Got a little frustrated/burn out with the sequence of bosses in the final stretch and ended giving up on Kashin Koji.

I think Nioh 2's influences are too closely replicated, and it takes a little of its merits. Team Ninja is so good with pure action games, and the dissonance that RPG elements bring to the genre will never be worth it in my opinion.

In terms of combat, even though the grabs are well warned, I wish there was a way to counter them. Sometimes the time to react is just too small. There seems to be a lot of input reading/state reading to trigger some grabs that feel unfair. Sometimes it feels that when your stamina is empty, a grab will be instantly prioritized by the enemy, even though a combo animation is happening.

Anyway, the game is very good, but o lot of its qualities come from a formula perfected by other developers. I think if Team Ninja embraces its action game roots, they could achieve something truly remarkable. If they keep in this path, they would just be chasing whatever the most accomplished developer right now is doing, and it seems unlikely that they could actually reach them.