Nioh 3 Review
The Path to Shogun, Fired in the Heat of the Crucible
Having seen hardy success in the action RPG landscape, the most recent title by Team NINJA aims to drastically expand the scope of the Nioh series, featuring an open world and forgoing the more linear, mission-based structure the series been known for. In doing so, there are some successes, but a good handful of failures too. Nioh ’s hallmark aspect, its intense and hardcore combat, is still present, with incredible customization and plenty of engaging thrills along the way, albeit watered down from the previous entry, largely due to the open world aspect and recycled assets. Nioh 3 is defined by its open world, which serves its purpose well but never comes off as anything more than fine, occasionally working against the game’s other elements, which mostly range from mediocre to good.
With Nioh 2 serving as a prequel to its predecessor, Nioh , Nioh 3 follows the events of both previous titles. Taking place in 1622, Nioh 3 is set at the dawn of Japan’s Tokugawa dynasty, with players taking command of Tokugawa Takechiyo, the fictional grandchild of Tokugawa Ieyasu. Being a player-created character, Takechiyo’s only real defining quality is being quite artsy and, initially, not combat-oriented, but is nevertheless set to be coronated as shogun. Ieyasu’s faithful retainers take the soon-to-be shogun to begin training, but the castle is suddenly attacked by armies of yokai, who players quickly find out are led by Takechiyo’s envious younger brother, Tokugawa Kunimatsu. With the era of peace ushered in by Ieyasu wholly destroyed, the ill-prepared Takechiyo is forced to confront their brother, but before being killed in a lopsided duel, they are transported to the past by their guardian spirit, Kusanagi.
Nioh 3 ’s plot effectively conveys its overarching themes and ideas. One of its core concepts concerns Spirit Stones, shining yellow stones that are born of powerful emotions and grant their owners' wishes, regardless of morality, often leading to abuse by powerful warlords. A particular form of this, Crucinite, begins appearing across time in the various periods players travel to, and it can grant immortality should the user consume normal, yellow Spirit Stones. Seeing the power of Crucinite is genuinely fascinating, whether it’s driving powerful daimyō like the Lion of Kai, Takeda Shingen, to even greater heights of barbarity and madness or manifesting into horrific city-consuming hellscapes known as the Crucible. Despite its unfortunate brevity in the main plot, the Crucinite-fueled jealousy of Kunimatsu stands out as a thematically compelling extension of this plot device.
[caption id="attachment_183845" align="aligncenter" width="640"] The hellish interior of the large Crucible looms over the engulfed city.[/caption]
Unfortunately, Nioh 3 suffers greatly from overextension as it spans multiple scattered time periods. Japanese history is extraordinarily dense and complex, and whereas Nioh and Nioh 2 fixated on briefer periods , the scattershot approach of Nioh 3 only increases confusion and prevents players from becoming attached to characters. As the story progresses, Takechiyo feels like an oddly jarring interloper rather than an organic participant in its events, leaving their desire to rid the world of the Crucinite and enmity toward Kunimatsu as as their only real characterisation. This serves as a good enough stimulus to drive the plot, but Nioh 3 ’s fleeting approach to so many characters and political complexities with its strangely short list of main missions significantly dampens its potential, especially when the featureless and largely silent Takechiyo has no real input into the surrounding events.
That said, the real appeal and draw of Nioh 3 is its riveting combat, which retains the core Samurai mechanics from previous Nioh titles while also adding the new Ninja form. In Samurai form, players have three core stances with an appreciable variety of movesets. By attacking, guarding, and managing Ki (stamina), players can fill Takechiyo’s Arts Proficiency meter, allowing them to unleash powerful moves known as Martial Arts. On the other hand, Ninja form focuses primarily on evasiveness and is more powerful when attacking from the back. It also gives players access to Ninjitsu skills, which include throwing weapons, evasive maneuvers, bombs, and magic. Players can seamlessly switch between forms at any time, which is the primary way to perform Burst Counters that quickly cancel and parry powerful enemy attacks with proper timing.
While the Samurai form and its three stances remain foundationally excellent, the addition of Arts Proficiency does a fantastic job at rewarding and encouraging proper guard deflects and aggressive play. The anticipation of building the meter and subsequent rush of successfully unleashing long Martial Arts combos is an insane adrenaline rush, though the game nicely balances this, as players must utilize timely Ki Pulses to regenerate their Ki to reap this form’s full potential, or risk being left defenseless afterwards. The Ninja form performs amazingly well, too, drastically increasing the pace and intensity of combat while also maneuvering with snappy, tight precision. Both forms have access to six different weapon types, and not only do the forms synthesize well with each other, they also mesh nicely with other combat staples from the series. Whether it’s the Onmyo Magic mechanic that allows use of yokai abilities, the deeply layered equipment system, form-specific skills, Guardian Spirits, or stat allocation, Nioh 3 gives players a dizzying amount of customization options, and almost no action RPG better rewards mastery and effective utilization of its overlapping systems.
[caption id="attachment_183846" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Wow, look at all those weapons![/caption]
Unfortunately, Nioh 3 ’s implementation of combat is slightly held back by a lack of new enemies and aspects of its open world. There are an astonishingly large number of enemies and bosses from prior Nioh titles scattered throughout the world. While new players won't notice, series veterans may be disappointed in finding many of the same bosses and enemies. With multiple large maps to explore, even with the entire roster of Nioh and Nioh 2 ’s yokai and this game’s unique bosses, there are still multiple instances of repeat yokai like Kamaitachi across them all, which forms part of the concerns about the larger implementation of its open world.
While Nioh 3 ’s combat remains great despite the limited enemy variety throughout the various periods, interactive elements sadly don’t fare as well. Its open world has its good points. It successfully serves as the driving force behind how players grow stronger, and gives players plenty to do: finding skill books, fighting powerful enemies, purifying Crucibles, capturing enemy bases, helping stray Kodama back home, or shooting Chijiko out of the sky with the bow to receive bonuses. All these activities and general exploration directly empower Takechiyo in various capacities. This is just one neat way Nioh 3 rewards exploration, with it being just one of many categories that contribute to earning Titles, which are various records of gameplay that, when achieved, earn points that can be spent to increase various stats, allowing players to consistently get stronger.
Unfortunately, Nioh 3 ’s open world also has issues. Each world is thoroughly devastated by the Crucible, which is initially interesting but quickly wears thin and becomes repetitive, as does having the same activities across succeeding time periods. Many of the sidequests aren’t particularly interesting, either, with many being given by faceless floating apparitions that don’t have much personality in an already thinly populated, ruined world, and they ultimately serve as window dressing to fill space rather than as memorable stories. When players reach the final area, there isn’t much new aside from the special Master enemies, each of which specialize in a specific weapon type and are a genuine joy to find, discover, and fight – but that gets to the root of the problem with Nioh 3 , which is that its best element is fighting, not exploring, and the latter drastically overstays its welcome.
[caption id="attachment_183847" align="aligncenter" width="640"] Nioh 3 has some really snazzy, stylized watercolor-like cutscenes.[/caption]
Visually, Nioh 3 struggles to fully express itself. While the actual world design, with its ruined battlefields, Japanese landscapes, and Crucible-infected zones, is outstanding, the display and performance hold back its artistic intent. The yokai, armor, weapon, and location designs are fantastic, and the game bursts with effective use of color, animation, and effects. However, on a base PlayStation 5, textures sometimes load slowly, and simple, fast camera rotations can catch models before their textures fully render. In addition, the mid-game suffers from persistent frame rate issues, jitters, and stutters, at times even becoming a nuisance in combat. Other performance issues include a handful of crashes and being unable to interact with objects until the game is reloaded. The game’s visual direction is gorgeous at times, with some story cutscenes showing some real flair, so it’s a shame that the performance doesn’t allow the world to shine as it should.
Nioh 3 ’s strong sound comes via an outstanding soundtrack and solid-to-good English voice acting. The game’s score effectively incorporates Japanese instruments throughout, with quieter, exploratory moments that drone soothingly or ominously using the shō . The battles, especially the bosses, use taiko with sweeping, intense string sections, rumbling, blaring brass, and even some throaty woodwinds to create a bizarre, booming, and demonically intense sense of urgency that raises the stakes and creates the sky-high excitement Nioh is known for. The English voice acting is quite good for the main characters, with Kunimatsu standing out as particularly venomous in his limited screen time, though if players are looking for a more immersive experience, the Japanese voice acting is outstanding. As a final note, the vocalizations and sounds of the yokai are as vicious and enthralling as ever.
All in all, Nioh 3 feels weighed down by its own scope. There’s a lot of space, and not quite enough content to fill it all adequately. If Nioh as a series was going to move towards an open world, there definitely could have been a better balance between scope and content. This is a game that could have benefited had it traded at least one of the time periods for more unique yokai and more missions. If it had to be this big, the performance issues and eventual repetition indicate it needed a bit more heat and time in the crucible. That said, it does maintain ferocious, ruthless, fast-paced action combat, punctuated by blood-pumping compositions, and it has a generally competent story and world built around it. Just don’t expect it to excel in every dimension.
Disclosure: This review is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.
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