Nioh 2 - Turn demons into loot again

The Feral burst counter move is also such a good dodge I almost hesitate to mention it. Feels kind of game-breaking to me. It has a long recovery so you can still get hit afterwards, but it saved my life 10 times as much as it killed me.

See, I got the monkey from the guy you meet after the first mission, and I equipped him, but bursting yokai with an attack that interrupts and staggers them just seems so much better that I switched back to the wolf.

I’m with you, @Kolbex! That attack plus stagger is so useful. Plus it seems like I take significantly reduced damage (maybe in the realm of 50%) if I’m hit while performing the attack, so even a miss isn’t useless.

I don’t know if I’m playing a good or effective strategy long term, but I’m at ~25% equipment weight limit and when I dodge I can now almost always dodge through enemies. This is super effective because it means I can counter hit from behind the enemy, which is usually safe and does extra damage with dual hatchets.

Tonfas, the one weapon I was like, “I’m not gonna use those,” are definitely my jam.

I should really give dual hatchets a chance, though.

I just really like weapons that are “why one, when you could have two”.

You can’t go wrong with any of them! Axe is the only one that requires you to play slightly more like Dark Souls, if at all.

And the sword is actually not boring, too. Arg, I can’t decide.

The sword is most interesting when you work some parrying into your routine. That could be an excuse for you not to use it.

Been experimenting with sword and spear, both cool. Hit another wall with Enenra, but this time I am confident I will eventually be able to scale it.

I’ve been deep on dual hatchets because I was reading The Lies of Locke Lamora when I started and there’s a great character with dual hatchets in there. This game captures the fantasy in that book incredibly well. I’ve been doing spear as backup because I pumped Constitution since it seems necessary to have high HP if you’re running light armor, and Skill for dual hatchets which boosts spear damage a fair bit as well.

I am interested in trying other weapons though. Would it be better to just start a new character to do that? My build is so Skill heavy that I figure I can probably only effectively use Skill based weapons. I’m especially interested in checking out the glaive and tonfas and some point.

You should never restart this game. Too much grind, finding kodamas, etc. Just use a book of reincarnation to reroll your stats. Make sure you have enough to equip your armor and then pump the main damage stat.

Damn, this guy is really hard.

Good to know. Do those become more plentiful? I’ve got a few as drops in the game but I’ve been worried about using them for fear there may be a limited number you can get.

You can buy them eventually. The price starts to scale up but you’ll probably get bored of swapping before the cost becomes a problem. For endgame diehards swimming in money, there’s actually a new system where you can swap between saved builds instantly at the cost of one book.

Damn, finally put down Enenra. What a brutal second boss. Not sure I’ve done any other boss so many times except Orphan.

Despite my best intentions, I am settling into spear and sword. There is some decent stat overlap between the two, but I’ve sort of spread myself out and think I may need to invest in a book of reincarnation.

I almost never swapped off my main weapon (switchglaive), just using the 2nd slot for set bonus weapons, so I wasn’t too concerned about stat overlap. Once I beat the game, I played each weapon until I got it to mastery level for all the dojo missions.

I decided to make a new guy to try switchglaive. It’s a neat weapon, but the most interesting thing to me is how obviously my skills have improved. Went through almost the whole first area and only died twice, killed Gozuki with no help and no deaths.

Oh, and the Phantom yokai burst counter sucks so bad.

Damn, this game is sadistic. Hit, I don’t know, the fourth story mission? When the snake ladies get introduced. So many tough enemies, and I’m sneaking around trying to find my way when I see a corrupted shrine, but to clear it there’s a yoki, a nure-onna and just for fun one of those annoying firebomb gakis, all in a very small area that’s also filled with poison water. Fuuuuuck. There may have even been other things in there, I couldn’t tell because I was so frantically trying to not die (I failed).