Axe is okay for variety. I don’t like it much. It’s also pretty hard for most new players.
Kusarigama might be my least favorite. It just doesn’t flow the same way. Advanced players use it a lot for living weapon builds. The Blade Spin attack does 3 hits in quick succession for that.
Wow and I thought first boss was hard. This game certainly doesn’t hold back when it comes to bosses.
Hehe first 3-4 bosses are probably the hardest in the game. Then it evens out to a nice balanced difficulty.
Hino-Enma was the one that I really got stuck on. The real Nioh started there for me.
That’s good to hear. I like challenge as much as the next Souls masochist but that was a pretty big spike in difficulty. It wouldn’t be so bad if tracking wasn’t so strong - you either evade at the right moment or you eat the attack. Stunlocks were kinda annoying too, lol.
Anyway, I beat her after some 10-15 tries by switching to low stance spear, the heavy combo seemed to work really well.
She’s the trial by fire. Once past that you’re pretty much equipped to take on the rest of the game!
I just found out that you can rebind every gamepad key on the PC version - this is a real game changer for me, I was struggling with using Guard and stance switches in the middle of combos because I’m playing with the x360 pad and those functions are mapped to bumpers by default. So I changed both to triggers and it’s like a whole new game now.
This combat system is amazing - the fact that bosses have a stamina bar that you can deplete and then use finishers on them is mind blowing. If we ever get another Souls game I hope they borrow some combat principles from Nioh.
I get a lot of joy out of the stunlock twitching when the huge bosses are out of ki.
Iga Escape mission is AWESOME. Apparently a lot of people hate it though, lol. It had some real Ninja Gaiden vibes, loved it.
I’m now using the Kingo set and more or less Kusarigama 100% of the time, seems to work pretty well (also Summer Twilight is amazing!). I’m about to make the switch to Iba set and try out throwing weapons since they have a nice synergy with Kusarigama which I’m already specced into.
Am I gimping myself by not getting proficiency in other weapons?
Nah, technically you’d gimp yourself if you branched out because you’d have to level 2 or more primary stats for damage. Which is fine either way, because builds are pretty loose in NG.
That’s funny that you landed on the kusa.
I liked Iga Escape. One of my favorite boss fights too.
Yeah well, the synergy was a little too obvious to ignore. I like the moveset too, but I’m mainly using high and low stance.
Finished the game on NG and I have to say I rather enjoyed the story. Level design is also pretty great, lots of varied tilesets - and some maps felt like mazes which I really liked.
In the end I used a mix of close combat and thrown spec but after I wrapped up the NG I took some time to update my gear and respec into throwing damage. Here’s a little video from one of the side missions that unlock after you kill the penultimate boss:
Onwards to dlc and NG+!
If you have trouble with the DLC you can play a bit in NG+ first. There are also some challenge missions in NG that may be too hard until later.
Or maybe not with that throwing weapons build. Haha!
I plowed through the dual boss missions in NG, and currently making very good progress in the first region of the dlc. I kinda want to move away from this spec though, I can feel the bad habits creeping up on me :)
Finally got to Way of the Demon (NG++) and abandoned the throwing spec, even though I now have 4 gear pieces with chance to do double throwing dmg. I’ve moved on to the Hayabusa set, but I’m using the amulet that reduces set requirements by 1 so I can have the Iga bonus to refresh my ninjutsu after LW. The game suddenly became a lot more fun again but I have to say that the damage in this game is overtuned. Some regular mooks straight up oneshot me at 3k hp and Honda bonus (halved dmg taken if on full life).
Also, fuck archers/cannoneers of all kinds. Their fire rate on NG+(+) is crazy.
Hayabusa is supposedly pretty glass cannon so watch out. I think I will switch to it after Way of the Nioh.
I can’t really go back to anything less than A agility :(.
Aaaand I went back to throwing spec lol. However, I’ll try to play it as hybrid. Rolled a pretty nice Kusarigama for now:
(purple is change to attack)
The new difficulties are only really tough for a while. Once you get good gear it’s pretty normal. You don’t have to play every level either, just the easy and fun ones.