Nioh

Nioh owes a lot to Dark Souls. This is a statement that you often hear these days, but in this case, it is particularly valid. From its demanding but rewarding combat system to its labyrinthine levels filled with dangers and exciting secrets, the influence of the famous RPG action developed by FromSoftware undeniably constitutes the foundations of the last effort of Team Ninja.

But Nioh also boldly asserts its own identity, as refreshing as it is surprising, which offers you just enough possibilities for personalization while respecting the constraints set by its approach based on endurance. This mechanism forces you to adapt your playing style every second. An appreciable variety of enemies to face, brilliant bosses to defeat, and a plot that turns out to be as terrifying as it is engaging make each of your steps in the Nioh adventure even more exciting than the previous one.

The Nioh plot offers a very special flavor to your adventure. You play a revised and corrected “dark-fantasy” version of the sailor William Adams, who inexplicably (and quite comically) turns into a demon slayer hero during the Sengoku era of Japan (era of social turbulence, intrigue political, and almost constant military conflicts which extends from the middle of the 15th century to the end of the 16th century). The character of William turns out to be sadly under-exploited, but his journey through the misty mountains, the war-ravaged villages, and the infernal battlefields of Japan at the time turns out to be captivating, thanks in particular to the appearances of 'other historical figures like the mysterious Hattori Hanzo and the fierce Tokugawa Ieyasu.

If I never really felt invested in the personal quest of William, I nevertheless loved the colorful characters of Nioh and the epic scope of their joint adventure, which sets the tone during more than 70 hours of play: it it is a strange mixture between historical facts and fantasy which brings an unexpected lightness to this action game which seemed at first glance to take a somewhat too serious approach. I particularly appreciated his ability to change your tone so harmoniously. The voluntarily absurd side of Nioh never gets in the way of the most epic and terrifying moments it offers, and these are present in number - especially during the last quarter of the game, during the ramp-up you leading to its thrilling conclusion.

With in all and for all two tutorials, a myriad of subsystems, menus, and enough shortcuts related to objects and skills to force you to maintain R1 (here acting as a command modifier) in order to access it by pressing the other keys of the controller, the grip of Nioh seems almost insurmountable at first, but the way its introduction gets you used to each game mechanic is absolutely remarkable. The Tower of London, where we meet our hero William for the first time while escaping from prison, teaches you the basics of combat and displacement, while the Dojo's separate (and easy to ignore) tutorial focuses on more complex aspects like how to manage your Ki gauge and your different combat postures.

Tons of optional training missions give you a deeper understanding of the different Nioh systems, including melee combat, Ninjutsu and Onmyo magic. If it is easy to master these mechanics by learning for yourself, performing this type of mission offers you excellent skills bonuses which are certainly worth the detour.

All missions - which includes main missions, exhilarating side missions and training missions - are accessible via a world map that appears when you complete a level. This allows you to breathe a little, improve your weapons at the blacksmith, and buy items. If I feared at the outset that this segmented approach would harm global progress by removing any feeling of "journey", the spectacular variety of environments offered more than compensates for this state of affairs. Overall, each area turns out to be a visually distinct and complex environment, densified by the presence of particularly striking enemies.

Even the most generic levels, among which there is a network of cliff-side caverns filled with cunning bandits or war-torn villages, offer interesting visual variations that distinguish them from the previous ones. But it's the unique levels that are truly unforgettable - like this deadly ninja temple filled with traps, and this bloody, sprawling battlefield infested with demons. When you reach a save point (taking the form of altars here), the enemies reappear (like campfires in the Dark Souls series), but the winding paths, the many shortcuts and the secrets hidden within each level makes exploration a fun and important part of this journey, whether it's main or secondary missions.

I loved tracking down the adorable spirits of the Kodama tree in each of the levels offered. You can guide them to your altar to get some useful bonuses, which makes them much more than just collectibles. They will sit at the top of your altar, before whistling a little melody while dancing, decked out in traditional split bowls as headgear. It is ultimately a wacky respite after an exhausting race from checkpoint to checkpoint. I never imagined that Nioh would be as captivating, and I must admit that this kind of wacky details contrasting sharply with his terrifying and overwhelming enemies constitute a nice surprise that influences the gameplay as much as its entertaining cinematics.

Channel your Ki

Fighting is undoubtedly the area where Nioh shines the most. The latter combines the slow and nuanced rhythm of Dark Souls focused on positioning, and the spectacular and exciting approach of a combat game based on combos in order to offer you some of the clashes that are among the deepest and most refreshing than I have seen it in recent years. The game proudly rises to the level of Dark Souls and Bloodborne - and if it does not benefit from the "purity" which makes its counterparts so effective, it compensates for this by offering you an even more demanding tactical approach, which allows it by same opportunity to differentiate from these. A success entirely due to his Ki system and the convincing dynamics that he creates between the different combinations of weapons and the fighting styles based on the guards of the player.

In the world of Nioh, Ki represents your attack potential - since attacking, dodging, blocking and taking damage drains your stamina bar. What makes this approach so unique is the possibility of executing a movement based on timing and called "Impulse Ki" in order to regenerate your endurance bar during combat, which will inevitably remind you of the potential "Rally" which allowed you to recover your health in Bloodborne, but which will prove to be absolutely vital here. The better your timing, the more generous and effective your Ki impulse will be. Performing a perfect Ki pulse, however, has other advantages - a little insight into how the individual Nioh mechanics interact with each other to create true strategic harmony. Certain demons (here called Yokai) can create a "Yokai Sphere", which is similar to a zone spell which significantly slows down the regeneration of your Ki bar, which adds an additional challenge to the confrontations. The only way to recover your Ki when you are in a Yokai sphere is to perform a Ki pulse, and if you perform this action with perfect timing, the sphere disappears.

The first thing to say is that the contents added by the DLC are designed for high-level characters, who have already completed the main game and maybe even all the secondary missions, including those recently added with the 1.06 patch (we talk about it in detail in this special in which we also show them all on video).

The recommended level for the first main mission of the DLC is in fact 150 and this requirement rises as new missions are unlocked, until it becomes level 175 for the latest secondary mission added by this new package. To get an idea, know that the last main mission of Nioh, in Via del Samurai (NG) is level 145, while the secondary missions added by patch 1.06 range from 145 to 155. The Northern Dragon DLC, therefore, it stands on a higher level than anything seen and played so far in Nioh.

The new missions are a total of ten, three main and seven secondary, and they are all located within a new region of the world map, the Tohoku region, which you will automatically find yourself in the game after installing the DLC, provided you are arrived at the end of the Via del Samurai. Otherwise I guess the region will unlock naturally after completing the previous ones if you are starting Nioh for the first time with the DLC already installed.

All very clear, in short. There are no particular secrets to be discovered to activate the new missions. The approach is completely different from that of the DLC proposed by From Software for its games, exactly as Nioh himself is generally clearer and easier to read than a Dark Souls. 13 new bronze trophies have also been added to the game, obviously related to the new content. Here too everything is very clear and linear.

As for longevity, completing the ten missions of the new Tohoku region took me for about eight hours with a level 190 character, therefore abundantly able to meet the difficulty requirements of the new scenarios. Things could change, of course, if you used a less powerful character than mine, who maybe finished the basic game "sleeping". My advice is to face the Northern Dragon DLC with a character of level 150 or higher, better if well equipped. For those who have also finished the Via del Forte (or Nioh's NG +), the problem arises in a different way, because clearly the new missions adapt to the difficulty level of that mode.

By the way. The DLC also adds to the game the Way of the Demon, or Nioh's New Game ++, with missions of level 450 or higher and the possibility of gathering weapons and equipment items up to a divine level of +15. Certainly an interesting challenge for those who have already finished the Via del Forte and still want to continue playing, perhaps in an attempt to bring their character to the highest possible level, maximizing all the stats. This time, unlike what happened with the Via del Forte, there is also a trophy (one of the 13 new ones added by the DLC) for the completion of the Via del Demone. Have fun to those who intend to get it.

And even the keyboard is obviously against Nioh. The tutorial already insists on only showing us Xbox controller buttons. We have to find out for ourselves which PC keys are meant - outside the game in the enclosed PDF manual. In-game, the layout is not shown anywhere, and the options menu only allows us to configure the gamepad layout at all.

Only good with gamepad - but then really!

But if you haven't stopped reading in disgust: Nioh is still worth it, even on the PC! If you can overcome the gamepad (or only play such titles with it anyway), the most serious porting problem will be eliminated. The rest works surprisingly well! That means: We also experience on the PC an addicting and challenging action role-playing game from the brand Dark Souls, which is much more than just a clone of its role model. It also shines with numerous successful innovations.

The second PC hurdle

When we start the game on Steam, we can choose whether we want to start Nioh directly or start the launcher first . Be sure to check out the launcher! Only there are the full graphics settings, including the resolution. Immediately after the start of sales, Steam customers flooded the store with negative reviews because there is no possibility in the game itself to change the standard setting of 720p. A bit archaic and cumbersome, but no broken legs as soon as you know.

And technically, Nioh ran largely smoothly for us. On the PC we can enjoy the game in full details at up to 60 FPS. On consoles we always had to choose between quality and speed: the film mode limits the frame rate to 30 for higher details, the action mode cuts the quality for 60 frames per second. These two options are also available on the PC, but here we can also simply screw everything to the stop manually. Including 4K! Bizarrely, according to the developer, it is not possible to support picture ratios other than 16: 9 - here we have to live with black bars.

We had no technical problems apart from a single crash in the test. Some Steam users report that the game occasionally resets the graphics settings, but we didn't. Nevertheless, we decided to devalue the console version by five points : Even if Nioh can be played well with a gamepad, the porting places unnecessary restrictions on control and resolution.

So much for the PC version - why Nioh is still worth it, its quirks, you can read on the following pages in the original test of the console version from the colleagues at GamePro.de.

Joho and a bottle of sake

Nioh, however, fails to bring us closer to this fundamentally exciting mixture of historically accurate backgrounds and Japanese folklore . It overwhelms me with terms, places and people without filling them with the necessary context. This is how a talking cat explains to me in less than a minute the actually complex mythological base around protective spirits, demons and their balance. And that has to be enough for me to classify many of the scenes in the game.

Live.Die.Repeat.

However, playfully, Nioh and the Souls series are close together. Although we do not explore the open world in Nioh, we select main and secondary tasks on a map after two introductory missions, but basically we do the same thing here as there: in the beginning primarily die.

Enemies lurk behind corners, floors crumble away from us, bats break out of corridors to tear us into the abyss. However , Nioh is not unfair. It makes it clear that I must not stagger through his levels like a drunken sailor.

In general, it's worth keeping your eyes peeled in the game's winding mountain villages and crumbling temple grounds. Again and again we find hidden boxes with useful items or cute creatures called Kodama, which increase the drop rate of weapons, armor and the like for a small donation at the next shrine. In addition, we come across opportunities to use the level architecture to our advantage.

In Nioh, the mostly vertically arranged level sections often interlock. As a result, we keep tapping abbreviations , for which we step down ladders to places we have already visited. "Vertical" also means that it is worth looking up or down from time to time. Maybe an archer is standing on a balcony above us? Or are there some useful items on a ledge below us?

Shrine shopping

So instead of rushing through the levels, we feel our way forward - from checkpoint to checkpoint. They are called shrines in Nioh and basically work like the beacons of the Souls games. Here we invest experience points (here called Amrita) in role-play-typical character values such as health, strength and skill, fill up our medicine supply or call other players to help as co-op partners . However, every time you visit the shrines, the defeated standard opponents of a level return.

Also borrowed from the Souls games: If the hero dies, he loses the experience points he has accumulated but not yet spent. They remain at his "grave" for the time being. If we manage to fight our way through there without dying, we'll get everything back. This mechanism builds up an immense tension and motivates us not to simply give up. In order for us to do better on the next attempt, I absolutely have to familiarize myself with the combat system.

A question of the Ki

Endurance, called Nioh Ki, plays a major role here. Attacks, blocks and evasive maneuvers devour the Ki bar. The bar fills up by itself slowly, accelerating it with a so-called Ki impulse, but it pays off. For this we have to press "R1" after a stroke as soon as William is surrounded by a cloud of blue Ki particles. Correct timing is not easy in the heat of the moment, but only those who master the art of Ki impulse will have a chance against more difficult opponents.

Because if we line up too many actions without a Ki impulse, it can happen that an enemy catches us while the bar is empty. Then we stand there completely defenseless for a moment. The same applies to our opponents as soon as their Ki is used up. So it pays to seduce your enemies to waste their Ki supplies by constant evasive maneuvers. Once they are standing there panting, it is very easy to land particularly strong attacks.

Ki against Yokai

The Ki impulse is particularly important in the fight against the Yokai. These are demons who, besides the many human opponents, make our lives difficult. The stupid thing about the evil spirits: They create a gray-black fog around them, which extremely slows down our ki regeneration. With a well-set Ki impulse, however, this fog can be "cleaned up" and the fight continues as usual.

How much endurance a confrontation ultimately costs also depends on the three fighting attitudes. Through them we control whether we lower, hold up or align the numerous melee weapons such as katanas, spears or axes. This in turn affects the strength and speed of the blows. In addition, we can switch between two weapon sets at any time, each consisting of a melee and a ranged weapon. For example, a classic katana can be combined with a bow, or a battle ax with a shotgun. When aiming with bows and the like, care is required: Whoever hits vulnerable points like the head does a lot of damage.

Ki management, fighting stances, choice of weapons - we have to take care of all this in parallel and adapt individual elements to the respective situation. After all, each type of enemy comes up with their own attack patterns. The strategy that still helped us with a bandit doesn't get us anywhere with a burning bike with a demonic grimace, and certainly not with a monster that flings its tongue at me in an all-round swing.

Finally die!

Nioh does not maintain its high level over the entire season. The Action RPG often performs level recycling on its side missions because they like to take us back to known areas. So a warrior loses his important sword several times in the same cave.

The loot system just mentioned, on the other hand, invites me to try out different types of weapons and armor, but on the other hand he exaggerates with his generosity. Almost all opponents leave at least one item that does not match my character values. A visit to the blacksmith, where I can get rid of the items, is therefore mandatory after every mission.

The quality also fluctuates in the boss fights . Nioh stages his bosses less impressively than the Souls series, but gives them more life points. The battles drag on from time to time, making them monotonous despite multiple phases or special attacks. The fact that the giant hybrid of monkeys, martens and tigers reliably shoots lightning at us after a scream into the sky, and that always strike close to us when we evade, is boring at some point.

However, this criticism does not change the overall performance of the game: Nioh challenges us, throws us into the dirt, but rewards us for getting up again. And every time.