Nioh 2 Review - Get Good And Die Trying - MW

Nioh 2 is not to be underestimated. Based on the same tough reputation as the original, Team Ninja's second samurai action role-playing game brought loyalty to the original to punish and fight with nuances. The sequel refers to the speciality of the original for the Soul without completely reinventing it. The result is a long and difficult slogan that will push even the most challenging players to their breaking point as they fight for every inch of the ground and become the master samurai.

Despite the title, Nioh 2 is a prequel, revealing the secret history of a decades-long war period in medieval Japan. As a silent, customizable hero Hide, you fight to discover the secret nature of the "spiritual stone," which brings supernatural power and defeats the Yokai throughout the country. The plot, which you mostly hear through cutscenes and explanations between missions, has an interesting historical twist, but it's really just the glue to hold the levels together. History-related names like Nobunaga and Tokugawa take part in the story, but whatever flavor they add in the moment will lose the second you take control and it's time to start slaying demons.

But it's OK. Nioh 2 story provides just enough context for you to follow and make you feel like you are making progress without hindrance in the game. The definitive feature of Nioh 2 is its challenge. With a core mechanic refined from the bones of Dark Souls, Nioh 2 seethe before a series of battles and duels in every situation. These battles require high precision: Not only are your attacks and skills limited by endurance gauges - called Ki - but any wrong attack or movement will expose you, usually an attack will cost you a significant amount of blood. Like other Souls games, it is a painful pleasure to master any opponent the game throws your way.

Nioh 2 builds on a diverse range of great options to develop personal fighting styles. Initial systems return: Each of the nine weapons offers a unique balance between speed, power and range, which you can fine-tune on the fly by switching between three poses ( low, medium and high). Each weapon has its own skill tree and progression, you will earn points by using it. Core weapon fights remain largely unchanged from the original, apart from a number of new capabilities and two new weapons, the two-speed Switchglaive and two truly speedy dual axes. That said, the fight is very accurate. Nioh 2 requires a deep understanding of all the attacks your weapons can perform, but there are a variety of attacks and each attack revolves around how you fight.

There are also many common skill trees, plus character levels that increase your stats based on earning Amrita from destroying enemies. Plus, Nioh 2 is a loot game, so you'll be constantly looking at new weapons with trade-offs to adjust your stats. A lot of things to manage, but it becomes easy to manage when you find your expertise and focus on upgrading the skills you know you like to use.

For Nioh doctors, it's all old hats: Nioh 2's greatest additions revolve around the idea that Hide can direct the spirits of Yokai. The most important is a hard parrot called the Burst Counter, which allows you to fend off attacks by powerful enemies. Each enemy has at least one attack that is vulnerable to attack; They are often big, powerful moves that you will want to avoid. It is very important to fight the urge and throw yourself at your enemies to turn around the situation for a moment, which makes fighting feel more tactical and aggressive. In the moment when you discover an enemy preparing for an explosive attack, you feel successful, just like you overtook your opponent, even in just a second. Because the game is so difficult, these small victories help motivate you forward.

You also learn the abilities of Yokai through the equipped Souls that allow you to turn into enemies in the moments you kill to use one of their attacks. More than Ninjutsu and magic, back from the original, Soul Cores adds a much wider range of useful skills in the context. For example, as Monkey Yokai Enki, you jump into the air and throw a spear, which is quite new because Nioh 2 has no jump button. As Yokai gets older - every boss gives you a Soul Core - sometimes a giant head or fists or magical feet appear to deceive your enemies. They are not so strong that you can rely on them to win, but these skills expand the range of things you can do.

Last but not least, Nioh 2 adds a super powerful "Yokai Shift" transformation that temporarily helps you get faster and stronger. Activating the conversion does not reduce the need for tactics. Although you are inviolable, both using attacks and taking damage will reduce the amount of time you have in a stronger form. A failed attack in Yokai mode not only wastes a powerful, slow-charging asset, but can also expose you suddenly if you return to your former self because the opponent caused you. caught off guard. In true Nioh fashion, even your greatest strength can become an opportunity for your enemies to gain the upper hand.

A lot to learn and, again, you need to bring it down perfectly to overcome what Nioh 2 throws at you. You can make many mistakes and die many times. Sometimes, you will feel like you have hit a brick wall and simply cannot win. In those situations, you need to take a deep breath, find out why you failed and adjust your strategy accordingly. Refusing to change weapons or taking risks or in other words thinking about how you play will disappoint you. The more frustrated you are, the more likely you are to lose.

Learning your own skills is only part of the experience. To truly excel, you also need to understand the vast world of Nioh 2. There is an incredible number of extremely long series of campaigns. Its winding multi-area missions span all sorts of environments, from burning castles and temples, to military camps, to forests and mountain slopes. Many of them change completely when you discover them, giving you a great sense of "travel" and achievements to cover up what feels like a long distance. For example, a first level, starting on a hillside outside a castle and ending in a giant underground cave. Even if the levels seem similar - you alone surround four to five castles in 20 campaign missions - the design of the level of diversity in both paths and details makes each person feel different and worth conquering.

It helps maps that are not just zigzag, zigzag dungeons. Most have at least one area with a unique trap or environmental conundrum. For example, at a forest level, a giant owl Yokai patrols certain areas, alerting the enemy if it sees you. During a castle siege, you must avoid the cannon when you fight the enemy. In addition, there are Dark Realm areas, and Yokai-obsessed black and white areas provide an even greater challenge by slowing down your Ki regeneration process, sprinkled throughout each level. Just by defeating a specific enemy in the Dark Kingdom, it will dispel permanently, injecting more ways for you to progress without reset when you use the temple (or die).

Even for all its variety, the Nioh 2 stretches all its content as much as possible. For each mission in its core campaign, there are two to three side missions, many of which combine part of the story quest. On top of that, there are Twilight missions revolving for advanced players. In addition, at the end of the campaign, you will have access to difficulty levels with enemies and higher level equipment. While in principle it can be a little frustrating to play the same level three to four times, each version finds small ways to change your path and presents new challenges to keep things fresh. . If you're interested in whipping everything out of Nioh 2 - mastering every weapon, get the highest level booty - there's too many mission configurations to go through until you're done.

Similarly, Nioh 2 never seems to run out of new enemies to throw at you. Almost every level has at least one new type of Yokai for you to study and fight against. They run the gamut, from literally giant spiders to animal demon soldiers like Enki, a giant monkey with a spear and Ubume like harpy. Each enemy has their own range of abilities, and you need to learn everything about them to anticipate their attacks and gain the upper hand. This process takes time - you won't get it on the first try or even after the first win. Every enemy, even the little devil Gaki, looks like a bald, red-eyed kid who can kill you if you don't bring your A game. Analyzing enemy models and figuring out how to fight them is the sweetest fun Nioh 2 offers: That there are so many enemies with so many different attacks to navigate to ensure that the game is never lose flavor.

Even when the levels seem similar--you single-handedly siege four to five castles across 20 campaign missions--varied level design in both pathing and detail make each one feel distinct and worth conquering.

You see this most clearly when you go up against each of the game's extraordinarily difficult boss encounters. Like the levels, the bosses vary widely and are all sights to behold. From a giant snake with mini-snake arms to a three-story spider with a bull's head, each flagship enemy design has a lot of character and is unlike anything you've seen in the game before. They all have one thing in common, though: They're extraordinarily difficult. Even more than standard battles, the bosses effectively demand perfect play for an extended period. You need to be able to recognize every move they make as they make it and know how to respond instantly. Very few took me less than a dozen tries, and many of them took me multiple hours.

At times, I wondered if maybe some of these bosses should be a little shorter, as there were many bosses where I felt I had mastered their patterns but couldn't finish because they landed a single one-hit-kill late in the fight. Ultimately, that excruciating difficulty and the feeling it evokes are baked into Nioh's DNA, though, and its boss fights remain compelling even as they vex and frustrate. Though it sometimes feels like a curse as you play, it is a testament that Nioh 2 successfully grabs and holds your complete attention so close for so long.

MW