Nioh series

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Jace on ice said:
Took me about 6 hours to 100% the demo. Genuinely good shit.

Pro tip for anyone who's struggling with the old snake bitch at the end. Dodge to her left, she genuinely cannot handle it like at all, 90% of her attacks will just straight up miss.
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Wish I knew that lol. I was able to beat the demo in six hours too. I was skeptical at first with a lot of the changes. However i do enjoy the combat changes so far, ninja feels really fast and slippery which I like. I'm not sure if they limited the amount of weapons you can use in the demo, cause I thought fists were returning, maybe that's full release thing. I thought I was going to hate the magic change, but I kind of understand it and does encourage core farming if you going for a magic build.

Overall I like the game but man that final boss kicked my ass. Took me several tries, and even when I grinded my guy to level 21 still felt like I did little damage with every hit.
 
BibiLivesMatter said:
Wish I knew that lol. I was able to beat the demo in six hours too. I was skeptical at first with a lot of the changes. However i do enjoy the combat changes so far, ninja feels really fast and slippery which I like. I'm not sure if they limited the amount of weapons you can use in the demo, cause I thought fists were returning, maybe that's full release thing. I thought I was going to hate the magic change, but I kind of understand it and does encourage core farming if you going for a magic build.

Overall I like the game but man that final boss kicked my ass. Took me several tries, and even when I grinded my guy to level 21 still felt like I did little damage with every hit.
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I got two purple tier fist weapon drops from snake grandma so I guess you just got unlucky.
 
Scream Aim Fire said:
Anyone got suggestions on a build or something to run? My go-to playstyle in just about every game tends to be "pump melee damage, health, and defense, no spells or item buffs unless absolutely necessary, dodge and hit enemy until dead", basically a simple as you could get. Still, I wouldn't mind learning something new for this; I was thinking about running a Fist build maybe? What weapons, spirits, builds. etc., do you guys suggest?
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While it could not the best if you're into minmaxx (I'm not sure if it is or isn't), the kusarigama is genuinely one of the most fun things to use on humanoid enemies. The counter, the spinning shit, the chain doing Scorpion shit. Everything about it is rad.
 
I am ashamed to admit that it took 6 tries for me to beat the first real boss. I kept thinking that the stance switch was its own attack that I needed to use when the enemy glowed red, but of course it works more like a parry.

I went Spear like my good buddy DSP and Hatchets for Ninja stance. Maybe later down the line I will go back to old reliable Odachi or go unga bunga Axe, we'll have to see once the game comes out. Then again, the hatchets were kinda addicting to use against the first boss, so I might go full 2Fast2Quick.

Last but not least, I need a new PC, the game auto-detected my specs and set everything to very low...
 
As of this moment, Nioh 3 is fun but it's fun in spite of the samurai/ninja system imo. I'm warming to it slowly though, maybe it's just hating change on my part.
 
the Ninja/Samurai system is a pretty unique way to do weapon swapping, I give them that, but thats basically what it is, sure they play different, and that's why its unique, but still.

the game has tons of combat complexity, as you'd expect, and beyond the final tutorial boss being a big jump in difficulty for new players to Nioh games, its a little easier.
 
How is Nioh 3? Steam seems to be positive but the negative reviews are spammed with MY RADEON 20000 CAN'T RUN IT IN 240 FPS, LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE so good luck finding legit criticism.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
How is Nioh 3? Steam seems to be positive but the negative reviews are spammed with MY RADEON 20000 CAN'T RUN IT IN 240 FPS, LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE so good luck finding legit criticism.
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I'm 40 hours in and greatly enjoying it. My only significant criticism is that some of the boss hitboxes are questionable but that's pretty standard for Soulslikes.

I also fought a boss today with a move that 100% will get patched. Shit comes out in like half a frame.

I'm a veteran and was hopped up on Monster and I still couldn't react to it.
 
I'm currently most of the way through the second map, and I think the game does an extremely good job so far of iterating on its systems again. With the way they added samurai burst counter back into the game at the end of act 1, I'm curious what other fun little tweaks they've got up their sleeves.



I suspect that the same way it did for Elden Ring, the open world will impact the replayability for me, and the SMT V-ish "designed around the fact that everything is already visible on the map" dynamic contributes to that feeling too. Counterbalancing that, the game feels a lot to me like a roughly linear collection of normal Nioh Levels, just with an "open world" stitching them together, rather than the open world really being the Focus. This is a good thing, I think.



It still feels like a good deal of love was put into the design of the open world sections, there's almost none of the thing from Elden Ring where you fight 6 guys to get a glowy mushroom or whatever, you're always always getting a new paper mario badge (there's a paper mario badge system now, where almost all skill tree passives are moved to,) or badge points or skill points from almost every single little Exporation Task or "Oh, can I get there?" you do.



One element of the design I'm really liking is how many spots have the "short hard way or long easy way" type of decision, especially the parts where you get to skip a big fight, a boss or miniboss, or a fight with 2-3 large enemies. (The parts where the choice is "Stealth for 30 seconds to backstab this big guy so he starts the fight -10% HP" are boring.) It's a bit of an illusion, because the skip path is for sissies and the hard path is obviously the Intended Route, but I think in this kind of frenetic action game it feels great to succeed at "picking the hard way," so having that come up frequently tickles me.
 
I've changed my mind after reaching the second map, the Ninja/Samurai system is fun, it's finally locked in for me and the game's upgrades made it not retarded. I always hate when people say "X is good but you need to give it Y time to be good" as a way to handwave away an improper handling of something, so I won't say that they did it perfectly from the jump, but it does get very intuitive by the 2nd map. If anyone here feels like me and is discouraged from the new gimmick, I promise that it does evolve into something neat.
I kneel, Team Ninja.
 
I'm not sure what weapons to use. I started with dual swords for samurai and sickle for ninja, but I feel like samurai would want something with more oomph while ninja works better with fast weapons.
 
  • Display Mode: Borderless
  • VSync: Off
  • Resolution: 1920×1080 (depends on your setup)
  • Frame Rate Cap: 60 FPS
  • Graphics Presets: Custom
  • Upscaling: DLSS
  • Sharpening: 1.0
  • Rendering Resolution: 65%
  • Dynamic Resolution: 60
  • Minimum Rendering Resolution: 50%
  • Maximum Rendering Resolution: 65%
  • Frame Generation: Off
  • FPS Dynamic Adjustment: On
  • HDR: Off
  • Post-Effects Resolution: Standard
  • Motion Blur: Off
  • Chromatic Aberration: Off
  • Len Vignette: Off
  • Noise Filter: Off
  • Mach Band Noise: Off
  • Color Precision: Standard
  • Depth of Field: Off
  • Lens Flare: Off
  • Bloom: Off
  • Subsurface Scattering: Off
  • Shadow Quality: Standard
  • Ambient Occlusion: Very Low
  • Model Quality: Standard
  • Model Texture Quality: Standard
  • Number of Models Displayed: Few
  • Wind Sway: Off
  • Anisotropic Filtering: Off
  • Effects: Standard
  • Motion Quality: Low
  • Screen Space Reflection: Very Low
  • Background Mesh Quality: Standard
  • Terrain: Low
  • Grass Density: Low
  • Volumetric Cloud Quality: Low
  • FPS (Cutscenes): 30
  • Cutscene Quality: Standard
  • Global Illumination: Standard
3060 settings for 1080p@60fps locked apparently.
 
Getting into middle of the first map, it's pretty fun but shame the character creation has Type A and B. So far mainly using the Ninja due to backstabs being far better in DPS. Samurai style is too slow to be effective with many of the enemies and bosses that dart around the map. Didn't really buy any perk besides the most basic ones. I don't really see a change in how it affects weapons and there are tons of ninja tools that I don't know if they are worth the cost.

Also the story is non existent, in the previous game I lost interest because no plot but then discovered shit happens 2/3 of the way through. I will say the open world formula works a lot better for Nioh than Dark Souls.
 
00R-Gundam said:
Decided to give the series a try and started with Nioh 1. Been playing with Odachi and Tonfas. So far the game just clicks right with me, i prefer fast souls-like like bloodborne so i feel at home.
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You will have a phantom pain if you continue the series since William is so based. I honestly like when actionRPGs give me an established character rather than creating one myself. I'm an autistic dork so in nioh 2 and 3 I just spent an hour making Sekiro my character,
 
TL;DR: It's worse than 2 but better than Team Ninja's stuff that came out between Stranger of Paradise and this, though not because of any of its own merits as a sequel so much as its merits as a Nioh game.

I will try not to mince words and this is going to be very listy and it's mostly negative. Not to say the game has nothing positive about it, but I'm not going to list those things because almost everything good about it is nothing that was introduced in this entry to the series.

  1. The levels
    1. The open world adds nothing other than replacing loading screens with walk time. Is it a bunch of Nioh levels stapled together? Yes. You know what else was a bunch of Nioh levels stapled together? The mission select on the previous 2 entries. If you're the type to like those in gameplay cutscenes rather than skippable ones, I guess you'll like this.
    2. Even with it being a bunch of Nioh levels stapled together, the levels are worse. Namely a lack of those locked in arena fights that were fairly prevalent. You have the mini-crucibles in the overworld, but they're not a sufficient replacement as they're mostly optional, not integrated into the main missions at all except for the very last one, and are just too easy (especially considering they are mostly optional challenges) on the first playthrough. Why these crucible arenas don't show up in any main mission other than in the very last crucible of the game is anyone's guess, but it's lame that they shoved what should've been more in the side and main missions into the overworld, where they're less part of the level design as a whole and more just little dingleberries of gameplay used like Bondo on the map. It's kinda like Elden Ring field bosses in that regard, which this game has too. Besides that, some of these little castles and towns on the map are still too open and can lead to some real cheese that'd not be possible on the mission select stages of previous entries and thankfully aren't possible on the Battle Scroll stages in this one.
  2. The RPG mechanics
    1. The Onmyo Box sucks. For some reason it's the only thing shared between Ninja and Samurai mode despite the fact that the passive bonuses are very significant (especially when stacking the same kinds of bonuses) from the soul cores in the Yang Position but are not always fit for one build or the other. If the concern for putting 2 different Onmyo Boxes was too many summons and magic uses, then just split the slots between Ninja and Samurai and increase the passive bonuses on the individual soul cores to match what it'd be when stacking. The only reason I can think of why they didn't do this is because then you wouldn't have that one bit of progress where you get the second Yang slot from the Onmyo mastery mission, which is a pretty gay reason to screw up that system. It really hampers the idea of actually switching that often between the 2 styles.
    2. Guardian Spirits are terrible in terms of balancing right now. I get the passives had to be nerfed as they also replace the yokai abilities from Nioh 2, but it's pretty fucked up the ones with the best passives also have great abilities (see: Guhin). Kurama Tengu is in shambles with 2 even slightly useful passives out of 5 and pretty whatever abilities. Remove sensor passives. The map automatically fills all that in when you get to a good enough exploration level and enemy sensor can be replaced by having eyeballs. What's worse is that you'll be playing with one style or the other for almost the entire game (we'll get into that) you really only have a selection of 10 for either style that have overlap and with some just being worse versions of others. Why is there this much overlap in the game? Did you really save the variety for the DLCs just so you could nickel and dime players to get Guardian Spirits for gun and bow builds? That was base game in Nioh 2. You don't even benefit from your secondary Guardian Spirit any more.
    3. Splitting Onmyo Magic's duration and strength into two different stats is just another nerf to an already struggling system. Ninjutsu allows you to have effectively infinite access to strong elemental projectiles and even elemental weapon with the right skill in the Ninja skill book. Give it a break. It's languishing and everyone knows it which is why they're coping about an Onmyo playstyle in the DLCs that will never happen.
    4. The lack of stats shared between Samurai and Ninja in terms of weapon damage bonuses hurts the idea of switching styles. It's mainly Ninja and the Skill stat not sharing with Samurai on most weapons than it is Strength on Ninja. There's a skill that you can get that changes this, but it takes up too much space in the shared skill book to be all that useful. Remodeling is still an option, but you'd have to do it every time you found an upgrade to your weapon that doesn't scale with that stat you want it to.
    5. Cutting out high and low stance from the start only to sell it back to you as something you have to unlock is lame.
    6. Cutting out the active skill customization options was super lame. The closest it comes to giving them back are the variants of the active skills you can find, but it's way less flexible, has way less options, and while you think the exchange would be that it really changes how some skills work due to the lack of variety that's really only true for a few. A lot of them are just the old imbue element on an active skill.
  3. The gameplay
    1. Style Switching is a sham. It takes very specific builds to make work that actively require both modes to be at half power compared to just dedicating to one or the other and the only systematic benefit is that the meters charge faster for the mode you aren't in. In theory, anyways, because you could just hit your deflects or your evasions and end up topping either meter off very quickly. You really only use it because you haven't unlocked the spirit guardian ability burst break yet. It's a lot of work for less reward because they really insured that both styles were able to clear everything just by itself.
    2. Speaking of too much work for little reward, that's Samurai compared to Ninja. I remember people saying it's just front loaded and will fall off, but it really doesn't. Ninjutsu especially is incredibly strong and incredibly safe, like it always has been, but now it's a meter instead of a limited resource (not counting eating a bunch of brushes in the previous games). The evade window is also really forgiving, refills ninjutsu, and refills ki. The fast ass ki regen is just the icing on top and the skill that allows Mist to purify is really cheap. You get a huge damage bonus from being behind an enemy, which is really easy, and bombs specifically have an arc that wants to explode behind whatever enemy you're throwing them at 99% of the time.
    3. Mist is kinda weird, though. It's the best on tonfas (it's actually a huge buff to Kannagi which was already very good) but is mostly a yokai pool clearing tool for the other weapons. The situation where you're out of ki and need a dodge right after an attack with a weapon that isn't the tonfas, especially with the ki regen speed, is very rare. If you can afford to dodge at that moment, you'll do it because evasions provide much better benefits than even the skills that you can get to enhance Mist.
    4. Aerial combat is finnicky. Small and human sized enemies are either completely helpless to it or actually have anti-air moves that they'll immediately use the moment you jump or are too fast and are thus almost immune to it. They're also finnicky to hit, often having to float above their heads at just the right angle to hit. Maybe you can do something cool like Chidori a guy into the air, switch to Ninja, and start juggling, but air juggles might only exist in Nioh 2 where you could cancel Chidori with a yokai ability that would juggle a guy in the air. Otherwise, it's fine against larger enemies.
    5. Soul core summons suck. I get they've been moved away from the ability that Spirit Guardians now have, but they're pretty bad. The animation is too long for either animation cancelling (which is a skill you have to find and takes up skill points) or even really hitting the enemy. If you take the ability that lets you move and summon with the animation cancel one then it's better defensively but now you're pulling the enemy away from where the summon will be and it's much more likely to miss. You don't want to miss because they're very limited and trying to get more uses of them is a huge opportunity cost. Even when they do hit they can feel very underwhelming. Basically only useful as openers and only specific ones that might not have the passives you want.
    6. Parries are a plague. I forgot Samurai even had them because the game isn't really balanced around it considering enemy tracking isn't all that crazy so you can still do the old positioning game, but you can just ignore positioning and timing for just timing with parries and get more rewards for doing so. The game rewards very dumbed down play.
  4. The grind is actually massively reduced in this game. This is the actual positive this game has that's unique to it.
 
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Tenshi Eating A Corn Dog! said:
Speaking of too much work for little reward, that's Samurai compared to Ninja. I remember people saying it's just front loaded and will fall off, but it really doesn't. Ninjutsu especially is incredibly strong and incredibly safe, like it always has been, but now it's a meter instead of a limited resource (not counting eating a bunch of brushes in the previous games). The evade window is also really forgiving, refills ninjutsu, and refills ki. The fast ass ki regen is just the icing on top and the skill that allows Mist to purify is really cheap. You get a huge damage bonus from being behind an enemy, which is really easy, and bombs specifically have an arc that wants to explode behind whatever enemy you're throwing them at 99% of the time.
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I'm halfway through and haven't really went indepth with gear, but yeah samurai still sucks. Using the gloves/switchglaive helps so you are at least not insanely slow in attacking, but movement is still ungodly slow and ki generation is ass. I get the idea of being static and deflecting everything and then using regular attacks, but dodging is far safer and you are still limited to waiting for the enemy to stop attacking, and it is way safer to get behind them than trying to be upfront, with the massive damage boost and better ki generation being the topping on the cake.

Still it's fun open world slop to explore.
 
I finished the game today. It's way, way too long, the story is absolute nonsense, only the combat carries it.
There were 3 or 4 points in the game where I thought it has to be over, only for the gibberish story telling to introduce another big bad I know nothing about, and don't care about anyways.
All the baddies (who supposedly did atrocious things) you fight, stab and slice walk off after a little cutscene because they've seen the errors of their ways, and you can't do anything about it.
It's also a time travel plot, because of course it is.
I didn't even meddle much with the billions of sub systems the game throws at you, the investment of time did not feel worth it getting 0.4 ki recovery when successfully parrying an enemy attack.
I went Samurai with a sword and mostly highstanced my way through the game, that I enjoyed a lot though.
The world design is so and so. Exploration is rewarding because in every corner is either some loot, a Kodama or one of them flying ferrets. The world itself is quite uninspired, evil area is red, everything else is kinda brown or green, and then there is the Ringed City from D3 as your final zone.
The boss fights weren't memorable at all. I still remember frog boss from Nioh 2, or the electric cat from Nioh 1, Nioh 3 had non of that.
Installing the mod that lets you transmog ninja gear to samurai gear and vise versa is highly recommended since the fashion souls aspect of the game is pretty cool.
 
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