E3 2016: ‘Nioh’ Should Come Bundled With One Of Those Controller Warranties
The short version of my time playing Nioh at E3 is that I died. I died, then I died again, and then I died some more. This upcoming action game from Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja is delivering on its promise to deliver a challenge rivaling Dark Souls, but even with that knowledge, I wasn’t expecting to find myself being manhandled so badly. If I was at home, I probably would’ve chucked the controller across the room a few times over, but I didn’t want to leave the convention in cuffs, so a deep breath had to suffice. Behind all the bloodshed however, is a beautiful, technically sound game that’s showing a lot of promise, mostly for its deep combat mechanics as we return to the days of samurai and demons.
As William, an English samurai based off of William Adams, your skill with the blade will be tested as each of the demo’s stages were full of deadly opponents who would jump at the chance to make your day a little bit worse. By making the mistake of entering a yokai haven, I never made contact with any of the demons since the human enemies kept me at bay with their synchronization and powerful attacks. Using three different stances that William can switch on the fly, each one favors either speed, power, or a balanced fighting style that helps you adapt to incoming threats. The problem as that as more enemies began to show up, it became easy to get overwhelmed, quickly teaching me that I would have to have my eyes on all enemies at all times. This isn’t one of those games where enemies will stand around waiting for their turn to attack either, because they won’t be shy about attacking you off camera, from behind, or while you’re in combat with another foe.
When battle became hard to keep up with, I was able to back off and use my bow and arrow to do some damage with afar. Thankfully, you’re able to recover some of your energy and items if you reach your corpse from a previous death, so you can start with a bit of an advantage compared to where you started. Even then, you can’t do too much at once, because William has a very strict stamina bar that dictates the actions he can use. If you swing too much, dodge one too many times, or sprint for too long, he’ll begin to move slower and lose his ability to defend himself. As you can imagine, this becomes difficult as more enemies pile on you, and only becomes worse when you see how two attacks landing can lead to your death.
When I finally got past the *first* area after about 40 minutes of futility, I was quickly met by a pair of ninjas. They attacked much faster than I could, dashed backwards when I tried to counter, and would constantly surround me whenever I tried to mount any kind of offense. Before I could figure out a way to get by their attack patterns and move on to the real demons, my hour was up and I left a humbled man.
So far, Nioh can be great. It looks amazing, hints at plenty of depth and is very rewarding when you’re finally able to clear those hurdles. My only concern is that I have yet to figure out if the game is hard because it’s designed to make you play carefully and precisely, or if it’s simply just cheap. Unfortunately, an hour isn’t enough time to determine this, but depending on where it falls will determine whether or not the game will be as great as it could be. Or maybe I just suck, but either way, I’m looking forward to finding out for myself when the game releases for the PlayStation 4 on October 28.
