I haven’t played around with much ninja in 2, but did a lot in 1. With your build it will be really strong soon.
-Kunai and storm kunai: regular kenai are going to be your main source of ranged damage. Storm kunai are actually best as a close range shotgun type blast. Regular shurikens are very cheap, but won’t do a ton of damage.
-bombs and fire shuriken: awesome for getting enemies burning. Combine with a couple of fire talisman from the magic side and you can keep enemies lit (dual sword and kusa low stances are both great for applying status effects).
-Scrolls: only one I used much was quick-change. It can be super helpful.
-Traps: these are very good, but can be tricky to utilize; most bosses aren’t going to just let you put a mine down
Edit: one more ninja note.
-if you go full ninja you’re going to turn into a glass cannon. You’ll be quick, and hit pretty hard. But enemies will break your guard and you won’t be able to take a lot of hits. This is how I played Nioh 1 and I personally think it’s a much harder way to do it. It’s overpowered in the endgame, but you have to get to the endgame. Don’t be afraid to pump a few stats into stamina and strength to help get your armor level up.
Is there any way to turn off the camera movement when using Yokai Shift? It disorients me so badly that by the time I locate the enemy and restore the lock, most of it has been used up.
Is there really no switchglaive set? If so that’s super disappointing to have a new weapon with no set. More so when there are seemingly so many sword based sets.
This just made me realize I don’t think I remembered to set the mystic art for the switchglaive. I hate stance switch attacks in general because they lock me into animations, but I think I still have a few set. The burst counter cancel makes it less risky I suppose.
Finished it tonight. I laughed out loud when I beat the final boss. You’ll know it when you see it!
I feel compelled to comment on the ending. It kind of felt like a bad sitcom. Where do you think you’re going, Maria? I almost expected Scooby Doo to show up. Then rapid fire denouement that didn’t make much sense. Oh well, it had you know who. Team Ninja loves their cameos. I’ll take it!
Discourse helpfully tells me that I’ve been playing NG+ for the last 17 days since my last post. I finished that tonight and got the platinum trophy. I’m ready for the DLC.
I either plan to grind a bit to enjoy these tonfas some more, or just play Ninja Gaiden II instead!
This game is great! I’ve been running hatchets and spears right now and really enjoying them. I’m leveld somewhere in the 50s so I’m assuming I’m over halfway done, but the skill trees seem to have a lot more room for growth so maybe this is longer than it looks. Not sure I’ll have much time to play in the next few weeks, but really looking forward to playing more.
I was just gifted this for my birthday. I spent over half an hour customizing my guy and now I’m paralyzed at the weapon choice bit. I want odachi, kusarigama and hatchets, god damn it.
It’s not about picking a weapon, it’s about picking a pair of weapons!
Kusarigama and hatchets share a scaling statistic (skill) so you can level that up and do good damage with both weapons, although optimization doesn’t really matter your first time through the game. They both do somewhat similar things in terms of movesets, but should have enough variety to keep you entertained.
My first playthrough of Nioh 1 was with Odachi as my primary weapon, with the rationale of long reach & crowd control. It wasn’t until later when I tried out the other weapons that I realised what I’d been missing out on, and that I’d made my experience more difficult for myself by sticking with Odachi.
IMO Kusarigama is the better option for reach & crowd control, with more variety in move sets & skills for other applications compared to Odachi. I started with Odachi again in Nioh 2, and soon swapped back to Kusarigama for that reason.
It levels off considerably. Once you get a hang of the ki pulses in particular it gets way easier, but also knowing what stance to use when is overwhelming at first and eventually feels like second nature.
Also once I got all my Ninjutsu stuff up and running it’s made a lot of the game way easier. I ignored Ninjutsu in Nioh 1, but it’s fantastic. Poison does incredible damage. And those shurikens can stun so many enemies out of devastating attacks. Really enjoying it.
Speaking of difficulty, this game lacks the double boss fight optional endgame content like the first one had. I didn’t notice until someone pointed it out (either in this thread or on reddit).
Either Team Ninja is going soft or they’re waiting for the DLC.
