Nioh 2: Review - The Purest Form

Nioh 2: Review - The Purest Form

No Spoilers

As I regenerate from the latest shrine, I know what I need to do. Approaching the first encampment, I snipe the two archers in each of the guard towers with my bow then quickly cut down the yokai hiding behind the door with a massive two-handed katana. Inching forward, I silently stab the nearest unwary guard in the back, instantly killing him. This draws the attention of his samurai buddies, one of whom is sprinting over to me with a spear. But I ignore him and head up the rickety wooden stairs to kill the hidden archer who shot me down last time. After a few quick slashes, the archer is down giving me just enough time to turn and face the last pursuing samurai. I block his first attack sending him reeling and unleash a barrage of heavy blows breaking his guard allowing me to get a quick execution. I take a breath. Phew, one room done. After collecting the bountiful loot that popped out of the fallen samurai, I make my way towards the exit door, checking to the left and right for any unwanted surprises. Suddenly, a stupid goblin jumps on my head from the outside of the exit door, heartily chews on my neck, and instantly eats away three fourths of my health. While he's evolving like a Pokémon, I panic dodge to the left of the door only to realize a moment too late that there's a cliff there and I fall to my pathetic death. Sighing, trying not to crush my controller, I take a deep breath. As I regenerate from the latest shrine, I know what I need to do.

Nioh 2 will put you in these paranoia-inducing situations constantly throughout it's sixty-hour runtime, pitting you against increasingly difficult foes in increasingly difficult combinations regularly. Yet the reward for accomplishing these trials is not only the self-satisfaction that scratches that inner masochistic itch but also a plethora of leveled loot that scales you up appropriately to face further challenges. This is not to say that the gameplay is slow or boring, it is the precisely the opposite, requiring quick reflexes and deep game knowledge to be successful. Even so, assembling a set of armor, weapons, and magic that compliment your playstyle will carry you to victory in just as many scenarios as your combat prowess. Nioh 2 improves on its predecessor in nearly every way from the combat to the story to the environments. While the game's philosophy of using death as a learning tool goes too far on occasion, Nioh 2 will nonetheless hook you with its addictive gameplay, rewarding loot structure, and fantastical aesthetics.

Clumsily Delivered Emotional Payoff

The story of Nioh 2 starts slow but, much like the rest of the game, rewards those who pay more than cursory attention to its details. Told primarily through in-game cutscenes at the beginning and end of main missions, the narrative unfolds in a necessarily clunky manner (necessary because you'll be spending long periods of time sorting your inventory and tweaking your build on the main screen between missions). While this does lessen the impact of the story, the writers have cleverly focused the story not only on the political maneuverings of feudal Japan but also on a decades-long relationship between you and your best friend. This personal connection gives you a thread to follow through the tumultuous machinations of the various warlords and evil spirits who drive the story forward. Best of all, this emotional relationship pays off in the later half of the game, incentivizing you to continue simply by making you want to find out what happens next. Unlike its predecessor, Nioh 2 intelligently builds a story slowly with consistent characters and an emotional investment that goes beyond the dry wartime intrigue between clashing factions.

Furthermore, for fans of the original, don't be surprised to see familiar faces sprinkled throughout as this game does take place before the events of the original Nioh. These nostalgic beats are satisfying but also a bit too pervasive, a point that I will discuss at further length later in the review. Regardless, many times you'll get a deeper look into the backstory of a specific side character, whether they are new or returning, usually through a stylish ink-painting cutscene. These vignettes are visually engaging and offer a deeper look not only into a specific character but also the fascinating setting of 16th century Japan and its mythology. As long as you get past the awkward delivery system, Nioh 2 offers a surprisingly effective main storyline accompanied by engaging and vibrant dives into the world and mythos.

Fantasy Brought to Life

Aesthetically, Nioh 2 almost always nails it, transporting you to historical Japan where magic is bursting at the seams. Fortunately, both the graphical fidelity and the art design have been greatly improved in the sequel. Glittering crystals emerge around traditional pagodas, great crags split war-torn battlefields, ethereal fog slips through a dark and menacing forest. Filling out these areas are a wide variety of opposing human samurai and ninjas or dastardly yokai, demonic spirits each with their own unique and imposing look. The art design really shines through here with both the environments and the character models overcoming occasionally muddy textures and various reused assets. Furthermore, the actual level design is typically excellent with logical shortcuts, vertical levels and expansive missions that are easily twice as long as the first game's offerings. However, as more of an exception than a rule, some areas overstay their welcome with labyrinthine layouts and less artistic appeal, making you question whether or not you've already been to a location or not as you circle around it numerous times. Regardless, the majority of Nioh 2 hits the right balance of realism and fantasy, far surpassing its predecessor's drab hallways and dank cave systems.

As far as music goes, Nioh 2 is kind of all over the place. Early in the game there are few tracks that I could honestly identify as being from this game if I heard them individually, leaving little if any impression at all. However, as the story ramps up so does the quality of music. Typical battle music gives way to orchestral string sets with melancholic overtones or haunting choir pieces that float behind a frenzied war theme. The music during the final mission is probably one of the best pieces of video game music that I've ever heard, exciting and triumphant while remaining grounded with traditional Japanese instruments. It all works to truly elevate the stakes of the mission. It's odd to split the game by music but the tracks that play during the later half's missions, boss fights and even in the overworld are far superior to any offerings in the first twenty hours.

Combat and Progress

All of the story and music and loot would be meaningless if the combat wasn't worth your time but fortunately Nioh 2's combat is simply excellent. Complex and satisfying, nothing feels as good as getting Nioh's combat to click with you. Each of the nine primary weapons that you can choose from have a fully fleshed out skill tree to unlock and can be held in three different stances which completely change how a weapon operates. You can even infuse individual abilities with elemental attacks using a system that is literally never explained, an issue that will persist into other facets of the game. Furthermore, you can instantly regain a large portion of stamina after a combo if you correctly time a Ki Pulse and, new to Nioh 2, you can now parry certain attacks from enemies. Enemies will flash red and begin to perform an extremely dangerous attack. The parry system allows you to knock them out of this attack if parried correctly or you'll be taking massive damage from the attack. This addition to the combat is perfect for Nioh as most of these attacks can be dodged or blocked if you have enough stamina but really rewards you for nailing the parry. Since death can come from any enemy at any time, juggling these combat systems to figure out the most efficient way to survive is usually a split-second decision, forcing you to either do it right or die.

That's not all folks because Nioh has a full suite of magic, ninjutsu, and demon arts to master as well. The magic and ninjutsu skill trees return from the original game with the player gaining more points to spend the more they use those abilities. These range from calling lightning down from the sky, to game-changing buffs and debuffs, to throwing caltrops and shuriken. The ninjutsu tree in particular is far more viable and borders on overpowered in the late game allowing you to toss flurries of kunai that will devastate enemies. All of these are buffed by the overall leveling system where you can spend your accumulated experience to level up certain attributes each with their own benefits. The progression system for everything stems from which points you invest in and will determine your health, your ki (stamina), your damage with certain weapons, and your damage and capacity for magic and ninjutsu.

I Use the Snake to Destroy the Snake

Also new to Nioh 2, enemies and yokai bosses will drop their soul cores which grants you one of their abilities to use in combat, whether that's summoning a giant snake to fly across the arena or calling forth skeleton archers to ping an enemy at a distance. They're a terrific addition to combat as they are visually exciting, situationally useful, and come with their own host of static buffs to your character. Since you can only equip two or three of them at a time, choosing the right ability for your build and playstyle is another layer of depth in a game already brimming with it. Finally, you can also transform into yokai yourself for a short period of time to go ham on the enemies. This ability is on a long cooldown and nowhere near as overpowered as living weapon from the original Nioh but grants a short period where you're invincible and can dish out a fair amount of damage. It's an enthralling system that has layers upon layers upon layers with one of the most in-depth combat systems of this generation.

The most satisfying thing about the gameplay however is the fact that you can feel yourself, as a player, improving your skill set. Enemies that once frightened you will easily fall by the wayside in later missions. As you correctly identify strategies to take down dangerous enemies and traverse hostile environments, you'll feel yourself improving as a player. It's an intoxicating sensation that only a few games can deliver and Nioh 2 delivers it in spades.

The Looter-Slasher Genre Starts Here

Though it may look like a Souls game on the face of it, Nioh 2 is equally akin to Diablo, heavily rewarding those who sift through the tide of gear that the game churns your way for a perfectly optimized build. The loot system in Nioh 2 is robust, fully-realized, and, to be honest, a little overwhelming. Enemies, chests, and bosses will shower you with loot quickly eating up your 500 item count and forcing you to pull up your inventory every few missions to deal with it. You have two melee weapon slots, two ranged weapons slots, five armor slots, two accessory slots, two or three soul core slots, and a guardian spirit to manage. Each one of these slots will have between three to six individual perks, not including the overall defense or damage numbers or the set bonuses which only unlock if you have multiple pieces of the same set on. It's a lot to handle and the game does a poor job of explaining to you how to handle it. While I understand that an inventory management tutorial isn't a sexy thing to add to a video game, Nioh 2 desperately needed one for players to fully grasp how complicated this system truly is. The plus side of this is the fact that there is almost always an in-game tool that can help you if you can manage to find it. You can mass-delete lower rarity items, you can select individual perks to find out exactly what they do, and you can even infuse soul cores into each other to make them more powerful. All of the tools are there but you'll have to figure them out for yourself.

Aside from the annoying lack of any instruction with the loot system, once you understand what you're doing, it's a complete blast to start working on a build for yourself. First of all, the loot looks terrific with unique, outlandish Japanese designs that varies from badass to intriguing to downright bizarre. Combine that with the best-in-genre refashioning system that allows you to apply any look from any armor or weapon that you've obtained to anything that you're using and you've got an exciting host of outfits to choose from. Furthermore, it's always thrilling to see and feel the actions of your careful build construction play out in the game world in a tangible way. Whether you only take a quick look at your gear trying to get the most damage and defense or you do a deep dive into the endgame where you're trying to get the perfect set of perks to annihilate New Game Plus. However, it's important to note that a committed build where every perk is carefully selected is challenging to put together before NG+. You'll quickly receive new weapons and armor that will outclass previous iterations and, while you can level them up to your current level, that will rapidly become cost prohibitive. It's mildly disappointing that you can't perfect a build before NG+ but, fortunately, NG+ is significantly different from the base game, bringing a host of new enemies to old areas, scaling damage appropriately, and providing a brand new tier of loot.

No Living Weapon Equals Better Boss Design

Bosses generally offer the highest highs and the lowest lows in games such as this. The best bosses will live on in your memory with fondness and respect while the worst will linger in the bowels of your soul occasionally reminding you of how much they sucked. Fortunately, Nioh 2 hits the mark nearly all the time with over twenty exciting, mechanics-based clashes with imposing opponents whether they are towering donkey demons or a lightning quick samurai. You can clearly see a change in identity of the bosses when compared to the first game. Without an overpowered super ability that warps bosses into insane damage dealers, Nioh 2 brings numerous bosses down to more mechanically focused affairs, where you'll be identifying openings and clashing more naturally with your foes. One caveat to this is the broken as hell ninjutsu build that can be obtained by late game which will shred every boss at distance allowing you to completely bypass the actual fight's mechanics, an oversight that I hope is quickly patched. Aside from that and the occasional forgettable encounter that can be casually obliterated, the bosses here are engaging visually, narratively, and tactically. 

Friends and Foes Alike

The last piece of the puzzle that holds Nioh 2 together is the multiplayer offerings. While there is no PvP at launch, the ability to quickly jump into any other player's game as an ally either at random or with friends is terrific. Personally, I always try and clear a level once before calling on friends but I had a great time steamrolling the cycling Twilight missions with a buddy. Be careful though as bringing in a second competent character will completely break most encounters allowing you to devastate most situations without breaking a sweat. Furthermore, strewn throughout levels are revenants who can be summoned. These are either phantoms of real players who have died in those locations that will be hostile but also yield some of their loot or they are phantoms that will help you through a particularly challenging stretch. Hostile revenants are a great way to obtain new loot and offer a middling challenge. Friendly revenants will draw aggro but are usually brain-dead and will go down without much of a fight. While numerous revenants can visually bog down an area, they do provide useful information as you can walk up to them and find out how they died, giving you some insight into what's coming. Overall, these mini-encounters serve a useful purpose in both the mini-game of fighting them and the macro-game of collecting loot. 

Nostalgia: Tool or Crutch?

Nostalgia is a powerful tool for a game developer making a sequel. Infusing moments with references to the past can be exciting to those who are in the know, rewarding series loyalty and offering a sense of continuity. However, if this is overdone then it feels like a ham-fisted attempt to capitalize on previous success or to simply reuse assets. Nioh 2 brings back a host of characters, armor, weapons and even sub-mission locations from the original game with various degrees of success. During the story, despite their ever-present nature, they typically pull it off with grace, nodding to important characters without overshadowing the new story that they're trying to tell. On the other hand, bringing back exactly the same sub-mission maps and areas feels unabashedly lazy. Completing these challenges feels nearly mandatory in order to level up adequately and dredging through the same locations not only in Nioh 2 but also from its predecessor feels fairly pedestrian. Finally, there are numerous returning weapon and armor sets. While these additions feel like padding to overfill the loot pool, this is counter balanced by the fact that there is so much brand new gear that you get on a consistent basis that it makes it hard to dwell on the repeated assets. At the end of the day, it simply means more loot to examine and it's hard to see a fault in that. On the whole, Nioh 2 does enough to distinguish itself from the original but long time players will certainly find identically shared assets between the two.

A Philosophy of Death

This game wants you to die. Each area and each enemy has been carefully constructed to kill you without mercy or hesitation. The game demands that you come prepared to every encounter, that you treat each corner and every rooftop with paranoid respect, that you have the requisite amount of gear level and tools to overcome the staunchest resistance. Most of the time this idea works well within the confines of the game but even so, there are more than a few times that the game pulls a cheap shot to try and end you. A perfect example of this are the new, near-death action grabs that enemies can perform. Sometimes, when an enemy is low on health or just got knocked down, they can lunge forward and grab you for massive damage. Individually, this is fine but if you're fighting a group and an enemy gets knocked down, your focus will inevitably go towards the enemies that are still standing and then you'll suddenly be killed out of nowhere by getting grabbed by the guy that was on the floor a second ago. This philosophy carries over into every aspect of the game. 

Every rooftop will have a hidden archer that will pop up once the fighting starts, every corner in every building will have a ninja waiting for you, every level will have hidden death holes that will instantly kill you. Sub-missions in particular will pit you against waves of enemies in tight, cramped locations and you'll be killed far more by getting caught on geometry during a dodge rather than unsuccessfully navigating combat. Overcoming seemingly insurmountable odds is immensely satisfying and Nioh 2 has plenty of that. But Nioh 2 occasionally tweaks the dial past challenging and into the realm of frustrating with numerous sudden death mechanics and so many hidden enemies that they become a chore rather than a surprise. For better or worse, the overarching design philosophy of Nioh 2 rides the line between aggravating and rewarding a bit too close.

A Sequel in its Purest Form

Nioh 2 improves upon the original game in every single way while also adding brand new mechanics, deeper customization, and vastly improved environments to the mix. With the inclusion of Soul Core abilities, individual skill assignments, and improved enemy interactions, the combat system's depth and fluidity rivals even the best action games on the market. The loot structure, while being criminally underexplained and genuinely time-consuming to manage, is the single most complex and specifically rewarding system that I have ever seen in a video game. Don't like any part of any thing that you equip, whether it's a perk or a look or even what stat it benefits from? You can change it. Once you finally understand how to navigate Nioh's convoluted and underexplained inventory system, it's engrossing to fall down the rabbit hole and really dig deep for a perfect build. The environments and art direction and late-game music all serve to elevate this action and loot grind to another level. Despite an overuse of old assets and a frustrating knack to try and kill you out of nowhere, Nioh 2 is a perfect example of how to do a sequel right. Improve upon everything that made your first game fun, incorporate new mechanics and suit it all up in a new coat of paint. It's everything a fan of the series could hope for and a damn good video game on its own.

Final Verdict: 4.25/5.0

Review Score Breakdown

1.0/5.0: Essentially unplayable, not enjoyable, or devoid of any gameplay satisfaction or erstwhile value.
2.0/5.0: Has a few, noteworthy features but is otherwise unremarkable or has a seriously detrimental downside.
3.0/5.0: The game has solid if unremarkable minute-to minute gameplay with a few highlights and considerable downsides.
4.0/5.0: The game is consistently fun and stimulating without any major bugs or issues holding it back.
5.0/5.0: This is an exceptional game that is simultaneously engrossing and thought-provoking in both subject matter and gameplay and is as close to perfect as they can make.