The Nioh demo is only available for three more days (will be unplayable after), nets you an exclusive DLC of dubious and unknown value if you beat half of it (which will take you many hours), and is mad awesome so do go play it.
It’s Ninja Gaiden meets (blatant ripoff of) Souls structure at 720p60 (select “Action Mode” as opposed to “Movie Mode” in the settings) and has very fluid and visceral combo-based combat with seamless impales and decapitations. Three stances for three movesets per weapon which you’ll use all of because you actually need to. I’ve died more times to the first enemy than I have all the way up to Abyss Watchers in Roll & R1 Adventure 2016. No i-frames to be found here. You turn when you back up quickly (so tilt the stick slightly or guard), and there is a significant backstab bonus that applies to you too, which many have cried about for not offering the exact same safety as Souls. There are no dumpster-loads of redundant items and ranged combat is satisfying; I’ve heard that headshots are instakill though I haven’t tried it myself. Armor actually matters and you are a one-hit-kill from the onset without it.
When you barehand parry, you clap the enemy’s sword midswing and thrust it into them. Timing is harsh and only certain swing angles can be clapped it seems, so it’s a risk/reward.
The stat system on levelup is all the same, but there’s also a skill system where you can learn new moves and combo finishers like a proper bemup.
Humanity is represented as a “Guardian Spirit” which stays at your corpse to protect it when you die (returning to you if you double-die at loss of souls), and it charges up to enable a hyper mode with invincibility and elementally-charged attacks for a short while.
Enemies can do nearly all the things you do and are just as fast, just as aggressive, just as evasive, aggro in groups, can hear you before they see you and will all chase you to the edge of the earth. They also have visible stamina bars governed by the same rules and vulnerabilities as yours.
The bloodstains of other players instead summon them as AI enemies for you to kill again and take their gear.
i beat this in four hours
once you figure out how to cheese the system its not put together very well
I like the aesthetic though
ill buy this and hope they fix the fact that I accidentally stumbled onto a perfect blend of equipment and skills that made everything super cheap
enemy ai (and especially phantom ai) really doesn’t seem to know how to respond to any of the long-reaching weapons and can be very easily cheesed with the spear
every phantom using a sword has pretty much the same attack windows, so learning how to parry and block in this is actually easier than in dark souls
they really named this dude ken-sama huh
I appreciate that recovering your body also means recovering your fox spirit energy or whatever though
i really like the combat in this game now that ive got to spend more time with it + ran through the demo again with my brother, who i convinced to play. i like how smart some of the enemies can be, and how difficutl and tense fighting guys in groups feels
I don’t have a PS4, but I can definitely imagine Team Ninja seeing the gradual embrace of the Souls series and thinking, “What the fuck? ‘Tough but fair’ is our thing! That’s the thing that we do!”
This one requires connectivity for the revenant system (bloodstain summoning), so it sorta makes sense that they can’t host it for months.
It’s a very generously portioned demo, too. The two levels will take you at least six hours to beat. They feel content-complete and there’s no “available in full game” messages.
I don’t think I ever knew they were going in this direction with the plot (quote lifted from a Destructoid article):
Whether it was a Dynasty Warriors reskin or something more akin to Dark Souls, Nioh has always had the same hero, a blonde-haired, blue-eyed samurai. From the outset, Koei has been more fixated on telling the story of this character, an English sailor and major figure in Japanese history by the name of William Adams, than the company has been married to a particular mechanic or genre.
After more than nineteen months at sea, Adams and a handful of other sickly members of the Dutch East India company made landfall off the isle of Kyushu. Adams went on to establish a number of trade routes for Japan and become the first (and one of the only) western samurai in recorded history.
“His story is really fascinating to us and it’s a central part of the game,” Yasuda told me. “The main parts of his life are all in the game … We’ve added some fantastical elements, like youkai, [to his story], but basically [Nioh’s central narrative] is pretty true to what we know of Adams.”
To be fair, in pretty much all the serious youkai encyclopedias I’ve seen, the most commonly given information besides the name and the translation of the name is the specific circumstances under which you can avoid being killed horribly by it
Even the non-fatal ones tend to be assholes. The shirime being the most literal example, of course.
If a Japanese dude showed up in medieval europe and said they were there to murder all their baby-snatchers, milk-curdlers, mine-collapsers, child-drowners, soul-stealers and night-screamers, the people there might just regard that as a Good Thing.
maybe Koei could balance it out with an adaptation of the Sun arc of Phoenix
I tried playing the “last chance demo” up on PS4 this weekend.
I guess I didn’t connect with the game too well? It feels like there are too many things to think about while you’re fighting: the strength attack you’re using, the kind of stance you’re using with that weapon (which modifies the kind of attack you do), and hitting the stamina-recharge timer after attacking. As soon as I had anything more than one enemy to fight the game just seemed to fall apart.
I’m bad at juggling in real life too, so maybe it makes sense. Oh well.