For the Ogress, did anyone else notice that if you press your character into the frontside of the boss all her attacks seemed to straight up miss? Killed her on my first try by doing that and safely attacking then dodging her jumping attack.

@strangestories: yah it's one of those typical Souls type bosses where playing it "correctly" by dodging through attacks is a lot more work than just cheesing it by clipping or hugging into the boss where all her hit boxes tend to miss.

Yep. Although keeping her relatively central so she doesn't corner you is key. Especially with her late flurry.

First time ever playing Nioh, and holy shit did it kick my ass.

This game feels all sorts of wrong for me. I don't even know where to start so I'm just going to start listing things that don't feel right in this game.

If you're above or below something, your attacks can just completely miss even if you're right next to them. I was above an enemy and went into the animation for when they are out of stamina and the attack just flat out missed twice in a row.

All the hard stuff seems to have hyper armor (or maybe that's why they are hard). They will do some huge windup attack, then I go in for the punish and hit them, they don't give a fuck that I just axed them in the face and hit me with their seemingly weightless giant weapon before I can move again. The fact that you need to know every attack rather than just reacting to what it does is just not fun for me.

This wouldn't be a problem if either your block or your roll was reliable at all. The roll you need to be damn near perfect if you want to hit the iframes on it. Which comes back to the point of having to know exactly when to dodge what attack and knowing the exact timing of an attack rather than reacting to it. The block takes way too much stamina in a game where your stamina regens incredibly slow even if you're hitting r1.

The way stamina works and the tankiness of mobs makes the game feel reeeeaaallly slow. I have gotten hit so many times waiting that half a second to be able to hit r1 after an attack string to get my stamina back rather than just doing what I should be doing and dodging out of the way.

This game just doesn't feel satisfying to play. It feels like you're abusing dumb AI to succeed rather than your own skills.

@noobsmog: All I'll say is other than the attacking on inclines what you said indicates you haven't grasped the mechanics properly yet as the things you complain about are non-factors when you learn the systems and utilise them to their fullest.

I agree. There are a bunch of cool and smart systems in there that make it the first thing to evolve the Dark Souls formula in an interesting way. That attacking on inclines thing is a pain in the ass though.

@pyrodactyl: There are some fun systems but it suffers from very similar issues as most Souls games. Memorization of levels and move sets is still very much at the core of the gameplay. Lock on seems better so far than your typical Souls entry but you still get a ton of problems with inconsistent hitboxes in a game that demands precision.

@humanity: you call them issues. Most people call them features. These features along with the unforgiving difficulty makes this genre quite popular.

I'm glad team ninja has found a way to make it their own now that dark souls is being retired. Hopefully it holds up in the full game

I wouldn't call dodgy hitboxes features. It's definitely slower paced than Dark Souls and that's entirely down to everything taking at least 3 hits to finish. It gives every enemy a threat but certainly slows you down. I've not seen too many people run through this game, either. Mobs are okay. You're usually only dealing with two, at the most. One of which you can headshot out of existence.

Yep. Despite the tutorial mission, I felt like I was in too deep once I tried my hand at the actual mission along the river in the forest. Still, seemed pretty good to me, and it's gotta be easier if you start at the beginning. I'm at least interested in playing it once it comes out.

@pyrodactyl: I don't know how you can call inconsistent hitboxes a feature? Whiffing attacks that should hit in a game where any enemy can basically two shot you if you're not paying attention is just bad.

The way you stunlock enemies is also a little in the weird side. I appreciate the stamina system, but it can make fights drag on.

Ultimately what CAN be called a feature is that above all else this game favors skilled gameplay. The buffer for error or sloppy play you get in a Souls game by overleveling isn't as prominent in Nioh. Likewise a lot of the skills require precise input and punish you if you mess up - like all the counter attacks. It's certainly admirable and awesome for dedicated players that like the challenge and have the skills to back it up, but it also seems to alienate more casual people that enjoy this type of gameplay but simply aren't that good.

I think I'm sold after the demo last weekend.
Love the presentation and the combat. It's Dark Souls with a twist and more RPG like systems in place. The fact that you can customise your character in so many viable ways is pretty cool. The only thing I'm going to miss from DS and Bloodborne is the awesome enemy and world design. It's all a bit too plain so far.

For anyone who cares, I dumped a bunch of info on the wiki page. Still terrible at the game, but the atmosphere and presentation is amazing so I decided to dig a little deeper.

Played up until the game kicked me out once time was up. Some thoughts.

The base mission seemed easier than the beta ones but that could be already knowing how the game works. The Twilight mission, however, I thought was the hardest mission I've done.

They seem to have nerfed ninjutsu quite a bit. Setting enemies on fire or poisoning them just seems tougher. The boss especially seemed impossible to put a status effect on. Smoke bombs, as far as I could tell, are much less overpowered. Enemies didn't walk right into the smoke for me to smack around, instead just leasing back to their starting point.

The samurai boss fight was quite a bit tougher, ramping up in difficulty as his health went down. His armor is still really cool, though.

Aside from attacks missing when you're on a different level from your enemy, the controls feel fine. I'm trying to get used to stance swapping to keep combos going but it feels a little too awkward to me. It feels great when I can pull off a stance swap combo and take down a big yokai before it can attack.

If I think of more, I'll edit in later.

@strangestories: One thing I hope the full game does better is communicating all these systems to the player. For instance I beat everything there was in that last tech demo and I didn't know there were combos and didn't quite understand how the magic operated. I thought changing stances during a purge move simply regained more stamina?

We're all playing it wrong apparently.

@notsosneakyguy: That's how this game improves on the Dark Souls formula. The fact that you can play what initially feels like a souls game and make it look like that is pretty incredible.

A few things I got from this video:

1. always be Ki pulsing. After you complete an attack string and before you do anything else you need to press R1. Most of the time the timing will be off and you won't get the full amount. Waiting for a full Ki pulse is only to dispel Yokai energy or when you can afford to wait. Most of the time you have to dodge or block to not die before the full Ki pulse is ready but you can still press R1 and get some stamina back.
2. For high level play you need to start changing stances once in a while when you do a Ki pulse. It will help you revover more stamina faster and keep the pressure on your opponent
3. Special moves that hit with a big combo string are really good against enemies out of stamina. Even Yokai get completely stun locked by the dual sword waling or the chain weapon combo.

@humanity: Not sure if you were actually looking for an answer for your question, but stance changing on a ki pulse doesn't necessarily keep a combo going in the traditional sense. From what I've tested, it allows to to keep your stamina up and allows you to go into a new series of attacks faster than if you just stuck to one stance. High stance for instance has considerable downtime between combos, but if you change stances after you do a combo you can lead into another string of attacks in mid or low very quickly. So basically you're just stringing different stance combos together quickly, not really extending a big combo.

I really hope the full game doesn't make it so damn easy to overpower yourself with weapons from other players who died. I got an absurdly powerful sword at the start of the twilight mission that made the whole rest of it easier than the normal mode version

@strangestories: Oh you see I thought you were talking about some honest to God combo chaining system where moves flow into each other. Yah the whole "regain stamina to continue attacking" bit I get, and I would do it at the end of combos but I'd rarely switch stances because a) I only ever really liked the mid stance speed and movesets and b) it felt too awkward even after spending considerable time with the game.

Also took me forever to realize that double tapping the dodge makes you roll away instead of just dashing. While a lot of it is a bit clumsy, there does seem to be a ton of depth to the game.

Just curious, how did most of you play it in relation to MOVIE/ACTION mode? I played the entire test in the higher FPS but worse graphic setting and it did look downright grungy at times (well most of the time really..) Did anyone play it on the 30 FPS lock, and if so was it alright? I've beaten Bloodborne numerous times so I know bad FPS isn't the dealbreaker one might assume it to be in these sort of games, but man I do love me some of that Demon's Souls smooth 60 (well.. it was mostly smooth.. we don't talk about the Valley of Defilement).