CO-OP in Nioh

[Dundo]

Me and my friends are long time fans of Souls, we've spent loads of hours in the series but are looking to organically play CO-OP. The way we do it in Souls is that we both complete the game solo once and then do a sort of dual playthrough in NG+. We are looking for something to play through from the start to the end together so that it feels more organic. I've read that Nioh has great CO-OP, so can anyone briefly describe how it exactly works?

[Zergem]

Yes, co-op in Nioh 2 is much more seamless than in Souls.
On the map screen you just go to the starting point then the tori gate to set up a room for other players to join (1 host and 2 companions max). The players will be together for the entire mission. If you finish a chapter and no new missions appear, you must go back to the map to watch a cutscene to open the next chapter. The only missions that cannot be played in co-op are one-on-one duels and dojo missions - both are absolutely worth doing though.

Then you select the mission. While in co-op players have a shared Assist Gauge. If a player dies, the gauge starts depleting but it can be eased by reviving the dead player quickly enough. You can restore some of the gauge by defeating a miniboss too.

If the gauge depletes fully, the mission is failed and players must decide either to exit the mission, or to surrender some of the earned amrita (souls) and continue from the most recently visited shrine with a reduced assist gauge.

In singleplayer, visiting a shrine is the same as visiting a bonfire in Dark Souls. In co-op, visiting shrines will not make enemies respawn, but each player can only get a full restore from the first time they visit a shrine. The rest of the shrines features can be used as much as desired.

Last thing to keep in mind is that there are a few additional enemies in co-op and enemies' stats will be scaled to the number of players. They might start off pretty tanky, but you'll make short work of them once your attack options start opening up in later chapters!

[Mech_Monkey]

Originally posted by Zergem:

Yes, co-op in Nioh 2 is much more seamless than in Souls.
On the map screen you just go to the starting point then the tori gate to set up a room for other players to join (1 host and 2 companions max). The players will be together for the entire mission. If you finish a chapter and no new missions appear, you must go back to the map to watch a cutscene to open the next chapter. The only missions that cannot be played in co-op are one-on-one duels and dojo missions - both are absolutely worth doing though.

Then you select the mission. While in co-op players have a shared Assist Gauge. If a player dies, the gauge starts depleting but it can be eased by reviving the dead player quickly enough. You can restore some of the gauge by defeating a miniboss too.

If the gauge depletes fully, the mission is failed and players must decide either to exit the mission, or to surrender some of the earned amrita (souls) and continue from the most recently visited shrine with a reduced assist gauge.

In singleplayer, visiting a shrine is the same as visiting a bonfire in Dark Souls. In co-op, visiting shrines will not make enemies respawn, but each player can only get a full restore from the first time they visit a shrine. The rest of the shrines features can be used as much as desired.

Last thing to keep in mind is that there are a few additional enemies in co-op and enemies' stats will be scaled to the number of players. They might start off pretty tanky, but you'll make short work of them once your attack options start opening up in later chapters!

Everything said here + one more thing.
When you make a room / lobby, does not matter which player is the host, all of the missions / story / chapter progression that you can do together will count for both players. So everything is new for both all the time.

[teravisor]

There is also another way of coop that does not give progress in missions to joining player, but also not punishing host for joining's faults. Good for one-time help.
If you start mission as single-player, you can "summon visitors" at shrine, joining player uses torii gate's "Random encounters", that way he gets summoned more like dark-souls style, as a helper phantom. If phantom or host dies or mission ends, phantom gets disconnected.

Note that even in this way you can set password or lock to friends only, so there's absolutely no problem to coop with your friend. And no problems with "sigil not showing up" and such.

However, in my opinion, to play with friend it's normally better to use the way described by previous posters, in game it's called "Expeditions" in Torii gate.

[Outlaw Mugen]

If you play with 2 players then its probably fun. However 3 players will make everything Bullet Spongy, breaking any combat flow and immersion.

[Vudak]

wow, never knew they'd improved the online experience just that much since the first. I never bothered with it in nioh1 (only ever did main story anyway, no ng+ etc). I've done all of nioh 2 now though, cleared wotn and am toying around in the UW.

Its good to know the game has good multiplayer though. I generally like taking my time with a solo experience my first time through games - but nioh2 is ridiculously fun, to the point i'd be happy to do it all again if a friend ever picks it up. Good info here :)

[shwarmizzle]

Originally posted by Vudak:

wow, never knew they'd improved the online experience just that much since the first. I never bothered with it in nioh1 (only ever did main story anyway, no ng+ etc). I've done all of nioh 2 now though, cleared wotn and am toying around in the UW.

Its good to know the game has good multiplayer though. I generally like taking my time with a solo experience my first time through games - but nioh2 is ridiculously fun, to the point i'd be happy to do it all again if a friend ever picks it up. Good info here :)

erm, I wouldn't really say that they improved it, since most of the time it's 3 players and you got super spongy enemies, which take way more time to kill than they should, even with the endgame depths build. I probably spent 500 hours playing co-op in Nioh 1 and less than 50 hours in Nioh 2 co-op, it's just tedious.