Nioh: A Host of Unnecessary Features

Nioh:

Nioh: A Tale of Two Englishmen in Feudal Japan

Nioh: A Host of Unnecessary Features

Nioh: A Derivative Dark Souls Clone

If the story of Nioh differs from the universe of Dark Souls, how are they similar? Nioh replaces Dark Souls' bonfires with Shrines. The first level, where William escapes from London, includes limited Shrines. These only heal the player. Shrines in Japan grant the player a location to upgrade, sacrifice weapons for experience, and choose their guardian spirit. Shrines refresh most enemies and restore healing elixirs. William carries a maximum of eight elixirs. Each elixir restores approximately 75% of William's health. Stopping at a shrine automatically restores three. Hidden across each level is a number of little green spirits, Kodama. The more Kodama the player finds, the more elixirs the shrine awards the player. Elixirs are also awarded by killing some enemies or sacrificing items at the shrine. Like Dark Souls, many dead enemies return to life after William stops at a Shrine. Nioh doesn't offer the player even a feeble reason for why humans revive. Sometimes the player sees a shadowy mist, or haze, across their path. These shadows indicate particularly deadly foes. When approached, a monster appears. If defeated these enemies don't respawn after the use of a shrine. While shadows mostly indicate a single foe, sometimes they spawn more than one. On rare occasions a dark mist releases waves of enemies. I even encountered an endless wave. Just when the player thinks they understand the mechanics, Nioh throws enemies at the player out of thin air. Setting up rules and breaking them is as frustrating as a friend who cheats at games.

Each level contains a final shrine. If the developers placed them to allow the player uninterrupted access to the level's boss they failed. For at least one final Shrine, the path to the boss is blocked by an enemy, and many require a significant amount of time to return to the fight. If the player dies, they respawn at the last shrine they touched. The reason for William's resurrection is vaguely hinted at. I died 333 times before beating Nioh, mostly to bosses in the middle of the game. After dying eight times to the Umi-bozu, twenty-one times to Yuki-onna, and thirty-three times to the Giant Toad, I only died ten times to the final five bosses combined, and only twice to the final two. I beat two bosses without dying once. Bosses are best defeated by finding the particular armor to mitigate their special attacks. Others are weak against ranged weapons. But the key is to patiently study their attacks, develop a plan, and attack with caution. Never attempt the extra hit and overextend. Even the Toad was easy with the right plan. Once I altered my fighting plan, I beat him on the next attempt.

The player sees the remnants of dead players scattered on their path. Bloody graves splatter the landscape with their filth. Each grave reveals the name and level of the deceased. A white name indicates a dead player, while a red name reveals a developer hero. The player challenges bloody graves to a duel at their discretion. A challenge summons the character, controlled by the computer. Winning a duel rewards the player with armor and glory. Even after finishing the game, I'm not sure what glory does. Unlike Dark Souls, which sprinkles a few uniquely difficult undead heroes in its dark domain, Nioh is full of developer designed bloody graves. This glut of persons lacks personality, except for their names. And while a few have Japanese names, others have names like LOA.test.subject.1 which is apparently a reference to Team Ninja's Ninja Gaiden series. Like the respawn mechanic, it's a jarring break to the atmosphere, for the developer to point and say, hey, look at us. While most graves require activation, some attack by mere proximity. The only useful aspect of the graves is that they relate how the dead died. Graves warn against hidden enemies, or sudden falls.

Killing the phantom from a bloody grave rewards the player with an item, weapon, or piece of armor. Nioh implies that these rewards are special, but they are no different than the rest of the shlock the player finds elsewhere. Everything in the game drops items. Treasure chests reward the player with three to five weapons, enemies drop armor on death, and dead bodies (not bloody graves) disgorge loot. Nioh features an overabundance of equipment. The player is limited to 500 items in storage, and I exceeded that multiple times. Nioh offers two solutions, aside from not picking up the junk. The player can sacrifice unneeded items at a temple for experience, or break them down into components. Every weapon has an attack value and an attack modifier. These use the player's core stats to determine the damage inflicted. Weapons also have one or more special effects; such as high attack does 5% more damage, or dashing costs 2% less stamina. In a single level the player discovers dozens of weapons, consumables, and armor pieces. Each is only incrementally better than the last. But because of the limited storage, after every level the player needs to shift through mountains of trash to throw it out, and keep one necessary item. The smith improves weapons, but not like the smith of Dark Souls. The smith has two options; soul match and reforge. Soul match improves the top line value (attack or defense) while keeping the same special effects. Reforge changes the special effects while keeping the attack or defense value. The smith also crafts new weapons with components. I tried each of these once, and founding them inconsequential never used any again. That meant that money was also mostly worthless. It is almost entirely spent at the smithy.

Weapons are wielded in one of three stances; high, medium, and low. High stance sacrifices speed for power, while low offers better evasion. Each stance has two attacks, weak and strong. In comparison Dark Souls has no stances, but does include the two attacks. Nioh includes seven melee weapon types, with each category vaguely connected to one of the core stats; Swords (Heart), Dual Swords (Skill), Spears (Body), Axes (Strength), Kusarigama (Dexterity), Tonfas (Skill), and Odachi (Strength). The weapon type determines not just the fighting style, but everything, because of the stat which corresponds to their weapon. A sword wielder has an unusually high amount of Heart, which boosts Ki, while a spear user has a higher Body, which increases health and allows wearing of heavier armor. While the player can equip a backup weapon, this is unnecessary. Why would the player ever use a secondary weapon, that is less powerful than their core one? Simultaneously, the player is only allowed to equip two of the three ranged weapons (bows, rifles, and hand cannons). This is unfortunate. Nioh offers only limited ammunition. I never had enough for my rifle, and had to rely on the bow, which didn't match up with my core stats. Because of the lack of cannon ammo, I only resorted to it for serious threats. But, to use the cannon I had to open the menu, which doesn't pause the game (same as Dark Souls) and scroll through it to equip a cannon. The player can also assign consumables to eight shortcuts, like elixirs, weapon buffs, magic, and bombs.

In addition to two types of attacks, shooting with ranged weapons, and shortcuts, the protagonist dashes, dodges, and blocks. I wielded an odachi, and I'm not sure whether Nioh includes parrying. In Dark Souls, if the player parries at the right time they knock the enemy off balance, allowing for a devastating counter attack. In Nioh, parrying is listed as the amount of Ki (or stamina) lost when blocking an enemy attack. Maybe some weapons in Nioh might be able to perform a function similar to the Dark Souls parry, but I never performed one. The ultimate ability is the Living Weapon. Defeating foes charges this skill. When fully charged the player uses it to gain temporary extra health, bonus damage, and special effects. It has a few limitations. If the player has died, they can't charge or use the Living Weapon until they've reached the space they died. They also can't charge the Living Weapon while fighting bosses, since it only charges by killing enemies. If the player has no Living Weapon charge at a boss, they need to farm enemies.

Combat includes a ton of unnecessary features. Three stances? Try one. Two weapons. Nope. Why not allow all three ranged weapons at the same time? For almost the entire game, the player needs only one weapon, one stance, one attack button, one combo finisher, but all three ranged weapons, because of a lack of ammunition.

Like Dark Souls, the protagonist is built out of eight core stats; Body, Heart, Stamina, Strength, Skill, Dexterity, Magic, and Spirit (DS actually has nine). These correspond almost directly to the Dark Souls stats. To level up the player earns Amirta by completing tasks and killing enemies. At Shrines the player spends Amirta to increase the value of one stat by one. Each level costs more than the last, regardless of which stat the player is improving. When killed, the player drops their Amrita at that spot, while their body respawns at the last shrine. If they return to the spot of their death, without dying again, they retrieve the Amrita. If they die on the way, it is lost. This Amrita system is exactly the same as Dark Souls, except for the name change.

One of the new combat features is the Ki pulse. The Stamina of Dark Souls, the measure of one's ability to attack, block, and dodge, before resting, is renamed Ki in Nioh. After every combo, William sparkles with a blue light that intensifies. After a second it vanishes. Pressing R1 on a controller during that second causes William to perform a Ki pulse. This had several effects. One, it stabilizes William, enabling him to attack again sooner than if he had not performed the pulse. Second, some Yokai create a shadowy mist on the ground with particular attacks. Standing in this corruption prevents the recovery of Ki. Performing a Ki pulse cleanses the area. Third, a Ki pulse also restores some Ki. The Ki Pulse stat also restores a small amount of Ki for every hit against an enemy. Unlike other stats, it is utterly incomprehensible. When a player earns 10 Life they have ten more hit points. When a player levels up for another 2 Ki, they have two more Ki to use for attacking, rolling, or blocking. But when a player earns 5 more points of Ki Pulse, what does that mean? Ki pulse isn't a measure of how much Ki one regains. At the end of the game, my Ki was 136, but my Ki pulse was 430. Team Ninja offers no official answer.

Nioh also includes skills. Each weapon has its own skill set. These are both Stat and level dependent. Some of them add a finishing move to combos.

The armor William wears also impacts combat. Like many other mechanics, Nioh uses a system similar, if not indistinguishable from, Dark Souls. In Dark Souls, the weight of the armor, and the character's ability to bear that burden was called Equip Load. The final result of the Equip Load would result in a fast, medium, or slow movement style. Faster allowed longer, quicker dodging and better stamina recovery. Nioh renames Equip Load as Agility. It still has the same three levels, but calls them A, B, and C (Both Nioh and Dark Souls also have a D rank for wearing so much armor that the player can no longer run or roll, but only walk). Agility has a more significant impact on Ki recovery than Equip load does on stamina recovery. After trying to play at Agility A, I switched to B and found it a good mixture of protection and Ki recovery. Based on the anecdotal reports of other players, C's Ki cost is too high to be useful. Armors are marked with an H, M, and L, which presumably mean Heavy, Medium, and Light armors. Some armors have no letter. It is unclear what this letter does. Every armor already has a weight rating. Does the letter merely guide the player, a vague indicator? Or does it actually have a numerical, mechanical impact?

Like so much else about Nioh, the answers are inscrutable.

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