Nioh (First one) - My Current Love Affair.

 

Nioh (spelled Ni (Two) and Oh (Kings)) is a game which was developed by Team Ninja - a developer team from KOEI TECMO company and published in 2018 for Playstation 4. I only started to play it in the end of 2019 (around October). At first, this game was hard to get my head around so I have gave it up after a while. But around February 2020, something forced me to give the game another try and so I did.

After about a year of struggling and find enjoyment in this rather unique and challenging game, I finally finished the final (main story) boss, Kelley and his summoned pet, Yamato-No-Orichi. Now, currently, I'm continuing the saga with the three DLCs and mopping up any extra trophies which I could able to obtain during that time.

At first, the game may look a lot like Dark Soul games (which I did try to play but like Nioh, I also gave up on it the first time). One of these days, I'm going to try another attempt on Dark Souls. Comments by gamers online often depicting the similarities between Nioh and Dark Soul but if you ask my option, the game look a lot like another forgotten Playstation 2 game which was Onimusha (which had four sequels). Onimusha games were quite popular back in early 2000s and disappeared by the time Playstation 3 arrived. The game Nioh reminded me a lot of those games.

There are not many problems I had with this game other than it requires a lot of patience from the players to stick around and willing to get abused. The enemies are unforgiving even at the very first stage. You will likely to die over and over again at the hands of grunt-level enemies which could be frustrating at first. This sort of games could force you to slow down and learn the enemy's patterns and behaviors instead of rushing in blindly as you could in a First-Person-Shooter (FPS).

In my first play-through (before I gave up), I managed to clear the first stage (Isle of Demons in Kyushu region) and reached the second stage (Deep in the Shadows - only to be halted by the vampire boss, Hino-Enma). I had quit the stage, went out, did other available stages and tried again. I failed three times, and gave up on the game for about three months. Finally, I decided to try again and this time, did deliberate slow grind to built my character and I'm going to tell you some tips which could be useful for you in case you are stuck in the same place.

My tips for this game are :

Tip 1 - Be observant. NEVER ever rush into a battle. Unless you are armed with the best weapon and has good Ki regeneration skills, the likely that you could attract more than one enemy and end up getting killed is very very high. Never get into a fight with more than one enemy. If you must, retreat backward and some enemies will take their times getting to you. The grunt types are usually faster and will rush you so kill them first.

Tip 2 - Weight Management. Like Dark Soul games, this game also have a stamina gauge and Nioh's stamina gauge recovery and usage is determined on how heavy the armor you wear. Heavier the armor, the more stamina (or Ki) you will consume when you are attacking, dodging and rolling. I found that anywhere between 70% to 85% are a favorable percentage when comes to armor weight. Anything less and you will be receiving a lot of damage and anything more, you could be moving like a snail. 

Tip 3 - Stamine or Ki Management. Related to the Weight Management above as well. But this time, I want to emphasis on the action you could perform which affects Ki. Even if you get William to run around butt-naked, he could still drain his stamina or Ki doing most of his actions such as dashing (running normally does not affect stamina), rolling, blocking and attacking. 

The main problem here is that a lot of people could likely to perform unnecessary movements or even do not understand when and where they should move, which direction they need to move, when they should dodge, block or attack. Every movement the NPC and enemy makes in a game is an animation clip. Most of these movements are same throughout the enemies. By studying these movements and the environment you are in, you should know when to move, when to attack, how far the enemy's attack could reach you, when to dodge and when to block. I usually roll or move to the side or back of an enemy before attacking by timing their attack with my movement.

Tip 4 - Know the Attack Types of the Enemy (both Yokai and Humans).

There are three type of attacks which all enemies of Nioh 1 makes, which are :-

1). Lunge - a single trust forward - covers a greater distance and does more damage but drains stamina more.

2). Continued attack - the common type where the Yokai and humans swings his weapon around.

3). Long range (Projectile) type of attack. Yokai fire balls, spider spinning its web, human (and undead) shooting at you with bows and arrows, rifles and hand-cannon. In some situation, some enemies will throw other items like paralyzing mist, shurikens, stones and even shit. 

Tip 5 - Learn the patterns of your enemies' attacks. Enemies can hide beside walls and higher ground to ambush you or shoot projectiles. Some could even take advantage of you being distracted by others to shoot you from a safe distance. Smaller enemies usually rush at you while the bigger and stronger time could stay behind and wait to use a lunge attack at you which could be devastating if you do not dodge. 

Their tactic here could be that the attacking enemy reduces your Stamina to a crawl and the bigger enemy will lunge. If you unable to dodge, you will get hit and die. If you do dodge, you could be likely to run out of Stamina and the smaller enemy will attack you. If you block it, you will run out of Stamina and the smaller enemy will attack you. Be wary of these patterns.

Speaking of patterns, there are two style of attack which you should take note. Style here is like dancing style. An enemy with full Stamina will likely to attack you with three strikes (before it stops to replenish its stamina). An enemy with 75% or half of its stamina will likely to attack you twice before stopping. Rarely have I seen an enemy attack ONCE unless it is a lunge attack (which uses all its stamina). So by looking at the stamina of the enemy, you could guess what sort of attack coming.

My usual method of playing is to allow the enemy to attack twice (but move away so the attacks will be wasted) and on the third attack, I will block it so the enemy could be close to my counter attack. I could attack ONCE or twice to stagger it before moving away. I keep repeating these until the enemy falls. But this method does not work if there is more than one enemy as the AI (Artificial Intelligent) seems to be designed in a way that two enemies could able to work together to stagger the player effectively. Never take more than two enemies and if you do, move away to a safer zone which will allow the faster enemy to move toward you in a hurry (thus reducing its own stamina in the process). 

Take note though that boss fights does not follow these rules. Most bosses can be divided into two types - aggressive and calculative. 

Aggressive types are those who have faster Stamina regeneration and could continue to attack you with purpose of reducing your Stamina (whether by dodging or blocking their attacks). Hino Enma (Deep in the Shadows), Giant Toad (Iga Escape), Honda Tadakatsu and Okatsu (Defiled Castle), Saika Magoichi (Immortal Flames), Shima Sakon (Sekigahara), Ishida Mitsunari (The Defiled Mountain) and Nobunaga Oda (The Demon King Revealed) can be considered aggressive types as they attend to push for offensive and will not allow you to regenerate stamina faster (which is why Sacred Water is very important to use when facing them).

The rest are Calculative Types. Calculative types are enemies who will use various methods which include faster movement to get into striking distance before moving away, use projectiles, traps, debilitating poison and such to their advantage. They will keep their distance as much as possible and could always wait for their stamina to regenerate to the max (or when you are within a striking distance) before acting. 

 Tip 6 - Know your weapons by heart. 

Swords - short range but good damage to the enemy but easily blocked.

Spears - double range of a sword, medium damage to the enemy but it is not suitable in a closed environment such as caves and buildings.

Tonfa - very short distance of attack, good range of damage but useless against enemies who attend to keep their distance from you, forcing you to get close and personal. This opens you to counter-attack especially when you run out of stamina. Use Tonfa when you want to do fast attack and move out of the way.

Axes - not my favorite. Similar to Tonfa but very slow. Has a devastating damage BUT it will leave you vulnerable to counter attack from stronger or faster enemies.

Kusagari (chains and balls) - fastest weapon but also the weakest. Good to take care multiple enemies but pretty useless against large Yokai who could take damage and counter attack.

Double-swords - fast weapon with medium level damage. Drains through the Stamina too fast for my taste. Useless against large Yokai who could take damage and counter attack you.

Odachi - My favorite weapon. It is a very large Katana which are surprising effective against humans and revenants. The best thing about Odachi is that it allows you to be in a safer distance (about twice the distance a sword could cover) and still able to touch the enemy with the edge of your blade. This means that you can swing and hit an enemy twice and move back once and the enemy have to move twice the distance to reach you. I liked Odachi so much that my character will always have one on his back and I have finished most of the bosses with this weapon because Odachi allows me to remain in a safer distance from their counters.

Projectile weapons (bows, rifles and cannons) - The ammo for these weapons are limited and the enemy will drop it randomly. Always break everything you see (like barrels) where ammos could be found. One thing I did notice is that the game do not give you any type of ammo to the type of projectile weapon you have equipped. Which means if you equip a bow and a handcannon, it could likely to drop rifle ammo for you instead. Or maybe it is just my game. 

Tip 7 - Onmyo Magic and Ninjutsu Skills. Personally I do not use or depend on them too much. I'm more comfortable relying on normal attacks (with weapons and projectiles) instead of using magic and traps. 

However, I did level up both Onmyo magic and Ninjutsu skills to get their passive skills which I find it to be very useful. Skills such as to increase Sacred water, Elixirs, bombs, increase Ki recovery and reduce elemental damage or increase elemental damage against the opponent as well are very useful skills to have as passive skills. Also, increasing Onmyo magic will allow you to heal more especially when you are getting health boost after a spa shower or normal healing items. 

Tip 8 - Find yourself a headgear with Amrita bonus which allows you to heal every time you pick up Amrita whether from ground, from striking down enemies or when you use Soulstones from your inventory. This is very useful to safe your healing item inventory to a time you really need them like in a tough battle or against the boss. Only other way to replenish your inventory could be to revisit the shrine but that could also mean the enemies will be reset.

As far as I know, only headgears comes with ability to give bonus when you pick up Amrita (I maybe wrong here but it is so in my game). Also, do not worry if your headgear is low-stats. You can always soul-match it with a higher-level headgear (as long as you have the money) and increase its stats later.

Tip 9 - Title (or prestige) points. One of the most easily overlooked features of Nioh is the Title points which the game rewards you for doing things like defeating certain number of specific enemies, or using certain weapons, elemental etc. What most people (myself included when I first played the game) ignored was the fact that these points could easily make William a very powerful character early on IF you know what to spend those points on for.

Agyo Title revolves around you defeating specific Yokai, using elements, . It will give you the points which you can use to improve the following stats on :

Amrita Earned.

Luck (for getting better equipment).

Life (increase).

Yokai Close Combat Damage (increases damage you can do on Yokai).

Received Elemental Attack Damage (decreases this damage on william).

Durability of Living Weapons (reduces the damage you receive thus prolonging the Living Weapon activation).

VS. Yokai Realm (increases your ability to restore Ki in Yokai pollution areas).

Onmyo Magic power (increase).

Ungyo Titles revolves around things like rare items, damage to human enemies and usage of certain weapons. It will give you points which you can improve the following stats on :

Gold Earned.

Item Drop Rate.

Ki (Max. amount you have).

Human Close Combat Damage (how much damage to deal to human opponent).

Damage from Fall.

Elixir Effect on Life Recovery.

Toughness (Your Durability/HP).

Ninjutsu Points.

Early on my game, I started to notice that it takes very long time to earn enough Amrita to level up so each time I was going through a stage, there was a possibility that I could end up losing it all which could be quite daunting for anyone. So these title points were a early stage substitute for those level ups.

I choose to use the points to level up only specific stats on both Agyo and Ungyo menu which has direct consequence on William as a character.

For Agyo, I only choose to use the point for Life, Yokai close combat damage, reducing elemental damage, increasing the vurneability in Yokai Realm and if possible, increase the durability of the Living Weapon. I ignored completely the need to earn more Amrita, Luck or Onmyo magic power.

For Ungyo, I had increased the Ki William has, the Human close combat damage and Toughness. I could increase the Elixir effect and Ninjutsu points if nothing else is there but there rest, I did not bother to increase in later in the game.

In this way, I had a character which was specifically created for combat, who could able to regenerate Ki in normal speed even if he was standing in thick of Yokai pollution, was able to withstand elemental damage done to him (especially those poison and fire) and could able to do extra damage to both humans and Yokai alike. And with such character, I was able to defeat the final boss (Yamato-No-Orichi) and had finished the Eye of the Queen mission (which ends the story of the game). Currently, I have two more trophies to go before I could get the Platinum for this game. 

Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nioh