne let you get away with will lead to tasteful rape in Nioh most of the time, which is probably why you see so many nu-Souls players complaining about it.

 

[Hobo Elf]

I'm also on the fence, but leaning more on the negative side. The lack of build variance, other than what form of melee you wish to use, kills it for me. So does the uninspired level design. And, perhaps, the worst of them all, having to grind out your healing items again should you fail a boss fight, and maybe your Living Weapon as well. This part was really unacceptable to me, unless there's going to be some way of buying them as well.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

You don't have to grind anything Hobo Elf, everything is beatable with what you have by default. And it's not even that hard to beat the bosses without taking damage once you understand how to fight them, their behaviour is very consistent.

I personally like the relative scarcity of healing. Yes, it makes bossfights rather unforgivable, but it works well with the frequency of shrines/shortcuts in the stages, making attrition a real danger, but also letting you go on indefinitely if you play well enough. I just hope the real game doesn't let you store too many elixirs at once, like BB.

 

[Leechmonger]

I'll play this on PC in three years.

 

[sullynathan]

The level design is pretty bad in this game. I don't like all the indestructible monuments that get you easily cornered or stuck and man, for a game inspired by Ninja Gaiden, the lack of a jump button is infuriating. One later area that has you going past rooftops is really bad because you can't even fucking jump between each roof plus there's only one ladder upwards. There aren't much shortcuts between areas, once I went down those rocks to fight the mini-demon, I had to go a long way around to get back to the same shrine I started but it was apparent that the game didn't want me to do that but to rather push on ahead.

This games difficulty reminds me of souls 3 but the enemy variety is nothing to write home about yet. The lack of poise makes for a very aggressive game but its punishing when you fuck up. I'm still stuck in this beginning area, and I've only fought a mini-boss demon thing. I dislike that they have souls tracking because it caught me off-guard a bunch of times. Plus there's hyperarmor in this game like DS3, which is stupid. I really like the skill-trees and stuff like that, it gives more variety for combos and I actually got some new magic items. I still feel like there is few healing items. Fuck, I have only 3 elixirs throughout what I played. It's like playing a souls game with only 3 estus flasks.

This game has a tendency to holster whatever weapon you have just because you used an item. It is really annoying when you summon a red phantom just to have him start attacking your to hell because your weapon was holstered, same for the demon mini-boss.

I like this games idea of red phantoms. Having other players characters fight you, will actually be pretty cool in the future especially when this games online community dies out, you can still find more fresh fights.

does anyone know when the beta ends?

This game is looking better and better by the minute, and more like Dark Souls 1 and 2 than 3. By that, I mean every enemy you come across doesn't have some ridiculous attack to their side that negates the purpose of dodging to the side and countering.

Nah, the game still has ridiculous tracking like Dark Souls

 

[Hyperion]

And, perhaps, the worst of them all, having to grind out your healing items again should you fail a boss fight

Sounds like Demon's Souls to me. Only shitty if you can't farm a surplus. Definitely gives more of an action vibe than an RPG-Dungeon Crawler hybrid if that's the case. Not something that can't be changed before release if people bitch enough. Cowboy won't be pleased, unfortunately.

The lack of build variance, other than what form of melee you wish to use, kills it for me.

I honestly don't think devs care too much about this anymore with the ability to release patches as the game goes on. It's a shitty philosophy to take because it takes too long and ruins those of us who were turned off by it and don't wanna go back *cough dark sword cough*. It's also possible they're banking on the other two characters, if they exist, creating the build variance we're looking for, and William Adams is just the melee-focused gaijin.

So does the uninspired level design

I watched someone play the demo of the first stage, it didn't look too bad. Is the second one a drop in quality, are there just not enough secrets and hidden stashes of loot, or is it just a general "Dark Souls areas by checklist"?

Also, in terms of difficulty, the game is not very difficult to play as long as you don't fuck up - you're quite powerful and enemies aren't too crazy in the Beta at least

This one is a real curveball. My experience with Team Ninja is they like to fuck you over just for the sake of fucking you over.

Nah, the game still has ridiculous tracking like Dark Souls

Goddamnit.