Team Ninja’s Nioh is a rousing Souls-esque experience with a dark samurai storyline. In some ways it’s a significant departure from what we’re used to seeing from Team Ninja, and it’s to their credit that the game has turned out as impressively as it has.
There’s no doubt that From Software made waves with Demon’s Souls several years ago, and each successive release on through Bloodborne has been, well, a ‘big deal,’ in the industry — and rightly so. These games practically formed a new genre, the likes of which the excellent Lords of the Fallen was a part of, as well as the upcoming The Surge, and, more to the point, Nioh. Some of the DNA you would expect from a Team Ninja game is in Nioh, despite it being the studio’s first entry into this typically slow, grindy, punishing genre. What struck me first was that Nioh feels a lot more like a typical third person action RPG in terms of the speed of your character’s movement and attacks, right from the start. At first what I thought I was in for was a tough game, but one that was kind of superficial when it came to RPG and mechanics
— boy was I wrong.
Nioh is a long, challenging game, with many paths to success (and failure) through a variety of weapons, stances, and upgrades. But this isn’t the case simply because there are lots of story and side missions, or a lot of tough enemies — all of that is on the menu, but Nioh has a multitude of other underlying gameplay mechanics that might not be so obvious. It’s worthwhile, let’s say then, to do any tutorials you encounter, because there’s a lot under the hood of Nioh’s combat and gameplay expanse that you should really learn and re-learn to stay on top of what seems like ever-increasing challenges. A dojo to practice in, for example, gets unlocked several hours in and I found myself revisiting it often to try and hone my skills. Make no mistake, Nioh is a tough game, and it’s got that annoying Souls-like death design in which you practically have to make it over to your fallen body (called a grave in Nioh) on your next life lest you lose out on a lot of your hard work.
If I can hop onto a soapbox for a minute, it’s exactly this kind of difficulty that has kept me from really sinking into this genre. If these games, Nioh included, came out when I was at a time in my life where I didn’t have so many other things more important than gaming, yeah, I could see myself grinding away at 70+ hours with a whole lot of dying and restarting and fighting the same enemies over again. Dealing with that nowadays is a real challenge though, because it’s a grind that has never appealed to me, personally. While I can understand the appeal of it, at this time in my life, it doesn’t resonate, if that makes sense. Having to run passed or re-fight all of the enemies I just defeated just because I died or because I used a prayer shrine goes a long way to shattering the sense of immersion I had and also adds unnecessary delays and time to the game that are not to it’s benefit. I wish there were an option to play these games, Nioh included, with all of its native difficult, but without all of the nagging respawning of enemies and pressure to reclaim your lost spirit/Ki/and so forth in between deaths.
Anyway, one really positive thing I can say about Nioh in this specific regard is that the load times are fantastically brief. I’m talking well under five seconds when playing on a launch PS4. This at least does invite experimentation to some degree if your last save point was not all that far ago, and that’s one of those intangible things I like to have the ability to do in games without the risk of too much penalty. That is to say, I really like it when a game encourages me to experiment and by extension, even replay certain areas until I get the moment just like I intended to, be it with a certain weapon, or without having to use any consumables, or whatever it may be. Very early in Nioh, during the Prologue level actually, there were two knights that were far more armored and had way more HP than your character has. A save point was right next to them however, so I knew I could experiment and reap the benefit of their loot if I won. It took me about ten tries, but I did it, and with little to no frustration in the process. It’s the more typical case of having to trudge back through previously defeated enemies again that is much less enjoyable.
As is typically the case with these games though, or at least the ones I have played, it seems that there is a sort of turning point whereby the player ‘gets it’ and has also gotten enough armor, weapons, upgrades, etc., to stay alive, not without peril and desperate times mind you, from one save point to another. With Nioh, I got into that groove but still felt like I was missing on some key gameplay mechanics and ‘gotchas,’ which led me to look up some forums and things like that. Indeed, the game does allow you to invite a player in to help you, but only if one of you has previously cleared that area before. It’s a great feature, one that I haven’t used much of yet as I’m firmly a single player or couch co-op / LAN type, but I can tell it’s going to be a feature I may lean on going forward.
In a nutshell, Nioh’s gameplay is excellent and addictive. The story is intriguing, the weapons and fighting are potent and have a great feel and response to them. Controls are tight, interesting upgrades are numerous, there are lots of neat gameplay elements like ninja skills and the Kodama that you can find to give yourself extra blessings (basically passive perks), and the Yokai (the demons) are awesome. Including three stances (high, mid, low), the Ki Pulse, and other design elements really ‘click’ to make a fresh experience that really feels like a blend of Ninja Gaiden with Dark Souls. On a personal note, I like the samurai themes better than a typcial dark fantasy theme too.
With regards to presentation, Nioh does something at first boot (that you can change later) that struck me as refreshingly honest and also a sign of the times. The game asks the player if they want Action mode, or Movie mode. In Action mode, the graphical resolution is reduced down to a typical 720p, but sometimes in less intensive moments, the graphics scale up to near 1080p; the benefit though is that you get a smooth 60fps. Movie mode will keep the frame rate pretty much permanently at 30fps, but at 1080p. Meanwhile, thanks to PS4 Pro support, you can do 60fps at 1080p in Action, and 30fps at 2160p — pretty damn cool. I was not able to test this out on a Pro, but I will say that other than some negligible clipping (battle axe clipping through walls in a tight spiral staircase, for example), the art design and animations are very good. Sounds of Nioh bolster the atmosphere appreciable well, too.
Nioh surprised me in several ways, all of them good. It feels like a bit of a sleeper title at launch that I think is going to catch a lot of people off guard, but if you have any interest in this niche genre or are a fan of Team Ninja’s, Nioh is definitely worth checking out.
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