Nioh (Team Ninja)

TJT said:

To me Bloodborne reigns supreme. Mostly because the gameplay (but i am a huge whore for the aesthetic too). I feel is the most refined of the soulsborne games. Even after like 70 hours of Nioh it is clunky shifting through stances and regenerating stamina... IDK I found it to be unnecessary complexity.

Sifting through all of your drops constantly is also a huge chore and I hated that part.

It made my gripe about useless items from the Dark Souls series even worse in Nioh with its loot pinata. I mean in Souls where there's plenty of weapons but a lot of them are shit or only have a few moves that you actually want to use and the rest of the moveset is garbage. Nioh just made that part even worse for me.

Click to expand...

See to me Nioh is more akin to Diablo than Souls. The item hunt is absolutely amazing to me and a big part of why I have put so many hours into it.

As far as the battle mechanics go, the only thing I felt was needlessly complex was the damn flux system. I ain't got time to ki pulse AND swap stances AND weapons. However ki pulsing alone is just hitting L1 after you do a combo/attack, and you don't even have to do that as long as you grab the ki pulse on dodge abilities for all stances. What that means is when you dodge, you just ki pulse as you dodge. So, you go in attack, count to 3 then dodge back out. Bam ki pulsed and full ki again. It takes a little practice but once you get the timing down it is loads better than just the flat stamina system of soulsborne.

Yeah Dark Souls (not so much bloodborne) is BLOATED with useless shit. Yeah there are 9000 weapons, but only about 50 of them are actually useful. The rest are either complete crap or just carbon copies of one of those 50. However in Nioh it's more like Diablo. Every item is useful in it's own way. It's just trying to find how to synergize everything towards the build you are trying to go for. Yeah there are a bunch of shit stats, but it's one of those games where you play the RNG lottery at the blacksmith to get the stats that you want. Once you do, and it all synergizes correctly, they payoff is amazing.

Dont get me wrong. Bloodborne is just one of those games that transcends pretty much everything and is not just a game of the gen for me but game of all time. Nioh just does a really great job of scracthing almost every itch I have when it comes to gaming tastes. It's not all perfect, and the story is kind of shit, but in the end I'm a huge sucker for item farming and build tweaking and Nioh has that in spades.

I just hope for Nioh 2 that they buff up the builds that are non living weapon, especially the ranged builds (Ninja and more importantly Omnyo Magic as the nukes are weak as hell). Also the RNG bullshit on item stats is over the top. A majority of the stats are complete shit. Tempering really helps alleviate that, but it still could be better. Which I do believe that is part of what you are touching on.

TJT said:

I am not that much of a fan of the item hunt in a Souls type game. Diablo loot pinata and build tuning is absolutely fantastic in games like Path of Exile. Where you're also running through maps at blinding speed hoping for the RNG gods to bestow their blessings upon you. I did hunt down all of the armors, hunter tools and weapons in bloodborne specifically though. Because they are all so unique and all viable. I don't think I hated a single weapon in bb really. The only one I didn't use was the lol shield and the Reithspallasch thing because it just really didn't fit my style. Even though I thought it was kind of cool.

Doing that kind of thing in Nioh really wasn't my style and I didn't like doing it. If Nioh 2 refines the process a lot more maybe I'll get to it faster.

Click to expand...

The problem with Nioh (so another thing they need to fix for 2) is the fact that it is REALLY front loaded on the difficulty. The first 3 almost 4 regions in the game host the hardest bosses by a mile. They are cake once you have enough skills unlocked and have the gear to enhance said skills. However on your first play through it is a complete kick in the dick. Then you get into region 4 and start fighting the straight human bosses and they are nothing compared to the monster ones you had been dealing with before regardless of build.

When you hit Strong and Demon (the next two difficulties) shit is just trivial and that's basically what it is (the blazing and hoping RNGesus loves you). To this day, on a fresh character I still die repeatedly to the first three bosses and umi bozo (fuck that guy seriously hate him). Yet when I come back in strong, the second difficulty, I just blaze through the level and gather up my divines to improve my gear. You hit another wall going into Way of the Wise due to a major bump in item level, and the only way to farm/unlock new item levels is by playing through the difficulty you are under geared to play.

TBT-TheBigToe said:

This game has a lot going for it, except when it steps on your dick.

Grab attacks are bullshit, they need to be high interrupt/low to mid damage or low interrupt and high damage. High damage and high interrupt is just cheap bullshit, and there is some pretty cheap bullshit done by the bosses and a few enemies in this game.

Especially in Way of the Nioh where most shit kills you in one hit and blocking is nearly useless because either shit hurts and kills you anyways or they hit you so much and fast that your guard gets broken and you get one shot.

However, for the most part this game has does something brilliantly and that is balance the builds reasonably well. It really feels like it’s on the the player to find what works for them, and there are many options, rather than be funneled into a certain style like the souls games do.

Namon hit the nail on the head with the front loaded difficulty. The first boss you fight is a really confined space and you actually need the extra space as a newb. The other things about this game is that it’s the opposite if a Souls game. Block when you should dodge, dodge when you should block, buttons, timings, and many other things.

If you go from playing Souls to this you might find yourself fighting with the controls at first, or at least I sure as fuck did.

Biggest tip, you can’t panic roll out of combos.

Click to expand...

Exactly and that was this game's biggest fault was the word of mouth marketing. The viral marketing tried to paint this as a souls like, and it isn't... at all. The only thing they share with souls is a stamina based combat system and a similar "buy a stat" leveling system. After that, they are almost two completely different genres. I liken it to comparing Super Mario with Super Metroid. Sure both are side scrollers that involve jumping from platform to platform, but the similarities quickly die from there. I fought with the controls too. Fuck, I platinumed the damn base game and didn't *truly* understand it until I came back a year later and picked it up again. With that said, it's very reasonable to come in as a souls fan and leave feeling disappointed, but I'd always argue give the game a shot. Survive the first play through and figure out what you find the most fun as you do. Then go into the second difficulty working towards your "build" and see how quickly it gets fun.

And on grab attacks... basically all of their fuck you one shot kill attacks, I think their reasoning is they feel they project it enough with the black and white "smoke" that gathers just before they do it. I am successful at avoiding it 75% of the time. But that 25% makes me want to break things. And it sucks the only option is to get the fuck out of dodge.

TJT said:

That is one thing I did like about Nioh. Not only were all the builds you could conceive you could make work I didn't really find a path of least resistance item build that just seemed to work constantly. Nor was discussed by every Tom, Dick and Harry. And I love trying new shit constantly. So you didn't have the Ludwig's Holy Blade situation going on.

I rolled with spears and dual blades whenever possible. If I play it again anytime soon or Nioh 2 I'll try something harder like the Kurisagama.

Click to expand...

K chains are actually completely broken OP. Pump Dex, learn to block juke to behind the enemy and absolutely destroy them. Then you can also go living weapon for icing on the cake. My main build is an axe build. I have two sets. My offensive set is a mixture of sets where the bonuses buff skill damage. My defensive set is part Tatenashi to make me damn near immune to any projectiles and half melee damage. I don't hit as hard but nothing really hurts me either. So yeah tons and tons of builds out there and most of them are viable.

Yeah the Kurisagama is broken, so is axe because who needs to dodge when you can just stagger/block everything. End game dual swords is the most egregious, can literally explode any boss on any level. Shame I never liked the style. The only reason I don't still play this game is the UI/menus and how much it sucks to respec.
Skip to 18:50

Fedor said:

Click to expand...

Open to everyone?

Edit: Reason I ask is that at the end is says "Alpha Demo" rather than Closed Alpha.

YEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!

Fedor said:

Click to expand...

Holy shit the best skill tree system ever in my mind is the sphere grid system and I am happy as shit to see them here. Yeah the weapon variety has been scaled down a bit... alot... but all the major types are still represented. Going to miss the K Chain though. I watched some of the other videos, and I'm not sure how much I like the yokai transformation mechanic yet. Seems like you can jump in and out of it pretty willy nilly, but whatever. Omnyo looks like it may have a shot to be more than just buffs. I really want to do a proper mage hurling fireballs that actually hurt.

You can actually pause Nioh and I'm sure it's the same with Nioh 2. It's just kind of hidden. You go into the options menu (options button) then hit the options button again... boom paused.

I REALLY hate that these games do that shit. Soulsborne and Monster Hunter. How hard is it to to sense you are in a multiplayer game and disable it? You have long drug out battles, I have kids and a wife, we both need to come together with a pause button.

If they can curtail the ui hell (loot flooding is fucking aids on console), increase encounter variety, increase build variety and balance armor types (kigetsu, tatenashi etc were just better than other sets) this will be a GoAT level game for me that I'll eagerly dump another 500 hours into. Goddamn the first one was amazing, blemishes and all.

DrSpooge said:

If they can curtail the ui hell (loot flooding is fucking aids on console), increase encounter variety, increase build variety and balance armor types (kigetsu, tatenashi etc were just better than other sets) this will be a GoAT level game for me that I'll eagerly dump another 500 hours into. Goddamn the first one was amazing, blemishes and all.

Click to expand...

They definitely need to figure out how to balance armor. First up 90% of your actual defense came from the defensive modifier damage reduction versus the listed AC, so heavy armor was hands down better than medium and light years better than light. The AC (or whatever it's actually called, can't quite remember) was basically pointless. My Tat set started out off the bat with reducing any and all incoming damage by 60% coupled with nearly 100% Reduced Firearms, I basically took 0 damage from ranged, and only took 30% of the damage from melee. While in light armor one shot would kill me.

On top of that I really wish stats were a bit more static. I loves me some RNG, but I absolutely hate random stats. Have the RNG play in the actual drops. Kind of like farming a smithing text. It only dropped once in a while. When a Iga Helm drops it has the same exact stats every time. I also hope they have sets that last the entirety of the game through all difficulties. It's no fun to be sporting your final set at the end of Way of the Normal, and really only working towards the exact same set with minimally better rolls and colors for the other 80% of the game.