You can return to character customization whenever you want. Game of the year.

Got severely obliterated as advertised, not disappointed in that field. What I didn't expect was the 100+ hour campaign, with about 80 bosses and a billion ways to defeat them. With the amount of variety and depth you can dive into, and for how brutally challenging it all is, I'm surprised Nioh 2 doesn't have more attention nowadays.

Let me put it this way: Nioh 2 is like endurance training at the gym. It only gets heavier and more unbearable as it goes on, testing your resolve and will to go the extra mile. At any point, you could stop. You could give up, say "I did enough, that's my limit", and move on. Or, you could climb that metaphorical mountain, taking all the weight you can, working your way to the third expansion, and the final boss.

And if you beat that final boss, the absolute bringer of nightmares that has awaited you for the entire game, it'll feel like the weight of a planet has been lifted off your shoulders. And that's the fun of Nioh 2; the journey, the uphill battle, and that payoff. Now, is the story and world-building that amazing? Objectively, no, but I didn't mind it though. Felt like a Sengoku period Johnny Mnemonic or something, and as someone who actually likes that film for some reason, the story had it's own janky charm.

tl;dr: Good, buy it if you want.

IF YOU DARE

Ever since Dark Souls got popular, many games have tried to emulate the satisfying gameplay the franchise provides. Few manage to do so, but there have been successes. Nioh 2 is one of them.

Dark Souls makes you feel small, weak and insignificant. Nioh 2, however, does the polar opposite. The combat oozes with flashy animations and vibrant particle effects, further emphasized by the weapons you wield. You’re a shiftling. Half human, half yokai. How cool is that?

You feel powerful. But you aren’t.

Below all the cool effects, Nioh 2 is like Dark Souls. Death is never more than a few meters away, and like the title it’s inspired by, the game forces you to look danger in the eye; if you don’t adapt, you won’t succeed. Simple as that.

Nioh 2 is one tough game. The first mission feels like an exam you didn’t study for. You barely get familiar with the mechanics before you’re thrown up against powerful yokai and groups of bandits who will shred you apart in seconds. That might sound unfair, but I wouldn’t say it is. It’s a test to see if you’re skilled enough, so to speak. The game gradually throws tougher and more unpredictable enemies at you; I never felt like I could just waltz my way through a mission without much thought. Each area scaled in accordance with my understanding of the game—the game keeps challenging you, but it never goes too far.

When it comes to bosses, the game really is a gift that keeps on giving. Every boss fight is well designed, engaging and fair. There’s no Bed of Chaos here. Unfortunately, the difficulty peaks at the third boss fight. Don’t get me wrong, the following are still tough. However, none of them offered the same struggle.

I do have a tiny nitpick in regards to the difficulty. Falling into water will instantly kill you, which is too punishing. It would’ve been better if you only lost a portion of your health. Why should I suffer more from a small misstep than the blow of a powerful enemy? It doesn’t add anything; it’s just frustrating.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2445471206

Rarely does a game manage to keep my attention like Nioh 2 did. The game is simply a lot of fun, mainly thanks to its combat system, which will have you pulling off cool combos to take down fierce enemies while trying to manage your ki.

Ki is essentially stamina, but it differs not just in name. After an attack, you can perform a Ki Pulse, which will restore a portion of your ki. It’s a simple yet very efficient way of encouraging a careful playstyle. Sure, you could simply hammer away at the enemy, but it’d be at the risk of running out of ki, which would leave you open to attacks.

Nioh 2 is a Souls-like, but that doesn’t mean it’s a carbon copy of Dark Souls. The game takes the foundation of that game and shakes it up. The final result is a game that scratches that FromSoftware itch while also differentiating itself, shaping its own identity in the process. If you’re one of those Soulsborne experts, you won’t go into Nioh 2 breezing past every enemy.

The game sees you choosing between one of eight melee weapons, each offering a distinct moveset complete with its own combos. You can switch between three stances—low, which allows you to dodge and attack swiftly; mid, which focuses on blocking; and high, which focuses on damage. Each stance alters your weapons’ attacks, so there’s a lot to play around with.

That’s only half of it. Remember the half human, half yokai aspect I mentioned earlier? That, of course, also plays a part in the gameplay. Killing yokai will occasionally net you soul cores, which offer different Yokai Abilities. These are special attacks that can deal a good amount of damage. You also have an Amrita Gauge. When it’s full, you can transform into a yokai. It’s a quick power rush, as you can deal devastating amounts of damage during this short period.

When all of these elements come together, they result in a combat system that never gets old. Nioh 2 is carried by this combat system. Even something that would normally be mundane, such as grinding if you’re into that, is fun because the combat is. You can use the same weapon for an entire playthrough and never have to consider if you should try out a new one. There’s a lot to like here, but there’s also a bit to dislike…

I’m talking about the loot system, or more specifically, the sheer amount of loot you acquire. Nioh 2 has a Diablo-like loot system. I don’t mind that. What I do mind is that I often have to spend a lot of time scrapping the items I don’t need because the game keeps giving me so much loot. Now, I could just avoid picking up everything I find, right? Not really. First of all, choosing which item to take is tricky. Secondly, there’s no way to view an item’s stats before it’s in your inventory.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2445472207

The game’s weakest aspect is its storytelling. It fails to make you care about its characters. A great example is Tokichiro, your companion who does nothing but tag along with you, always arriving once you’ve disposed of the danger—and yet, he gets half the credit. In trying to make you like him, the game actually makes you dislike him. Initially, he’s set up as the awkward and witty type—a cheap shot at comedy, as nothing he does is funny.

The problem with the narrative is that the game doesn’t lend it much time, and when it does, it doesn’t use it well. Everything about it is forgettable—the plot is bland and clichéd, and the characters are unremarkable. It’s a missed opportunity, as the idea of merging historical events with mythology is compelling. I did enjoy reading the lore of the different yokai, but it pales in comparison to Dark Souls’ grandiose tale.

The different locations do have small stories behind them, but they’re revealed on a loading screen; they play all of their cards too quickly. It’s a shame, as the locations are fun to explore. Each one is unique due to differing color schemes and unique layouts that urge you to look around every corner. The locations are somewhat linear, but there are still many opportunities to explore off the beaten path.

These locations aren't interconnected but instead split between missions. In classic video game fashion, there are main missions and side missions. The latter are mostly remixes of the locations featured in main missions or less memorable areas. I had fun playing them, as they gave me more of what I loved—the combat system.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2445477222

Intel Core i7-10700K, RTX 2070 Super, 16GB DDR4 RAM @ 3200Mhz, NVME M.2 SSD | 1440p

• Performance: The frame rate fluctuates a lot. On max settings with DLSS set to Quality, I was able to get 80-120 FPS. Most of the drops occur when there are a lot of visual effects in play.
  
• Polish: There was a time where all UI text disappeared. Luckily, a restart was enough to fix it.

Nioh 2 is an awesome Souls-like that every Soulsborne fan needs to play. The combat is satisfying and offers tons of variety, and the tough enemies will test your skill. Unfortunately, the story is forgettable, and the item management is tedious, but that doesn’t keep Nioh 2 from being a great game.

• Rating: Great
  Click here to see my rating chart

We might not be yokai, but Devils in the Detail are just as fearful.

Here after Elden Ring too?

It's worth it.

Nioh 2 is a fun game that's, in a way, too complex for its own good.

It takes the basic gameplay loop of the soulsborne genre, and layers technical action game combat and loot showers on top of all of that. All of this together both makes the game great and overwhelming at the same time.

The more technical combat on top of the Souls formula creates a barrier to entry even to veterans of the genre. On top of light and heavy attacks, you've got a bunch of special offensive and defensive moves that you'll want to make good use of to succeed.

There's also the youkai abilities you have as a shiftling (half-human, half-youkai). These are a pretty simple matter of having an "anima" (basically mana) bar that you build by hitting enemies. Then you just press a simple button combination to throw out an ability.

So far so good.

Then we get into the fact that there's three different stances for each weapon, which basically are a matter of how fast or powerful you want your swings to be. Each of these not only have different attack animations, but also have their own set of special attacks, so you need to remember different sets of attacks for each of them. You also carry around two weapons, so you've pretty much got 6 different sets of attacks to keep track of, plus your aforementioned youkai abilities.

To make things more complicated, a lot of heavy unblockable attacks are stopped with the "burst counter" mechanic, where you momentarily shift into youkai form and do one of three different type of defenses (parry, dodge, strike) to counter and stagger the enemy. This is based on which guardian spirit you have active, and you can carry around two spirits, which may have different counters, so you need to be mindful of that to know how to use the counter correctly in the moment. Furthermore, burst counter is used with a button combination involving the youkai ability button (which is fine), but doesn't involve the defend button, which is used in normal counterattacks that you can unlock for your weapon styles.

Your ki (stamina) also notably regens pretty slowly (even with a relatively light weight class), and to get it back rapidly you'll have to make use of the "ki pulse" mechanic (where you tap a button to recover a much faster regenerating bar). Honestly, I don't know that this really adds much to the game, other than adding some mental overhead. Though, sometimes you might want to forgo the pulse, or use it at a time where you won't get full recovery because you need to stay on the move, so it does add something. I just don't know that it really adds all that much, and there's already a lot of things to keep track of in this game.

There's honestly just too much stuff going on, and it makes the difficulty curve of the game incredibly steep in the beginning, as you try to hammer in all the button combinations and controls into your head. I died a lot in the beginning to the fact that I kept pressing the wrong button combination to try to get burst counter out, since I intuitively thought it involved the defend button, which it does not. Overall, I died slightly over 300 times in my first play through of the main storyline, which took some 80 to 90 hours. Well over 200 of those deaths are from the first 50 hours. By the last two main story chapters of the game, I was sight reading the bosses more often than not.

On top of all this is managing your stats, which you're used to in a soulsborne game, and also your loot that you're constantly showered in. You'll be sifting through pieces of armor to balance your toughness (poise) and agility (weight class that impacts ki use and regen), among other bonus stats, then selling/dismantling literally dozens of pieces of equipment between missions.

The gear curve also seems like it's a little rough in the first play. Unless you know how to build already (which you probably won't if you're a newcomer), bosses will hit super hard and be super hard to hurt. They seem much more difficult than they are later in the game. This may be because I figured out a build by later in the game (and you have more tools at that point), but I'm also pretty sure it's because the gear you get ramps up rapidly toward the end of the storyline. The last main storyline level is recommended for level 114 characters. By that time I had gear that was over level 130, and I didn't do any farming of any kind for it. Thus, I'm pretty sure I was overgeared without even trying to intentionally get gear above the level of the levels I was playing. I'm fairly certain this contributed heavily to my ability to sight read many of the later storyline bosses.

Nioh 2 is overwhelming. It was honestly too much for me. I actually burned out 50-60 hours in, and only picked up the game again recently (a year later), picking up where I left off. It's not that the game was too hard, I was beating a level or two every night after work, but it was just too much. One night I just didn't fire up the game to keep going, because I felt I wanted to relax, and this game doesn't fit that bill. That was the end of my run up until recently.

There's a lot of things to keep track of in Nioh 2, and it all can make the enemies and levels kind of become pains in the ass. Still, it's all this stuff that also makes Nioh 2 incredibly rewarding. All the tools and options you have at your disposal allows you to come up with a huge number of ways to build you character and approach each situation. Enemies that smashed your face in over and over and over will be common fodder to you later, and you'll face them more and more the further you get (which also contributes to them being a pain, if I'm being honest).

Nioh 2 is a hard game. It's not for everyone; not even for all fans of the soulsborne genre. It's incredibly well-crafted and beautiful. It's a lot of fun. Just don't go in thinking this just another soulsborne, because it's not. It's much more than that, and that will be absolutely fantastic for some people, overwhelming for others, or if you're like me, both fantastic and overwhelming at the same time.



Also the character creation is great.

This game isn't for everyone.

1, it is hard, often unfair bordering on sadistic. Some of the encounters and bosses seem purposefully designed to not let you have enough breathing room to even attack.

2, it's designed around replayability: the whole first new game is basically a tutorial on the basic mechanics, and to have a taste at the different enemy designs.
NG+ (and then ++, and then +++ and then there's more, and then there's even more) is where the game shines and you open up build variety and new mechanics (as well as making the game more difficult ofc).
If you just finish the game once, you'll probably only see like 10% of what it can offer.

That said,
Combat is the deepest I've played in years, only thing I could compare it to is the platinum games style of combat (dmc, bayonetta), but more realistic
A dozen weapons, with like 20 skills for each, spread out among 3 stances you switch between instantly at will
Mid-combo weapon switching
dodge, roll, parries, counters, grabs
And magic spells, and ninja tools, and pokemon attacks you collect from enemy monsters, and a super sayian form when things get tricky
And tech, for animation cancelling, for new ways to combo, or just for style
When you use all of this and combo it together fluidly, the sky is the limit

On top of that, so much loot, tons of gear, tons of bonus sets, a ton of customization, so many builds, all viable

Be aware, all of this will be overwhelming and needs hundreds of hours of gameplay to unlock, followed by hundreds of hours of practice to use properly. But if you like this kind of game, you'll come back for more anyway.

This is not so much a "souls-like", beyond the very surface. It's closer to a Ninja Gaiden game, combined with Diablo's loot systems, with brutally punishing difficulty, even compared to From Soft games. Nioh 2 has more systems and subsystems and loot mechanics than almost any other RPG out there, so unlike Dark Souls, you're actually going to have to put in some work with comparing your equipment, and developing a build that's somewhat unique to you. Play this game if you want more mechanical complexity than From Soft's games are giving you, and more compelling combat than Path of Exile or Diablo are giving you.

There are demon cats that you can pet.

• Three player co-op, main story and most side missions can be played with other players
  
• Custom character creation (male or female)
  
• Challenging but rewarding combat
  
• Good music overall, sound effects are spot on
  
• Story is a fantasy retelling of real events in 16th century Japan
  
• Recommend playing with controller

Take two scoops of Devil May Cry, a scoop of Ninja Gaiden, and a handful of Dark Souls and blend it up. You'll get something close to, but not quite like, a Nioh 2 smoothie. If, like me, you're coming from other souls-like games into Nioh you'll learn quickly the combat is faster but fluid. Unlike Dark Souls / Elden Ring or other games like them there is less emphasis on dodging - in fact, dodging is often not your best option. Instead there is a focus on carefully timed blocking and counter attacking. Fights against strong enemies and bosses are only partly solved by learning the pattern and when you can punish them. You also need to see what you can interrupt to create your own openings for flowing combo and chain attacks.


Three player co-op - easy to setup and jump straight into missions without any weird systems restricting your play. Some duel side missions are solo only but the main story and most side missions can be played with up to two other players.
Graphics are solid, although some environments can feel overly busy. The character creator is superb and you can create a male or female character, which should be standard by now, but is welcome here. You will have a hard time making a character who isn't handsome / pretty, as Team Ninja is behind this one. The cut-scenes are in-engine so your custom character and the gear you have on are reflected in the cut-scenes which is awesome. The armor and weapon designs range from realistic to leaning deep into fantasy. All are well modeled with beautiful textures.
Music is great, some of the tracks are so epic they'll keep your blood pumping fast as you feel the pressure to move, attack, counter, and destroy. Sound effects have plenty of clanging metal, weapon into armor crunch, and solid hit effects.
Controls are tight and belie their fighting-game roots at times. Learning the ki pulse, stance switching, and counter system - with slight variations for each weapon type - will take time but is incredibly rewarding once you get into the groove. Speaking of weapon types, there is a nice variety of weapons on offer for different play styles. As you unlock the ability and skill tree for each one they develop their own character and feel. Once the trees are about half unlocked or more the weapons will feel very different.
The story takes place in 16th century Japan with some hefty liberties taken with real events to fit in the fantasy elements and your character's role in the alternate history presented. Keeping track of all the characters can be difficult but fortunately there is a character guide in-game you can consult to keep up with the story as it plays out.
The game can be modded.


The game is difficult and makes no apologies for it. Some of the duel side-missions are harder than anything the main story will throw at you but the main missions are no slouch, either. The flip side of the difficulty is the satisfaction you will get as your skills improve and you conquer a challenging enemy or boss. Be warned, however, the difficulty is no joke and there is no easy option. The game plays best on a controller, keyboard and mouse not so much.


This is a well polished game and most of "the bad" would resolve to nit picks. With that said, the game wastes no time throwing complex systems at you with barely a tutorial. It took me some time to wrap my head around the controls as this game will utilize every button on a controller and then some. The twilight missions use a red filter / lighting system that hides the beauty of the levels they take place in. I wish you could tone down the effect as they are SO RED. Some of the music is short repeating loops that can grate after awhile, even though for the most part the music is great. The aforementioned twilight missions are also the only content that gets level synced, so if you are teaming up with a low level friend on a high level character you will eliminate a huge chunk of the challenge for them and stomp the lower level missions. With all of the special effects in combat your screen can get cluttered in flashes, sparkles, hit indicators, and more at times. There are mods to tone this down but the default game can be overwhelming visually at times.


Nioh 2 is a solid game. Expertly designed combat takes some getting used to but is very satisfying once you begin to learn and eventually master it. Three player co-op with custom characters is fantastic. Even at full price this game is a worthwhile purchase but it sometimes goes on sale and I enthusiastically recommend snagging it at a good price.

Finally i've beat the first boss.

Best combat mechanics ever