With the impact of Dark Souls, naturally, there came an influx of imitators. Some of these imitators create something fresh with Dark Souls as an obvious template, but not to the point where it seems derivative. Others unabashedly steal from the franchise without grasping what makes Dark Souls so refreshing, resulting in a mediocre experience. In the case of Team Ninja's 2017 title Nioh, it upholds the Dark Souls influence without any shame but holds enough of its own merits to avoid being labeled as a "Dark Souls clone." However, the differences this game makes from Dark Souls detracts me from seeing it in the same light.
I'm sure most Dark Souls fans wondered before 2017 what the games would've been like if the setting was Japan. Many fans even wondered why From Software would choose a western, English medieval location for their franchise instead of their homeland of Japan. Many Dark Souls fans are also weeaboos, a correlation that I was ultimately coming to. Because many Dark Souls fans are weeaboos, there was plenty to bank off of the Japanese background of Nioh. Of course, to pander to the weeaboo demographic even further, the protagonist is an Irishman named William. William isn't just some white schmuck. William is based on an English sailor who went to Japan and became a lord in 1600. The events of Nioh retell William Adams's time in Japan in 1600, minus the yokai demon slaying and the elemental powers (or at least as far as I know).
Unlike Dark Souls, this game has a concrete, non-cryptic story through cut-scenes, occurring after every primary mission. Also, unlike Dark Souls, this game could not make me care about the story or any of the characters. Isn't it ironic how sometimes doing less does so much more? Maybe I'm just opposed to the typical epic tale involving a hyper-masculine man conquering all his enemies because it's so cliche. Perhaps it was because I wasn't immersed in the story. After all, I thought William's motives didn't warrant going to Japan in the first place. Before he sets sail to Japan, there is a lengthy prologue in which William's spirit guardian named Saoirse is captured by an alchemist named Edward Kelley. William's motive to go to Japan is to rescue Saiorse from Kelley. I guess I don't understand the relationship between William and Saiorse or understand its depth. William uses several guardian spirits throughout the game, so I'm not sure why Saoirse is special. If it's a sexual relationship, then that would be like if Peter Pan was fucking Tinkerbell, which would be a total mess.
Once William sails to Japan, the game truly begins, and I am reminded why I vastly prefer Dark Souls. For one, the game is very, very linear. It's so linear that there is no hub world. Rather than a hub world, there is a mission select map per area of Japan. One of my favorite aspects of Dark Souls is the lack of boundaries for its world. It seems like an open-world game with Metroidvania-Esque obstacles that prohibit players from going to certain places that uncover through natural progression. As soon as I saw Nioh's mission select screen, I made an audible groan. I knew for sure that this game wasn't going to be as immersive as Dark Souls right then. The seamless world of Dark Souls is one of my favorites in gaming, and this just seemed comparatively lazy.
Nioh's levels follow a familiar structure to the levels in Dark Souls, and they are adequately executed. Most of the levels have a pretty unique layout. The checkpoints in the areas are placed fairly, and the gimmicks for some of the levels are pretty clever. One of my favorites is the mission "The Ocean Roars Again," where you can immediately fight the boss as soon as you start the level. However, there are three torches you can light scattered throughout that award the player's time and effort spent finding them, making the boss fight much easier. There are also plenty of shortcuts you can unlock that make traversing the level much easier once you've uncovered most of it. This design point is always convenient in Dark Souls and shows the developers' care for detail. I also really like the collectible Kodama scattered all over most of the main missions in this game. They are adorable, and there is an incentive to collect them, ranging from getting more experience per kill, finding rarer items in drops, and increasing your medicine count.
Some of the original features in Nioh are dumb. I could not for the life of me execute a goddamn Ki-pulse. It's a button combination move implemented to replenish your ki/stamina. It sounds easy and convenient, but the timing needed to execute it takes extreme precision. Either the game is broken, or I suck, and I'd instead not leave that up to debate. I could argue vociferously about how unnecessarily precise it needs to be. One also must consider how many "ki-pools" there are that keep your stamina from regenerating throughout the game. Once you run out of stamina in most situations, you won't be able to move. This handicap caused me to die more times than I could count. Something else that pissed me off was using a Himorogi branch to exit the level. Not only does it deplete all of your experience, but it just seems unnecessary. There would be an exit option in the menu in any other game. It's not like the game world is intertwined between levels.
Nioh has about 18 story missions and several sub-missions. Each story mission varies in either going straight until you fight a boss or finding keys or a gimmick to get to the boss. The story missions are varied enough never to get stale, but the sub-missions are tedious and repetitive. The submissions tend to be variants on previous story missions but with different/smaller objectives. There are also "twilight missions," more complex versions of the main story missions, but with a red aura surrounding the level. The red aura signifies intensity. All these "twilight missions" have to offer is occasionally adding a harder yokai randomly. These submissions are also reasonably short and optional, but I recommend you do every one of them because this game is very grinding intensive.
Leveling up characters, armor, and weapons are a ubiquitous trope in the action RPG genre. These tropes are what separates the action RPG from the regular action game. Nioh executes this common trope poorly as scaling and progress are measured through arbitrary leveling and arbitrary leveling only. Sure, leveling is essential in any RPG game, but I think Team Ninja had another motive. I don't believe Team Ninja was very confident when making this game. They seem to force you to play a lot of it over and over again, whether you like it or not. Every mission has a difficulty that coincides with William's level and a difficulty meter represented by five red swords. If the mission has all five swords highlighted, you're going to have a bad time. If you're under-leveled, many enemies can take out 80% of your health with one hit. I swear, the next main mission is always around 15-20 levels higher than the last one, so you'll be seeing the five red swords of difficulty constantly. You'll naturally gain two or three levels doing the main missions without dying and maybe once per sub-mission, but it never amounts to enough. Involuntary grinding is one of my video game pet peeves, and Nioh is guilty of it in spades.
Speaking of padding the game, Nioh also really hopes that you like its bosses because you'll be fighting them over and over again, whether you like it or not. The bosses are pretty well designed, and the fights are usually pretty fair. The exception is Hino Enma, a bigger difficulty spike than anything in the entire Soulsbourne franchise. Being paralyzed after one hit so you can't move for more than five seconds, guaranteeing you die is cruel and unusual. Like with each level, every boss can be fought on the player's own volition at the end of their respective level even after beating them for the first time. This aspect is fine with me, but familiar bosses will show up constantly during the missions. Many repeat bosses will appear as regular enemies, end bosses in sub-missions, and even in pairs with other bosses. Some submissions are dedicated to putting you in a familiar arena simply to fight a boss you've already fought before. It's like their way of checking up on you or something. Their favorite seems to be the first main mission boss, Onryoki. He shows up maybe ten times throughout the game during so many instances. He's a giant yokai with two balls and chains, and halfway through the fight, he breaks those chains and uses his body and his iron balls (from the chains) to try to crush you. He's an acceptable first mission boss, but putting him in the game so many times is like someone who told an amusing joke once that got a tiny bit of laughter but then tells it over and over again, hoping it will be just as funny the tenth time as it was the first. It just gets REALLY tiresome.
Nioh is a competent game and supplementary to anyone craving a Dark Souls experience. However, I don't play Dark Souls because it merely satisfies the standard of video game competency. I play it because it's a rich experience. Nioh had Dark Souls as a source of inspiration but was too insecure about their game to deliver the same as Dark Souls. The lack of quality is readily apparent by their streamlined mission selection world, grind-heavy progression, and padding the game by repeating bosses and missions. All of this amounted to a grueling game to get through, not just because the game was challenging. Team Ninja essentially did their job but didn't put a lot of passion into their project.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com/
I'm sure most Dark Souls fans wondered before 2017 what the games would've been like if the setting was Japan. Many fans even wondered why From Software would choose a western, English medieval location for their franchise instead of their homeland of Japan. Many Dark Souls fans are also weeaboos, a correlation that I was ultimately coming to. Because many Dark Souls fans are weeaboos, there was plenty to bank off of the Japanese background of Nioh. Of course, to pander to the weeaboo demographic even further, the protagonist is an Irishman named William. William isn't just some white schmuck. William is based on an English sailor who went to Japan and became a lord in 1600. The events of Nioh retell William Adams's time in Japan in 1600, minus the yokai demon slaying and the elemental powers (or at least as far as I know).
Unlike Dark Souls, this game has a concrete, non-cryptic story through cut-scenes, occurring after every primary mission. Also, unlike Dark Souls, this game could not make me care about the story or any of the characters. Isn't it ironic how sometimes doing less does so much more? Maybe I'm just opposed to the typical epic tale involving a hyper-masculine man conquering all his enemies because it's so cliche. Perhaps it was because I wasn't immersed in the story. After all, I thought William's motives didn't warrant going to Japan in the first place. Before he sets sail to Japan, there is a lengthy prologue in which William's spirit guardian named Saoirse is captured by an alchemist named Edward Kelley. William's motive to go to Japan is to rescue Saiorse from Kelley. I guess I don't understand the relationship between William and Saiorse or understand its depth. William uses several guardian spirits throughout the game, so I'm not sure why Saoirse is special. If it's a sexual relationship, then that would be like if Peter Pan was fucking Tinkerbell, which would be a total mess.
Once William sails to Japan, the game truly begins, and I am reminded why I vastly prefer Dark Souls. For one, the game is very, very linear. It's so linear that there is no hub world. Rather than a hub world, there is a mission select map per area of Japan. One of my favorite aspects of Dark Souls is the lack of boundaries for its world. It seems like an open-world game with Metroidvania-Esque obstacles that prohibit players from going to certain places that uncover through natural progression. As soon as I saw Nioh's mission select screen, I made an audible groan. I knew for sure that this game wasn't going to be as immersive as Dark Souls right then. The seamless world of Dark Souls is one of my favorites in gaming, and this just seemed comparatively lazy.
Nioh's levels follow a familiar structure to the levels in Dark Souls, and they are adequately executed. Most of the levels have a pretty unique layout. The checkpoints in the areas are placed fairly, and the gimmicks for some of the levels are pretty clever. One of my favorites is the mission "The Ocean Roars Again," where you can immediately fight the boss as soon as you start the level. However, there are three torches you can light scattered throughout that award the player's time and effort spent finding them, making the boss fight much easier. There are also plenty of shortcuts you can unlock that make traversing the level much easier once you've uncovered most of it. This design point is always convenient in Dark Souls and shows the developers' care for detail. I also really like the collectible Kodama scattered all over most of the main missions in this game. They are adorable, and there is an incentive to collect them, ranging from getting more experience per kill, finding rarer items in drops, and increasing your medicine count.
Some of the original features in Nioh are dumb. I could not for the life of me execute a goddamn Ki-pulse. It's a button combination move implemented to replenish your ki/stamina. It sounds easy and convenient, but the timing needed to execute it takes extreme precision. Either the game is broken, or I suck, and I'd instead not leave that up to debate. I could argue vociferously about how unnecessarily precise it needs to be. One also must consider how many "ki-pools" there are that keep your stamina from regenerating throughout the game. Once you run out of stamina in most situations, you won't be able to move. This handicap caused me to die more times than I could count. Something else that pissed me off was using a Himorogi branch to exit the level. Not only does it deplete all of your experience, but it just seems unnecessary. There would be an exit option in the menu in any other game. It's not like the game world is intertwined between levels.
Nioh has about 18 story missions and several sub-missions. Each story mission varies in either going straight until you fight a boss or finding keys or a gimmick to get to the boss. The story missions are varied enough never to get stale, but the sub-missions are tedious and repetitive. The submissions tend to be variants on previous story missions but with different/smaller objectives. There are also "twilight missions," more complex versions of the main story missions, but with a red aura surrounding the level. The red aura signifies intensity. All these "twilight missions" have to offer is occasionally adding a harder yokai randomly. These submissions are also reasonably short and optional, but I recommend you do every one of them because this game is very grinding intensive.
Leveling up characters, armor, and weapons are a ubiquitous trope in the action RPG genre. These tropes are what separates the action RPG from the regular action game. Nioh executes this common trope poorly as scaling and progress are measured through arbitrary leveling and arbitrary leveling only. Sure, leveling is essential in any RPG game, but I think Team Ninja had another motive. I don't believe Team Ninja was very confident when making this game. They seem to force you to play a lot of it over and over again, whether you like it or not. Every mission has a difficulty that coincides with William's level and a difficulty meter represented by five red swords. If the mission has all five swords highlighted, you're going to have a bad time. If you're under-leveled, many enemies can take out 80% of your health with one hit. I swear, the next main mission is always around 15-20 levels higher than the last one, so you'll be seeing the five red swords of difficulty constantly. You'll naturally gain two or three levels doing the main missions without dying and maybe once per sub-mission, but it never amounts to enough. Involuntary grinding is one of my video game pet peeves, and Nioh is guilty of it in spades.
Speaking of padding the game, Nioh also really hopes that you like its bosses because you'll be fighting them over and over again, whether you like it or not. The bosses are pretty well designed, and the fights are usually pretty fair. The exception is Hino Enma, a bigger difficulty spike than anything in the entire Soulsbourne franchise. Being paralyzed after one hit so you can't move for more than five seconds, guaranteeing you die is cruel and unusual. Like with each level, every boss can be fought on the player's own volition at the end of their respective level even after beating them for the first time. This aspect is fine with me, but familiar bosses will show up constantly during the missions. Many repeat bosses will appear as regular enemies, end bosses in sub-missions, and even in pairs with other bosses. Some submissions are dedicated to putting you in a familiar arena simply to fight a boss you've already fought before. It's like their way of checking up on you or something. Their favorite seems to be the first main mission boss, Onryoki. He shows up maybe ten times throughout the game during so many instances. He's a giant yokai with two balls and chains, and halfway through the fight, he breaks those chains and uses his body and his iron balls (from the chains) to try to crush you. He's an acceptable first mission boss, but putting him in the game so many times is like someone who told an amusing joke once that got a tiny bit of laughter but then tells it over and over again, hoping it will be just as funny the tenth time as it was the first. It just gets REALLY tiresome.
Nioh is a competent game and supplementary to anyone craving a Dark Souls experience. However, I don't play Dark Souls because it merely satisfies the standard of video game competency. I play it because it's a rich experience. Nioh had Dark Souls as a source of inspiration but was too insecure about their game to deliver the same as Dark Souls. The lack of quality is readily apparent by their streamlined mission selection world, grind-heavy progression, and padding the game by repeating bosses and missions. All of this amounted to a grueling game to get through, not just because the game was challenging. Team Ninja essentially did their job but didn't put a lot of passion into their project.
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Attribution: https://erockreviews.blogspot.com/