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acquired-stardust · 10 months

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Game Spotlight #12: Nioh: Complete Edition (2017)

Acquired Stardust's latest game spotlight is here! Join Ash as she takes a look at the most recent game featured on the blog so far in 2017's Nioh: Complete Edition! Often misunderstood and mislabeled, let's examine the game and see some of what makes it such a standout title. As usual from an Ash piece there's a long read ahead, so buckle up!

Larsa and I are big fans of Koei-Tecmo's work and are naturally huge history nerds, with two subjects that we love being frequent settings for the company's games. Hearing that they were finally releasing a new IP that was set in a familiar period for the company and its fans definitely had us interested. Rising from the ashes of a decade-plus stint in development hell, Koei-Tecmo's Nioh began development before the two companies had even merged. Starting all the way back in 2004 Koei sought to develop a game apparently based on an unproduced Akira Kurosawa script which meandered through several incarnations before ultimately being handed off to Tecmo's Team Ninja and entering real development in 2014. The resulting project caught gamers by surprise in its evolution of the portfolio of a company often labeled as releasing 'the same game every time' by those largely outside of the fandom. Although it stuck to familiar territory of flagship franchise Samurai Warriors in its setting of late-Sengoku era japan, the tone and gameplay had changed drastically from what had been traditional Koei-Tecmo territory. Gone was the romanticized heroics and melodrama, and KO counts that could be racked up well into a thousand enemies by playable characters that were essentially superheroes. In its place was a dark, ominous, sinister tone that was decidedly more grounded. Although character design remains impressively strong as is tradition for the company, Nioh features a less anime aesthetic than the company is known for for the most part with fairly realisitic depictions of its historical cast. Just as well the game veers significantly into appropriately bloodsoaked horror territory given its setting of turbulent late-Sengoku Japan, a stark contrast from the bloodless battles of Warriors games.

Alongside this tonal shift was a shift in its gameplay. Warriors games are something of a comfort food - they are relatively simple and easy, often described as 'button mashers'. It's true enough that they tend to allow you to coast through them doing just that, though there is a depth to the combat systems that often goes unexplored. Nioh's gameplay mechanics complement its horror very well and have taken a shift towards a style that emphasizes its reframing of the Sengoku. Players are able to select two weapons from an array of seven melee weapons as well as two weapons from an array of three ranged weapons as they take control of William Adams and take their first steps into Japan in 1600.

Gameplay is, at first, a slow and deliberate experience. Attacks are able to inflict fatal damage in just two or three hits, so attention and patience are not only rewarded but demanded on a base level. Players quickly learn the value in blocking and dodging enemy attacks which often come in combos of multiple blows as well as from range. Managing William's stamina meter, in this game referred to as the ki meter, is also important and more involved than one might expect with the 'ki pulse' mechanic in which the player is able to restore a portion of their meter immediately which enables further attacks and dodges with less downtime. Enemies are a wide array of human and demonic yokai who must be fought differently both as individuals (as in, for example, what weapon each may have) as well as a species with the universal stamina ki system functioning differently between human and yokai enemies.

If any of this is sounding familiar to you, you're not alone: Nioh is often referred to as a 'Soulslike', a genre of games that take deep inspiration from From Software's Dark Souls series which itself has roots in From Software's earlier King's Field series. Nioh often lives and dies by this comparison and most players come into it with a lot of preconceived notions of what exactly 'Soulslike' is and either fall in love with the differences or can't get over them and put the game down. That being said, there are indeed differences and despite its similarities Nioh is not a simple Dark Souls clone.

Nioh is most certainly a result of Dark Souls' success, and that much is indisputable. Dark Souls is responsible for reminding the world just how much it really liked cryptic, tense, unforgivingly difficult experiences so much so that even updated ports of things like the 2017 Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy was discovered by a generation of gamers and labeled "the Dark Souls of platformers" for its difficulty. In many ways after years of obscurity From Software has fundamentally changed the way we look at and talk about video games as a whole, with even games released well before their Souls series being compared to it.

Although Nioh owes its exit from development hell into the hands of gamers to Dark Souls insofar as its tone and difficulty being inspired by it, Nioh actually owes much to two games that are compared to it far less: Koei-Tecmo's similarly brutally difficult series of Ninja Gaiden games and Blizzard's Diablo. Combat is significantly deeper than Dark Souls' even from the jump with each of the seven melee weapons each having three different stances players can switch between on the fly, each with their own strong and weak attacks and combos. As players explore the RPG mechanics (also a Soulslike staple) they also discover a long list of abilities to unlock for each of the game's seven melee weapons that add new abilities and moves to the combos. The result is a game that almost feels significantly more like 2008's Ninja Gaiden 2 on the Xbox 360 than Dark Souls, with fast paced and tense action that results in either bloody dismemberment for your enemies or a swift death for the player.

Just as well there are also several classifications of armor with many different individual pieces within those classifications, some of which can give the player a bonus when assembled together as a set. Alongside this are countless different weapons within the ten total offensive weapon categories, with gear (all of which have their own levels of quality and stats) frequently being dropped by enemies upon their defeat. Needless to say the loot aspect of the game, itself not entirely unfamiliar for Souslike games, is significantly expanded upon in Nioh especially postgame to the point it much more closely resembles classic PC release Diablo 2.

There are a staggering number of ways to play the game as in addition to all of the gear, weapons, builds and stances there are ninjutsu and magic skills, items and 30 different spirits the player can equip with various different effects, all of which can be summoned as part of Living Weapon mode which sees William manifest the spirit into his weapon for a brief powerup that allows him to devastate enemies. Just as well there is a vast array of clans the player can join, all historical powerful factions of Japan's Sengoku which provide different bonuses and is one layer of the game's multiplayer component. This variety is served well through the base game's brutal difficulty as well as its three DLC scenarios and its equally staggering three additional difficulty levels of new game plus.

Aforementioned multiplayer component comes in multiple forms. Players leave graves where they die which can be summoned as fightable AI-controlled revenant that can drop their gear and glory, a currency used to trade for items or character models of Nioh's vast array of characters that the player can transform into, replacing William in normal gameplay outside of cutscenes. Glory also contributes to the faction wars - a race between the White and Red factions to see who can earn the most in intervals with the winning side awarded discounts in glory-accepting transactions. Players can also face each other in direct player-versus-player combat, and are even able to tackle the entire game together cooperatively.

You might've noticed that the player character I mentioned earlier, William Adams, is most certainly not a Japanese name. And that's because he isn't (duh!). William is a relatively obscure historical figure who was one of the first non-missionary westerners in Japan as well as one of the few and earliest western samurai. William is an Englishman chasing alchemist Edward Kelley across the pacific ocean to reclaim William's personal guardian spirit, stolen in an encounter with Kelley in the game's opening stage. After his search takes him to Japan William finds his familiar tangled web of influence and power between England and Spain has become all the more complex with the addition of Japan's own political turmoil of the late Sengoku period.

Through the course of the game William finds himself eventually aligned with the Tokugawa forces by way of Hanzo Hattori, a bilingual ninja in service of Ieyasu Tokugawa. Nioh's campaign and DLC takes the player through several highlights of the late Sengoku period which are the game's absolute highlights. Although featuring a wide variety of stages set in varying locales such as cave systems, shipwrecks and ruined temples, it is these recreations of historical battles that the game truly shines with. The base game's recreation of the Battle of Sekigahara is one of my favorite parts of any video game for its melding of historical accuracy and dark fantasy elements. For us history nerds there is nothing quite like the haze of that morning's battle and the show-don't-tell approach much of the game takes with its environmental storytelling. One way this is achieved is through the largely unsubtitled gameplay segments (though the cutscenes do feature subtitles), with NPCs uttering Japanese phrases to William who naturally does not understand them. It's a fun little thing that helps convey the fish out of water elements of the story and rewards players who can speak the Japanese language (of which I am one). Another small moment is in the aformentioned Battle of Sekigahara where a small band of men clad in Kobayakawa-clan emblems charge up the battlefield without stopping to tell the player who they are or explain that the momentum of the skirmish has definitively swung in the direction of the Tokugawa forces. It's a small but memorable moment rewarding big history nerds like myself and Larsa that have memorized much of the intricate tumult of the Sengoku that has stuck with me well into my 200-something hours spent with the game in its various levels of difficulty and gear grind.

The trend of the game's highlights being the recreations of historical battles is never more apparent than in its DLC scenarios Dragon of the North, Defiant Honor and Bloodshed's End which follow the post-Sengoku struggles against the Date clan as well as the winter and summer sieges of Osaka respectively. Winter's Osaka siege stands out as perhaps the best depiction of war in a video game with the level design and gameplay elements lending itself extremely well to portraying the sheer horror that must've entailed battle in the Sengoku with exhausted enemies surprising each other with their presence in the stage's tight trench corridors before engaging in quick and bloody battles to the death. Defiant Honor's Winter siege of Osaka culminates in a battle against legendary samurai Yukimura Sanada in another particularly memorable moment, featuring a more grounded design than his Samurai Warriors counterpart (although his armor is based on his real historical suit which was also featured as an alternate costume in Samurai Warriors 1), Yukimura wields his iconic traditonal Japanese jumonji spear as featured in Samurai Warriors and even has a few moves reminiscent of his moveset as a playable character in that franchise.

On the subject of further historical matters Nioh furthers the trend Koei kickstarted by reexamining Mitsunari Ishida with his moral fiber and his place in history, featuring a touching moment with retainer Sakon Shima monologuing about him. Nioh was also the first popular modern media, to my knowledge, to feature the obscure historical figure Yasuke, a black samurai associated with legendary daimyo Nobunaga Oda who was recently featured in his own Netflix anime. It was, sadly, also the beginning of Koei-Tecmo's slightly understandable but disappointing nonetheless deemphasizing of historical figure Ranmaru Mori, a popular and enduring cultural icon also featured and beloved in Koei's own Samurai Warriors games.

The game works very well on the level of a slowly paced Soulslike or a more action oriented Ninja Gaiden style action game depending on the build and play style of the player, which is a great testament to its strong gameplay and level design. Just as well the game becomes significantly less hostile with another player in coop, and is a very satisfying exercise in teamwork. Larsa and I decided to play the base game in its initial difficulty level solo before teaming up to take on subsequent difficulty levels, and we can vouch for the fact that it makes an excellent game for gamer couples especially since the nature of coop allows the player duo to help take the load off of each other. It is as excellent an exercise in teamwork as it is a bonding experience thanks to the tense nature of its gameplay.

Nioh also introduces new mechanics consistently through its entire run even into the final difficulty level of new game plus where there is a whole new tier of gear with its own additional abilities which is a very impressive feat. For as much good as there is to say there is a big asterisk which may deter players as health recovery items are a finite resource not indefinitely restored unlike in Dark Souls, and players must conserve and find more lest they wind up with only limited guaranteed healing. This can gate lesser skilled players out of progress without hope of making it through the game without a lot of practice or getting help from a friend. Another small complaint is the minimap which is a featureless circle in the top right corner of the screen that only provides very minimal information to the player without having an ability such as 'kodama sense' attached to their gear, which displays hidden collectables scattered through stages that provide bonuses such as ultimately 25% more experience or a 5% increase in drops to weapons or armor as a green dot on the minimap.

Nioh indeed has much to gush about, and in many ways it represents the maturation of Tecmo-Koei's library of games. A fun alt history romp through the Sengoku that the company is very familiar with coupled with a fresh coat of paint in its action-horror dark fantasy elements that hearkens back to a little-remembered in today's zeitgeist game in Ninja Gaiden as well as megahit Diablo, the old meets the new in so many satisfying ways making Nioh a joy to have 100%ed (taking roughly 100 hours to have unlocked all achievements). It may owe its existence as a finished product to Dark Souls, but it is far less of a Soulslike than you may have heard or expect and has so much to offer on its own and as an extension of some of the gameplay featured in Ninja Gaiden. It is a joy to play on its own or with a friend/loved one and rewards your time spent with it considerably even far later into the experience than one might expect.

Nioh is immediately available via Steam and the Playstation Store on PC, PS4 and PS5.

A gem hidden among the stones, Nioh is undoubtedly stardust.

-- Ash

#gaming #video games #acquired stardust #ash #game spotlights #gaming spotlights #nioh #koei tecmo #ninja gaiden #samurai warriors #soulslike #team ninja #ps4 #playstation 4 #ps5 #playstation 5

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acquired-stardust · 7 months

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Game Spotlight #13: Nioh 2: Complete Edition (2020)

Acquired Stardust's first game spotlight of the new year is here! Come along with Ash on a long look into one of the greatest games of the past generation and a little bit of a look into where its influences, and even its overall genre, lie.

As previously discussed, I think Nioh is a title that lives and dies by its comparisons to Dark Souls. Director Fumihiko Yasuda has been transparent in his admission that Nioh was inspired by Dark Souls, and the influence is clear. As a matter of fact I don't think it's a stretch to say that after a decade in development hell it's likely due to the success of Dark Souls that Nioh was able to see the light of day in the first place. Team Ninja cleverly designed the opening hours of Nioh 1 to appeal to fans of the smash hit Souls series with eerie, tense enemy introductions and a slow combat system that eventually gives way to a deep and fast action game by the time the opening hours of the game are up, at which point players coming to Nioh simply for more Dark Souls are lead to one of two conclusions: either 'this isn't Dark Souls and that sucks' or 'this isn't Dark Souls and that's awesome'.

The slow burn of Nioh revealing its identity to the player as not just a mere Soulslike, instead an unmistakable fusion of Blizzard's Diablo and Team Ninja's own previous success Ninja Gaiden, is a satisfying one. Seeing a game go from standing in the shadow of another massive success to one with its own impressive vision and execution all in a single game, within the space of just a few hours, was one of the coolest experiences I've had with a game. It's my pleasure to report that Nioh 2 doubles down on everything that made the first game special, and represents an official divergence from the label of Soulslike into a little-discussed larger genre known as 'masocore'.

"Masocore" is a large umbrella, a broad style of game and design philosophy, with titles that span a variety of genres from precision platformers to action games and everything in between. And while you may not have heard the term before it's not a new phenomenon per se as you're likely more familiar with the saying 'Nintendo hard' that hearkens back to the era of the Nintendo Entertainment System when games were often cryptic and overly punishing in their designs. It is the goal of masocore games to deliver those sorts of punishing and oppressive experiences to players so that the eventual triumph feels all the sweeter. Not every developer has the vision and expertise to deliver on the promise of the genre - not so with Nioh which saw an incredible utilization of the nature of masocore titles to effectively communicate not just its brutal setting but provide a deep sense of immersion to its gameplay. While many developers simply wear the masocore aesthetic as a gimmick, Team Ninja utilized it expertly in the original Nioh title and continues to do so in its sequel.

It's also important to note that while you may not have heard of the masocore term, Nioh series director Fumihiko Yasuda most certainly has and while he has freely admitted the influence Dark Souls had on his project he's never actually called the games Soulslikes - he instead refers to them himself as masocore titles. The label of 'Soulslikes' was inevitably but perhaps unfairly attached to Nioh from the start, but is certainly unwarranted for Nioh 2 which represents a bold step forward in both vision and execution for a series that already shined bright in these areas and a complete divergence from any attempt to bridge the gap between fans of Dark Souls and Nioh, proudly wearing its vision on its sleeve from the start.

Featuring every single mechanic from Nioh 1, an already staggering number of ways to interact with a game of surprising and impressive length, Nioh 2 does indeed double down on all of them. On top of every weapon type from the previous title returning with new and reworked abilities as well as three stances (each with their own movesets attached to them), Nioh 2 adds a whopping four additional melee weapon types along with new ninjutsu and onmyo magic techniques as well as making both of those categories much more viable for use. The Living Weapon and Guardian Spirit mechanics make a return and has seen a significant expansion, replacing its upgraded moveset per weapon with three unique forms with movesets tied to them based on the classification of the currently equipped spirit (that's Brute, Feral and Phantom classes) each with their own Burst Counter unique to each class of guardian spirit. Burst Counters are a new mechanic that allows the player to interrupt big telegraphed enemy attacks (always associated with a red glow) and create an opening for offense, with the counter using a small portion of the new Anima gauge.

The Anima gauge is also used for the game's most impressive and obvious addition to the gameplay formula with Yokai Abilities, which sees enemies have a chance to drop a Soul Core which can be equipped to your Guardian Spirit (for a total of up to three different cores) and allow you to perform an attack based on the particular enemy you obtained the Soul Core from. There is an impressive number of these Soul Cores in the game, with the majority of enemies being able to drop them, and each comes with an array of passive effects (some of which baked in and inherent to the particular enemy type, some of which are randomized) tied to the Soul Core which adds an astounding number of additional opportunities for customization. Just as well there are the new Demon Scrolls, items obtained starting only on the game's first run of New Game Plus (of which there are 5 total difficulties, each with their own escalating recommended levels as well as featuring remixed and new encounters).

Demon Scrolls drop randomly from enemies, similar to Soul Cores, and give the player a repeatable arena-style fight with predetermined enemies that ultimately turns the Scroll into an equippable item with an increasing number of passive bonuses depending on the tier of rarity of the Scroll. These encounters, repeatable, can be utilized to farm Soul Cores and items from specific enemies but also allow the player to reroll one effect from the Scroll upon subsequent completions of the battle.

It isn't only the gameplay systems that have seen an impressive expansion and upgrade that doubles down on the original's vision. Opening in the middle of the Sengoku as opposed to the tail end of it like in Nioh 1, we are treated to a surprising and impressive character creation suite with lots of room to create your own character or even attempt to recreate one from various media before being launched into its significantly more complex story.

Opening with our protagonist having a chance meeting with a young Kinoshita Tokichiro, one of history's least likely success stories and most fascinating people, the base game storyline of Nioh 2 chronicles his meteoric rise through the rigid social strata of the turbulent Sengoku era Japan in a roughly 60 year period before his eventual fall. The story features a higher number of active characters and even deeper ties to real-world history, as well as many instances of toying with history and verging into alt-history in fun ways and culminates in a surprisingly touching way before picking back up in an awesome epilogue and its three DLC episodes.

It is unafraid to throw gamers headfirst into the complex web of events and does not hold the player's hand through the twists and turns of territorial gains and political allegiance swaps, in part because it offers a surprisingly robust encyclopedia that features entries on each and every character in the game that unlocks subsequent lore entries as you advance through the game for those who would like to really study the events of the game which largely mirror actual history. As an aside the game sees my favorite integration of face scanned actors in all of gaming, which often feels like hollow and distracting celebrity cameos to me. The casting of Naoto Takenaka as Tokichiro is a particular stroke of genius in this regard, as the actor has played the historical figure several times previously in live action and his unique voice, sounding less like an overly polished voice actor and more like a person you could actually talk to in the real world, lends a remarkably genuine human element to an otherwise larger than life character.

Nioh 2's encyclopedia also extends to the game's large variety of enemies, again split between human and the demonic Yokai, with the majority of Yokai based on actual Japanese mythology. These Yokai have their own language that is heard and seen through undecipherable subtitles upon picking up a Soul Core, with enough Soul Cores having the benefit of translating the aforementioned subtitles and providing a little more insight into the particular Yokai.

Speaking of the different enemy types and changes to the game, Nioh 2 features a drastically higher ratio of Yokai enemies than the original game and marks another real divergence point in how it feels to play. Yokai, who's ki must be depleted before there are real guaranteed openings to attack them (with said ki only being able to be reduced through risky attacks you shouldn't fully commit to lest you tempt a swift death), are prone to otherwise unpredictable amounts of hyper armor that ignore the hitstun of your attacks. They most certainly require a different mindset and skillset to battle, and the huge increase in Yokai enemies may deter some players but it does offer a lot more opportunity for various elements of the game to shine. Tonfa in particular, which eventually allow for the player to animation cancel significantly more often than other weapons, provide a really engaging sense of interaction against these lethal enemies.

With the increase in Yokai enemies comes an unavoidable fact: Nioh 2 is considerably harder than the first entry on a base level. Enemies are harder to interact with in favorable manners and are faster, often with wider ranging attacks radiuses and trickier animations. Burst Counters and Yokai Abilities added into the mix also highlight the issue of input bloat from the first title that has only gotten worse with the increase in difficulty and overall game speed. While certainly absolutely more challenging and even challenging in meta ways like input bloat I do not consider this a flaw per se - it is merely a mild growing pain in the long journey towards mastery of the game mechanics that is, of course, part and parcel with the masocore genre. You are meant to be challenged and feel like survival, nevermind comfortability, are impossibilities and that feeling of danger helps sell the story, world and their stakes incredibly well. Mastery over the game's overwhelming number of mechanics and potential interactions is a long road but more satisfying than almost any other game I've had the pleasure of experiencing.

Of course, this being The Complete Edition, Nioh 2 does feature three DLC episodes bringing more story content and side missions that explore other fondly regarded periods of Japanese history and further utilize the characteristics of the masocore genre to make a very salient point about history: there is no utopian past from which we have strayed. Frantic soldiers in the Genpei War lament their helplessness, villages burn and their inhabitants are massacred, and discrimination sets people down the path of bloody revenge. While there may indeed be heroes and heroism, life has and always will be a brutal struggle against the harsh realities of nature as well as against our own worst instincts. These expansions to the base game are each as fascinating and satisfying as the base game, and can feel just as meaty with the content included, which is a real testament to the overall vision and its execution.

While much has been made of Nioh's connections to and divergence from the Soulslike label, its connections to Diablo and Team Ninja's previous outing in the 3D Ninja Gaiden games run far deeper. In fact while many of the references made in the first Nioh have been retained (such as cameos from series regular Muramasa with the same design as in those games as well as Nioh's small treasure chests' designs being directly lifted from the Ninja Gaiden games) there are even more that have been included in Nioh 2. The Tsuchigumo ninja, rival clan to Ninja Gaiden's protagonist clan, see a glorious return to gaming complete with their eponymous Yokai making an appearance. Ninja Gaiden 2 (2008) opens with an enemy throwing hatchets at protagonist Ryu Hayabusa and Nioh 2 manages to include the same hatchets as a new usable weapontype complete with a weapon throwing mechanic for them. The masocore genre existed long before Dark Souls became synonymous with it and there was a time Team Ninja was thought of as being the kings of it in the days of a waning scene for Japanese games, perceived as being well into a decline in the aughts.

The rise of the blockbuster shooter in the mid to late 2000s completely changed the discourse around video games for one simple reason: it introduced so many people to gaming that many of the people talking about games now simply weren't around then, and many who were around then were likely too young to be playing much beyond what completely gripped the entire mainstream gaming scene at the time. A million games came and went while the likes of Gears of War, Halo and Call of Duty monopolized our collective playtime and this time in gaming is poorly remembered because of it. One such example of this is the way in which Dark Souls has become quite so synonymous with 'hard games', to the point that even Crash Bandicoot, returning to prominence thanks to a wonderful remaster of the original trilogy, has often been called "the Dark Souls of platformers" despite its entire existence playing out well before Dark Souls was born.

Nioh's bucking of the monopoly From Software's Dark Souls (along with Sekiro and Elden Ring - perhaps spotlights for another time) have on our perception of and conversation around hard games is significant, and its place among the upper echelon of masocore titles is simply undeniable. Bigger and better in almost every conceivable way than its already fantastic and extremely dense predecessor, Nioh 2 is easily able to keep you busy for several hundred hours provided you're willing to give it that much time. It's also developed with multiplayer in mind in a significantly deeper way from enemy attack animations to the push and pull of the Assist Gauge as well as a reliable scaling down of player stats if there are large discrepancies to keep things relatively on the rails, making for a wonderful experience with up to two other players across the vast majority of its missions.

Nioh 2 is unquestionably worth every minute you're willing to put into it, and likely even more no matter how much you've spent on it. The sheer breadth of the experience is almost too much to describe and encapsulate in this spotlight - it needs to be experienced first hand to be truly understood.

A gem hidden among the stones, Nioh 2 is undoubtedly stardust.

--Ash

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