The plot of Nioh revolves around the western samurai William Adams, a real-life historical figure is known in Japanese as Anjin who arrived on Japanese shores in 1600. It’s a fantasy setting where you will kill giant yokai and giant tough bosses. Through the excellent gameplay and well-made cutscenes, you will experience the very personal reimagining story of William, about his quest and his rise as a skilled Yokai slaying samurai. Where along with your journey to reclaim William’s (in this case your) guardian spirit, you will meet, fight against and besides many other real-life historical figures of Japan.

Graphics
Nioh is beautiful. While playing, it will give you a feeling that, you are really in Sengoku era Japan. You will be able to feel the environment, sometimes through the steams coming out from the hot spring or sometimes from the ripples created by the raindrops on a puddle. This little touches with its excellent use of lighting make Nioh a beautiful game.

Control
I am a PC gamer and for most of my games (except arcade fighting and BulletHell), I use keyboard and mouse. But for Nioh, I have used a gamepad. It was uncomfortable at first. But, soon I had managed to adapt to it and I am glad that I had played it with a gamepad. Playing Nioh with a gamepad is far more comfortable than playing it with Keyboard and mouse.
Nioh’s control is solid. It is similar to any other Action RPG game’s. Four action buttons are for attack, heavy attack, dash/dodge and interact with various objects and actions throughout the gameplay. You will control the camera with the right analog stick and move with the left one. When you lock on an enemy, the camera always stays on your enemy and it lets you concentrate your mind on action rather than controlling the camera.

Gameplay
Nioh is a mission-based game. From a world map, you will choose your mission and every main mission will end with cutscenes and Boss fight. Along the way, you will collect experience points and will be able to spend it on shrines or checkpoints. Every time you check a shrine, it will replenish your health. But, will also respawn almost all the enemies.
Nioh is not an easy game. You will die a lot. But, the thing is. It is a part of the game. If you die on Nioh, you will lose your spirit guardian and also lose all of your experience points and will respawn at the last shrine you have checked. You will also get one chance to recover your experience points. But, if you die along the way to recover them, those experience points will be gone forever.

Combat
Combat is the bread and butter of Nioh. Here, along with five classes of male weapons, you will also be able to use range weapons along with magic and ninjutsu attacks to support yourself.
This game shines the brightest at the one-on-one duels. It will make you feel like a real samurai who is fighting with a real human player. Every single one-on-one duel is engaging, exciting, existing and sometimes rage inducing. But, never frustrating. Maybe it’s because of the excellent AI or because of the equal playing ground for both you and your opponents.
Stamina in Nioh is known as Ki and your Ki will deplete when you will run, attack an enemy or get hit by the enemy. Managing Ki is absolute to survive the battle. Your equipment weight affects the Ki recovery speed. the higher the weight, the slower the Ki recovery speed. Most importantly if you lose all your Ki and enemy hit you at that situation, you will temporarily immobile from stamina-depleted exhaustion for a couple of seconds. And those couple of seconds are enough for some enemies to finish you off. Some enemies will also create “Yokai Realm” or Ki dead zone, where you will not be able to replenish Ki. But there is a catch. If you can trigger a Ki pulse by pressing the shoulder button at the right moment after a combo. That will not only purify the Ki dead zones but also speed up your Ki recovery speed. I know it sounds like, this game is not fair. But, here is the catch, your enemies’ abilities are also limited by the same restrains. They have limited Ki and you can exploit this weakness as the same way your enemies do.
There is also a stance system. There are three stances and you can change them even while in combat. High stance will let you attack your enemy with high damage for the expanse of the high amount of Ki. Low stance will produce low damage attacks but excellent for defense and medium stance is for all situations.

Verdict
Nioh is challenging and requires intense focus. But, it will make you feel like a real samurai or sometimes a master ninja. Occasionally it will even make you throw away your gamepad. But, the satisfaction you will get after killing that hard boss at the end of the equally hard level, is enough to make you push through the game.

4/5