[h1] High Octane Gameplay With Silly Story [/h1]
Nioh 2 is my first Nioh game. The game is addicting and offer players many option of their preffered playstyle. From weapons, armor, guardian, ninja gadget, and magic, all of them are ever-changing depending on the environment, levels, and bosses. The game is massive with many main-quest, side-quest, boss fight, and gauntlet. Some of the characters are quiet memorable, charming, and cool. Although it can bore me with repetitive enemy and maps, juggling them will hooked me back in. The complete edition also offers end-game DLC with harder bosses, new story, characters, and map, but not much of a new mechanic. The game is amazing, but the repetitiveness is a letdown.
The story is simple, but it feels abandoned and not quiet in-depth. I love games with good stories wether it's simple, funny, complex, or have cool twist, but I can't get immersed enough with this one. The premise is cool, you're a mercenary with yokai power, so in times of war, your partner Tokichiro wanted to reach for success by having alliance with stronger people. It's a cool premise on the surface where you're exploring everywhere to invite strong people like Mumyo, Koroku, and Hanbei, but as I get invested with the story, the game hits you with timeline. Cool, first mission, the year is 1559, let me do this quest real quick, next mission, the year is 1579. Wait, you're saying i've been doing this for 20 years? Tokichiro and Hanbei are old now. What do you mean, I wear the same armor since 20 years? Mumyo still treated me like garbage, after 20 years? Ok cool, next mission, the year is 1602 now, it's 40 years, like what are we doing? It goes the same with DLC where you're going to the past like it skips you 10 years after first mission. Am I in the past for 10 years? Although the execution of the story is okay. I thought the ending was pretty good and heartwarming. I feel like this is a problem of following a historical accurate war timeline. I love to see a shorter timeline let's say a year but so much happened during that year.
There is other thing that makes the game a letdown and that is the repetitiveness of gameplay. I thought fighting the same enemy was my bar minimum of getting bored of this game. Granted, because the game keep summoning Karasu Tengu gatekeeping the door and somehow that bird will never go down. And then it hit you with same map. "Go to this map again because it's swarmed with enemy now", yes it's just a side-quest now, but it's still a tedious thing to go through the same map just to fight the same thing and possibly the same bosses again. And then it hit you with gauntlet, where you're gonna fight everyone you've encountered in that region with waves of enemy, maybe kudama, and bosses at the end. You may say, "Dude, it's so we can have a rematch with these formidable bosses", ah yes, there will be a duel with that only bosses on different quest too. You know what's crazy? The last gauntlet I did on DLC took me about 2 hours of a constant fight. Not exploring the world, not finding new thing, not even testing new combo, just brawl. These repetitiveness are so boring.
But I love how massive the game is. When it's not about repeating the same thing, the game really shines. I love everything about the exploration. The game is linear and small, but every places are connected with shortcut, hidden walls, kudama, and hot spring. I love everything about it. Finding kudama can't be this addicting. Before I have Kudama Sensor, I googled before finishing the quest. The thing about kudama is that, you don't find kudama, kudama find you. It means it reward players that loves exploring all the corner of the map. There's this slick map where there's fire all over the place and you'll think it's not passable, until you found out it does, and that's where Kudama hide. Amazing. Every NPC you met during your quest, boom, new quest, they're asking you for duel. The 1v1 was epic, challenging, and reward you with their items. Not just the map, but also the enemies and bosses. It's always refreshing to find new enemies wether they're harder or more annoying. The bosses in the game are top notch. I think the highlight are on DLC where the bosses are more punishing, challenging, and fair. When I said fair, the game will put you on a big arena and just watch you fight. No small arena gimmick, obstacles, or uneven ground. It's all about your skills and learning bosses moveset. Although there's some lows on bosses design, but I beat them in first try, so I don't want to complain.
I also love the characters. They may not be so connected to you because weird character development, but characters like Mumyo, Raiko, Suzuka, and Okani are beautiful. On the other side, Oda, Hanzo, Benkei, Seimei, and Hayabusa are really cool. They're really charming, have cool backstory, and a formidable opponent. I don't understand anything about japanese history and who they were, but they're not for shows. Like this game is pretty good at introducing and offering new characters but then again, they don't go in-depth on them. I love scampuss, kudama, and some of the enemy design too.
Now this is the biggest highlight of why the game is amazing, the gameplay. It's started super rough on me. I don't like how slow the weapon is, confusing the armor stats are, too many soul core options, overwhelmed with guardian option, and not to mention, I have to play the game. What's interesting is that, instead of going for only one weapon, I distributed the whole stats equally so I can try everything, from tonfa, sword, fist, odachi, spear, hatchet, kusarigamas, and I finally found weapon I like, the bow. Bullseye-ing enemy from across the map, bypassing unnecessary fight on enemy, is amazing. Although switchglaive is my 2nd favorite because I can't optimize bow enough on bosses. It was really slow because I used odachi, turns out I don't like that weapon, I love slacing enemy, changing stance, and combo with yokai abilities. The armor set was overwhelming, but then I tried every possible combination armor set that leads me to try other weapon. There's so many guardian you'll get, but if you have the patience of reading what it does and the category, the game will click on you. I love brute guardian because it rewards me for engaging counterattack, you will have 3 yokai abilities so I manage them to do differently for different situation. The worst introduction was combo. Every weapon got their own combo, press this and it will do this, press that and it will do this, like what the hell is this game. But then, you learn. Every combo possible on every weapon lead on the same button, just different rhytm. Thirty hours later, I did high stance combo into mid stance combo into low stance combo, and it flows like a water. It's an amazing experience. It doesn't end here, you will be introduced with magic and ninja gadget. This add more variability on certain enemy, exploratiton, and boss fight. What's amazing is they always recharged if you're dead/back in shrine, so you can always be prepared on boss fight, that is knowing the bosses are challenging enough. Buffing yourself, putting traps on boss arena, managing combo, are the most amazing experience I had in the game.
Nioh 2 is an amazing game with amazing experience that offers you varied playstyle to your prefference. It has charming characters, fun explorations, challenging boss fights, and good DLCs. The game can get you lost in the timeline that leads in confusing character development and story, but you can still see what the game wants to tell you. The repetitiveness of gameplay may be the biggest thing you should considered when trying Nioh 2 because it will really dissapoint you if you don't like facing same enemy, same boss fight, a load of waves of same enemies. To my experience, I'm satisfied I get to try Nioh 2, trying the franchise as a whole. I give Nioh 2, 8,25/10.
