By Sam Coles:
Nioh is a game that is not ashamed of wearing its influences
on its shoulders as you can clearly see what game inspired it. It’s a new take
on the Dark Souls experience set in feudal Japan with high difficulty coupled
with punishing yet satisfying combat.
You play as a character that is based on a real historical
figure named William Adams who is an Englishman who sailed to Japan and became
a samurai however for some reason in this game William has an Irish accent, not
an issues if you’re not familiar with the history but it can take you out of it
if you do. You find yourself locked up in the Tower of London and you must
escape the catacombs and this is where the game lets you get to grips with the
basics and throws in an easy boss, I like this as it eases you in.
Once you get to Japan the game starts to throw more
mechanics at you and this is where things get a tad more complicated but if you
take your time you’ll find that it is not that hard once you get to grips with
it. You’re first presented with three stances, you have high stance which let
you do slow but powerful attacks however you’re open for damage. There is the
middle stance which is a mixture of powerful strikes and fast pace reflexes,
this is the stance that is most useful as it is a happy medium and is great for
crowd control. Finally you have the low stance which allows you to strike
quickly but it does not deal a lot of damage.
The fighting is not slow paced like Dark Souls but it does
not take an aggressive route like Bloodborne, as it is made by Team Ninja who
are most famous for making Ninja Gaiden a notoriously hard game with fast paced
combat. It even has the over the top gore and violence from the that series as
you can decapitate your enemies.
Like Dark Souls you collect experience points when you kill
enemies and the tougher the enemy the more experience you gain. However when
you die you lose all of your experience and you have to reclaim it by visiting
the location where you died, this encourages you to tread carefully and take
note of fighting patterns of foes as they all have wind downs and wind ups with
their attacks.
Managing your stamina is important as well because otherwise
you’ll get destroyed and the game punishes you for sloppy fighting. Stamina is
called “Ki” in this game which will run down if you attack or sprint, there is
a technique where you can regain some if timed correctly called a Ki Pulse. How
this works is if you hold R1 for a certain amount of time you’ll regain Ki
which is vital for some fights as some enemies will drain your stamina and you
have to master this technique to push through this game.
The game looks beautiful as it recaptures the ancient
Japanese period however the environments do start to repeat as you either go
through villages, forests or a village within a forest. The game runs at
buttery smooth 60 frames per second which is essential for a game like this as
it requires quick reflexes, what makes me laugh is that they offer the option
to play at 30 frames per second calling it “movie mode” why would you play at
that frame rate?
The only issue I have with this game is that it can feel a
bit cheap with its difficulty as enemies can kill you really quick because once
they have started a combo on you there is nothing you can do to defend or
retaliate.
I was surprised how much I loved the meaty challenge of Nioh
as it keeps throwing surprises at you and encourages you to try again making
you better. This is another solid experience exclusive to the PS4 and it’s a
good year so far for Sony’s console let’s hope they can carry on the streak.
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