I’m at the last boss now but haven’t finished it yet. The game didn’t hold a candle to Nioh 2 for me but it was okay, here’s some random rambling thoughts.
I found the combat to be pretty good but with a couple major asterisks. I played this game 90% in co-op (not talking about summoning players for help) and things just don’t come together well there, not compared to Nioh 2. With the extra visual clutter of another player (or two) and the fact that bosses will sometimes switch targets in mid-animation, it made it hard to read a lot of the times. And reading the moves is so important when it comes to a game system that revolves around deflect/parry so much. This is made a lot worse because of how floaty everything is. My friend described the game as “Martial Arts on Ice” because it felt like everyone is fighting on an ice rink. This gets so annoying in co-op, because one player applies pressure to an enemy and they’re just sliding around everywhere, making the other players miss with most of their martial arts, spirit attacks, etc. It was just annoying to constantly deal with.
Another issue I had in co-op is that it seems (I don’t know for sure) that they’ve inflated the enemy spirit gauge? Maybe it’s just supposed to be like this aside from some of the earlier bosses that I was doing solo, but we go through the majority of boss fights with only getting a single opening for a fatal blow. This made some of the later bosses – including our two attempts at the last boss – really annoying when they’re just zipping around the screen everywhere. And again, with the bosses changing targets rapidly, the other player is typically just frantically chasing the boss around until it does a 360 no-scope in mid animation and hammers them. In single player and “summon help” MP, it seems like openings could be created when countering red attacks sufficiently, so I’m wondering if they inflated the spirit gauge value for co-op. Which doesn’t really work, because of the ice skating and rapid movement. You’re not getting 200% spirit damage on enemies or bosses, particularly since only one person can be countering red attacks.
So as a co-op experience, while I’m glad they added it, I found it had some issues that detracted from the experience. Ultimately, it felt like the counter system wasn’t working well in co-op, and it’s kind of the core the combat is built around. 100 out of 100 times, I’d take the Nioh 2 ki system over this.
Lastly, builds/gear are boring as fuck to me. Taking a wait-and-see on this one since I only experienced Nioh 2 with all the DLCs, but even early-game Nioh 2 I had tons of interesting things to play with. Lots of useful ninjutsu/onmyo abilities, Yokai abilities were awesome --that ability that you get from the snake boss (third boss) carried me through some tough parts in the early game. So satisfying to use. I didn’t find a single martial art or wizardry spell to be anywhere near as fun. In co-op, it felt like the most effective ability by far was the standard light attack since the windup times on spells or martial arts would often mean that enemies were pushed out of reach, and all it did was leave you with depleted spirit and an opening for something to smack you. That gets pretty boring and one-note fast, at least it did for me.
Oh, and the absolute worst thing about co-op this go-around? Map progress doesn’t save. So you know how farming up morale and getting the flags can kind of be a chore? Well, imagine getting 90% of the way through the level, opening some shortcuts, having most of the flags down, and then getting disconnected (which happened frequently, unfortunately). Gotta start over from scratch, 0 morale and at the beginning of the level. In Nioh 2 I could just go to a nearby shrine and continue, I don’t know why they screwed it up here. I think it was probably 80% of main campaign maps (some of which are pretty large!) we had at least one disconnect. Sometimes more than one. It was very tedious, and while I have mixed feelings on morale overall, I absolutely hate that anemic wizardry abilities are locked behind it. Especially since you can only slot 4? In Nioh 2 I could slot 12 and I wish I could do something similar here. Did I miss a way to do that?
Anyway, I wouldn’t go so far as to call it disappointing, but it’s in the neighborhood. There were definitely some cool aspects to the game, but I felt that as a co-op experience it just didn’t work. I’m still going to keep my eye on the game as the DLCs come out, but I’m kind of out of steam on the game before even beating it. Hopefully the DLCs add some cool build variety at least, I think that and co-op have been the most disappointing aspect of the game for me thus far.