So I'm hit or miss with Dark Souls games... I ~want~ to like them... but often times lose interest for one reason or another. I've played all of them except for Bloodbourne (The one I'd probably like the most *eyeroll*). I enjoyed Dark Souls II, regretted buying 3 and LOVED Lords of the Fallen.

A store near my area is having a pretty good trade in deal on either Nioh or Horizon, so I'm looking for some feedback before I make my decision. I feel like I'm burnt out of open world games and want to give Nioh a try. Is it Darksouls or is it different enough like Lords of the Fallen where it could grab me?

Do they actually have Nioh in stock?

Nioh is a mixture of Vagrant Story, Ninja Gaiden, Diablo 3, and Dark Souls; and it nails almost every part; if you like any of those games there's a good chance you'll like Nioh. It also has an extremely good NG+ system which is more like just an extremely hard difficulty setting (with some enemy placement dicked around with) instead of a boring incremental increase.

I am a fan of Lords of the Fallen (did a Let's Play in fact, the only one I've ever done), but Nioh has better gameplay/bosses/equipment/atmosphere/story/progression systems/NG+. I will probably play CI's new game this year (provided it looks slightly interesting) but chances are I'm going to play Nioh for like 400-500 hours this year alone.

That said it doesn't have the running shield bash to just knock people the fuck over.

I think nioh is more its own thing than lords of the fallen. I find that i am playing it more like i do an arpg than i do dark souls, grinding side content for items, weapons and gold. I think the combat ends up being better than both dark souls and lords of the fallen, with ninja garden-esque variety in movesets and fighting styles. Its more twitchy as well, even more so than bloodborne but punishes bad timing similar to the xbox ninja gaidens.

I think you can get a good idea if you will like it from the quick look.

I think it's pretty different from a Souldborne game. Far more so than Lords of the Fallen, which tried to ape that formula pretty closely. For whatever reason, I'm finding it considerably easier than a Souls game, maybe because the controls are more responsive and there's less BS going on with the camera. I've only died four times to bosses so far.

I have to say, if you dig around in the menus a surprising amount of effort went into it. Every single damn character, enemy, and guardian spirit has a series of unlockable codex entries together with either art or animated models. Plus the Souls-style item descriptions for everything. It's pretty rad, particularly given that Japanese mythology isn't something you see in the West a whole lot. Just imagine the Witcher bestiary but with oni instead of drowners.

Not true - it's just an axe specific skill. You bull rush people out of the parry stance. Although personally I prefer the whirlwind spin because you bellow like Conan the Barbarian the whole time you're doing it.

@lawgamer: There's loads of ways to knock dudes over starting from a stationary position but none of them involve running full speed from person to person only needing one input while also being the optimal speed running boss DPS strategy.

The more I read and watch playthroughs of this game the more I'm bummed out that this doesn't have a PC version, and I dig it because of the combat and loot system.

What was it about Lords of the Fallen that you liked that Souls didn't do? I tried getting into Lords a few times but always fell off of it after a couple of hours, can't quite pinpoint why, I don't think it's bad or anything. Haven't had enough people say nice things about it, so I'm actually curious.

@fredchuckdave Do you think the level designs are more Ninja Gaiden or Demon's Souls? I can kinda see both, my reference point has mostly been DeS.

@tobbrobb: There are quite a few Demon's Soulsish levels toward the beginning but later on the game goes into Ninja Gaiden territory. They also utilize the Dark Souls II approach of having every possible kind of weather + castle combination though it doesn't seem as non creative and serves the variety well; also Japan had a lot of castles at the time.

The best level stands alone and is pretty incomparable, no idea how they made that work in the context of a Souls game but it's easily the best action RPG level ever. Actually it's probably just the best level period, fuck Dead Simple, 1-1 etc.

Having played about 6+ hours of Lords of the Fallen I'm baffled as to why you love that game but generally get bored with other Souls games. I also think Nioh is a better "Souls-esque" game than LotF.

I didn't get far with LOTF (due to it not playing great and the awful fps dips on PS4), but Nioh could be right up your alley. It's Dark Souls, Ninja Gaiden and Diablo combined. Think it's terrific!
I have fallen hard off the Horizon hype wagon when I saw the latest gameplay footage. To me it looks like any other open world game out there. Hope I'm wrong, though.

Also, yes you really should play Bloodborne!

It feels similar to me, as an off brand souls like. The main difference is Nioh adds a lot whereas Lords of the Fallen didn't add much except they have similar loot systems. Nioh is also a much faster game.

I enjoyed weight of the character more in LoF then in the souls games, but I feel thats just more of a western game development thing then what comes from Japan. I also really liked being able to bank my souls. For whatever reason I ~hate~ dying in these games because the thought of accidentally losing all of my progress is incredibly frustrating. In Lords of the Fallen I could just dump my souls if I felt like I had gone passed the point of no return and then explore forward at my leisure.

In the souls games this translates into me having to play incredibly conservatively to the point it starts to suck the fun out of the game in order to not die. I only ever died maybe 20 times in Dark Souls II; that speaks more to the level of obsessive study and time that I put into each encounter then it does as my skill as a player. Lords of the Fallen was just more fun because of how it was animated and dealt with progress. I understand that the game launched with some horrible performance issues that maybe soured it for some folks, but picking it up a few years later it was a pretty polished experience during my time with it.

Nioh has my interest though as it seems to also fix a lot of my problems with Dark Souls in its own way. The idea of actually having loot instead of using one or two items for the whole game is pretty cool too.

I'll echo this entire statement, except I have 7 hours into Lords of the Fallen.

Lords of the Fallen is a decent game that struggles to shake the fact it was the first clone out of the blocks. It had to take the hit but I enjoyed it enough to play it twice.

People actually like LotF?

@pyrodactyl: I really liked it when I first played it because it was the first proper Souls game outside of From Software which is very interesting if you're into those games at that time. It also had some pretty cool ideas with the way the bloodstain worked and I generally liked the weapons. I also thought the game looked pretty okay. After a while I put it down though. I didn't think it was good enough and wasn't really having fun.

i see dark souls is still this infallible pillar of gaming to many...

@junkerman: It's interesting that you mention the weight, because that's one of the things I think the original Dark Souls really nailed, while Lotf had this really weird floaty feel to it. Something about the movement and the hits of your weapons just didn't have the same oomph. That's one of the few things I tend to level against the game.

@ripelivejam: I don't think it's infallible but when very few games are part of your genre it's hard to complain about a few annoyances when there is an overwhelming amount of good.

That being said I think I like Nioh more than I liked Dark Souls 3 and Dark Souls 2 is better than three. I hope they are able to expand on Nioh for a future game.

I liked what I played, though the combat is far slower than Nioh. Honestly, my main stupid reason for stopping was that anytime you used this magic aura thing, the frame rate would go to like 20fps (and I took a wrong turn into some area where I was severely underleved).

Other than that, pretty well-made game.

@ripelivejam: It's just a really good series of games, that is unmatched in its genre. Which isn't hard since it was the only one in it for a good long while, but even without that it is still something special.

@deathfromace I have not sunk nearly as many hours into DSIII than I did other Souls games. Not because I didn't like it, there was just some other stuff happening at the time. Why would you say it is worse than DSII (which is my favorite so far, though that might change once I get to play more DSIII).

I personally just enjoyed playing it more and I felt like the magic system was much better. Plus the covenant system in Dark Souls 3 had to have been broken for the first few weeks the game was out and no idea if they ever fixed it. Some covenants that were meant to summon you never did anything and was a waste and the Bell Tower covenant in Dark Souls 2 was perfect and honestly that one covenant makes me really like that game and I have very fond memories of it and it will probably be a gaming memory I have for a long time. I really liked being able to run around doing my thing and time to time be summoned away into a bell tower to fight another player and win or lose it was a nice change of pace along with the moment when I finally get to the second Bell Tower summon place with my character I finally find out that I've been killing people that messed up and they are forced to go through that area and I've been killing them this entire time making the game that much harder. It was a cool twist I didn't expect and honestly changed the way I treated pvp in that area.