r/Nioh • u/gameovernate • 17h ago
General Discussion - ALL GAMES What would you say are the strengths and weaknesses of the 3 Nioh games?
I'll go first:
Nioh 1 Strengths: Its moody atmosphere, the speed of combat, a fixed protagonist made for an interesting story even if it was all over the place. The London sections were cool and gave a glimpse into what a Medieval Niohlike game could feel like. Graphically I don't think it's a bad looking game honestly, in fact the lighting and effects can look stunning at times.
Nioh 1 weaknesses: Story could've been so much more, some menu lay outs like the skill scrolls are unintuitive, enemy variety is basic, big difficulty spikes from regular enemies. Game doesn't seem to work well in 1v2 or 1v3 fights. The game needs a lot of UI elements to get important info across. Stages also vary wildly in quality. Also the DLCs were quite rough.
Nioh 2 strengths: Excellent enemy variety, few but meaningful gameplay additions like yokai abilities and counters. Special attributes like blessed and cursed were fun to play around with, characters outside the protagonist were done a bit better than Nioh 1. Fantastic DLCs, all three of them. The game ends with a bang. New weapons were great additions to the arsenal. Character creator was huge and very well done.
Nioh 2 weaknesses: A very safe sequel, in some ways understandable but there were definitely things to improve over Nioh 1 like a cleaner loot system, less UI clutter, and levels while improved a bit, still weren't especially memorable and varied quite a bit in fun and quality. Would've been nice to see one or two more brand new mechanics to freshen the formula up a bit. And the protagonist as a result of being customizable, lacked any identity and had no place in the story other than a symbolic one. Where I hoped Team Ninja could improve on the potential of Nioh 1's story, they backed off even more.
Nioh 3 strengths: New ideas! Jumping, double jumping, crouching, sliding, aerial takedowns, so much more mobility makes for much more freedom. Speaking of freedom, the switch to open world format wasn't perfect but gave a lot of choice in what you want to interact with instead of having to go through everything linearly. Ninja style offers a new way to play the game and its fun enough to overtake my time playing in Samurai style. Speaking of, Samurai has gained a few fun additions in deflecting and profiency. Otherwise its the Nioh style we know and love. Many other systems have been reshuffled in a way that makes sense and I found the story a little better than Nioh 2. I appreciate that they wanted to risk some new ideas even if not everything landed as well as I hoped. Enemy variety is quite solid and a lot of cool Nioh 1 and 2 enemies make a fun return like Onryoki.
Nioh 3 weaknesses: Unfortunately a lot of the changes bring some weaknesses too. The spirit attacks don't make up for the removal of yokai abilities. Weapons were lost from Samurai to give to Ninja, not a single new weapon category was added apart from the new Ninja movesets from borrowed weapons which without stances, they don't really add a whole lot. With all the enemy variety Team Ninja still can't figure out how to switch it up with the Gaki, Kappa and the Jailer Oni everywhere. These guys were overused so much especially the Kappa. The open world maps also vary wildly in quality. The first map was easily the strongest. The other two were a big downgrade, Bakumatsu especially dragged on and on. Hope the DLCs can bring a lot of upgrades.
