Gaijin Our Skills Against The Demons Of Nioh

Through its twelve years of development, Nioh has gone through many forms as it’s been moved from one development team to another. The gameplay has changed dramatically in that time, and development started from scratch on several occasions, before settling at the renowned Team Ninja and taking inspiration from the kind of action RPG made popular in the Souls series.

One thing that stuck through all the changes is the hero, a blonde haired, blue eyed Western man named William. He’s based loosely on the historical figure of William Adams, and I say loosely, because although Adams did become a samurai and a close advisor to the Shogun during the 1600s, he did not to the best of my knowledge travel across the country battling Yõkai spirits and trying to undo the evil manipulations of another foreigner.

Elements of the Souls series can be seen throughout, but given their own twist to fit the tone of this game’s historical and mythological background. You’re not presented with an open world to explore, but take on missions and venture into sprawling levels. It’s here that you try to work your way through to the final boss characters, exploring multiple routes and defeating enemies both human and supernatural along the way. Dying sends you back to the last shrine you visited, with many of the enemies resetting and standing in your way once more, and so you endeavour to open up new paths, kicking down ladders to give yourself shortcuts to later areas.

Aside from the look of the game, perhaps the most tangible trick up Nioh’s sleeve is the addition of stances to combat. Holding the R1 shoulder button, you can quickly switch between the more powerful but defensively lacking high stance, the balanced medium stance and the least powerful but most defensively strong low stance. Naturally, you want to blend those together with the right weapons for your play style and the enemies you face.

Twin swords let you unleash a rapid whrilwind of blades, while the hooked spear gives you the ability to pull opponents around and get behind them. There’s an element of randomisation to the weaponry and armour you find, with differing rarities and stats to them. You can equip and switch between two melee weapons and two ranged weapons, which quite wonderfully let you kill from distance, just as easily as you swap stances.

One of the trickiest things for me to get my head around was managing my Ki, or stamina. Whether it’s sprinting past enemies you don’t like the look of, blocking attacks, or unleashing a flurry of your own, your Ki is quickly depleted and only recharges when you relent. There’s the constant need to be aware of your stamina, as running out slows William’s moves, preventing you from blocking attacks, and generally puts you in a really bad position.

You can also see your enemy’s Ki alongside their health, and so you fall into this tentative dance within combat, always trying to be aware of your relative strength and trying not to overextend yourself. Dropping your guard lets you recover quicker than holding to block, but you can also boost your Ki recovery by timing a button press to the moment Ki energy swirls around William and getting a Ki pulse. My problem was more than just timing it right, but in remembering to try and pulse in the first place.

While many of the foes you come across in the world are other people, fearsome looking Yõkai also guard certain paths and secret areas. Taking the form of various mythological beasts, they are difficult opponents, often lying in wait for you in the most awkward of places. I simply couldn’t get the hang of battling the eagle-like Tengu Yõkai in my time with the game, but each enemy has their own particular way of attacking you, and you have to learn how to gain the upper hand by watching their movements. The Yõkai can also create pools of Ki-sapping darkness, that can only be dispelled by killing the beast or creating a Ki pulse.

Of course, not all Yõkai are bad, and you have your own guardian spirits to choose from to help you on your quest. They take the form of a huge variety of animals, whether long and sinuous dragons or bats, tigers, wolves, or a pair of quite adorable Shiba Inu pups – my personal favourite. There’s so many to choose from, each with their own particular perks, and charging their power over time lets you use them to imbue your weapons with their strengths for a short period of time. They might stun enemies, reduce the amount of damage you take, increase the strength of your attacks and so on.

As in the Souls series, dying sees you lose all the Amrita you’ve gathered from defeating enemies, but able to regain it if you return to that point. A nice twist here is that your guardian spirit will stand watch over where you fell, but this deprives you of their assistance until you can make it to that point.

Playing on a PlayStation 4 Pro – Nioh on Neo, if you will – the game lets your choose between graphics settings. Plugged into a 1080p screen, you can get a little extra spit and polish to the visuals with better anti-aliasing and so on, while those with 4K teles can play at that resolution with 30 frames per second. Alternatively, Action Mode lets you play at 1080p with 60 frames per second. You can see Action Mode in, well, action in our hands on video, but for anyone that’s put up with Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3’s wayward frame rate and frame pacing, this will be a breath of fresh air.

Nioh just hammers home to me just how much effort and dedication it takes to get ahead in these sorts of exactingly difficult action RPG. I like them, I can ‘get good’ at them, but every time I pick up the controller after months away from the genre, my reflexes have dulled, my decision making is wayward, my every move is filled with apprehension. Gradually I get back into the swing of things, and start to overcome my enemies, but there’s always the potential of finding yourself facing a brick wall of difficulty that feels almost impossible to overcome, as I found with the final boss of the level, a demonic transformation of Ishida Mitsunari.

If you enjoy the Souls series, Nioh is clearly a cousin to those games, and a new challenge to overcome for fans of this particular niche. Importantly, it also has its own ideas and its own identity, from clever twists to the combat to the Japanese mythology and culture that surrounds it.