The remastered versions of NIOH and NIOH 2 are outstanding. Visually they are nearly equal to each other and both still maintain the core enjoyment of the series, which is dying over and over again while slowly but surely progressing. Of course, those deaths are in 4K with a high frame rate via PlayStation 5, which makes the experience far more entertaining.
I thought my Demon Soul’s genre experience was over, but I was wrong. While we may not have been the first review up for this collection, I can assure you that we took the longest to review it. Mainly because I was dying a lot. Let’s get into this Team Ninja terror.
You know the collection
As a reviewer, I feel compelled to discuss gameplay, even though the gameplay is essentially the same across the board. Both NIOH and NIOH 2 maintain the same type of consistent gameplay structure. The stories are considerably different journeys with the first starting in a London jail, while the second puts you squarely in Japan. You’ve got death and demons to deal with in both, so it’s consistent in that arena. Regardless of starting places, each allows you to pick up items as you progress and upgrade your characters to gain better advantages over enemies. The gameplay is a slow and gradual process that uses the Demon Soul’s method of progression where when you die, you lose everything…unless you make it to a prayer box. A saving grace perhaps? The boxes exist in both games and are strategically placed throughout the maps. The box locations make you suffer stress and anxiety before finding them. The latter is seriously a good portion of the gaming experience in NIOH and NIOH 2. Anyway, if you access one of these boxes, you create a checkpoint. I know what you’re thinking, ‘So, couldn’t we just run to these and get through the game quickly?’ LOL…no. If enemies are anywhere near the boxes, they’re unavailable to you. The games will force you to take care of the enemies before proceeding to breathe a sigh of relief. Also, by accessing these boxes, you do in fact set a checkpoint, and you also respawn every enemy you defeated prior to that moment. The joy of the gameplay, right? Don’t worry! There’s more.
The central gameplay is essentially surviving the experience. You will run into countless enemies throughout the game, some of whom are waiting in dark corners for you to appear, while others are out in the open. The enemies are wiley little bastards, so always be aware of your environment and look for tell-tale signs of enemies. Should you spot one, and get close to their activation zone, they will run at you aggressively, so have a plan before you approach. There will most definitely be panic button-pushing. It’s part of the series experience.
Now, as you play the games over and over again, you die quite a bit, but that’s the crux of the gameplay. By dying in NIOH and NIOH 2, you’re learning enemies and their movements. This is akin to Ralph Baer’s Simon game, where you memorize the color patterns to last the longest. That is the goal of NIOH and NIOH 2. You will learn how enemies move, what their activation zones are, and you will find bringing them down to be less and less of a chore. Along the way, you also start to find shortcuts to improve the speed of the journey. For example, you will find places where you can eliminate enemies faster, such as happening upon a demon near a ravine and knocking them down the gulch, and killing them instantly. You will also gather new and more powerful weapons and armor too. All of that alone will encourage you to power through the tough enemies and keep you motivated in the game. The gameplay for both games is meant to be flexible, but at the same time compensates the flexibility with brutality, which brings us to boss fights.
Killing regular enemies in each game is just essentially getting you ramped up to take care of massively unforgiving bosses. The first boss you run into during NIOH is an executioner, who is easy to take down in his first form, but is then granted ungodly powers, is resurrected, and is just a horse to bring down. He’s a big dude, who has an unusually large range with his ax and can take you out quickly. You’re armed with rolling, swinging, and a limited amount of stamina. The limited stamina is probably the most frustrating part of the entire experience, though you get used to it after a while and, as Alfred said to Bruce, “Know your limits”, which you should always keep track of in the back of your head. All these things you have to master to get through not only the executioner but also the game. Bosses are very patterned, some switch up their moves at certain points of their health (prepare for this), so you should catch on quickly. Patterns do make it a tiny bit easier to handle these massive foes, but it will forever be a good challenge unless you live and breathe the game. Some people do and more power to you.
Getting back to bosses, in NIOH 2, the first boss you run into is a demon at a Shinto shrine that is fast as he is brutal. If you get caught in his flurry of attacks, you will be out like a lantern on a windy night before you know it. The bosses in both games are a considerable ramp-up from smaller enemies. In both games, taking these large enemies down is a chore, but one that will lead to a more forgiving gaming experience. That experience is led by less difficult, smaller enemies, and led by learning how to move, shake, and strike with perfection…or without panicking. Along the way in both adventures, you also gain some phenomenal weapons/armor/power-ups by taking down bosses. Those will make your journey through both games so much easier.
All the above is the heart of both games, where you will try and fail over and over again, but at the end of the day you slowly become a better player and the gameplay becomes less frustrating. The RPG elements will keep you going, as will the desire to see what each story has in store for you as you progress. If you need more adventuring beyond that reasoning, each game is the ‘complete edition’ of its own, which means you get DLC with it. Regardless, they are both tough experiences, but ultimately are rewarding if you can get into the dying groove.
Why you came to this review
Both games are gorgeous. While I still have to tip my hat to NIOH 2, which was a visually pleasing game on the PS4 Pro, both games look absolutely outstanding running in 4K mode and with the upped frame rate. From the moment you step into the rain and see reflections on the ground in the first NIOH, to the gorgeous lighting and backdrop of NIOH 2 in a dark Japanese setting, there’s a lot to love visually about the remastering and PS5 enhancement. The improvement in frame rate does help quite a bit, as it certainly makes everything a helluva lot smoother (maybe PC gamers were right), but both games are now closer visually than they were previously, which is just a beautiful delight to the eyes. The remastered collection looks like it should with the ‘remastered’ moniker on it.
That said, I’m not sure that this game is remastered enough to look as gorgeous as Demon Soul’s. I think there was considerable time, effort, and money thrown into Demon Soul’s to make it stand out. I mean, it came from a few generations back, so it was bound to look even better than it originally did. It certainly was up to PS5 standards when it arrived in November and it was hard to compete with considering all of the above. Should that detour you away from NIOH/NIOH 2 Remastered? Lord, no. These remastered games are still gorgeous and look PS5 ready. They are also different stories, different experiences, and different enough structures to make for a separate gameplay adventure. Why not own all of them? It makes sense.
Anyway, Team Ninja did an outstanding job on both games to make them visually equal.
Conclusion
The remastered versions of NIOH and NIOH 2 are outstanding. Visually they are nearly equal to each other and both still maintain the core enjoyment of the series, which is dying over and over again while slowly but surely progressing. Of course, those deaths are in 4K with a high frame rate via PlayStation 5, which makes the experience far more entertaining.
