Nioh

After 100+ hours, I earned my first Platinum Trophy on NIOH. So, obviously, I loved the game. Hopefully, you'll enjoy it as much as I did. The Map You select Missions from a Map. There are Main Missions, which drive the story, and Sub Missions which use existing levels populated with different enemies to create additional content. Feel free to fight through them to advance the story or farm them for additional loot. Missions The game plays like a Souls game. Battle your way to the next checkpoint, which is a Kodama Spirit Shrine. If you die, and you will, you'll respawn at the last Shrine you visited. All of the enemies will respawn as well. Your XP is called Amrita. When you die, you drop it. You have a Guardian Spirit in the game that gives you special stat bonuses. On your first death, your spirit will stay with your Amrita to guard it. So, you must battle your way back to your Amrita to reclaim it without your Spirit Bonuses. This is a challenge. If you die again, you lose your Amrita, but recover your Spirit. A special item will allow you to recover your Amrita, but they are few and far between. Or, you can abandon your Amrita and call back your Spirit at a Shrine. So, there is always tension when you are battling your way through the Missions. Loot The loot system is amazing and rewarding if you want to spend time at the blacksmith looking at inventory screens. You can have weapons, armor, and two charms. Each of these gives you stat bonuses. When you visit a blacksmith you can customize your weapons and armor. You can change the look, re-roll the stats, swap specific stats from one item to another, or level up an old piece of gear to increase it's stat boosts. This is pretty awesome and NIOH is very generous with Loot. It's much easier to customize your character in NIOH, than in the Souls games because you have more stat bonus slots. In a Souls game, you may have to level up 5 times to use a cool sword, but in NIOH, you can equip a new piece of armor or a new charm or a new spirit to boost your stats to use that sword. Combat It's much faster than Souls and maybe even a bit faster than Bloodborne. The enemies seem to hit harder and chase you farther, than in the Dark Souls and Bloodborne games. The combat is incredibly fast and you can get hit by multiple enemies at the same time resulting in an instant death. The larger enemies that have 3 hit combos that can kill you on the second hit. The combat is very fast and precise. As you advance through the game you'll unlock new moves to extend combos and a variety of parry attacks. To block, hold L1. To parry, hold L1 and press one of your attack buttons. You can choose which parry you want to execute. This gives you more freedom than the Souls games because you can choose how you parry the attack. Do you want to perform a wide arcing attack or a powerful counter with your parry? You can decide. Weapons There are 5 weapon types. Sword, Spear, Dual Swords, Chain Sickle, and BIG AXE. Each of these weapons has 3 stances. Low, which is good for quick attacks. Medium, which is good for counters and multiple opponents. High which is good to deal a large amount of damage to a single enemy. So, the learning curve for combat is steeper than the Souls games. You carry two Melee weapons and two Missile weapons with you at all times. You can swap between the weapons and the stances quickly during combat. Ki Ki functions like Stamina. Using a weapon, blocking, or evading consumes Ki. Your Ki refreshes quickly. If you run out of Ki, this is VERY BAD! You cannot move, attack, evade, or block for over a second. If you are hit in this state, you take extra damage. Basically, if you run out of Ki in a boss fight and you get hit, you're dead. You really want to avoid running out of Ki!!! To make matters worse, Demonic Enemies pollute the Earthly Realm with Yokai energy, which slows your Ki recovery. As your Ki replenishes, a timed button press will boost the recovery speed and clear any demonic energy around you with a Ki Pulse. You'll need to pull off Ki Pulses in combat when you battle the tougher enemies. Story The Story follows William, who ventures to Japan and becomes the first western samurai. A maniac named Kelley wants to start a war in Japan so he can mine Amrita. Amrita will turn a human, animal, or guardian spirit into a superhuman monster. There is no shortage of enemies in NIOH. You'll fight humans, undead, demons, giant monsters, a variety of bosses, and all of the fights are engaging. Multiplayer There is Co-op in the game and PVP was added recently. Rating The game is M for Mature, but there's no nudity or sex, just demon slaying violence. Value The main game can take you about 40 hours to complete if you rush through. If you want to finish every Mission, this could take 100 hours. Then there's a New Game + Mode called Way of the Strong, where you can replay any mission in the default or Way of the Strong Mode. Way of the Strong, populates the levels with higher level enemies. Once you get the hang of the combat system, it's really difficult to put down. NIOH is incredibly rewarding on so many levels. Definitely play this if you want a challenge, love Ninja and Samurai, or are hungry for a Bloodborne Style game.

No me gustó que me asesinaran a cada rato ! Pero....... Ya es cosa mía jajajaja tiene muy buenas gráficas y te enseña muchas posturas para ataques es algo mmmm "complicado" pero como el juego te va dictando paciencia y experiencia de combate cosas que tienes que ir usando y acostumbrando a recordar , me pareció muy bien juego tal vez compré el 2

I got the package sealed which was a nice bonus because the ad said used. Unless this is opposite of what EB Games does and claims an open product is new when in fact it is used.

Nioh is an Incredible, Challenging, Booty filled game that uses parts of the Souls formula and capitalizes. Nioh offers a nice mixture of available stat and character builds. You are obviously a Samurai who can use a Katana, Dual Katana, Spear, Axe or Kusigarama. In addition to your main weapons there are Bows, Rifles and Hand cannons but combat and ways to play Nioh go beyond just that. There are stats to level Ninjitsu and Onymo. Ninjitsu offers Ninja type items such as shurikens and smoke bombs along with poison and paralysis weapon buffs while Onymo uses magic and elemental weapon buffs. While I personally don't use much Ninjitsu both are great to have leveled up, ready for use and have plenty of other passive and active abilities. So you could technically level to be more of a Ninja or Magic user than a Samurai but at the end of the day the weapon combat is still going to be an extremely part of combat. The combat system is fluid and spot on. Team Ninja added a target system that wasn't in the alpha demo. This is an extremely useful addition that makes playing the game better. As for the mechanics, there are 3 stances and switching between them during combat is simple. There's high, mid and low stances all of which provide different attacks with each primary weapon mentioned previously. The player can have two main and ranged weapons equipped at all times, switching between the two is an easy transition in combat. There is also a Ki [stamina] bar in Nioh but unlike other games there's a mechanic called Ki Pulse which allows you to regain a lost portion of Ki by tapping a button at the right time. This is extremely helpful to continue attacking or to have the ability to move from offensive to guard against a series of attacks without running out of Ki and being dead meat. There are also Guardian Spirits who give you different stat boosts and allow you to call upon them using their strength to perform a Super [Living Weapon] for a certain amount of time. Each spirit varies and there are items to improve length and other aspects of the Spirit, or Living Weapon. While the player starts with one of, I believe, three Spirits, throughout the game you encounter many other spirits that are added to your list of Guardian Spirits accessible via Shrines. To utilize all the spirits and bonuses they offer it is wise not to ignore the Spirit stat when leveling up. While Nioh doesn't offer an integrated open world like Souls games the map along with the progression work extremely well. Once a mission is complete you are sent to a Map which holds the location of Missions, Sub Missions along with a castle logo in which you will find a Shrine (your saving menu), Blacksmith, Dojo, Teahouse and Storehouse; feel like I've forgotten one. I often felt this took me out of the game having to visit the Blacksmith and break down or sell all the booty I received during the mission then had to decide what to do next. Despite my own quarrel, as I said, the setup and system actually works great. In the Blacksmith you will find Buy, Sell, Forge, Dismantle, Refashion (change appearance), Reforge along with Soul Forge. Soul Forge is an extremely useful option in which you're able to upgrade an item you really like and ensure it stays useful in DMG or DEF. The problem is that often times the cost for soul matching is rather expensive so at times it's best to find or forge a new weapon or armor to use. It's a great aspect just one that I wish were more viable, rather, cheaper. However, some items are priced cheap or reasonable and I find it to be a great feature in the game. As is reforging which allows you to remove a perk or perks from weapons or armor to find ones that are more suitable or likable to the player. I strongly suggest familiarizing yourself with everything the Blacksmith offers and don't be afraid to use them. The Dojo offers training along with challenges once Ninjitsu, Onmyo, weapon familiarity, etc reach certain levels and you've progressed so far into the game. While the Teahouse, which unlocks later, is where you can join a clan. Clans give you bonus stats and allow you to fight the spirits (fallen soldiers, sword in ground, forget exact name) for a weekly battle. Also the teahouse offers Gestures, items and other goods that can be bought with the currency from fighting those who have fallen. Nioh is definitely a challenging experience that does get somewhat easier with time. If it's too hard one could always spend time leveling or focus on using the Guardian Spirit/Living Weapon during boss fights to make the game easier. While I do see some areas for improvement or things I'd personally prefer Team Ninja truly knocked this one out the park. Nioh is an incredible game that is definitely worth playing. If you're not a fan of the Souls series there's a chance you will not like this. However there is also a chance you will as I've read quite a few comments online from those who didn't like Souls games but were loving Nioh. Either way, if Nioh has caught your attention and you don't mind a little challenge do yourself a favor and pick this game up. From top to bottom it is solid and a blast to play.

It came super fast but I am a little disappointed it was the PlayStation hits box.