Oh Nioh, how you caught me totally off-guard. Just saw it on the PSN store, dude who looked like Geralt off of Witcher with some japanese gibberish of "Nioh" and alpha on the screen. I thought eh, whatever, and tried it. Never expected it to be a Dark Souls game, except... well, even more japanese. Yet its incredible at that aspect. I wasn't entirely thrilled with the demo, because it only ever gave me two swords and as I was practicing, experimenting, summoning ghosts to fight, I died a lot. I also wore out the blades a lot, and once they broke that was it. It was a very stupid design in a Souls type game where a big point to the game was practicing and improving in a very difficult atmosphere of a game. People reassured me you get drops further on, but what was the point of that if I just wanted to practice or simply couldn't get to that magical loot-fantasy point!? Also what happens once I get my new weapon, I just break that and drag that to the next loot drop point? Its stupid. You wanna know what else is stupid? How damn fun the game still managed to be, because I dragged through and wound up pushing even further with simply broken blades and just didn't care enough to quit.
The game was just a lot of fun. It had its problems like the durability that hindered it from being as good as Souls, but it did such a good job of establishing most of that gameplay loop while bringing its own style to the table. It had fighting techniques that could change up combat, a system where blood stains from souls were essentially extra opponents because "why not?", and best of all it was just that great presentation. I love Dark Souls and all its amazing lore, art style, and atmosphere, but something was just greatly refreshing and instantly enticing about foreign mythology instead of mostly western stuff. Nioh was dripping in Japanese-stylization, even to the point where it kind of leaves me scratching my head at a lot of stuff. Still I can't deny that its great to have a wolf guarding my grave instead of just generic energy residue, or offering sake to play multiplayer instead of... magical soapstone? Yeah that's always kind of been a question on my mind, but whatever. Basically I'm into the idea that after fighting through three games of castles, zombies, and knights that I can enjoy some time with mystified samurai and wonder if I should be pretentiously sipping a cup of cheap sake that looks japanese but was really out of california. Still the game had some irksome bits about it that I kind of thought would hinder it just a bit. That durability, the incredibly stingy health restoration, and feeling like I was just missing some basic function on how to properly use its combat system.
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| Okami? Is that you? |
Now the beta is out, and holy crap I still love this game. I think they fixed the supposed frame-rate problem for the 60fps mode (could be mistaken though), and rebalanced some really big stuff. I still remember when I read the article on changes. They didn't nerf or buff things like the weapon durability, the removed the system entirely. That's a bold step I haven't seen taken since Thief's reboot threw out the dumb XP system. That's an entire element of gameplay, part of survival, and part of the duration, possibly with other bits linked to it like an item that helps it out. Still I'm so proud and happy of the fact they just threw it out the window, and told players to just go and enjoy themselves a bit more. I'm all for gameplay depth, but its got to make sense, and feel good. The durability is gone, and despite that they funnily seem to have given far more item drops than before, have a new function in place to elevate a specific drop to the player's wishes, and I think even the Ki pulse move has been changed to make a bit more sense. This all dramatically smoothed out my experience, and I've gone much further. The health fixer still refuses to give you anything more than 1/3rd of your health and doesn't add up a lot until later, but even then there's way more item drops so that 3 you get at your start is practically your ONLY life force.
However don't be afraid if you're some try-hard looking to express your desire to eat rusty nails, because funnily enough the first outside feedback I saw was "Its much harder now!" ...yeah, somehow, game got harder. I... wont exactly say I agree, but it was a much upvoted comment, and at least someone added in a true statement that there seems to be denser enemy population. So fingers crossed the supposed champions of hardness don't whine for this current pace to change, because I love it. Its still obsessively japanese, its still really tough but yet practical and satisfying, its still using some neat new ideas I like, and its just really shaping up to look good. I'm honestly left just shocked that I hear so little about this game. I've seen some good destructoid articles on it, but little else. I think its set to follow in Demon Soul's footsteps honestly. Its probably going to release and find itself a nice cozy cult community, but will go largely ignored unless they do something spectacular for a sequel. I've got to kind of confess I may not even be there for it at launch, since too many great stuff is around, and there's just not enough money. Still I've got this on my radar for the right time, and I wish it all the luck out there. I'm anxious to see it turn out well, and to figure out what its story is. Why are these people attacking? Who are these demons? Who am I? What does Nioh even mean again? Whatever the answer, here I am telling you to go try out Nioh if you've got a PS4, before the awesome beta ends. Its great!
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