Nioh - PlayStation 4

After 100+ hours, I earned my first Platinum Trophy on NIOH. So, obviously, I loved the game. Hopefully, you'll enjoy it as much as I did. The Map You select Missions from a Map. There are Main Missions, which drive the story, and Sub Missions which use existing levels populated with different enemies to create additional content. Feel free to fight through them to advance the story or farm them for additional loot. Missions The game plays like a Souls game. Battle your way to the next checkpoint, which is a Kodama Spirit Shrine. If you die, and you will, you'll respawn at the last Shrine you visited. All of the enemies will respawn as well. Your XP is called Amrita. When you die, you drop it. You have a Guardian Spirit in the game that gives you special stat bonuses. On your first death, your spirit will stay with your Amrita to guard it. So, you must battle your way back to your Amrita to reclaim it without your Spirit Bonuses. This is a challenge. If you die again, you lose your Amrita, but recover your Spirit. A special item will allow you to recover your Amrita, but they are few and far between. Or, you can abandon your Amrita and call back your Spirit at a Shrine. So, there is always tension when you are battling your way through the Missions. Loot The loot system is amazing and rewarding if you want to spend time at the blacksmith looking at inventory screens. You can have weapons, armor, and two charms. Each of these gives you stat bonuses. When you visit a blacksmith you can customize your weapons and armor. You can change the look, re-roll the stats, swap specific stats from one item to another, or level up an old piece of gear to increase it's stat boosts. This is pretty awesome and NIOH is very generous with Loot. It's much easier to customize your character in NIOH, than in the Souls games because you have more stat bonus slots. In a Souls game, you may have to level up 5 times to use a cool sword, but in NIOH, you can equip a new piece of armor or a new charm or a new spirit to boost your stats to use that sword. Combat It's much faster than Souls and maybe even a bit faster than Bloodborne. The enemies seem to hit harder and chase you farther, than in the Dark Souls and Bloodborne games. The combat is incredibly fast and you can get hit by multiple enemies at the same time resulting in an instant death. The larger enemies that have 3 hit combos that can kill you on the second hit. The combat is very fast and precise. As you advance through the game you'll unlock new moves to extend combos and a variety of parry attacks. To block, hold L1. To parry, hold L1 and press one of your attack buttons. You can choose which parry you want to execute. This gives you more freedom than the Souls games because you can choose how you parry the attack. Do you want to perform a wide arcing attack or a powerful counter with your parry? You can decide. Weapons There are 5 weapon types. Sword, Spear, Dual Swords, Chain Sickle, and BIG AXE. Each of these weapons has 3 stances. Low, which is good for quick attacks. Medium, which is good for counters and multiple opponents. High which is good to deal a large amount of damage to a single enemy. So, the learning curve for combat is steeper than the Souls games. You carry two Melee weapons and two Missile weapons with you at all times. You can swap between the weapons and the stances quickly during combat. Ki Ki functions like Stamina. Using a weapon, blocking, or evading consumes Ki. Your Ki refreshes quickly. If you run out of Ki, this is VERY BAD! You cannot move, attack, evade, or block for over a second. If you are hit in this state, you take extra damage. Basically, if you run out of Ki in a boss fight and you get hit, you're dead. You really want to avoid running out of Ki!!! To make matters worse, Demonic Enemies pollute the Earthly Realm with Yokai energy, which slows your Ki recovery. As your Ki replenishes, a timed button press will boost the recovery speed and clear any demonic energy around you with a Ki Pulse. You'll need to pull off Ki Pulses in combat when you battle the tougher enemies. Story The Story follows William, who ventures to Japan and becomes the first western samurai. A maniac named Kelley wants to start a war in Japan so he can mine Amrita. Amrita will turn a human, animal, or guardian spirit into a superhuman monster. There is no shortage of enemies in NIOH. You'll fight humans, undead, demons, giant monsters, a variety of bosses, and all of the fights are engaging. Multiplayer There is Co-op in the game and PVP was added recently. Rating The game is M for Mature, but there's no nudity or sex, just demon slaying violence. Value The main game can take you about 40 hours to complete if you rush through. If you want to finish every Mission, this could take 100 hours. Then there's a New Game + Mode called Way of the Strong, where you can replay any mission in the default or Way of the Strong Mode. Way of the Strong, populates the levels with higher level enemies. Once you get the hang of the combat system, it's really difficult to put down. NIOH is incredibly rewarding on so many levels. Definitely play this if you want a challenge, love Ninja and Samurai, or are hungry for a Bloodborne Style game.

Nioh is an Incredible, Challenging, Booty filled game that uses parts of the Souls formula and capitalizes. Nioh offers a nice mixture of available stat and character builds. You are obviously a Samurai who can use a Katana, Dual Katana, Spear, Axe or Kusigarama. In addition to your main weapons there are Bows, Rifles and Hand cannons but combat and ways to play Nioh go beyond just that. There are stats to level Ninjitsu and Onymo. Ninjitsu offers Ninja type items such as shurikens and smoke bombs along with poison and paralysis weapon buffs while Onymo uses magic and elemental weapon buffs. While I personally don't use much Ninjitsu both are great to have leveled up, ready for use and have plenty of other passive and active abilities. So you could technically level to be more of a Ninja or Magic user than a Samurai but at the end of the day the weapon combat is still going to be an extremely part of combat. The combat system is fluid and spot on. Team Ninja added a target system that wasn't in the alpha demo. This is an extremely useful addition that makes playing the game better. As for the mechanics, there are 3 stances and switching between them during combat is simple. There's high, mid and low stances all of which provide different attacks with each primary weapon mentioned previously. The player can have two main and ranged weapons equipped at all times, switching between the two is an easy transition in combat. There is also a Ki [stamina] bar in Nioh but unlike other games there's a mechanic called Ki Pulse which allows you to regain a lost portion of Ki by tapping a button at the right time. This is extremely helpful to continue attacking or to have the ability to move from offensive to guard against a series of attacks without running out of Ki and being dead meat. There are also Guardian Spirits who give you different stat boosts and allow you to call upon them using their strength to perform a Super [Living Weapon] for a certain amount of time. Each spirit varies and there are items to improve length and other aspects of the Spirit, or Living Weapon. While the player starts with one of, I believe, three Spirits, throughout the game you encounter many other spirits that are added to your list of Guardian Spirits accessible via Shrines. To utilize all the spirits and bonuses they offer it is wise not to ignore the Spirit stat when leveling up. While Nioh doesn't offer an integrated open world like Souls games the map along with the progression work extremely well. Once a mission is complete you are sent to a Map which holds the location of Missions, Sub Missions along with a castle logo in which you will find a Shrine (your saving menu), Blacksmith, Dojo, Teahouse and Storehouse; feel like I've forgotten one. I often felt this took me out of the game having to visit the Blacksmith and break down or sell all the booty I received during the mission then had to decide what to do next. Despite my own quarrel, as I said, the setup and system actually works great. In the Blacksmith you will find Buy, Sell, Forge, Dismantle, Refashion (change appearance), Reforge along with Soul Forge. Soul Forge is an extremely useful option in which you're able to upgrade an item you really like and ensure it stays useful in DMG or DEF. The problem is that often times the cost for soul matching is rather expensive so at times it's best to find or forge a new weapon or armor to use. It's a great aspect just one that I wish were more viable, rather, cheaper. However, some items are priced cheap or reasonable and I find it to be a great feature in the game. As is reforging which allows you to remove a perk or perks from weapons or armor to find ones that are more suitable or likable to the player. I strongly suggest familiarizing yourself with everything the Blacksmith offers and don't be afraid to use them. The Dojo offers training along with challenges once Ninjitsu, Onmyo, weapon familiarity, etc reach certain levels and you've progressed so far into the game. While the Teahouse, which unlocks later, is where you can join a clan. Clans give you bonus stats and allow you to fight the spirits (fallen soldiers, sword in ground, forget exact name) for a weekly battle. Also the teahouse offers Gestures, items and other goods that can be bought with the currency from fighting those who have fallen. Nioh is definitely a challenging experience that does get somewhat easier with time. If it's too hard one could always spend time leveling or focus on using the Guardian Spirit/Living Weapon during boss fights to make the game easier. While I do see some areas for improvement or things I'd personally prefer Team Ninja truly knocked this one out the park. Nioh is an incredible game that is definitely worth playing. If you're not a fan of the Souls series there's a chance you will not like this. However there is also a chance you will as I've read quite a few comments online from those who didn't like Souls games but were loving Nioh. Either way, if Nioh has caught your attention and you don't mind a little challenge do yourself a favor and pick this game up. From top to bottom it is solid and a blast to play.

I eagerly awaited the arrival of this game, when I first found out about it several months before its release. Although I didn't play any of the alpha or beta testing, but followed and watched most things I could find on it on YouTube over the months of waiting. As a long time souls player, whom was becoming rather bored with DS3 (of course until the last DLC drops soon here) I was ready for something new, but just as challenging. I feel that many of us in the hardcore souls community were hungry for a similar offering. Pros: I really cant praise this game enough, and I actually find myself enjoying its combat system even more then Souls, and BB, in many ways I would compare its combat system to a distillation of the best parts of Souls and Bloodborne. The game is gorgeous, plays very smooth, and has so many options as far as fighting style customizability it will keep most Souls fans busy for a long time figuring out different combinations. And trust me there are many. The multiplayer side of things is a lot of fun as well, although, its a bit confusing till you figure it out. Rather then a summon sign you can put down for players to bring you into game in Souls, since the game works on a mission based system, you can either summon in help at random from shrines within a level, jump in at random to help someone who is summoning for help, or you can start a level wholesale with a friend or random friend pretty much within seconds (ofcourse the quality of said random friend is 50/50, my biggest gripe is getting the speed runner that runs to the boss, ignores you, and all the other enemies and drops, if your doing that WHY ARE YOU EVEN PLAYING WITH SOMEONE ELSE!) Cons: The story is pretty hard to follow, and is pretty light, some of this is probably a language barrier if you don't speak or have a lot of knowledge based on Japanese history, the game does offer more detailed story content that you can look at your leisure as you make your way through the game. But the story isn't going to blow any one away. The enemies can be repetitive, as you get to later and harder levels and difficulties, the enemies are pretty much just beefed up, rinse and repeat as difficulty grows. Although this doesn't bother me a whole lot, it would be nice to see some variation in appearance, and attack pattern. The game glitches HARD at times. Of course im sure this will be patched and fixed as time goes on, and they are few. But in a game as unforgiving and hard as NIOH, having the boss fall threw the floor, or you get clip stuck in a doorway unable to finish a level, is brutal. Overall if you are a souls fan, or even aren't, but a game of this style attracts you, give it a go, I love this game, and have sunk in a lot of time, and am eagerly awaiting the many future content to be released for it. But be warned, like any souls like game expect to be smeared across the arena wall when you first enter a boss battle, its all part of the Masacore level of fun! Happy gaming!

Nioh is a different take on the Souls-like genre which was originally popularized by Demon Souls. Developed by Team Ninja this game offers a bit more versatility in combat than what veterans are used to along with a very unique mechanic. In this game you have to watch your health and your stamina, but the interesting thing is that if you time a button press shortly after you attack at the optimal time, you can actually regain some of your lost stamina. You’ll need to master this mechanic too as not only will it help you take on your enemies, but it will purify any Yokai realms that are summoned by the demons called Yokai. Another interesting thing about this game is that in addition to seeing an enemy’s health bar, you can also see their stamina and if it runs out they will have to stop and take a breather just as the player would which leaves them open to attack. You might think this in turn would make the game far easier as any self respecting player will no doubt exploit this, but that’s not the case and if you’re looking for a challenge, you’ll definitely find it here. Now in combat the player has access to many different types of weapons such as swords, spears, hammers, Twin Katanas, bows, rifles, and Kusari-gamas, but there’s also many other items the player can use as well like ninja stars, stones, bombs, poisons, etc. The way combat works is for the most part is that you can choose from 3 different stances being that of high, low, or normal. Depending on which you choose you may attack more rapidly but deal less damage, or attack at a slower pace but deal higher amounts of damage. I should also mention you’re able to switch on the fly at any given time with the tap of a button and no menu is necessary, which is definitely a good thing. As you play and level up you’ll be rewarded skill points which you can use to buy new moves and skills for certain weapons in addition to new combat techniques for the different stances. These will obviously go a long way into making you a much more capable fighter. While you can’t actually customize your character in this game, you have full freedom to equip whatever armor or outfit that you please with each piece offering it’s own set of stats, which allows you to tailor the character to your play style. Make no mistake though that this game is challenging and you will die a lot, so accept that now before you start playing that way you don’t get overly frustrated and decide to ragequit by uninstalling the game. You’re going to struggle and you’re gonna have to git gud, but if you stick with it and persevere you may find the game is really enjoyable to play.

Ignore the other one star reviews talking about being burned by online codes for armor that you will honestly use all of once or about how the co-op is broken (it's not), this game is fantastic with everything it tries. The Story: Probably this game's weakest point, but it's still good. It does make you care about the characters, but at times there are pacing issues, and it does feel like it just drops you directly into an already in progress game, not that you're beginning from the start. That could be a good or bad thing depending on who you are and how quick you like to get into games. The Co-op: Despite what others reviewers are saying, the co-op is as advertised pre-launch of the game. You do have to beat the levels before you can help co-op in them, but they are all fun enough that it's not a chore to redo them multiple times. In addition to this, which is semi-Dark Souls like, there is an alternate mode in which you both act a the host of the world and both progress through from the start. The catch to this one is, that if you die, you do not get kicked back to your world. Instead, you stay dead in the world and must be revived by your partner to continue fighting. This uses up a sort of shared life meter that will run out as you die/revive. Once it's gone, it's game over. The Combat: This is the game's absolute crowning achievement. It feels very simple at first, but as you play through the game, you will begin to string together combos and abilities faster than you know. It feels more fluid than Dark Souls (and that's come from a big fan of those games) and at times, even more fair and punishing at the same time. If you get hit, it's because you messed up your timing or block, not because giant boss #35 used his arena clearing horizontal swing to chunk off half your health bar. There's 6 primary weapon types to pick from and 3 long range, you can use anything from a basic katana and bow, to a chain sickle and hand cannon. The customization: One of the game's strong and weaker points all at the same time. The character is one static guy who you can give a haircut and beard trim to (like Geralt in The Witcher 3), but the armor choices are fantastic. I've got around 30 hours in the game and I've counted at least 20 sets of armor so far, and you can mix and match all of them. You can also transform the look of any piece of armor to look like another one you might like better. The crafting: So in depth, holy crap. You can forge weapons, forge armor, upgrade the level of gear to match your current by burning another you don't use, replace stats on every piece of gear, break gear down to make better gear. The list goes on and it makes the game very easy to tailor to your play-style and preferences. I cannot recommend this game enough if you like Ninja Gaiden or need your hard as hell game itch scratched, and I would give it more than 5 stars if I could. It's already contender for my GOTY 2017.

Nioh takes the general challenge of dark souls, the feel of combat/the leveling system, and meshes it with what feels like an MMO/diabloesque loot system and a game world that focuses on efficiency over atmosphere. Though there are a LOT of similarities between Nioh and the souls series, they are utterly different experiences and I could easily see someone loving one and hating the other- And on that note you shouldn't go in expecting a soulsesque experience from Nioh. I will list a few of the differences to give you an idea of what I mean while I flesh out what Nioh IS about: Dark souls 1 has a very connected world, and the series in general has a connected world without loading screens between areas- Nioh has a world map where you click onto different areas and then sub missions within them. This is one of the largest differences that immediately sets a totally different tone for the game. Dark Souls has a very subtle, and to those who don't look for it, nonexistant story that is cryptic and vague and lets you fill in some things yourself. Nioh has a very blunt story- Being based off history but with mystical elements incorporated. While a cool idea, its presentation is very poor since its handled pretty goofily, with characters appearing and disappearing rapidly with not nearly enough context for someone not familiar with the time period to grasp whats going on- And not done seriously enough for those who are familiar with the time period to appreciate. It feels like a missed opportunity and just an excuse for the setting of the game. That being said I still overall enjoyed the game so I was able to effectively just overlook the story. In terms of atmosphere, souls is certainly more atmospheric with its more realized world, and the fact you don't get kicked out to a menu periodically. The music is also far more standout in souls, and combined with the fact some of the bosses are truly massive in scope and feel weighty the game just comes across as far more epic than Nioh. Multiplayer is also barely noticeable in Nioh, with co op being much less smoothly integrated and "blood stains" being a way for you to fight NPC versions of deceased players. Considering I prefer going through souls games solo the first time I didn't mind, but if its a staple for you, be wary. All that being said, if you're in the right mindset Nioh does have a lot to offer. The combat is stellar and fairly deep with lots of options and talent trees to explore. If you are in the mood to soak up a lot of content- Nioh has repurposed its assets to create additional missions, which when coupled with NG+ and especially NG++ with the dlc adds a lot of theoretical playtime. I had a fun time grinding it out, and platinuming the game, but if you aren't in that mindset and want to submerge yourself in a fleshed out world than you'd be better off holding out.

If you love the Dark Souls series, love Bloodborne and you enjoy Diablo 3, then you likely already own Nioh and if you haven’t picked up Nioh yet I’m not sure what you are waiting for. The combat is deeper and perhaps better than any Soulsborne game, and there is near infinite replayability due to all the different possible builds you can make due to weapon variety and playstyle. The game is long. There are many main missions and tons of optional sub missions. The ‘real’ game doesn’t even begin until you finish New Game, then the sweet loot starts dropping to power up your warrior. The game is highly addictive once it clicks, and even features an “Abyss” which has 999 floors which is the ultimate ( entirely optional ) end game challenge for the ultra serious player. One Unique Feature of Nioh is your Guardian Spirit, which is a Super move which lights your weapon a blaze giving you a brief period of invincibility which will often be the difference between life and death. Another cool unique feature are revenants, which are a grave of fallen samurai. You can conjure up this samurai ghost, commence dueling, and if victorious you can gain some special armor or weapon drops to help your cause. As of Dec. 2017 the online co-op play is still very lively and if you are having trouble with a mission offer an ochoko cup at the shrine ( like a Souls bonfire) and a visitor ( human player ) will arrive to assist you. I’ve put in over 500 hours ( so rarely have done this with a game) and can’t recommend this game enough. Fair warning, It’s not for the faint of heart and some levels are very difficult, but overall deaths are fair and you hopefully learn from them and won’t not make the same mistakes repeatedly. The DLC is also great and offers two new weapons choices right from the start, so be sure to pick up the complete edition if possible. Some minor quibbles, enemy variety could be greater, and the loot drops can be excessive requiring some time consuming inventory management. Nioh is my Game of the year in 2017, and a sequel to this near masterpiece now sits atop my list of most anticipated games. Hope Team Ninja is hard at work on one as I write this.

Nioh is kind of like dark souls with a few large differences: Dark souls is more one continunous world, Nioh is more rigid with it's mission system and each mission being a map that may or may not be unique to that mission, in most cases not. You can't kill any boss that isn't part of that mission and there's no way to go from one mission to another without going to the mission select screen. The game has diablo style loot. You can't easily finish the game with your starting gear. Gear has levels and rarity and a lot of random bonuses. Bosses are overall easier even when trying to avoid skills that kill the balance. If you use skills like sloth however the difficulty hits the easy point. A far departure from Dark Souls where there are very few cheap skills. Bosses however are generally fun to fight require a decent amount of skills, have not so obvious weak points and are fast paced. Dodging is necessary and worth it. No shield blocking or switching from one handed to two handed stances. Weapons can block most damage so there isn't a need for shields but it also takes a unique character style out of the game. With that said the game has a lot going for it, health potions, elixirs, are limited but not terribly limited. You won't find many 1 hit kills or cheap kills to annoy you. Basically all damage can be avoided. The story line is pretty good but overall combat is the focus of the game. It's fast paced, offers many choices, and is really player skill based. It's one of those games where you should be prepared to die but where death was your fault and not cheap.

No me gustó que me asesinaran a cada rato ! Pero....... Ya es cosa mía jajajaja tiene muy buenas gráficas y te enseña muchas posturas para ataques es algo mmmm "complicado" pero como el juego te va dictando paciencia y experiencia de combate cosas que tienes que ir usando y acostumbrando a recordar , me pareció muy bien juego tal vez compré el 2

I got the package sealed which was a nice bonus because the ad said used. Unless this is opposite of what EB Games does and claims an open product is new when in fact it is used.

It came super fast but I am a little disappointed it was the PlayStation hits box.

Un juego entretenido. Con buen nivel de dificultad. A mí parecer a un excelente precio.

Muy buen juego y entretenido, la version estandar de lanzamiento es la que me llego: ideal para quien le gusta coleccionar los juegos!