Nioh: Feudal Era Dark Souls

[Reinhardt]

Giant Frog

Ninja one? I remember to me it was one of the easiest fights in the game.

 

[Deflowerer]

Thoughts after a dozen hours or so:

The core combat loop is great. You have a solid variety of weapons to play around with. I myself favor the large sword that you can Ki-switch to different stances. To my surprise, my biggest gripe so far has to do with the progression. It still feels like all it takes is one to two good hits to send you to death's door. Because of this, it makes the living weapon (devil trigger) feel very overpowered and functions as a get out of jail free card. It's helped me trivialize bosses once I get them halfway to 2/3 of their health pool down. I was having tons of trouble with the Giant Frog until I realized I just just farm to get my devil trigger ready, enter the fight, fight him halfway, then just mop up with devil trigger. Also, it's funny to me how you can meet a level end boss and just stomp him with the devil trigger in SECONDS. Back to the progression, something that I miss a lot from Dark Souls is seeing you HP/Stamina bars grow across the screen. Here, it's very hard to feel any progression on that front. Still, I'm having an enjoyable time, not so much with the boss fights unfortunately. Level design is serviceable but I totally understand people's desire for a large world versus the one-off levels that are presented here.

Nioh allows you to break the game as much as you see fit, especially on 1st difficulty/playthrough. On higher difficulties spamming LW is less trivial unless you build your stats and equipment around it.

You just have to restrict yourself from using LW on your own. As an alternative, you might want to try getting a Ninjutsu skill that gives you one extra chance if you happen to die, as you respawn immediately in the same spot.

 

[Puukko]

Giant frog a dozen hours in? You must be blazing through the game at sanic speed because I just beat him about 30 hours in.

I will agree about the progression to an extent, you're really just trying to keep up with being able to survive 2 hits from the stronger enemies. It's not quite as extreme as in Nier Automata where Hard made all enemies hit you for 80-95% of your HP so everything that increased your HP beyond that was essentially useless as you'd never be able to take two hits in a row.

 

[Hyperion]

Make a heavy armor build. Get 100% projectile damage reduction. Use Dual Swords for the cherry on top and laugh as the strongest enemies hit for <100.

 

[Deflowerer]

Reaper is a crazy skill.

 

[Ivan]

Nioh combat feels like playing a twink build in Souls. Pulling off combos, successfully gauging distances, countering successfully, and employing your weapon skills feels AMAZING. Getting rekt by an enemy off screen, or by the very edge of an enemy's attack swing, fucking blows. Very often there is no room for effort. I wondered if this was the default experience, and it DOES seem to be the case, at least for the regular game. I imagine once you enter NG+ you might be able to spec into the heavier armors and have success with the bosses but IDK. That said, because the boss fights (especially the boss fights) feels like Twink Souls, overcoming those who you can't cheese with devil trigger feels amazing. I just finally a boss that has become my favorite b/c it took me so long to learn her moveset. Something else I noticed, because you can't afford to take 2 hits, I often felt that I not only needed my skill but also sheer luck to finally overcome some of these foes.

In sum, combat feels amazing when you're doing well, one slip up and you're either at death's door or just SUPER dead.

My experience: finished the main campaign and moved on to the DLC. Noticed a pretty big increase in difficulty with the blue snow yokai. Bosses here were a bit tougher too, there were some where you couldn't re-charge your devil trigger so you just had to git gud/lucky. Finished DLC 1 and absolutely loved the grind of learning and besting Lady Maria. I feel like most of it not all bosses from this point on are going to be walls that I'll have to slowly scale and not just devil trigger my way through.

DLC 2 starts now.

(went shirtless for that sweet stamina regen)

 

[Wunderbar]

(went shirtless for that sweet stamina regen)

no wonder you die in one hit.

Tanky builds are absolutely viable in this game.

 

[Cyberarmy]

Yeah very viable. I finished as a heavy with standart katana, axe as back up.

 

[cvv]

it makes the living weapon (devil trigger) feel very overpowered

Nioh allows you to break the game as much as you see fit, especially on 1st difficulty/playthrough. On higher difficulties spamming LW is less trivial unless you build your stats and equipment around it.

Yeah I had a much easier time with my 1st Nioh run than any other Souls-like except DS2. Builds or strats don't matter, just take whatever and press buttons to win.

But as soon as I jumped into the DLCs I got my ass beat very, very bad. Probably because up until then I didn't bother at all with ki pulsing and stance switching and farming and tempering and all that jazz. It's maybe the only serious beef I have with the game - New Game is a bit too easy and it doesn't train your for the DLCs and NG pluses at all.

 

[Ivan]

Finished the DLC. I had a solid enough time. I recommend this to anyone looking for an action game. It's a dungeon crawler with bite sized levels. I don't care for the Diablo-style loot, so I never repeated any completed level. I had a pretty tough time in the DLC after the base game, but the game gives you enough tools to survive (I think the green items start dropping there, finished the game with +3 equipment). It actually felt really good expending all of the resources I had been saving to finally defeat the endgame bosses. I'll be checking out the sequel once it also sees a deep discount.

Favorite boss: Maria, pretty much the humanoid one on ones

Fuck this: huge bosses whose projectiles are obfuscated by their character model (pretty common complaint for these games)

 

[Serious_Business]

I played the shit out of this in the last week. Pretty strong game I think. The DS influences are there, but you can tell these guys, Team ninja, have a strong grip on action game design beyond copying FromSoft. The game in general plays better than any Souls game, I'd say. It also offers as much difficulty as you could want - as a lot of possibility in screwing the system's balance, if you know what you're doing. You get much more a sense of "mastering" the game here, by playing over and over, learning your weapon combos and the enemy patterns, or just investing in the right magic skills and pressing the button to win. There is also build variety, which is a must (Sekiro really bombed on this in my opinion ; if you remove character strategies then these kind of games become deeply non customizable, they have no strategic elements). I played with the big old sword + light armor ; high damage, low survivability kind of thing - it worked quite well, but I had to play it with some kind of skill all the time, any lack of concentration from my part and I was out. I'm sure you can make heavy armor work, but I'm not sure how I'd play it. In terms of narrative I enjoyed the endless winks to japanese history ; pretty amusing. I don't know who the japanese are romanticizing their culture for - themselves or westerners ; it seems like a marketing habit (a western habit?) at this point. It ain't fucking Kurosawa by any means, but then Kurosawa never was the norm, romanticizing is ; big feelings, big feelings indeed. It also is here on the Codex of course ; what about those dung balls though, they are pretty sweet if you ask me, heeheehee

 

[Reinhardt]

Fffffffffffuuuuuuuuuu. Launched it today to refresh memories before Nioh 2. It was rape.

 

[cvv]

In preparation for Nioh 2 (Steam) I jumped back in, respecced in an Odachi, heavy armor and some onmyo and went to NG+. Proceeded to absolutely smash my way through the WotST. The odachi play style is kindda one-note - just spamming Twin Moons or Moonlit Snow over and over and facetanking most of the mobs - but I went through everything like through butter. Not sure if this strat is viable on WotD and further but on the first two difficulties an odachi magic tank is by far the most busted build I've ever played or even seen.

I've also smashed through the first DLC that seemed so difficult with my spear build. I couldn't even get a measure of how difficult are the bosses coz me smash boss ded. Altho I guess Maria must be a pain in the arse with a lighter build, she almost hurt me.

Now two more DLCs to roflstomp through and can't fucking wait for Nioh 2.

 

[Machocruz]

How come there doesn't seem to be as much chatter and hype about this game as there was for the first, I mean outside of here? Seems like a Legend of Grimrock 2 situation, as far as attention.

 

[cvv]

How come there doesn't seem to be as much chatter and hype about this game as there was for the first, I mean outside of here? Seems like a Legend of Grimrock 2 situation, as far as attention.

Well it came out almost a year ago, next February is just the PC release. Also it's "just" a sequel and a very similar to boot so the novelty is gone. Still super stoked for this.

 

[Machocruz]

How come there doesn't seem to be as much chatter and hype about this game as there was for the first, I mean outside of here? Seems like a Legend of Grimrock 2 situation, as far as attention.

Well it came out almost a year ago, next February is just the PC release. Also it's "just" a sequel and a very similar to boot so the novelty is gone. Still super stoked for this.

Fuck I mean to post that in the Nioh 2 thread lol.

 

[cvv]

How come there doesn't seem to be as much chatter and hype about this game as there was for the first, I mean outside of here? Seems like a Legend of Grimrock 2 situation, as far as attention.

Well it came out almost a year ago, next February is just the PC release. Also it's "just" a sequel and a very similar to boot so the novelty is gone. Still super stoked for this.

Fuck I mean to post that in the Nioh 2 thread lol.

And I didn't even notice lol.

 

[Deflowerer]

Way of the Strong difficulty is probably the easiest difficulty in the game: by that point you are proficient enough with the gameplay and encounters that you don't have too much of a hard time, and the difficulty scales quite linearly with the loot you get.

From Way of the Demon onwards, bosses start getting buffs, buffed enemies start appearing across levels AND more mobs are added in certain stages and areas. Not just randomly scattered either, but usually you get some nasty additional enemy placements. Battle of Ohashi bridge (that big axe guy miniboss) gets a Raven Tengu accompanying him and holy shit does it significantly increase the difficulty, considering that there isn't too much room on that area to really move either. Some other usual additions are ambushes (spawns behind your back) or ranged enemies giving support to melee.

 

[cvv]

From Way of the Demon onwards, bosses start getting buffs, buffed enemies start appearing across levels AND more mobs are added in certain stages and areas. Not just randomly scattered either, but usually you get some nasty additional enemy placements. Battle of Ohashi bridge (that big axe guy miniboss) gets a Raven Tengu accompanying him and holy shit does it significantly increase the difficulty

New mobs and buffed boss battles are already a thing on WotST. I've fought the axe dude + tengu just today. Proceeded to smash them both since my odachi has a strong guard break plus pierce guard. Also the Lifesteal talisman makes a joke of any human opponent.

 

[Deflowerer]

Strange, I don't remember any of that in Way of the Strong.

 

[cvv]

Strange, I don't remember any of that in Way of the Strong.

There are no red phantom enemies but there are more mobs.

 

[cruel]

Nioh: The Complete Edition is free on Epic Games store for the next 7 days:

https://www.epicgames.com/store/en-US/free-games

 

[curds]

36 hours into this game and I've barely spent a dime, thought until now money was pointless and have been offering all my loot for Amrita rather than selling.

Now I want to soul match for the first time and all the money I've earned since the start of the game isn't enough to do it.

 

[Puukko]

Smithing is really mostly a late game thing.

 

[curds]

Smithing is really mostly a late game thing.

Kinda thought I was in the late game at this point, or do you mean ng+ or whatever?

Surely the core game can't be much longer than 40hrs.