After finishing Nioh 1 i was curious to see what was next in the series. Its a Souls clone but also heavily inspired by things like Diablo with its expansive loot and stats system.
In Nioh 2, much is the same. It feels a lot like the same game, engine, controls etc, but just vastly expanded and more content. It follows a similar structure as the first, the same co-op system with the overview hub world and joining through the 'Tori gate' , much of the mechanics are the same in how the game operates.
Once again, I played through the entire game in co-op mode.
The co-op is pretty streamlined and implmeneted decently, though at first it was confusing to figure out how it all worked.
You have a blue bar at the top left of the screen, this is the 'co op bar' . Everytime you or your partner goes down, this bar depletes. When the bar reaches 0, you fail the mission.
Mission failure however, is not that painful, because It seems sometime after the game was first released , they added in a patch that you can respawn at the last checkpoint (Shrines) at the expense of your co-op bar being reduced to half capacity for the rest of the mission.
This feature was used a lot, and certainly made the game less of a frustrating pain than having to redo the entire mission in 1 go, I think thats how Nioh 1 worked.
You can gain some blue co-op bar by doing various things, mostly by defeating enemies inside these fog areas, where its much harder because it destrically decreases you stamina regen inside of these places.
This fun co-op mechanic was at the real center of the enjoyment of the game. As mentioned, I completed the entire game in co-op , so I cant speak to how different the game is in solo mode, but in co-op the difficulty felt just right.
Many people have said Nioh 2 is much harder than the first game, but the difficulty felt much more fair here.
It never felt too easy or too hard, it was the perfect challenge.
For example , in the first game you had to spend hours struggling through the first mission and boss just to be able to even play co-op, in this game you can play co-op right from the beginning.
Also, there are blue graves absolutely everywhere, on every level, and you walk up to one and hold X and can summon an NPC to join your party and fight with you. These NPCs seem to be a replica of other actual players characters , complete with having their online screen name and equipment. But they are AI controlled. You can summon these NPCs in co-op. So for most of the game we would have 2 of us players 1 NPC with us at almost all times. The currency to spawn these NPC's is incredibly easy to get 'ochoko cups' you can auto-refill them at every shrine. So this also further made the game a bit more forgiving on us.
The stat system is much similar to the first game.
At the beginning, it asks you which type of weapons you want to specialize in. You can choose 2. You get to test out the various types of weapons, short sword, Odachi (huge sword), dual swords, hatchets, spears, ETC
Like in the first game, I chose the Odachi (huge sword) as it was most appealing to me and I like the moveset.
Once you choose your weapon, you then have to go to the stats and figure out what stat best scales with your weapon type. Luckily, in the stat descriptions , it tells you which weapon scales with which stat. So for the Odachi it scales with the Strength stat. So collecting souls (amrita) by killing enemies and selling loot in the 'Make Offering' section of the shrine menu, you balance your stats around increasing the scaling of your main weapon via the proper stat, and then getting other stats like Life, equipment weight, etc.
The only awkward problem is trying to figure out when exactly your weapon scaling gets diminishing returns. So for example it takes half the game to put your Strength up to 20, but then you wonder if at a certain point its just a waste to put it any further. So I had to google this, and it seems like 40 is generally the cut off point.
The equipment is extremely varied and enjoyable. In any given mission you can expect to find dozens of new weapons, helms, body armors, leg pieces, etc. Theres different rarity types correspnding to color like purples, blues, green etc. Like the first game, its usually a simple matter of just looking at the biggest number 'Defense' or 'Attack' and using that one. But it can be more indepth if you want to spend more time looking at the stats. Each item has random stats and can do various cool things like 'life drain' which gives you life when you attack , or all sorts of different imbue effects and even some weapons with this odd 'Sentience' meter which I think after you get enough kills, it auto-buffs the weapon for awhile.
It's always a careful balancing act to try to maximize your defense without wearing too much weight, or else it ruins your stamina. I've found a good rule of thumb is to look at your Equipment Weight ratio % on the top, and try to keep it below when it goes yellow, because then it ruins your stamina too bad.
This of its self is an enjoyable mechanic to constantly be bombarded with all this new kind of loot thats fun to look at, and mix at match, and try to increase your abilities. You can frequently spend 10 mins in between missions just playing with loot and stats if you wanted to, but the great thing is you dont really have to.
Theres all other sorts of mechanics and skill trees, at first they are pretty daunting but its fairly simple stuff once you sit and scan it for a minute, its nothing overwhelming or ruins the pace of the game. And most of it can simply be ignored if it doesnt suit your playstyle
For example theres this whole section of 'Omnymo magic' and spirit demon ability where you hold Right trigger and press the face buttons to do these magical animal attacks, which correspond to these items you can equip to change them. They're kinda cool but its not something you have to even care about if it doesnt appeal to you. It didnt really appeal to me that much so I didnt invest that many points into anything related to it, and only passively cared about changing new equipment which improved it. It still proved to be useful, but its not like it made the game really hard because I ignored it.
The game rewards you in playing how you want to play, it doesnt punish you for ignoring mechanics that you dont find personally appealing, I think thats awesome.
Really though at the center of Nioh is its very fluid and great controls. The combat system with the stances is unique, you can switch stances on the fly which change the way your character attacks, you have High stance which breaks guard more easily and does maximum damage, but at the cost of being slower. Mid stance, and low stance, are just faster attack methods at the expense of less damage or greater range/aoe. Its very fun to mix between these as the situation requires it. The controls are snappy and the combat is just really fun to engage with. Seeing the damage numbers , your character improving, but also needing to have good player skill is the perfect combination for ARPG.
So about the game difficulty;
There are tons of side missions you can do, the thing is though, I think if you simply skip these then yes, the game will probably be very hard and frustrating. So in a sense, it kind of sucks that the side missions are almost required.
We basically did every single side mission in the game, which in turn always ensured we were at the proper suggested level for each mission, and also kept our loot up to date and good.
The side missions of themselves are pretty short and great too, though. It reminds me of little missions in Doom or something. usually they are just small arenas, with a few rooms and hallways, and then waves of enemies or even sometimes bosses from the first game. They're short and fun little challenges with rewards that feel meaningful .
Some side missions are kind of bad like the ones that keep repeating that stupid vertical maze house area taken straight from Nioh 1, out of all the missions to take from i dont know why they keep repeating that one so much.
The graphics are very pleasing too, a lot of the shaders and specular lighting effects look awesome. and even at 60fps it somehow feels more silky smooth and fluid than other games. Something about the engine is just tuned in a way which looks and feels great to engage with.
While im personally not the biggest fan of a lot of the culture the game is based on, such as the way a lot of the armors look, theres still a ton of them that look pretty cool too and extremely detailed textures and models. Which is another reason why swapping between different armors constantly is so enjoyable and interesting, even to just look at all the different designs. Though, some of the weapons can look kind of stupid and a bit too 'final fantasy' esque.
The main missions in general are pretty good.
You have 20 main missions, though i'll admit theres not an amazing variety of locations. Most of them take place in japanese small villages or country sides, for the most part they are pretty straight forward and fun and even linear.The objectives fairly easy to understand usually just run to a location and kill enemies/obtain some item and find a door and open it.
Some missions are particularly bad, like the one inside the maze cave and a few others, really the missions themselves arent particularly memorable, in that nothing really stands out. Its just overall the whole flow of the game is fun but theres nothing in particular that stands out. The level design overal doesnt seem better or worse than nioh 1, maybe even has less memorable stand out moments. But theres nothing particularly very bad either, some annoying parts here and there of "where do I go im running in circles" but theyre few and far between. Mostly the more vertical levels can be kind of stupid at times.
The bosses are also kind of standard fair, maybe half of them are just typical human samurais, which are actually really cool and fun to fight, others are weird crazy demon monsters, they're all really fun to fight but again, none of them really stand out in your mind after the game ends. If Nioh in general has a problem its that theres a real lack of "wow" stand out moments. But it makes up for it in that its consistently fun and engaging regardless. Though, it has a really awesome variety of enemies that constantly seem to be mixing it up. Lots of ranged enemies, and all sorts of crazy mythical creatures you keep discovering.
The last boss only took us 3 attempts to beat, so i dont know, either we're better now, or just nioh 2 is less frustrating and hard than the first game. I think its better than the first game, because of the quality of life changes, there seems to be so much more to dig into, a whole new game+ with all sorts of different mechanics and features that I havnt touched, it seems like it can be endless content really if you wanted it.
Theres not that much to complain about besides the overall lack of memorable moments, but there is one big elephant in the room ; The story , and all the cutscenes, and dialogue, once again totally sucks, and is boring and senseless, and neither of us cared. In fact, the story and characters might actually be worse than the first game. The whole story seems to be centered around this goofy sidekick guy in a yellow coat that eventually gets possessed by evilness and then he turns on you and blah blah , its stupid and boring . A lot of the cutscenes and the overall mood and artstyle is frequently ruined by all these stupid magical animals that keep showing up its just lame and corny. None of cutscenes were like "dam, thats cool" maybe a few of the battlefield cutscenes but thats it. So unfortunately maybe the biggest Nioh has is that its narrative is just not captivating at all and just always leaves a bad taste in your mouth. And maybe there is a bit too much filler in places, it isnt a short game, clocking us at 55 hours to finish it. Yeah we did all the side missions, but if we ignored them all the game would be much harder and may even take us longer from dying way more. Also, you play as a voiceless custom created character this time, unlike in Nioh 1 where you played as a voiced protagonist. Its a noteworthy change, I think I prefer the custom characters in Nioh 2.
Other than that, Nioh 2 is probably one of the best co op games of all time, dare I say. The constant engagement with your co-op buddy and trying to keep the 'co op bar' in a good place, the suspense and action of working together helping eachother out, strategizing how to take out the bosses and which items to be using etc. Its just a damn good time. The flaws are few and far between, and it does so many things right, mostly that the difficulty feels very rewarding and satisfying and the loot and stat system is good too.
8/10