Nioh is addictive

Nioh is a hard game, but not too hard. Seems more forgiving than fromsoft games, after you get rolling on it. The first part of the game makes it seem stupidly hard, as you run out of "ki" (stamina) incredibly fast, do very little damage, and get ganged up on by multiple enemies which makes it seem very slow paced and grueling, having to bait away the enemies so you can fight them 1 on 1. If you are coming from playing souls games, you might default to trying to play it like a souls game, but that's just not quite it. I actually got so frustrated with it at the start that I shelved it, uninstalled, and didnt come back for a LONG time to try it again. I ended up beating all the souls games since then and now it feels much "lighter" and less ridiculously punishing.

That doesn't mean it's not hard, but the enemies are easy to figure out, don't have tons of attack patterns, and there is a fairly low variety of them so after getting the hang of beating them once, you can essentially beat them every time without taking damage. Though this requires a bit of patience more than anything, staying out of their attack range and then punishing at certain opportunities, not getting greedy to get extra hits in etc. They will hit you hard, just about everything will nuke your health in a couple hits so you end up needing to be a bit methodical in your approach. That being said, most enemies seem pretty slow and are relatively easy to dodge/avoid 1 on 1. Even the first boss fights seem like a piece of cake compared to fromsoft games, as the enemies arent gargantuan monsters with strange attack patterns which cause you to essentially have to brute force attempts until you learn them all. If you just dodge/sprint around for a while, you can figure out all their attacks and when to punish, and win the fight. If you try and rush it and try and do more damage faster, you will end up getting smoked. So take your time, run in circles, dodge, and only punish when its safe and it becomes easy.

Whereas the enemies become easy to fight as you get the hang of it, the mechanics available to you evolve as you skill up, and a good variety of different weapons to choose from keeps it interesting, there is also ninjutsu and onmyo magic you can skill into as well, making for even more variance in your play-style.

You can go full strength and just super chop people with an axe, one or two shotting most basic enemies, or you can pick fast attacking duel swords or Tonfa's like im currently doing. The skill is in properly utilizing your combos, and timing dodges and "ki pulses" which regain your KI, essentially stamina, more quickly. Allowing for longer combos and less time evading while regaining it. Each weapon variety has its own skill tree, where you can unlock new skills and passives. Getting good with the skills and combos + ki pulses keeps the game interesting and throws the individual players skill-cap way higher, this is what makes it addictive for me. It's not too crazy though, not like a fighting game, but you can really turn it up many notches by lacing stance changes, skills, ki pulsing, and dodging with the normal attack combos.

It feels great and the progression isn't too fast or overwhelming, you have enough time to get good with your skills before adding new ones to the mix, making it pretty natural as you become a master samurai/ninja. There are also tons of items you can use which can further add variance and make things a bit easier on yourself. Don't feel like fighting that thing head on? Throw bombs at it until it lights on fire and run around as it ticks off health... Don't want to fight 3-5 enemies at once? Pull one with a shuriken... Getting absolutely blasted by an elemental damage attack? Use a talisman to gain resistance...

Item drops are plentiful, making a good portion of the game revolve around gearing out your character properly to max effect for your play-style. Picking out the right armor/weapons and finding or creating gear with the best stat combinations adds to the game without being too intensive. You can also keep around different sets for different things. For instance, you can have a heavily defense oriented layout, attack bonuses, or one that maximizes your item drops, rarity, and collection of gold and/or amrita - which is used for leveling up. This is pretty optional though, as you can just wear whatever and go around pressing Y with an axe and chop your way through the game, with practically 0 skills or tuning needed. You will find some things more difficult than others though, if you aren't stats maxxing where appropriate, switching out for gear with lightning, or paralyze resist for example. Elements are self explanatory, do elemental damage, or resist it, again, not necessary to min-max but it does help a ton when you do.

The combat mechanics and bountiful drops of equipment and items make it feel a bit like a souls-like game crossed with a dungeon looter + fighting game. It's incredibly satisfying when you get so good you are running through entire missions without being killed, I just completed a mission without a single death, including the bossfight, and im feeling pretty godly about that. Getting absolutely smoked on the next one though.... I may want to grind up some levels before attempting this boss im stuck on, and explore the mission more, as I think im missing a crucial part of the mission which might make the boss easier to fight, maybe not, but worth a try.

You can also fight revenants, which are essentially other players characters, where they died. Fighting revenants is a great way to get really good equipment and weapons, as you can sort of shop them for their loadouts. I've noticed that a bunch of players that are playing right now all have similar loadouts we got from killing a specific players revenant, and eachothers, until everyone was rocking a full set of the same stuff, haha, It almost feels like cheating though, having not "worked for my own gear". I noticed some players obviously decided to not do that and they have way weaker looking loadouts at the same mission/character level as the rest of us. So you can change the difficulty quite a bit based on how well geared you are. It's the difference between getting one shot, and needing to attack enemies a lot, or being relatively tanky and taking several hits, and needing to hit the enemy fewer times to kill them, that's common sense though.

I played early on with a high luck stat, and item/equipment drop rate, so I had lots of rare gear already. It makes a big difference in your drops. I also had good amrita gain stats on my equipment so I was stacking on levels pretty quickly. This was at the expense of survivability and damage potential, but balanced out because I was always finding more rare equipment that was more powerful. If you just go for damage and survivability, you will be harder pressed to find rare items. So swapping out pieces as needed for survivability is a good basic strategy, running high equipment find and amrita gain otherwise.

There are also Guardians, you start by choosing one and you find others as you progress, you can choose a guardian to get bonus stats, and as you hit enemies and gather amrita your Gauge will fill up, when its full, you can go beast mode for a time and do extra damage with your guardians type, it also unlocks different basic attack combos, and makes you semi-invincible, taking damage from your guardian meter instead of health, this is a useful tool for nuking hard enemies and during bossfights when you need to clutch it, and its available quite a bit, more than I make use of it.

This is getting incredibly long, as I'm rather loving the game right now, I think I covered most of it.

The story exists, linear progression hopping from mission to mission, in between missions you can shop and forge items etc.

Team Ninja made a great game imo, im going to stop writing this and get back to playing it, as now im hooked and have to beat it, and then Nioh 2, and then 3, which comes out very soon. Seeing that is the whole reason I decided to come back and actually play the first one.

I'd give this a 5 out of 5 just because im addicted and having lots of fun. The Graphics hold up well even nearly a decade later, but it's nothing mind-blowing. The story is basic, as the game is more about mastering the combat mechanics and defeating the enemies, it's less convoluted than Fromsoft games, and doesn't have all sorts of hidden lore pieces. Gameplay and value are definite 5's, if you give it a fair chance, and push through a rough beginning.

IF you like souls-like games, or Ninja Gaiden - you will probably love this. IF you like a challenge, you will probably love this. If Fromsoft games are a bit too much for you, but you like a challenge, this is a bit easier to swallow. It's no Dark Souls, or Sekiro, which some fights can be a bit ridiculous. I have beaten most of the bosses in several attempts, and could have beaten them in fewer if I was playing more cautiously. I just one shot a boss by being careful and taking my time.