I got a kusari-gama early on and nothing else for the rest of the demo had even close to its attack value. Not sure what's up with that, but it was effective and that's my preferred weapon type anyway. It will probably end up being one of the weaker ones by late game though, just based on how similar it feels to the Nioh version.
Has anyone else seen something similar with their drops? Here's the item in question:
View attachment 617201
It's only level 7 and yet the next highest attack I have is a bunch of level 10 uchigatanas that are still only listed at 108. But considering how much slower single sword moveset is that's not really comparable either. The actual second best weapon I've found is a L13 dual uchi that's 95 attack. I assume it's just something weird about that crescent moon base, since even the other kusarigamas that are higher level aren't even close to its damage either. AFAIK the star only means it has an orange affix and has no effect on other stats. Also, this was taken before I did the crucible and none of the weapons that dropped inside were competitive either. Definitely try to get a single sword (samurai, not ninja) while you're in that crucible though, the special art on it is pretty broken.
Overall after playing the demo I think the whole samurai/ninja swap thing is really dumb, but as long as its possible to run a full ninja build that only shifts to samurai when absolutely necessary (i.e. R2 counters) I'm not going to complain too much. I've always hated having to master Ki Flux bullshit in this series. Need to try a run through of the demo on PC to see whether it's worth considering there or if I should just stick with PS5 as usual.
The whole series is massively front-loaded with its difficulty. Once you can get gear that actually makes a good build they are about as easy as the genre gets. I think that's why some people are saying the demo feels way too easy. The open world allows you to run around and easily outlevel everything to the point where you can button mash to victory, whereas in the previous mission-based games you actually have to git gud to complete the missions. The only difficult fight that's not optional in the demo is the very first boss. Most of the optional ones are super easy too, it's pretty much just Bloodedge Demon and Mezuki that will bend you over if you aren't prepared.