The news of a few days ago literally has gold in its mouth: in the next few lines you will find thoughts and considerations triggered by the announcement regarding the sequel to Nioh , Nioh 2, an action-rpg title from Team Ninja / Koei Tecmo who have decided to open the doors of the closed alpha of the upcoming game, testable for a period that began on May 24, 2019 until June 2, 2019, closed alpha restricted to a small number of play testers.
Obviously , by the time of reading this piece, we will have already put our grubby hands on the title , which is still in the works , to see what the developers have in store for us avid gamers and to try to carp a hair in advance about the wrinkle and/or evolution that the Nioh series is about to take.
When I think that I have been immersed in the first chapter of Nioh for just the past two/three months, this news is gold for yours truly. The game kept me glued to the screen for more than 60 days and still gives me hours and hours of adrenaline-pumping entertainment through its epic and arduous challenges.
In fact, I consider myself , in some respects, ultra-lucky , as fresh from the endgame (with its dlc included) , I still have sharp and vivid features , mechanics, controller sensations in hand , of the title and I feel that I am treading a ground more than familiar to me. Kind of like when in soccer you play at home rather than away, maybe in Russia in -10 degrees below zero.
Approaching Nioh , two years after its release and strictly without spoilers,was for me something surprising.
A very solid game, deep in mechanics and combat system and one that revolutionized (for the better in my opinion) what is understood by most experts as the typical standard of souls-like publications.
I must of necessity make this juxtaposition; From Software's works, for better or worse , have unabashedly influenced dozens and dozens of videogame productions , so much so that they have carved out a veritable genre in their own right. Many have been the poorly succeeded apes , many others the products of very good workmanship but not as successful as the Souls themselves that have seen the light of day in recent years .
All with a common and well-defined constant : games that for the largest segment of the public are pupils that never surpass the master. Granted that I have spent thousands and thousands of hours on all From's publications, and that I have just "burned" hundreds and hundreds of them on Nioh, I have come to the point of wanting to expound some personal thoughts on what excellent Team Ninja has accomplished, and I hope will accomplish , in this second chapter about to see the light of day in a future that we do not yet know how near or far off it is.
Obviously , I don't feel the need to juxtapose the two series (Souls/Nioh) and start making comparisons about the features of one and the other strand, although when the first Nioh was released , at least 9 out of 10 articles made reference to the congruencies between the two productions dwelling perhaps a little less on how much better and good the title had re-interpreted,revisited and recoded taking cues from the Souls. Here we are talking about , and I want to make it very clear , of feelings and considerations , shared or not , matured from my personal experience and to say it in all honesty I believe that Nioh , to date is the only case where precisely the pupil exceeds the master repeatedly mentioned above.
DO NOT be wary of imitations
I have high expectations of Nioh 2 , the latter arising from the very global concept with which the developers intended the experience that I literally enjoyed and am still enjoying. Nioh is a challenge within a continuous challenge ; each milestone passed poses a 'further one , with increased difficulty.
Put like that, a player who has never trod the eastern lands of the title might immediately go with the mind to the repetitiveness factor that could plague the game : nothing could be more wrong : each new challenge can be approached in countless different ways . Deepening the discourse is precisely here that we see the great merits of Team Ninja ; Nioh is a game that compared to any souls (Sekiro excluded) gives extreme pleasure for commands , combat system and also exploration thanks to a level design not brain-dead but made to perfection.
The same argument cannot always be applied to From publications, where the maneuverability is often the subject of debate and criticism for all that could have been accomplished for the better. Nioh in these terms is simply a Ferrari ,with a driven arrow that travels in a fast lane against a hatchback compared to a Souls ( Sekiro and Bloodborne excluded ).
Another thorny knot , for years , have been the Hitboxes , thwarters of great feats that have mowed down millions of players in Souls , and crumbled the rosaries and holy living room shrines that older relatives settle in those little shelves right above the televisions of young players.
In Nioh , for all the hours of play , I have never had to swear by the care and precision of this feature, which in summing up determines the progress, victory and defeat , as well as joy and frustration , of a duel faced by any player.
The game is "slow release" in my opinion. It literally "opens up" at the semi-advanced stage of completion, although completion is arduous to speak of given the depth it possesses and that I had never dealt with before in a title. When I thought I wanted to stop the adventure a little bit , close to the fourth /fifth region reached , the progress and overall development of my character and the introductions that the title offers arrived at a certain point , were able to inject in my veins a huge load of interest and desire to go on until infinity.
Many other players have undergone the same thing , a choice at this point that makes me think it is all thanks to the direction and developers , very skillful in terms of balancing what is the in-game experience of the end user; which others then is not that the most important protagonist of the video game after all.
Great , indeed enormous merit of Nioh is also the revisiting of what From means as NG+ and subsequent +++ etc..etc... . In this sense , leaving NG always at hand and adding the function through which one can switch to NG+ ,or way of the DEMON if you prefer , is worth every single euro and minute spent on top of Nioh.
At any time , when the storyline is completed, one can decide whether to take on new, more arduous challenges or dive back into level 5 missions , even being level 187 ourselves just to pull random numbers and examples. An 'option this one that adds packs and packs of replayability to the whole thing and does not force the player to start the story from the beginning and retrace their footsteps. Hats off to the creativity of the choice adopted.
Separate mention , but absolutely not insignificant , should be made regarding the skills and character development we use: here too the key word is depth + abundance.
As the Souls have accustomed us , the development always passes through predetermined "items" , roughly a dozen in each chapter that has followed over the years, some capable of " breaking in 2 " the game and others less virtuous, not to say totally useless, such as the old dear RESISTANCE of DS1 or the VIGOR of DS2 that many users have pumped in vain.
Each Souls has its own developable feature that on balance turns out to be as decisive as the two of clubs when the sign of swords reigns in the middle of the table during a good race in an Italian trump tournament. Are such upgradable items nothing more than wasted souls due to lack of accuracy offered by From, or is it better to believe the fairy tale of some exponent who passes off features made "ad cazzum" as From Software's "perculation" of users?
One can also include Bloodborne's wooden shield in the discourse just now , to you readers I relievedly leave the right to doubt or believe one or the other school of thought,we would miss it. It is a fact, however , that in NIOH, we will not find ourselves making such considerations as the concept of the skills and upgrades provided can be comparable, compared to any Souls (and here I am not excluding even 1 title), to looking down from the top of a ravine in the Grand Canyon (Nioh) compared to spying on the room next to one's own from the keyhole (SOULS).
Even the surplus of items such as armor, weapons, rosaries, and amulets that one collects throughout the game at first glance may seem excessive, realizing instead later that the coloring itself and the possible farming of usable materials at the FACTORY make the drops extremely useful. Nothing like the wizardry of FRAMPT in DS1 or the obnoxious "EXIT and RETURN from the game " from the Snuggly crow.
All of these things corrected in the making in later chapters and which if there had been no YouTube guides probably only a small fraction of players would have discovered perhaps accidentally.
In addition, in Nioh , there are vast options for each individual weapon to evolve , as are multiple spells (OMNYO) and purely NINJA-style abilities ; there is a world of possible combinations , obtainable by receiving in return a lot of gameplay expertly scattered throughout game Japan. Obviously the multiple options of approach , but it is known to all who chew on this genre of titles , are also there in souls.
One can make the most varied approaches here as well and use divesified techniques from each other to cope with a situation by taking advantage of level design , available weaponry and one's creativity as a player. I only maintain that in Nioh all this is much more user-friendly, fluid in terms of animations and less impacted by creepy camera views to say the least and no hitbox daughters of a good woman.
Time is distorted
After all, given the enormous sounding board that the series of The Dark Souls possesses, distinguished by the art direction headed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, for many in the industry it has been a morsel too delicious to pass up . It can often happen that any inconsistencies or flaws in the plot that the Japanese genius omitted have been welcomed and there have been no negative opinions lest they find themselves a population of fierce detractors in tow and lose support .
On the one hand, it is also understandable, especially for those who make certain assumptions by writing articles or have a certain media following what was said poh'anzi would have been a kind of a shot in the arm.
Very often, however, in the face of cosmic nothingness , there is a lifeline that actually answers everything : "eh but time is distorted..." ( sorry but I have to laugh a lot , ed ) .
Back to us and to Nioh : here there is not much room for interpretation, the story evolves and does not have the same creative insights of a Souls , nor the same charm but fortunately not even the same Pindaric flights that however , at the end of the fair, remain only speculations or pass me the term : fuffa.
Far be it from me to unleash the antipathies of fans, but you will agree at least a little with me that time cannot be distorted ALWAYS. Personally, the LORE of Bloodborne is the one that has convinced and fascinated me most of all,and by the word all I mean all the games that at the ripe old age of 39 years (unfortunately I cannot say that time is distorted) I have had the privilege and pleasure of playing , starting with MSX, ATARI, C64 up to the present day.
Another small parenthesis I want to open concerns the difference between the much proclaimed self-citation and the recycling that frequently is represented by a very thin line in Souls. I do not want to put my finger on it, but I am almost sure that in Nioh2 I will not have the distinct feeling that I often felt in the Souls instead. Elements such as the models, the revisited arenas, the bosses that are repeated in multiple areas perhaps diversified only in coloring have some staleness as also of the rest, for me, the blue moon swords, the deformed Pg hand , but above all the distorted fucking*****o time that goes into covering every hole.
Is it all LORE that glitters ?
Encouraging are the early signs coming from Nioh's testing ground, already we have glimpsed significant introductions that turn the character into a usable Yokai demon , and if good mornings are any indication we can sleep soundly for all the other introductions Team Ninja may have in store for us players.
Concluding this simile-comparison between Souls and Nioh I hope I haven't hurt anyone's feelings or hurt them further by confirming that Nioh is , except for art direction , a superior product in all other aspects to From titles (Sekiro excluded).
Of the plot of this sequel we know nothing , but the very first impressions suggest that, as with the previous chapter, the effort was focused more on gameplay as a whole than on the strength of the plot.
After all, a well-constructed game world is capable of telling a story on its own , but a very deep and technically flawless gameplay can make you give a damn about why or for how you are in that world battling.
