As much as I enjoyed Dark souls and played various other "Souls-like" games, Nioh stands out due to its engaging combat mechanics and incredibly addicting loot system. Although not entirely original, Nioh strikes the right balance between Dark Souls, Ninja Gaiden, and Diablo II. It's the ideal niche for ARPG and fighting game fans.

Fundamentally, Nioh looks and is comparably difficult to other souls-like games. Health and Ki are represented by an identical red and green bar. You collect and use "Amrita" to level up your main character, William. Enemies and bosses all require a thoughtful approach, as rushing in will get you killed. The game tries hard to be fair, but some levels and bosses can feel pretty cheap.

Where Nioh stands out is in its approach to:

• combat
  
• loot
  
• mission structure

Being a Team Ninja developed game, you can't help but recognize the Ninja Gaiden roots in Nioh's overall presentation. You're offered seven different weapons, each with unique skill trees, techniques, and combat style encouraging you to learn and appreciate what it's offering. The ki pulsing mechanic empowers you to recover stamina; blending this with stance canceling and weapon switching between combo strings makes for a challenging, deep and satisfying experience.

Nioh is divided into individual missions rather than overwhelming you in an open world. I favor this decision as I'm not interested in getting lost in a labyrinthine of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. However, the compromise made here is copy & pasted world design, of which most levels aren't that appealing to look at in the first place.

The shortage of color within the world is juxtaposed with all the colorful loot you will be accumulating. Different tiered weapons, armors, and items are all available to be picked up, customized, and equipped. Tons of loot and loot colors make for an appealing loot mechanic, but too much loot makes for a lack of value. Nioh compensates for this by giving all loot, even worthless junk, a purpose. You can disassemble, sell, or transform it into Amrita.

Nioh's story is ok, but somewhat incomprehensible, permeated with Japanese supernaturalism and samurai mythology. There is a separate section of the menu that summarizes the overall lore and story for those interested. There are also character directories that describe other things you don't notice in-game. Japanese history buffs will likely embrace Hatori Hanzo or Nobunaga's appearance, but it's hard to care about the overall story.

With all it's flaws, Nioh nevertheless provides an in-depth and rewarding experience that should scratch the itch of anyone looking for an ARPG to get lost in.

Far from terrible, but a few missteps keep it from being a recommendation. It’s got that janky M.U.G.E.N. feel, much like Slave Zero X from last year—same chunky hitboxes, same floaty pacing. I just 1CC’d it on Hard expecting a little more, maybe a TLB, but nothing. Feels like a passion project made by some college students. Or a community mod for an already established game. It looks great though, I love the style.

Overall, It's pretty easy. It feels easy because you always feel overpowered. Supers shred everything, and the default character (there's 4) starts with a shotgun that’s basically a god-tier keepaway tool. You can just run to one side of the screen and control the entire fight from there. Run toward them and juggle. Every fight (Including Bosses) can be cheesed by juggling them into a wall without ever letting them hit the floor.

Seven stages feels like a bit much. By stage five, I was already feeling a sense of fatigue, the backgrounds and overall stage design feel random like a bag of ideas tossed in without cohesion. You go from afternoon city streets, to parachuting into a snowy airfield full of downed helicopters and planes into an underground subway then an industrial beach? wtf?

The final stage is a joke, it looks like a fighting game training stage, with a blank, lifeless backdrop. It’s hard to believe there was any real thought put into it, because there’s basically nothing there, just rain?


All bosses especially the final one are a massive letdown. They all go down the same way, fall for the same tricks, and never force you to adapt. The bosses desperately need more love and more thoughtful patterns, more variety. As it stands, they’re basically the same character wearing different, albeit really cool sprites.

If the bosses were memorable, I’d recommend this without hesitation. The second boss, for example, has such a cool sprite, but I ended up rushing him into a corner and juggling him to death. It’s not that I’m some kind of god-tier player, it’s that the AI is just that bad. This was on hard difficulty btw.

Remember Final Fight, where bosses had multiple color-coded bars due to a massive life bar? Here, bosses only have a single life bar like a regular enemy. Nothing to stand out.

I only died twice on the last boss, and that’s only because, instead of giving him smart attack patterns or unique mechanics, the devs just flood the screen with enemies. Armored grunts, random thugs, none of whom have any logical reason to be working together; They are all dumped in like a toybox flipped over onto the floor. It’s pure chaos for the sake of chaos, meant to disguise the fact that the last boss is basically just another enemy, only this time with a flamethrower. Just super him, juggle him into a corner, and he goes down like the rest.


There’s a high-score leaderboard, and after my first playthrough I’m already sitting in the top 20. Maybe I’ll chase that coveted number one spot but I’ll probably burn out before I get there.


After completing it twice, I realized I’d already unlocked every achievement. Wow. I wasn’t even trying, and my total playtime is under an hour (steam doesn't reflect this since I left the game on). Running through it again with a different character only reinforced my decision not to recommend it. Maybe if it were $4.99, I’d say go for it—but at its current price, it’s too much for what you get.