Just a few days ago, on the occasion of the third and last DLC , we were all around our imaginary focus, discussing how much NiOh ‘s journey in these nine months since its release had been arrembanding and extraordinarily rich in content.
The souls like of Team Ninja was able to carve out a slice of the market increasingly wide and sell a quantity of copies much higher than expected.This thanks to a reworking of a winning formula, combined with the great desire to return to forgotten settings in recent years: the brilliant union between Onimusha and Dark Souls (more BloodBorne in speed, to be honest) was the spark that has triggered great curiosity. After more than ten years of troubled development,
today is the path of one of the great epics started during the last generation. NiOh is over, no doubt we will have a sequel in shorter time than the original but, in the meantime, for those who have not yet had the chance to play it, prepare yourself for an impressive amount of hours. Welcome to the longest and most varied souls you’ve ever seen.
AMRITA UNIQUE LOVE
We are here to discuss how this PC version behaves in relation to a tradition of console porting certainly not extraordinary. But this does not exclude the fact that someone may not be aware of the conditions of the game, which is why we will try to give an insight into the various aspects. On a narrative level, NiOh is inspired by an old screenplay never brought to the big screen by
Akira Kurosawa. Announced in 2004 by Koei, the project has been blocked and restarted several times over the years: choosing the definitive way of the souls like, the narrative arc has been structured around a long series of divided and independent missions, but which follow all a single common thread.The protagonist is a notorious British soldier with silver hair, prisoner in the dungeons of the queen, awaiting trial. Saved by his guiding spirit, he becomes aware of the
importance of Amrita’s accumulation in Japan and of the Queen’s will to take a large amount of money to end the war against Spain soon. In order to pursue the person who claims to be responsible for the damage caused by this mysterious stone, he decides to embark on the Rising Sun, giving rise to the real adventure in a devastated Japan of 1600. From these premises opens a story sufficiently long,
which requires no less than thirty hours to be completed in its standard version, but which is able to give ten times as many in which case you want to recover all the recoverable and face the missions at different levels of difficulty (which here the approach to action totally changes).
What’s more, the addition of the New Game Plus, able to fully update the sets and weapons, and the contents of the three full-bodied DLC, are all elements that will keep you glued to the screen for weeks, if not months.
DIFFICULT OR FRUSTRATING?
We do not hide reality: NiOh, as souls like, is not a simple approach game. It is probably the exponent of the genre that, during the first few hours, can be the most brutal and demotivating on the square. The amount of enemies, the frenzy and the addition of special mechanics such as the recovery of stamina, are elements that require time to be digested, but once understood can totally change the sort of battles.
This is what makes the difference between NiOh and everyone else: Team Ninja, strong in its history and experience, has packaged an action RPG that makes the assimilation of the technique its focal point.If you are so good to be transported by what NiOh can give you, you will discover a title anything but difficult, but at the same time extremely rewarding.
Understanding how to manage your arsenal, when to infuse some specific weapons, how to work on the growth of the character and which of the dozens of spirits guide to equip, will all be elements that will make the difference between life and death.
This is where there is probably some small flaw in terms of balance, which sees its climax during the three DLCs. The almost infinite variety of approaches, difficulties and the resulting difference in terms of accumulation of resources
and growth of the character, have made it difficult for Team Ninja to balance the game.In fact, it is possible that, according to the method you will use, you will find yourself to be war machines or simple soldiers after a few tens of hours.
