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Now dont get me wrong, I loved all the souls games, sekiro and elden ring aswell, mostly on consoles. But Nioh 2 goes above and beyond for what I wanted in a dark themed souls rpg. People have got this wild thought over the last decade or so that you shouldnt have to grind or farm or play long to get the best gear or perfect your build. I was so glad that this game said ♥♥♥♥ THOSE PEOPLE. All the tiny stats you can grind for and roll for are perfect to me, its what Ive always wanted being someone who used to play WoW a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. Its nice to see a game that really lets you get down to the nitty gritty parts of your build, and Im not talking darksouls levels of nitty gritty. Im talking way deeper than that... only thing Id change is making it open world instead of mission based, but honestly hasnt bothered me much.

I highly recommend this game. I give it 8.5/10. The short version: Overall, great game, but the devs were a little bonkers and unreasonable in a few places. The flaws stand out more because the game was somewhat close to being perfect, in my opinion. I did not find the game overly difficult and haven't used summons or anything like that, but assistance is there if you need it and want to progress and see how the story unfolds.

DIFFICULTY
--This game does have a learning curve that can be rapidly scaled by doing the tutorial/dojo areas. This is good and bad--while they give low pressure/low consequence places to learn, it does feel like wasted time. If you're like me, you prefer on-the-job training, to sharpen your skills through progressively increasing difficulty. However,
--The game throws you right in with tough boss/mini-boss encounters within minutes of starting the game. If you've spent maybe an hour or so patiently mastering the dojo, these should be doable. If like a normal gamer, you don't got that kind of time or patience, it can feel like banging your head against the wall. And then
--After the first level, you are much, much better equipped and to deal with everything else, and literally nothing comes across as hard as the first 5-10 minutes of the game

GRAPHICS
--I like the graphics. The devs did not go for ultra realism, but instead something a little more cartoonish, for the sake of performance. They did a nice job, in my opinion. In a game where you are a half-demon fighting crazy looking demons, the 3D comic book look is the right one.

BUILDS AND LOOT
--The character customization is nearly infinite. Similarly, it feels like there is almost an infinite variety of gear. Which means you can have the exact look you want, but you will be saddled with mountains of unwanted loot that you can sell or dismantle.
--After a while, you might get tired of a weapon, and/or hit its level cap. So try a new one from the others to choose from. I started with sword, switched to tonfa, then dual swords, tried them all, and then settled on fists. The move set for fists is just pehenomenal, even if the range is lacking.
--You also have the ability to make gear, but the utility of that goes to zero after a couple of playthroughs, as high tier gear can only be obtained through loot drops. And,
--Speaking of loot, this is yet another game that has a lot of buffs and throwables that mostly come in handy early in the game, but that you will need a lot less of as the game progresses. My inventory has hundreds, and sometimes thousands, of certain items. There are a few items I never found a use for. And with regard to useful items
--Things like healing elixirs will feel like they are scarce when you start, and affect your game play (causing you to be more cautious), but by the second or third stage, you should be sitting on a mountain of them.

STABILITY
--A++++ After a gajillion hours of game play, I have had one crash, and that was my fault (I was testing out summoning other people and had loads of online people and in-game summons all going at once). The game can freeze for a minute or two on exiting, but that's not a big deal.

LEVEL LAYOUT
--The level layout is pretty good and interesting. They do reuse/repurpose levels for various side quests, but there are over 100 different missions, and asking the devs to design that many unique areas, and the players to have to learn these areas, would be unreasonable. However,
--There really aren't a lot of secret areas to explore. The few hidden places are pretty obvious once you know what to look for, and
--Some levels are a extremely annoying with their use of vertical space. Climb up here, fall down, climb up somewhere else, go around, fall down somewhere else, climb back up, etc. Said levels also tend to have a lot of pitfalls that you will definitely fall into while fighting enemies, which means retracing steps. It doesn't really add any sense of challenge or exploration. It just bogs you down.

COMBAT
--The action and combat are top tier, the best I have ever played (same as with the original Nioh). The seem to have solved the camera problems that plague other fast-paced action RPGs. I would categorize enemies in 4 tiers--peons you can button mash and plow through, slightly tougher versions of them that require a little more patience and tactics to deal with, mini-bosses, and bosses. One complaint is that the difficulty is wildly inconsistent across them. There are several tier 2 enemies that are just collossal PITAs every single time, and may kill you more often than a lot of bosses. And also,
--The combat is so good that the few flaws really, really stand out. These can be to your advantage, like when your character magically does a 180 in mid-air while executing a flying kick, because the enemy you locked onto has moved behind you (the lock counts until the moment the attack is about to hit). But,
--Certain human enemies don't have the same stamina (called ki in this game) rules and can sprint after you forever.
--Enemies can spam special attacks with no cool-down whatsoever.
--Enemies with guns essentially have machines guns with infinite ammo. Jarringly out of place in this game.
--And grab attacks are uninterruptible. Enemies can even overcome combos that are staggering them when they initiate grabs. Some of these grab attacks can one-shot you. So you can be skillfully going through combos, managing stamina, and still die because some ninja you were beating on grabs you a rams a bomb into your face. The devs have to be aware of this, and I guess just left this in to be jerks. To which I say
--The game and its difficulty are compelling enough. Creating artificial difficulty by violating logic or the rules of your own game is just lame and slightly cheapens the experience.
--Personally, I don't like guns in games. I know they were appropriate for the period the game is set in. In a game that requires skill in melee martial arts forms, with maybe some magic or ninja tools, sniping someone and blowing their brains out just seems awful. I know this is illogical and it's a game full of gore. I tend to stick to the bow for ranged attacks. An arrow through the neck is more humane, I guess.

REPLAYABILITY
--The big elephant in the room is the replayability and what's hidden at the end. The game does give you incentive to do multiple playthroughs by raising level caps and dropping higher tier gear. And also enemies get new moves, tougher enemies show up where there used to be easier ones. It's enough to refresh the experience for a bit. But,
--All the goodies are exhausted at the beginning of NG+3. And quite frankly, whatever direction you've taken your build will be locked in by NG+. Which means you probably are toiling away just to get better versions of the stuff you like. However,
--There is a special area that is unlocked after NG+4. Which means 5 full play throughs to get to it!!! I have never played through a game 5 times. I thought this might be the one, but I am in the first 1/4 of NG+3, and had to say, 'enough is enough.' You can unlock 2 additional gear levels, which means NG+2 would have been sufficient And NG+2 is probably the sweet spot before most dedicated fans of a game just get tired of it.