On the last day of February, the editors received the key for Nioh 2 – an extremely hardcore action game from Team Ninja, which became the prequel to the first part.

On the last day of February, the editors received the key for Nioh 2 – an extremely hardcore action game from Team Ninja, which became the prequel to the first part. After the first Dark Souls, I fell in love with the genre, later called souls-like, and therefore volunteered to make out this game. Then it seemed to me that experience would allow me to easily run through this “parody” for a couple of evenings, but the first mob clearly explained that I was wrong. Now I am a little comfortable in this world of demonic samurai, which means it’s time to tell the story of meeting one of the most difficult (but far from the most successful) games in my life.

Stage One: Denial

We make a reservation right away – I am new to the original Nioh, and therefore I will judge the prequel without regard to the first part. She came out in 2017 and received very positive reviews, but she was frightened off by the excessive “Japanese” in the setting and the PR campaign, which for some reason did not hesitate to constantly mention Dark Souls. By that time, the market was just flooded with mountains of clones of creations From Software – The Surge, Lords of the Fallen, (to some extent) Salt and Sanctuary. Therefore, I decided that the cunning Team Ninja simply decided to stick to a common theme.

Open any Nioh video and see for yourself that it has all the attributes of the Souls series. The player respawn at the bonfires that were called shrines here, walks along the corridors and opens shortcuts, accumulates Amrita (local souls) and dies regularly.

All fights also send us to From Software games – most often the hero has to circle around opponents, repelling blows and waiting for the “window” for his own attacks. Missed the attack and died? It doesn’t matter – at the place of death a grave will arise from which it will be possible to raise the lost Amrita. In general, I started the game with the clear intention to take the huge sword of атиdati, find a scary mask and cosplay Giant Dad in a new setting.

But nothing worked out for me – once in the world of the game and feeling the realities of local battle mechanics, I quickly realized that there would be no easy walk. And this is not a cliche that is customary to describe the gameplay of all souls-like – in Nioh I was really trampled into the ground by the most primitive of all enemies – Gaki, who is even ashamed to show.

Stage Two: Anger

The combat system Nioh 2 completely does not follow the traditions of the founder of the genre. Dark Souls is considered a complex game – even the Prepare to Die registry entry from the PC version reminds us of this. At the same time, from the point of view of the combat mechanics, From Software games were always simple, if not primitive: weak and strong punches, somersaults, blocking with a shield, and parrying – the same game designer bike that is hardly worth reinventing.

Team Ninja, however, decided not to follow this: after Dark Souls, the “battle” of Nioh 2 explodes the brain with a variety of mechanics. In battles, the protagonist has three stances: the upper one allows you to deliver the most powerful blows in the game, which spend a lot of Ki – local stamina, the lower one makes it possible to bring down a hail of weak but quick attacks on the enemy due to minimal energy consumption, and the middle stance is a kind of mix between them.

In each of the racks, the hero has two buttons for striking – fast and slow. At the same time, movie sets of all types of weapons in different racks differ dramatically. At the beginning of the game, I chose Kusarigama – a sickle, to the handle of which a chain with a heavy counterweight is attached. And if the hero inflicted light blows in the lower stance with a blade at lightning speed, then in the upper stance the same weak strokes turned into prolonged swings with a sinker – remembering all the basic animations even for one weapon was not so simple.

The stances also affect the animation of the dodges: if in the high the protagonist will ride around the field like a potato crop, then in the low one he will be able to gallop around like a hunter from Bloodborne. But further – more! Each of the eleven types of weapons in Nioh 2 has its own skill tree: for special experience points, you can open new tricks, add-ons for combos and passive abilities. Three more trees relate to the basic skills of the character to fight and use the magic of local demons – Youkai.

There are also attributes in Nioh 2 that can be improved by experience – standard health, strength, agility, etc. for all RPGs. Each parameter affects the ability of the protagonist to handle a particular type of weapon, and also increases the supply of HP, stamina and mana. Even in the game there is magic, a demonic form and a special parry, which is necessary to reflect the most powerful blows of the enemy. There are regular parries too – but first you have to buy them, and then remember what rack they generally work in.

I would definitely stop there, but I’m not an employee of Team Ninja, and therefore in Nioh 2 there is another strange mechanics – Ki ripple. Because of her, every fight here is also a rhythm game. After each hit (or combo, if you are very good), the main character should stand in the base rack: if at that moment you press a special button, the game will restore part of your endurance. The better the timing, the greater the bonus.

If you, like me, have not played Nioh before, then now you probably think: well, a bonus and a bonus – let them learn casuals. But no, this is core mechanics, without which the game is unlikely to be able to pass. Kicks, dodges and blocks – all this eats stamina at such a pace that over time I stopped thinking about the blows – it was much more important to press R1 in time and complete the pulsation Ki.

It would seem that such an arsenal of techniques should simplify the passage, but this is completely not so. Everything happens exactly the opposite – instead of cutting down the heads of youkai and local bandits on the run, I approached every battle, afraid to forget about some mechanics and tricks, and this stress increased tenfold in boss fights.

Stage Three: Bargaining

A pile of mechanics wounded the soul of the Dark Souls fan in the first minutes of the game, but it was too late to retreat. Having hardly reached even the first boss, I fell into an enchanting cycle of deaths and restarts, which was repeated a couple of dozen times – fortunately, in the level design Team Ninja also did not give a damn about From Software patterns and placed respawn points literally at the entrance to the arena for a fight. Once again, returning to the sanctuary, I suspected something was amiss and began to analyze the situation.

Attention was drawn to the glowing red graves, which are abundant in Nioh 2. This is a kind of attempt by Team Ninja to revive the world of RPG: when a player dies, his character’s grave appears in the worlds of other users. Having disturbed her, you can cause an angry spirit and fight him, in order to then appropriate his weapon or armor.

Receiving a hat even from ordinary Yokai, I did not really strive to call other users’ characters for sparring – but in vain. It was this mechanics that saved the passage of Nioh 2 for me by changing my outlook on the game. All this time I was waiting for Nioh 2 to suddenly turn into a regular souls-like game, although in reality I just needed to see in it … Diablo.

Having slaughtered 15 red ghosts, I completely updated the character’s gear – and the terrible demonic horse that was waiting for me at the end of the level suddenly caught up with me. If before that he easily pierced my defense with two blows, and with a strong grip he actually shot me, now I have a chance to get close to him, having saved enough strength to attack.

A similar story was repeated with the second boss – I worked out the perfect tactic, but could not break through his block with the kusarigama. But half an hour is farm, and now I’m not so much afraid of the fire that the enemy commands, and my new spear really does damage to the boss. Of course, I immediately had to forget about the external aesthetics – in the screenshot below, my heroine suddenly grew a mustache because of a helmet – but this is a sacrifice you can make.

Items in Nioh 2 can be knocked out literally from each mob – by the end of the first level I had accumulated under 40 different types of weapons. Many of them are repeated – I had at least five kusarigs alone. Subsequently, the protagonist will meet the blacksmith and get the opportunity to combine weapons, melt them and collect new ones to fit their current needs – why not Diablo?

Stage Four: Acceptance

Realizing this feature of Nioh 2, I was able to greatly facilitate my passage. Of course, the bosses still beat me in the face, and sometimes I had to come back to them several times only to be able to study their battle patterns. However, the game itself ceased to be unnaturally complex – I was able to control the complexity curve myself, once a couple of hours announcing the farm time of the red phantoms.

At that moment, the game finally began to unfold, and it turned out that she still had something to boast of besides the super-complex “battle”. For example, the character editor in Nioh 2 is the best I’ve ever seen in souls-like games. I spent about an hour in it, because there are such parameters as “depth of the middle of the chin” or “chest volume”. However, collecting the character is better than in the standard set, it didn’t work out for me – but thanks also to Team Ninja, because now you can’t look at From Software templates without tears.

I have questions about the design of enemies, but this can be attributed to individual preferences. The demons in Nioh 2 are inspired by Japanese culture and are often monsters that can really be found in local folklore. In fairness, most of them in the game look even more intimidating than on traditional engravings.

With an abundance of monsters, the game, nevertheless, seriously tries to be historically reliable in matters of armament, culture and architecture, and therefore can be an interesting find for all Japaneseophiles. In addition, the localizers retained the original voice acting – it was difficult for me to appreciate it, but this option clearly beats the dubbing, because Japanese does not sound translated into Russian at all.

The mechanics of the game itself are also worth something – I cannot downplay its merits. The flood of Nioh 2 became a kind of challenge for me and was able to keep the game for several tens of hours. But if I had completed the article on this, I would not have been honest with myself.

Stage Five: Depression

It was not by chance that I confused the fourth and fifth points in the classical model of accepting grief. Acquaintance with Nioh 2 was really given to me without a stage of depression, but then the impression of the game began to deteriorate again – for another reason. After completing the familiarization phase, I dived into Nioh with my head and … was disappointed. Since, in essence, the game could not offer me anything but the interesting (and still overly complicated) battle mechanics.

Nioh 2 is fun to play – but only as long as you like the concept of “smash your forehead about the new boss.” Team Ninja cannot offer you anything else. Due to an inexplicable craving for realism, developers deprived themselves of the opportunity to make memorable locations, because of the genre – they could not write an interesting story.

Nioh 2 is primitive in everything that does not apply to the combat system and the appearance of bosses. And it’s interesting to fight the latter only because of their overpriced complexity – the very model of boss behavior and their movie sets can hardly compete with what From Software once offered to fans.

It may be argued that Dark Souls is also as simple as a stick, but there is a real depth behind this primitive primitiveness. Try to dive into the ENT DS – and just the story of Seth and Artorias will require you a couple of hours of research. Nioh 2 has nothing of the kind – it has only a beautiful story about the script, which was made by the cult director Akira Kurasawa. Perhaps his film would expand the Nioh universe, but today we only have a peppy action that can only captivate video game masochists.

I admit that I will still play Nioh 2, at least in order to learn how to ideally switch racks during the combo process. But after that I will forget about it, because the game didn’t interest me anymore. Her world is boring to explore, and the ENT does not want to study. Nioh 2 is the souls-like that tried to reinvent the wheel, but as if forgot to make wheels – in the end, on the device from Team Ninja you can … sit down. But it’s unlikely to roll downhill with a breeze.