Nioh - 4/5

Hey guys, for the one or two people that may stumble across my game reviewing efforts, I've decided to take a slightly revised route towards how I go about reviewing. I've decided to go with a really simple X out of 5 system. I feel this will keep things both simple and honest. I mean, why say a great game is 81 over 89? Where is that definitely point between 89 and 90 for an amazing game? Also, instead of making you guys sift through all my thoughts before coming to the conclusion, I'm just going to whack it in the title. It's not like I'm getting paid by any adverts to bore you guys with!

Also, I appreciate that Nioh has been out for near a month so this is dated to say the least, but at the same time I'm not fortunately enough to make my passion of games any kind of career, so any games I review are paid for out of my own pocket during the public release and I don't have the time to play a game to completion (or near enough) to write an honest review. Thanks for popping by and let me know if you have any thoughts!

So anyway: Nioh.

Nioh is a great game, that gets a lot of important things right. It's a game that wears it's influences in it's sleeve, but at the same time takes those influences and makes them its own. Team Ninja clearly spent a lot of time working on Nioh's combat. Your protagonist, William (based on a real-life western Samurai) has both "heavy" and "light" attacks to play with, as well as three different stances (high, mid, and low) that affect how these heavy and light attacks work. Stamina in this game is called your "ki", which each of these attacks and stances (as well as dodging and blocking) use varying amounts of.

While low-stance light attacks using a little amount of ki and allow you to attack continually for minimal damage, a high-stance heavy attack will do both substantially more damage while using substantially more ki. Coupled with this is the game's "ki pulse" mechanic. This allows you to quickly regain your ki, as well as purifying "Yokai domains" (small areas left by demon enemies that both hinders your ki recovery while enhancing their own). It's similar to Bloodborne's regain system but with recovery being on your ki rather than your health. All these aspects added together result in a fun and engaging combat system that would never get old if it wasn't for some issues we'll be getting around to.

The game's mediocre story is more than made up for by this awesome combat, as well as touches of Japanese history and detailed descriptions given by the game's bestiary and encyclopedia. You're also not forced to fight every enemy you come across. The bows and matchlock rifles give you the option to (mostly) one-shot snipe headshots from afar, giving the game an aspect of stealth that is rather satisfying. So satisfying that I couldn't bear not mentioning it among all of Nioh's other accomplishments.

I should point out that I decided to play with the game's "Action" setting and favouring a regular 60fps, over the "Movie" setting which favours prettier graphics but at 30fps. Having never seen the difference in Movie mode, and with the game being plenty pretty already in Action mode, I'm not at all concerned about what I'm missing from Movie mode. I'd recommend everyone else to do the same. Just having this option is a great inclusion, and something I hope other games adopt going forward into this new generation with multiple versions of the same console. I'm fine with PS4 Pro users having prettier graphics at 60fps, providing my little PS4's framerates aren't made to suffer

Nioh, while great, is not perfect, however. Part of Nioh's initial appeal for me was how long and lengthy people made the game out to me. Given that the length is compensated by having the same enemy encounters over and over again, I feel this game would have greatly benefited from being a lot more concise. It's sort of the opposite problem these open sandbox games have nowadays: instead of there being big empty voids to traverse, the game is littered with repeating content.

The game's loot system can also be a bit of a saturating experience, as well. Each piece of gear can have numerous perks, but there's simply so many different options that I ceased caring about them. This is partly because of how versatile the combat system is. Do I want a weapon that lowers the ki I use for my quick attacks? Or increase the damage I do during my mi-stance? Or does more damage with heavy attacks? I just stuck with weapons that seemingly hit harder and armour sets that gave additional perks based on how many pieces of that same set you had.

While as mentioned the combat is great, the game's lack of enemy variety really gives you no real reason to change an established and effective tactic. I'm still fighting the same enemies in sub-mission 100-something that I was fighting in the first mission after the game's tutorial in the Tower of London. I say "still fighting" because it's actually become a chore for me to switch the game on and play, because really I'm still having to do things that I've done countless times already.

One particularly disappointing example of this is the game's first real boss, Onryoki. I understand the idea of taking an early boss and making it something of a surprising to turn up again in later missions, but I've fought this guy 6 times already. And I know for a fact there's going to be a 7th. The worst part is this game has heaps of great bosses, but they've only used this same boss. I'm totally over it. So over it, in fact, that it was the 6th Onryoki encounter that's stopping me going back in and finishing the game off. I'm a handful of missions from the finale but I'm burnt out.

This is something PVP should be able to help with, as players learn and adapt within the same fight, you too will have to change up your strategies to beat them. Relying on the same tactic won't work with an adapting enemy player.. Unfortunately, the game's "Revenants" (NPC-controlled versions other players, spawned from the graves where they've died) suffers from the same problems of the games other enemies. The same tactics will pretty much get you through it. They definitely add a welcome change from fighting the same enemies you've already slaughtered 100's of times already, but even they get a bit samey before long. They're a good compromise until PVP goes live in a few weeks/months time, but they are just that: a compromise.

In retrospect, I think part of the issue with this overly samey gameplay is how I decided to tackle the game. I've played each of the games missions and submissions on order of the level indicated on the game's hub map. If there's a level 100 submission and a level 101 mission, I'd take the submission first. This is mostly because Nioh is a difficult game (though no-where near as difficult as the Dark Souls games). Having any opportunity to level up as much as possible just seemed like a good idea at the time. Perhaps it'd be a better idea to stick to the main missions, and only dip into the submissions when I came across a particularly tough mission in order to level up? Hindsight is 20:20, as they say.

To close, Nioh has the potential to be an amazing IP for Team Ninja. Not only in the coming months as they tweak the game (I'm particularly looking forward to how PVP plays out), but also as they take Nioh's already solid foundations and polish it further in future iterations. I'm looking forward to seeing where Nioh ends up!