Nioh - Demo on PS4

Games
301

Well, I went from “I’ll just fire it up to make sure it works and decide if I want to play it now or do something from a different genre as a palate cleanser after finishing DS2” to completing the intro segment, the first real mission, and the sub-mission and twilight mission that remix that mission, so it must be doing something right!

Not sure why this would be – I’m not having any trouble adapting so far, though maybe it helps that I’ve also played and liked DMC/Bayonetta/etc., so I was expecting and wanting a fusion of that style with Souls. I’ve had a few control flubs of hitting the wrong buttons in the heat of battle, but those are already fading as I adjust.

Good

  • So far the combat is pretty much what I was hoping for, a speedier and more responsive version of the Souls-style stamina system.
  • The ki flash is a great addition that feels really satisfying to pull off correctly.
  • I like that the weapons have standardized movesets and their special attributes are clearly spelled out.
  • The weapons themselves seem really fun and varied. I started with the spear and tonfa, but wound up using the kusarigama a lot in the first mission thanks to its range. Now I’ve kind of switched over to using the sword and odachi just because those are what I’ve found high level versions of, and those are fun too, if more familiar.
  • The stances feel like a great addition, really varying how the weapon types feel, and I can see it being a lot of fun to adapt to using the right one for different situations, and changing on the fly, though I haven’t been able to do much of that yet.
  • It looks great (after finding a fan-made ultrawide patch), and the story and environments are interesting so far.
  • There seems to be more emphasis on actual physical positioning rather than just timing your dodge so the i-frames match up with the enemy’s attack (are there even any i-frames here?). I died a whole lot on the first mission’s boss when trying to do the Souls thing of dodging through his ball and chain circle sweep, but was able to beat him once I realized to just run backwards out of range.

Bad

  • Two crashes so far, both in cutscenes. One was at the end of the intro area, and I had to replay that boss. The other was at the start of a mission, so not too big of a deal. Really hope this doesn’t become a pattern, though.
  • The control rebinding is really shoddy. I swapped the start and select buttons, as well as the triggers and bumpers. It works great in gameplay, but some menus adjust the button icon but not the functionality, and others adjust the functionality but not the button icon, so I never know which one is going to do what I’m trying to do.

Unsure

  • It’s exciting to find a cool weapon upgrade, but I’m probably going to get tired of doing a bunch of fiddly inventory triage after every mission, so not sure if that’s going be good or bad.
  • It feels like the revenants kind of subvert the expected gear progression, at least so far. I’m level 13, but have a bunch of purple gear at level 25-30 from fighting them that seems to be way better than the stuff I’m finding from missions.
  • Ranged weapons so far seem to be usually an instant-kill headshot as long as I have the drop on most enemies. This may change later, and is somewhat mitigated by ammo, though.
302

I’m glad you seem to be enjoying it!

Yeah, you’re way ahead of the Internet. Most of them get stuck on the boss in the first real mission, or a couple other roadblock bosses early on. I should’ve realized your beat 'em up experience would help, duh. (By the way, if you never played Ninja Gaiden, then that might need to be your next destination!)

I think you’ll find the weapon movesets and how they interact with the admittedly repetitive enemies and levels is the real meat of the game, so be sure to savor each one of them. (Don’t worry, you can re-spec easily a little later in the game.) If you want a gentle suggestion, I’d start with the “standard” sword since all the other weapons kind of play off that one. But you can’t go wrong, and the parry-heavy mechanics of the sword work better later too.

To me there’s a style aspect to it I’m sure you’re familiar with from DMC and Bayo. You could use the basic stance the entire game, but true satisfaction comes from switching to high stance for a high damage move, then a quick switch to low stance to dodge out of there. At that point you’re toying with the enemies. That’s the fun part for me.

There are i-frames. Here’s a video of the first boss for the lulz, though it’s a later NG so very minor spoilers. Lock-on running is definitely OP though.

Looking through my old posts, I got crashes until I set the game to Windows 7 compatibility mode. (I’m on Windows 7.) Maybe try that?

Kind of related topics. Yeah I’d skip revenants unless you’re running a super underpowered weapon and you just need a decent upgrade. For NG mode, definitely skip all the min-maxing options they unlock later like reforging. It’s completely unnecessary to beat NG, and you’ll be doing a ton of it in NG+3 and beyond, if you’re interested. I say this just to save you time.

Looking through all your loot is always a bit annoying. It helps once you get armor sets because the set bonuses allow you to ignore upgrading for longer than normal. Your eyes will get used to looking for the important things.

It’s a nice way to get rid of archers so you don’t have to deal with them. Otherwise I pretty much ignored those weapons.

Anyway, enjoy!

303

One more thing. I recommend you backup your save every now and then. It never happened to me, but occasionally someone posts to reddit about how they accidentally unlocked all their gear and sold everything, or used the respec item and forgot to re-apply experience before dying and losing it all.

304

Yeah, the first real mission boss did give me a fair amount of trouble, probably 10-15 deaths or so. But as soon as I started running backward before his spin attacks, I barely even took a hit. I’ll see if that pattern holds true for the upcoming bosses.

Hmm, I played a bit of the Vita one, but stopped because it felt compromised and not a great fit for the platform – cramped on the small screen, iffy performance, and gave me hand cramps. Just looked, and it seems like that whole series is trapped on old consoles (barring PSNow, which sounds like a disaster for anything with precise timing).

I’d like to give it another chance, but amazingly, the industry actually seems super well stocked with melee action games for me at the moment and in the near future, so it’s probably not going to be a priority.

Huh, that looks exactly like what I was trying to do, but the chain kept hitting me when trying to dodge through it. The timing must be really precise.

Thanks. Yeah, I messed around with the Soul Match and Reforging systems a bit, but it seems like you keep getting so much loot that it isn’t worth the time. I’ve since started just using my best stuff and disassembling everything else.

I went ahead and did the second main mission, and its associated submission and twilight mission. Does it make sense to keep doing those as they pop up, or is it going to wind up making me overleveled? One of them gave me a new spirit, so they don’t seem to be completely superfluous.

Also, not really sure what I’m doing in terms of stats. I’ve been getting everything up to 10 first, since someone (maybe you?) said upthread that that’s where the first softcaps are. I guess at some point It’ll make sense to pick a weapon or two and specialize.

And I’ve unlocked ninjutsu, but haven’t done much with it yet.

305

Yes i-frames are more precise than most games.

The twilight missions rotate each day. It’s an odd mechanic. You can skip them as well to save time. Try a few to have fun with them and then if I were you I’d just plow on with the game. If you’re really hooked you’ll eventually want to come back for the NG+ playthroughs – maybe after a break! – so you’ll see these maps plenty. I don’t believe there’s any unique unlocks in them so I’m not sure what you mean about the spirit.

You won’t be super overleveled if you do all the main and side missions. Gear makes most of the difference and that scales by mission level. You’ll get better gear in twilight missions but it doesn’t break anything because that gear will be obsolete soon too.

You can ignore stat min-maxing for NG. Do the usual HP, stamina and weapon damage. Ninjutsu and magic is a whole other aspect I hardly touched because I had so much fun with the melee weapons. I know @Bateau did a kunai build for a while. You’ll be drowning in skill points and you can respec as needed.

There’s really no way to go wrong. Have fun!

306

Oh yeah, that was the sub-mission, not the twilight mission. I guess I’ll just keep doing the sub-missions for now then. Those seem to change things up with the environment and such, while the two twilight missions I’ve played have just been doing the whole mission over again but with more/harder enemies, so if that’s generally the case, I’m happy to wait on them.

307

All the sub missions are “real content” so I had to do them all as a completionist. I skipped a lot of them in NG+ and above. You can skip main missions there too and blow through the campaign. It’s a nice system.

308

Correction: after looking through my posts, I’m reminded that the only thing you can do wrong in this game is go to C agility (yellow). It kills stamina regen. You’ll know it when you see it.

309

Oh yeah, I made that mistake in the prologue when I put on a full set of plate mail from the knight guys there and subsequently got clobbered by the boss there. I do appreciate the way the equipment weight mechanic is clear compared to Souls.

I made a point of putting enough points in to be able to wear the full Warrior of the West set without dropping my agility too much, and it’s been going well so far. Just finished the third mission, and apparently that’s it for the region. Still loving it so far.

310

How’d you like that fight? It was a classic in the alpha and beta days. He just destroyed people.

311

I actually didn’t have any trouble with it. Pretty much just kept the pillars between him and me, and punished him whenever he overextended. Though I can imagine that being quite tough if you were going into that fight without prior experience learning the combat system.

And just now, the real Tachibana Muneshige kicked my ass up and down his arena for most of an hour before I managed to take him down. Much faster and more aggressive than the fake one – maybe he was toned down after the beta feedback.

312

Oh no, my mistake. I thought since you had the Warrior of the West set you had already slapped him silly a bunch of times in the side mission to farm his gear. Haha! That’s the one they had in the beta. Great duel.

313

Ah, that makes more sense. No, that didn’t open up until after finishing the other missions here. My armor is mostly from revenants.

314

Played up through Spider Nest Castle over the weekend, and still loving it. I’ve been trying to get some experience in all the weapon types by just using each one until the familiarity is maxed out and then replacing it with whatever looks good that I’ve found in the meantime.

But I find myself gravitating back to the odachi whenever I’m actually having trouble with a fight. It’s got a great balance of reach, speed, and power, and the moveset has excellent specialized tools for lots of common scenarios (sweeping mid strikes for groups of weaker targets like those floating elemental heads, the mid-stance strong attack poke against duelists moving toward me, and a big overhand chop to break horns).

My second-favorite so far is the kusarigama (which seems somewhat suboptimal as a complement to the odachi, since they share no bonus stats). It’s got a long wind-up, but then just keeps hitting over and over. And it’s got a couple of useful moves to close distance – it may change later, but most smaller targets so far just get stunlocked until death by doing the pull move immediately into an attack combo.

I’ve built up my dexterity and experimented with ninjutsu, and really like it so far, with my favorite being the caltrops and the paralysis shuriken. You mentioned @bateau doing a kunai build – I haven’t been impressed by the raw damage of any of the jutsu yet (even while trying a bunch of armor with + Ninjutsu Power), but I’m definitely intrigued by the idea of being able to focus on one stat to boost both my main weapon and a grab bag of useful casting abilities. I also found a weapon with inheritable A- scaling on Ninjutsu Power, which seems like it could be pretty good to keep passing down if I do wind up going for a ninja build.

The sword, dual swords, and tonfas have been the ones I’ve had the least success with, due to their short reach. That extra fraction of a second to get into range, and then to dodge back out to avoid attacks really adds up for me. It feels like they want to stagger the target, but I’ve seen a lot more enemies just shrug off their hits and attack anyway than I have with the kusarigama.

Axe is pretty fun and hits hard, but can be painfully slow. I’ve wound up defaulting to low stance with it for reaction speed, and just switching to the others when I know I have an opening.

Unlocked the tea house, and man there are a lot of clans to look at potentially joining. I’m not quite clear on whether their effects are just for multiplayer or not.

The story is getting a bit confusing – lots of cutscenes of figures that are probably familiar to a Japanese audience sharing meaningful glances at each others’ guardian spirits.

315

I got a little lost with the characters, especially due to the Japanese names and inconsistent naming conventions. The over-arching story is pretty simple. Really, the only good part about the cutscenes is to see whether Hattori Hanzo shows up, or William says something in his delightful Irish accent.

The sword is all about parrying as I mentioned, plus Iai strike, which is a pure joy that needs no explanation. Dual swords have their own version of that, and I like the basic combo that requires some button timing. Spear is continuous combo flow between stances. Tonfas are all about ki reduction, which is the unique twist to the Souls formula. It was probably my favorite weapon.

Odachi was up there as well – Moonlight Snow is a beautiful attack I can do over and over. As you can tell, I love charged burst damage moves in these games! It really feels like toying with the enemies.

The point is that each one of them is a completely different way to play the game. Feel free to settle on the two you prefer in NG. Since builds matter less, you can get away with swapping between them. For NG+ and beyond I switched to a single weapon type for each run because it helps to specialize.

316

This is the best summary of Nioh’s storytelling I’ve ever read. Right on the money.

317

Finished up the third region, and the difficulty curve is on the climb again. Several bosses in a row had gone down within a couple of tries, but Yuki-Onna really gave me a hard time, and the upgraded versions of Nue and Onryoki were both tricky as well. The latter in particular hits for several times my max health, leaving zero room for error (other than having just learned Quick-Change scroll, which seems super useful).

I fought Ii Naomasa a couple of times and collected a set of his gear, which seems really good. I hadn’t found any decent spears in a while, so this is the first time I’ve really used one since the very beginning, and I’m liking its moveset a lot (though the odachi is still my fallback that I wind up using on most bosses). The loss of all the +ninjutsu power on the armor I was using previously is barely noticeable.

I need to make more use out of living weapon. My instinct is generally to keep it in reserve as a panic button, but I wind up forgetting to actually use it before I die.

318

Up through the battle of Sekigahara now, and still loving it. Such a satisfying combat system. Have been back on cruise control through the main missions, rarely dying more than once on a given boss or area, but the sub-missions seem to be where they take the gloves off. The bath house mission where you have to fight a raven tengu and a flying bolt at once is right up there with Onryoki and Muneshige Tachibana for my body count, and the amped-up Giant Frog was pretty tricky too, as he seemed to have much better tracking on his spear thrust than the initial fight, which threw off my dodge strategy.

Went back to the Warrior of the West armor after finding a few good pieces as loot, and it seems to help a lot with survivability over the lighter Red Demon armor. It seems like a bit of a shame that there are so many different armor types I’m picking up, but none of them seem worth giving up the set bonuses.

Spent some more time and skill points with the sword and tonfa, and have completely come around on both. The sword in particular felt underwhelming at the start without skills, but is vastly improved by incorporating its counter and iai strike. Still haven’t made dual swords work yet, but they’re next on the list, as I’m still rotating and trying everything.

319

Nice. There are some epic levels coming up.

Now is probably time to warn you that in the endgame you’ll unlock some optional missions with absurd difficulty. They were added after release as challenges.

The DLC is also very hard. You may need to go to NG+ for a bit first. You can swap back and forth freely.

Anyway, don’t get frustrated. If you’re struggling, it’s probably normal.

320

Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind. I remember hearing that the DLC areas came out far enough after release that they were balanced assuming players were already in NG+.

And I’m definitely open to struggling a bit more. My sweet spot for favorite and most memorable bosses in games like this are the ones where I die 5-10 times or so. Enough to have a sense of developing mastery and satisfying achievement when I win, but not to become oppressively frustrating.