LogFAQs > #976818690

Nioh: Complete Edition (Steam)

I actually ended up completing the vanilla game a couple weeks ago but thought I'd want to go through the DLCs as well which ended up requiring some preparation, but more on that in a minute

I first played some of this game in 2019 but ended up coming back to it because of how much I ended up feeling oddly compelled by the gameplay of Stranger of Paradise and seeing various comments that it was the same gameplay/engine that served as its base, and after finally finishing this one I can say that's pretty much true; other than the technical aspects there's the same mission based progression where you thoroughly traverse each map the first time for a story mission then you get a few shorter side missions later which go through the same map backwards with a different objective. Gameplay is comparable to something like Dark Souls other than every enemy having a stamina bar, though in this one emptying it doesn't mean a guaranteed OHK opportunity, and yokai also handle it differently from humans where they don't stagger until it's empty but it also doesn't regenerate unless they're standing in their spooky hell dimension circle. Figuring out how to fight all the different yokai types effectively is where the most of the challenge comes from here; in that sense the boss fights is probably where the game is most like Dark Souls where it's mostly about finding a good strategy for outlasting the boss. Pre-endgame builds are largely based on what weapon you're using and what extra skills you've unlocked of which there are a lot to choose from, though ironically I just found out that my two favorite weapons in the game, odachi and tonfa, apparently weren't even in the original vanilla release but were added as part of the DLCs. Wack.

There's also the aspect of tons of progressive equipment loot drops which make the blacksmith/crafting system obsolete until the very end of the game but which also pretty much become the metagame if you want to advance into any of the content that comes after the end of vanilla, since at this point you won't get better stuff unless you start delving deep into the Very Hard NG+ content. This became a minor time sink for me at that point since I couldn't rely on just getting higher level stuff from drops consistently anymore going into the DLC missions because of how postgame drops are restructured; you start getting random drops of green rarity "divine items" which sometimes have a + number next to their level which represents a much bigger stat bonus, which you really need at that point because the base level is locked to 150 and relatively low + levels until you reach the NG++ maps. I managed to complete the first main mission of the first DLC with this low level postgame equipment, but then decided to rush my way through as many of the NG+ maps as possible so I could get some NG++ equipment and come back to do the rest of the NG DLC levels since I'd heard... interesting things about the bosses in them. Which all turned out to be true, incidentally; the main challenge there comes from them being regular human fighters who spam living weapon buffs, making them agile and hard to hit while also giving them increased offense, elemental damage and un-staggerability until their stamina runs out at which point it's only a matter of time before they resummon their buff. Though ironically the only boss in the entire game that I couldn't beat without summoning help was the Onmoraki in the second-to-last mission of the final DLC, which spams wind attacks that give you a big offense debuff.

Speaking of the online, I had that off through most of the vanilla game not on purpose but simply because I didn't realize that one of the settings (crossplay with the epic store version) pretty much breaks it and guarantees it won't work (which was a relief to discover since for a while I suspected I was shadowbanned because I was running the game through Special K launcher), maybe I'll go back and do some more of that now that I'm pretty much done with the game but mostly I'm glad that I am so that I can check out some of the earlier Koei/Capcom games (Acquire too, but that was on the table already) with that same kind of setting since honestly one of my favorite things about this game was the style and presentation for the historical fiction part of it even if the dialogue isn't really stellar and the information they have about the characters/yokai in their profiles. I've heard the sequel is also a significant improvement so I look forward to playing that at some point. And hey, the fact that I was willing to put that much more time into this game after I was "done with it" so I could continue on to see every part of the story probably says something to how much enjoyment I actually got out of it.