Nioh

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GreenGoo
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Re: Nioh

Post by GreenGoo »

coopasonic wrote: Mon Nov 27, 2017 3:58 pm I finished the base game content yesterday. Steam says it took me 61 hours though some of that would have been distraction time. In game stats tell me I died 573 times over the course of the game.
At this point I'm 93 hours into the game and I'm not sure how far along. About 1/2 way I'd say. Some of that is the game idling, but not a huge amount of it.

I just checked. There appear to be approx. 23 main story missions, I'm on mission 9.

So...yeah.
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Re: Nioh

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I may have hit my wall. After killing the boss in a box, it was only a sub-boss (I knew that) with the only thing left to do on the mission was the mission boss. I don't think I have it in me to make 10's of corpse runs as I try to take yet another boss down. I'm a slow learner I'm slowly learning, and I'm slow in general. Most of the time I know exactly what I'm supposed to do, but fail to do it in time. Sometimes I dodge too early, sometimes too late, sometimes I get nicked by the boss's elbow. As far as I can tell, each boss has a certain move set for their first 50% of life, and when you knock them past 50%, they break out a new move set that you need to learn. It's such an iterative, painful experience learning each boss, and I'm so bad at it, that I don't know how much I have left in me. Knowing that I have to do 50% damage before I even get to see and start learning the new move set is demoralizing.

The game is fantastic and up until now I've persevered through sheer force of will. That will is starting to run out. I've even started a new Dark Souls game because Dark Souls is much easier with its slower and more methodical combat. "easier" being a relative term.

I don't count, but I'm sure it takes me 30-50 tries to kill each boss. Sometimes more. I have never reached 100 serious tries yet on any boss, but I can see that happening in the future. 100+ times I run back from the shrine spawn and fight the same fight over and over again. Just writing that out is daunting and disheartening.

I've tried debuffing with the discord debuff, but the problem isn't damage. I simply cannot stay alive long enough through each boss's move set to make it to the end of their health bar. Doing more damage doesn't make me a better dodger, or predictor of what's coming next.
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Re: Nioh

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I don't know where I'm going to find the patience. Up until now it has been frustrating, even anger inducing, but it was also fun. Now it's none of those things. I'm not having fun, I'm not angry, the frustration I'm feeling is a completely different sort of frustration. Before it was damn, I'm trying hard and screwing up, I better do better next time. Now it's like, why bother?

I just ran 10-12 times against the white tiger. I'd say 4 of those times I reached his second moveset, which includes a wide swinging eye beam that swings back and forth 2-3 times with infinite range. Presumably I need to dodge 2-3 times using the iframes to avoid damage, but because it's the second moveset, I have little practice and it is constantly surprising me. Blocking (which I tend not to do anyway) results in huge chunks of damage.

Anyway, that means 8 times I never even reached his second 50%. And this is not a tough fight. Or not supposed to be anyway. Here's an example of what's causing me trouble. The cat telegraphs a charge. So far so good. Lots of options, but the best I've found is to dodge forward and to the right (could be left, I just chose right) and hammer him in the side as he recovers from the charge. 9 times out of 10 he lands and continues to face the direction of the charge. 1 time out of 10 he lands and spins around all in one move. Often 180 degrees, but sometimes less. What happens to my dodge is that because I'm locked on the boss, and my camera moves relative to the direction of the boss, and my dodge is relative to my camera, when the boss is not where I expect him to be, my dodge will often land right in front of him. So I'm happily dodging and combo'ing, dodging and combo'ing, then for no discernible reason, he'll land funny, the camera will spin wildly, and my dodge will either fail completely or I will end up in front of him where he swipes pretty hard. I can often recover from even this, dodging his swipes. But not often enough.

If I just spammed healing pots I could make it much farther, but then I'll die anyway as I learn his second moveset, and you have a finite number of pots. Eventually I'm gonna run dry and that'll leave me short of the next boss.

I realize this is pure whining, and that I need to "git gud". I may simply not be cut out for this, and that's the worst part of all of it. I may have reached a game that I can't beat, because it takes me too long to figure everything out and then even longer to utilize that knowledge. I have no doubt that I will, one day, defeat this boss. I'll do everything exactly as I have been doing, but instead of screwing up the timing, or getting hosed by a camera angle change, or because the boss picks his easier to predict moves instead of some of the harder ones, I'll get through it. At which point, so what? I don't think I have *ever* felt satisfaction at beating a boss in this game. Relief? Sure. Happiness or satisfaction? No way. Fighting the same fight 10's of times and finally getting through it one time just doesn't seem to be satisfying. It feels like luck. Like, *this time* I didn't get screwed over or dodge too slowly. To me the dodge feels the same when I succeed or when I fail. I anticipate the move and dodge. Whoops, didn't work. Whoops, didn't work. Whoops, didn't work. Whoops, didn't work. Hey, it worked. Move on to the next boss move, repeat.

Hurray.

I so desperately want to keep playing the game. The regular mobs are maybe a bit too easy, but they are fun. I think I might just be too old to handle the razor thin (to me anyway) margins of error. Rarely (although the multi-swing eyebeam is one) do I not know what I need to do, I just fail to do it.

I apologize for the negativity, I'm just venting my spleen. I can't bring myself to spend hours running from the shrine back to the boss any more. That I might have to forget about playing the game sucks.
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Re: Nioh

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To give you an idea about how long it takes me to defeat a boss, I can often reach maximum familiarity with several weapons from when I start fighting the boss, to when I finally defeat the boss. Several. Like, more than 2.

edit: I just realized something. For some reason, sometimes, the camera doesn't reposition directly behind you towards your target. Sometimes it's slightly off center, like it's looking over your shoulder instead of over the top of your head. This changes a bunch of things, including perspective and anticipation of angles. That's fucked up. It's not the reason I'm having trouble, but it is part of the reason. I spent several dodges examining the effect, and trying to get the camera to "straighten up". Eventually it did, but as far as I could tell, it was just randomly broken and then randomly fixed. It wasn't pushed to the side because I had my back against something that was blocking it, as sometimes happens in games like resident evil/silent hill. It's just...misaligned. Grrr.

edit2: I've turned off "auto avoid obstacles" just in case I'm wrong and it is because objects are screwing with it.
edit3: That's not the problem, and I'm too used to the setting being on that it's screwing with my normal play. back on it goes.
edit4: And it crashed in the middle of the fight. It was too early to tell if it was going to be a good attempt or not, but that's enough for me to put it on the shelf for the rest of the night.
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Re: Nioh

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I just want to mention that you are being heard. There is just not much I can say in response. Each time you bitch I am tempted to start the game up again. I thought I should point out that after you finish the game there is a fight available that has White Tiger with two other hard enemies (I can't remember the exact enemies, but some type of bird thing as I recall) in the same location. I spent a good bit of time trying to defeat that, but I don't think I ever did... dammit I am *this* close to reinstalling.
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GreenGoo
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Re: Nioh

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Turns out I was doing it wrong.

Got pissed off enough that I said f**ck it, and decided to stick to White Tiger like glue, never disengaging unless I had absolutely no choice. 5 attempts later it was dead.

:roll:
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Re: Nioh

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coopasonic wrote: Wed Jan 09, 2019 10:32 pm I just want to mention that you are being heard. There is just not much I can say in response. Each time you bitch I am tempted to start the game up again. I thought I should point out that after you finish the game there is a fight available that has White Tiger with two other hard enemies (I can't remember the exact enemies, but some type of bird thing as I recall) in the same location. I spent a good bit of time trying to defeat that, but I don't think I ever did... dammit I am *this* close to reinstalling.
Tengu.

They are a fight all by themselves, but if you have room to maneuver they are relatively easy. I mean, they are tougher than fiends and such, but you do need to engage in tactics for multiple attack sequences before you can finish them. They are like 1/4 or 1/8 bosses, in that you actually need to dodge and stay mobile, but they don't have the hp. The first time you see them is the sub-mission after Umi Bozu, which is the last of a series of waves.

The first sub-mission after White Tiger has you fighting a Tengu supported by 2 Mages, who are also summoners if you let them get a chance. I couldn't do that fight without splitting them and fighting them separately. I sure am excited to fight 2 Tengu and White Tiger at the same time. :?

I feel kind of bad about venting like I did, but I was at the end of my rope. I never did look up how others were defeating him, but I will in the future. I can't be doing that for the next 14 bosses + additional sub-bosses. I think the game said I died 71 times (which was over the span of 3 days) before I finally beat him. I'm not even embarrassed, much. Of course it is just ridiculous, because quite honestly he was one of the easier bosses up until now. I just kept getting f**ked over by missing my dodges by a single iframe, or a fast camera reposition that messed with my dodge direction. There were a few times where I dodged *through* the body of the tiger, but you don't have enough iframes, so I made it 1/2 way through, and died inside the tiger. Was pretty funny to watch.

The fight *seemed* like it was an engage/disengage/engage fight, like many of them are, but in this case I only ever had to leave melee range when it was doing a AoE spin move. By the time I got it down to 25% I just living weaponed the hell out of it, but it had a sliver left, so I threw 3 fire shurikens at it and it died.

I have 30 unspent samurai points. :oops: In my defense (again) a lot of the skills are just extra attacks on the end of combinations and other utility type skills. I did look into spending some of them and nothing I saw was immediately helpful in the boss fight.

I also have a few ninjutsu and Onmyo points.

Being a generalist is not as fun as it was at first. I don't have a plan going forward.
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Re: Nioh

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I've been spending my time with Dark Souls, the original version on steam, not the re-mastered version.

I plan to get back to Nioh, I just needed a change of pace after banging my head repeatedly against a brick wall until I finally broke through.

Plus, I'm a fickle gamer. Now I'm fickler.
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Re: Nioh

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I'm back. I'm just starting a new zone that I didn't reach my first attempt at the game.

However, I'm posting a link to a youtube video where a player describes and shows you advanced combat techniques. It really illustrates what is possible in Nioh. It's easy to fall into spear/mid-stance and just poke every time there is an opening, but that is incredibly boring and kind of insulting to the game designers in that there are entire systems here for you to utilize and you're ignoring them. It'd be like playing SFII and only using jump->heavy kick->heavy sweep as Ryu/Ken, over and over again.

Now, some of these techniques are way out of my ability range, but I'm certainly going to be exploring them and trying them out on the lesser mobs. That said, I practiced parrying a TON before and was never reliable enough to try it outside of a controlled environment except rarely, versus weak minions.

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Re: Nioh

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Fyi, I'm playing with all cloth armor this time around. Since it never seemed to matter what I was wearing the first time, getting hit meant dying, so I decided that if the plan is to never be hit, I should be as fast and agile as possible. I still get hit. :cry:

It actually works really well, the main problem being staggered from even the slightest nick. I *never* block unless I have absolutely no choice, as it is my experience that the ki drain and subsequent butchering that comes after is far worse than missing a dodge. That said, I watch other players and they are blocking boss attacks that I thought for sure would completely drain your ki, so I'm not sure what's going on. There are plenty of videos claiming that unlike Dark Souls, in Nioh you block rather than dodge. That has not been my experience at all.

In a moment of rare pride from a game that is constantly shaming me, I managed to get an in game achievement for defeating Tachibana Muneshige (warrior of the west boss) without getting hit once, which also means no healing. For reasons that I am not willing to go into, I also did not use any Jutsu or items of any kind. I am also not going to discuss how many attempts it took, my near insanity by the end, or the amount of profanity involved.

I noted that there are additional in-game achievements (as opposed to steam achievements) for defeating later multi-boss fights without taking a hit. I won't be attempting those.
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Re: Nioh

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26 deaths learning to beat the Toad. 39 deaths learning to beat the Ogress. I would consider both to be fairly easy bosses, after the fact. Ogress, once I figured her out, I got her to 25% then died, then killed her on the next try. I'm confident I could kill her in less than 5 tries from now on. At least on normal. No opinion on NG+, which I seriously doubt I will play.

So...that's what it's like for me. Die, die, die, die, die, die, die, die, wait a minute, die, die, die, die, hey that plus this, die, die, die, die, win!
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Re: Nioh

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I'm just gonna say that the default onmyo casting time (before you get the insta-cast, if you do) is specifically designed to be too long to cast during most boss' combo recovery time. There are some bosses where you have to actually knock them down to be able to cast, and some where you need to be on the other side of the field, but there are many that you simply can *not* buff/debuff during the fight. Particularly the fights where they've decided that putting the fight in a small box is a good idea.

There are so many times there was almost, but not quite, enough time. Usually you get the cast off, and you get buffed, but you are still locked in position while the animation finishes. I don't know how many times I've been mashing the dodge button, swearing at the game to give me back control of my character so I could get out of the way of the cement dump truck barrelling down on me.

That's all. Well, fuck you, game designers. Now that's all.

edit: To be clear, the casting time is about 1.5 seconds. Boss fights -->mostly<--- do not give you 1.5 seconds of uninterrupted peace. Sometimes they give you 1.3 seconds of peace just to fuck with you.
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Re: Nioh

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Huh. I can't actually kill tall boy in 2 rounds. Now what? There are no more foot crystals to destroy and my odachi is doing 25 points against his legs.

It sure does seem like they expect you to kill it in 2 rounds, but...I can't. My dps is just not high enough, and that's with a wind guardian kicking in extra wind damage.

I guess I'm supposed to kill the last bit of health 25 points at a time? That could take awhile, meanwhile I'm getting one shotted if he touches me.

I'm not annoyed or frustrated as per my usual. I'm confused. What happens if you reach this spot and just don't have the dps?

edit: never mind. On my very next attempt I cheesed it with a sloth talisman. Even then, I needed to jump off the cliff swinging as I went to reach his withdrawing head. My last swing before he was out of range did it. Still, though. Seems like a dps test in a game where it's not easy to just leave and gear up and return with more dps. The mechanics of the fight are trivial.
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Re: Nioh

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For the record I'm having a much easier time this play through, and not just in the sections that I had already seen in my first attempt. I don't know if the difficulty is uneven through the levels or what, but a number of bosses I've been able to defeat with less than 10 attempts. That might seem like a lot, but for me it might as well be my first attemp, I have to try so many times usually.
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Re: Nioh

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I just wanted to jump in and say I remember almost nothing about this game. You're welcome!
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Re: Nioh

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There is only a single mission left on the map.

I believe it is the final mission, although it seems clear that additional, side missions open up after the story is finished. Then NG+.

I am, god help me, toying with the idea of playing through again with a high stamina tanking build. I've basically worn only light clothing for this playthrough, using mobility and dodges to make my way through. I think it's probably the best way for my play style, despite my constant complaining about missing dodges. The only downside imo is being staggered when you get hit (which is already a failure of its own). You are rocked so hard that you often can't recover before the combo continues and finishes you off.
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Re: Nioh

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Here's a dude parrying the ever living hell out of the 2 master mission (unlocked after the story, I guess?) and when he's not parrying, he's timely guarding, which I admit I don't know what that is or how it works.

The problem with some of these techniques is that they only seem to work on human npcs, and even then only on base attacks. Skills don't seem to be parry-able (not sure about timely guards). For the record I parried the hell out of the spear master (mystical skill unlock) in the dojo repeatedly and ended the fight with 75% of my health and no elixirs used. Now spear is one of the easiest weapons to use even if you don't poke everything to death, but it was still a big accomplishment for me. Compare that to the Kusarigama master, who I could only parry once in a blue moon and had to rely on counter attacking during his recoveries.

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Re: Nioh

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My parrying is becoming mediocre, which is a major improvement!

I just parried 15 revenants to death in a row without healing, using both katana and spear, against kusarigama, daichi, katana, spear and dual katana. I've also had some luck parrying with kusarigama in a previous play session.

It's fun.

Timely guard is a skill (like, you need to pay for it in the skill tree) that staggers an attacker if you block right before the attack. A second skill knocks the attacker down if you timely guard then block again (which is what you can see in the video I posted).
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Re: Nioh

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GreenGoo wrote: Sat Apr 13, 2019 10:16 pm My parrying is becoming mediocre, which is a major improvement!
Parrying is getting better. I managed to kill the Red Oni using only parries, and I did 75% of the female ninja's health by parrying her dash attack, something I claimed was "too hard" earlier in the thread. There's still room for improvement. I can't parry every time I want to do it, and a lot of the time I have to see an attack combo coming (from tells) before I can parry it, but the Red Oni was pure adrenaline and parrying as the attack started, which was pretty sweet. Parrying is still incredibly risky, as even low level minions can do 50-100% of your health with a big enough weapon and a heavy enough swing (the combination of which just happens to be the easiest to parry).

What I'm struggling with right now is the "timely guard" as illustrated in the video above. It's a button that is normally only ever held down (you typically hold block, you don't have to time it), rather than pressed, so my muscle memory for that finger/button combination is slow, both physically and in anticipation. I'm making progress though.
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Re: Nioh

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GreenGoo wrote: Sun Apr 07, 2019 4:42 pm Huh. I can't actually kill tall boy in 2 rounds. Now what?
The answer is to stand on the mid-tier landings, wait for him to slam his hand down, dodge the hand, smash the crystal in it, then living weapon the hell out of his head just like you do when you smash the crystals in his feet. It's a little more dangerous imo, but if you don't have the dps to do it in 2 cycles, you can do it in 3 (or even 4, he has 2 hands. Well he actually has 6 hands, but only uses 2 of them to smash you/has crystals in them).
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Re: Nioh

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This is free on Epic Game Store until the 16th. I feel it is one of the more accessible souls-like games. Worth checking out for free!
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Re: Nioh

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GreenGoo wrote: Fri Apr 19, 2019 4:22 pm
GreenGoo wrote: Sun Apr 07, 2019 4:42 pm Huh. I can't actually kill tall boy in 2 rounds. Now what?
The answer is to stand on the mid-tier landings, wait for him to slam his hand down, dodge the hand, smash the crystal in it, then living weapon the hell out of his head just like you do when you smash the crystals in his feet. It's a little more dangerous imo, but if you don't have the dps to do it in 2 cycles, you can do it in 3 (or even 4, he has 2 hands. Well he actually has 6 hands, but only uses 2 of them to smash you/has crystals in them).
You can also use cannon fire on the amarita in his chest to get him to fall a 3rd time. Or if you built for thrown weapons (who does this? Me, for one), you can just beat him down with shurikens and kunai.
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Re: Nioh

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So I started playing on the PS5 version, and have 2 characters with only 1 more mission left (I think). Demon King revealed. I'm assuming this is the last mission, but I might be wrong.

Anyway, I keep making alts, and since they can't be deleted without deleting all Nioh saved data on the PS5, I have too many characters taking up space. Super annoying for someone with alt-itis like I have.

I had about 5 characters on the PC at this point. So that makes at least 7 characters I've played through the entire game except for the last mission. I honestly don't know why I don't finish it with at least 1 character. It's weird and a mystery even to me.

Now with more dark souls-like experience, some parts of the game that were hard before are super easy now. And some seem to actually be harder, which is weird.

Anyway, this is an amazing game. I love it. And I haven't even mentioned the loot system or crafting, both of which are excellent as well.
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Re: Nioh

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GreenGoo wrote: Fri May 19, 2023 8:31 am So I started playing on the PS5 version, and have 2 characters with only 1 more mission left (I think). Demon King revealed. I'm assuming this is the last mission, but I might be wrong.

Anyway, I keep making alts, and since they can't be deleted without deleting all Nioh saved data on the PS5, I have too many characters taking up space. Super annoying for someone with alt-itis like I have.

I had about 5 characters on the PC at this point. So that makes at least 7 characters I've played through the entire game except for the last mission. I honestly don't know why I don't finish it with at least 1 character. It's weird and a mystery even to me.

Now with more dark souls-like experience, some parts of the game that were hard before are super easy now. And some seem to actually be harder, which is weird.

Anyway, this is an amazing game. I love it. And I haven't even mentioned the loot system or crafting, both of which are excellent as well.
You do know there are 2 sequels right? Both of which improve on the one that came before it. Nioh 2 and Wo Long.
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Re: Nioh

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Yep.
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Re: Nioh

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Finished NG with 4 characters now, on the PS5. Have started NG+ with two of them.

I'm debating continuing to play a game I know how to play or to start to learn Nioh 2. Probably a little of both for now.
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Re: Nioh

Post by coopasonic »

Nioh 2 is a pretty natural progression from Nioh. It adds some mechanics but it isn't an overwhelming change.

Nioh 3 errr, I mean , whatever they actually called it (Wo Long), is a pretty big change but still feels pretty familiar.
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