Great game. Alot better than I expected actually, I thought this was gonna be a simply enjoyable Souls-like knockoff...boy was I wrong. It's so good, it's actually a better Dark Souls III than Dark Souls III!

This game's combat system has such depth to it, it's almost mindblowing. It's very Souls-esque in the sense of high risk/reward to each move you make in battle, but it still has that Team Ninja identity to it that gives it a very Hack 'n Slash flavor. It definitely does more than enough to have it's own identity, it plays nothing like Souls and it's very different from Bloodborne even though it's also very fast and frenetic. It's also incredibly well balanced and satisfying, with lots of awesome boss battles and enemies with recognizable attack patterns and exploitable weaknesses. This makes it sound simple, but believe me...the amount of mechanics and nuances to this combat system are so many that I can't even remember all of them! Just play the game for yourself, and you'll understand.

Instead of a seamless exploreable world, in Nioh you go from level to level in a map screen. It's kind of lame, specially considering how well designed these levels are. All of them are very fun to explore, and have plenty of shortcuts to find and help you travel faster to every point of the level. Enemy placement is also excellent, there are occasions where the game does go a bit too far but generally it's very fair and challenging.

Killing enemies and bosses will reward you with Amrita (Souls) and items...alot of items. Nioh has a loot system like Diablo, where every enemy and boss drop a TON of loot when killed and I find this shit INFURIATING! Never should a game force the player to spend as much time on menus as Nioh did to me, because I constantly had my itembox full and had to spend minutes selling everything I didn't need or had in excess. Damn, this aspect pissed me off!

Combat alone makes this game great for me and very fun to play, but unfortunately it might not be enough for most people. The art design is cool and some of the cutscenes have cool visuals, but the story makes absolutely no sense and the soundtrack is serviceable at best. The presentation of this game is really a dissapointment, and it also extends to the gameplay a bit because there's a severe lack of enemy variety and also level scenarios.

But the problems I have with Nioh are very minimal when compared to the amount of fun I had with the gameplay. It's brilliant, and I recommend anyone who loves Action RPG's to check it out.

This is way more like a Souls game than I ever expected. Umbasa!

Surprised I haven't heard anyone talk about this yet. This is basically as close to Ninja Gaiden 4 as you're gonna get until they announce actual Ninja Gaiden 4. It's a samurai hack 'n' slasher by Team Ninja. I suppose people don't necessarily hold them with the same reverence as they once did. NG3 was very different from previous games.

Anyway, this looks like something I'd be into. Apparently it's been sorta-in-development since 2004. And here I thought we were only waiting for Beyond Good & Evil 2, Final Fantasy XV, The Last Guardian, and Duke Nukem Forever (well, alright, no one was waiting for DNF). But as it turns out, there was this whole other game with a 11+ year development cycle that I'd never heard of.

The main character looks like the spitting image of Geralt from The Witcher. They really should fix that...