After a little less than a year waiting, Nioh 2 is finally available on PC, and a complete edition to start! This Action RPG resembling souls is certainly a worthy predecessor, improving almost all aspects of the original already excellent. If you are not familiar with the franchise, the game system is complex in a manner radically different from the classics of Software, so do not expect to another clone resembling souls!
Nioh already felt among the most complex souls, and Nioh 2 adds only more. I do not mean the word “complex” either as a positive goal, but something that, I think, comes down to individual tastes. The dark, the franchise resembles an exercise of minimalism, where they push its orders for a deceptive simplicity to its beautiful limits. _Nioh, _ on the other hand, is a demonstration of extremism where they pile systems on the systems while maintaining somehow its impressive balance.
The fight is not just about managing endurance and health bars. One of the seemingly minor changes that have a drastic impact on the game course is the way you get your endurance. After each combo, a very timed ki pulse will give you much of the stamina that you used to keep the offensive or move to defensive more safely. This system learns to the player to move away from the mashed buttons and play the game in a more methodical and rhythmic way, where to know your combos by muscular memory will decip up your potential.
Then there are the positions. High for the pure offensive, where you will find your most damaging and distant movements at the expense of defensive options. Average for equilibrium, with attacks, decent parades and a reduced locking cost. Low for speed, sacrificing the attack for faster races and improved bearings that go further with more invincibility for less endurance. And unlike less interesting systems where your choice depends solely on your game style, you must use the three positions to dominate the fight.
Just in terms of duel against other warriors, you must react to your opponent’s position. If they are in high position, you can consider moving to the low position, where you can fill the gap with your movement and overwhelm their little guard with quick attacks. But if they are halfway, they will easily protect your attacks and return. In this case, a high position to crush their guard could be the best option. It also becomes more complex with monsters and several opponents. The postures being a constant and fluid part of the fight, you must react quickly and make the right decisions.
This combines with the mechanics of the pulse ki of the past, where to change position during your pulse rewards you with even more endurance. The ki pulse mechanism adds another layer when you choose to dance between the positions, which requires to predict which position could be the best option next, or perhaps renounce the bonus because stick to your current choice is sometimes the right choice. It is only a small part of the impressive combat system proposed by the game, and with the inclusion of Yokai capacities and bursting counters in NioH 2, this game is an assortment of mechanisms in which to plunge the teeth..
As the original, Nioh is back with guardian minds, trees and random gears with statistics. First of all, I will approach the most impressive change, the guardian spirits system that has received Yokai transformation capacity.
Previously, the activation of your guardian spirit shine your sword and improved your abilities, but now, you turn into a hard yokai to cook. A complete transformation that changes your moveet and your style of play, it’s also fun to use only to watch. There are also three different forms in which you can transform and offer a little variety. One of the dull components of the spirits in the previous game was the way you hardly could use the mechanism because it took a while to build it. Even if nioh 2 is not very different in this regard, the addition of Yokai skills allows you to use the demonic side without fully engaged in processing. In addition, as you can only have two separate capabilities equipped at a time, this even more encourages the decision-making of players.
Unlike the simple skill tree of the first, NioH 2 has a constellation of skills – a network of nested nodes that are both visually impressive and terrifying. However, once you look closer, it’s pretty intuitive. Each node offering new movements and interesting gameplay enhancements, they managed to make each individually charged upgrade. With separate constellations for each weapon, magic and discipline, the construction options are simply vertiginous.
The equipment statistics have not changed much compared to the original, which was a kind of depreciation for me. The first problem with random equipment in the game is that there are just too many drops with too many varieties of modifiers to give players a kind of rewarding choice for the time spent in the inventory, especially at the beginning From the game. As it depended completely for luck, I found that I always ended up using the highest level equipment that I had in my inventory by default. Why spend time finding the perfect article while you just go past it?
Now, I understand that considering optimal equipment is more of an end-of-game thing, and it becomes more relevant there. But with the game so based on skills, you do not need to minimize your equipment to beat it, as long as you have decent objects and a solid comprehension of the fight. There are people who will cultivate for the perfect equipment once they reach the maximum level, but I wondered, what is it? This is not a mmorpg where you are limited for the content or a dungeon-loading where the goal of the game is to find a new loot which completely changes your way of playing.
Overall, I find that random equipment is a distractant element for NIOH that allows players to look at their inventory rather than engaging in its excellent gameplay.
One of the most requested features, the ability to create your own character, is here Nioh 2 and it’s better than I could hope. You are no longer obliged to play a white samurai as in the original. Sorry, William, I did not really like it.
With a large number of sliders and options, it’s easy to bring out your character. In addition to this, unlike many other games where to create a beautiful character is difficult (and you end up resembling an extraterrestrial), I found it hard to go wrong with Nioh 2 unless you n ‘Try to do it. And finally, you can even customize the appearance of your transformation. It’s not as complex as your normal shape, but it’s an unexpected but really nice customization layer.
For the most part, the port is quite standard. The most important thing, the opportunity to pass the game to 60-120 fps is there and works like a dream. However, there are some places where I have noticed important optimization problems where fighting some Yokai with many visual effects would cause slowdowns. They improved during the fight, so it did not put the game in an unplayable state, but I hope the port will be optimized in the coming months as these things evolve.
In addition, not being able to completely customize my controls is a bit of a rest of its console origins that I do not appreciate. PC players require a higher level of customization, and I do not think that change orders to demand too much.
Nioh 2 is an excellent game on PC and if you were a fan of the first, it’s a must-have purchase. If you have not played the original, I hope that criticism gave you an idea of what the game looks like. A myriad of complexities in the action games do you excite or resemble They to unnecessary distractions? Personally, I lean further to the minimalist side, but when a game pulls its mechanics as well as Nioh 2, it does not bother me to plunge once in mind the first.
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