Now that I’ve beaten and essentially 100% the demo (not including farming locks for max weapon skills), I figured that I would give my 2 cents on the demo and essentially what we could expect with the full game. I’ll try to keep it brief, but will probably be a lengthy post, nonetheless. So apologies in advance.
If you have played Nioh 1 & 2 the controls are nearly identical, save for some differences. Such as the style switching, and now not only being able to jump, but double jump. It definitely feels like Nioh 2, but with gameplay and world aspects of Rise of the Ronin.
The big selling point for this entry is switching between two styles on the fly, Samurai & Ninja
Samurai: Enhances your attack power and guard proficiency. The ki pulse is exclusive to this stance as well. If you’ve played Nioh 1 & 2 this will be very familiar. However, you only start with Mid Stance, you have to unlock Low & High stances in the Samurai skill tree.
Samurai also has the arts gauge, which when filled and activated by using a strong attack or martial art, will enhance your attacks, ki consumption is reduced, damage dealt to enemies is increased, and arts can be used consecutively. You lose it by being hit.
Ninja: This style is a completely separate style to Samurai, the biggest difference being that it does not have the ki pulse mechanic, instead being replaced by a mist function. Same concept, press R1 after attacking, but you instead turn to mist and evade attacks. This is pretty much a second dodge button that DOES NOT consume ki upon use. You also CANNOT recover your ki or purify yokai puddles in Ninja stance either. Can only be used after an attack. This style is very heavily built around dodging and agile / quick movements.
Ninjutsu has also been relegated to the ninja style as well. Each ninjutsu has a gauge, attacking enemies will fill the ninjutsu gauge. Filling it up completely gives you more ninjutsu uses. How fast the gauge fills depends on the ninjutsu’s strength.
Burst attacks / counters make a return, however because it’s tied to the same button as the style change, you will change styles when you counter the enemy burst. HOWEVER, you do find a skill called “Resolute” which can “fix” this. This has a skill capacity cost of 0, and this lets you do a burst counter without changing styles.
Specific weapon types are locked to specific styles: katana, spear, and odachi weapons can only be used in the samurai style. While the Ninja style, can only use twin katanas, kusarigama, and fist weapons. I’m unsure if you unlock more in the full game. Each style can also only equip one melee and ranged weapon each. Not sure how I feel about this honestly, It definitely limits weapon combinations.
Equipment is also locked to a specific style: When you get gear, it will have either a Samurai or Ninja icon next to it. This means that only That style can equip that piece of gear.
Guardian spirits make a return: They are now quick, special attacks tied to a gauge instead of summoning them for an attack. Honestly prefer this and simply flows better in combat. The super form makes a return called “Living Artifact” and seem to differ depending on the Guardian and weapon equipped. This almost feels like a fusion between the spirit weapons in Nioh 1 & Yokai form in Nioh 2.
You have the skill tree from Nioh 2, but also passive skills for three categories you can equip. Common (General Beneficial skills), Samurai, & Ninja. You gain more skills by exploring the open area and discovering them. You also unlock skills for your style / weapon skill trees by exploring and completing tasks such as crucibles. Basically, if you don’t want to gimp yourself or lose out on valuable skills, you are heavily incentivized to explore a bit.
Yin Yang system for Soul Cores: Soul Cores are now directly tied to Onmyo magic using the Yin Yang system. Placing soul cores in Yang givers special effects, bonus stats, & the ability to summon that Yokai. Placing them in Yin will give you onmyo magic items.
Yokai summon animation feels very long though and not worth the hassle majority of the time, with one exception. Scampus: This is THE best summon. Seriously, this murders bosses.
Open Area / World: The Nioh 3 Website says the game is “Open Field”, so I am unsure if the game is an open world like Rise of the ronin, or if you travel between large open but separate areas. But as for the demo, you travel around a large open field, but the Crucible at the main objective point (which is the endpoint of the area) is built like a more linear mission similar to Nioh 2. You can also take on side missions as well from the shrine in the Battle Scrolls option. So it seems like the game will have a combination of open world with linear missions mixed into it.
Crucibles seem to come in two flavors:
- They are enemy arenas in the open area.
- They are a traditional, linear style mission at the end of the area.
The main gimmick of a crucible area is that when you take damage, your maximum health shrinks. However, you can regain your max health value by dealing damage to the enemy. Also, if you die, your max health is diminished. But again, you can simply gain this back by hitting an enemy. Also, the super gauge will fill quickly and the yokai summons are more powerful. I’ll be honest, the whole crucible mechanic is more of an inconvenience than an actual detriment. I never felt like I was at a disadvantage, not in the same way as something like in Demon souls, because I could recover my max health very quickly from the fist weapons alone.
Note: It seems that some skills are also locked on crucible weapons, so maxing out the familiarity with a crucible weapon with that skill will permanently unlock that skill.
The open area also includes “Exploration Levels” (Again, think Rise of The Ronin), these are increased by exploring the map, clearing enemy bases, destroying yokai spikes, and etc. Leveling up your exploration level gives you bonus, such as increased stats, samurai / ninja locks, etc.
You can find Kodama in the open areas, however, kodama blessings at the shrine seem to now have been changed to only effect the elixir and medicine, instead of other bonuses such as more amrita, weapon / armor drops, etc.
Jizo blessings are new to the shrine, these are gained by praying at Buddha statues found in the world. These have their own blessings, similar to Kodama.
Chijiko are floating yokai that you can shoot down for a reward, they will have a jingling sound when nearby.
Scampus can now be chased to find secret areas or simply get rewards.
After beating Demo: you get Gale sprint, which lets you run at an increased speed. I assume this is for backtracking and exploration in the area you just beat.
If you buy the game when it releases and had beaten this demo, you will gain a bonus in the shrines boon in the full game from the demo save.
Titles make a return but only unlocked them after beating the demo. However, you can see all the available ones at once and pick & choose which you want to level. Instead of having to choose from a list of three that cycles through, its better in my opinion.
You unlock a new mission at the shrine after beating the demo. It’s the final crucible area again, but more difficult with new enemies. There is also a new, more difficult final boss at the end of this mission, so it’s worth re-running the final level if you want to get the most out of the demo. Rerunning this mission after completing it will reward you samurai and ninja locks, but considering this is a demo, not really worth the trouble in my opinion.
It took me roughly 9 hours to (Essentially) 100% the demo.
Personal thoughts: Combat is still highly enjoyable, feels very refined and I enjoyed the style switching mechanics more than I thought I would. I’m a bit burnt out on open world games, but it’s hard to tell how the exact structure of the full game will be as mentioned above.
I am convinced that Nioh’s story peaked with the first game. Only judging by the demo and that you are a custom character again, I do not think the story will be anything special. At least RotR was set in a time period that was rarely shown in video games if ever and was interesting to learn about that point in History. I struggle to think how this will be much, if anything other than Japanese war number 10,001 with Yokai.
But those are my thoughts. Apologies for the absurdly long post but figured this could be helpful for those who are unable to try out the demo for themselves or will miss the deadline before it disappears and want to have an idea of whether they would be interested in dropping money for the full thing or not come next year.
