Remember that first time you played a souls game, how do you different it felt. It took a while to even understand how to play. That’s NiOh. It looks like souls but the combat is quite different with a huge learning curve. The game just throws you into it with all kinds of stats and game systems you don’t know how to do. Play for an hour and things kind of make sense. Every enemy can kill you if you aren’t careful and managing ki (endurance) is huge.

The movement feels a lot more loose than DS which generally I am not a fan of, I like my characters to have weight to them. It’s loose yet stiff which makes for an odd combo, while you can move around quick attacks are very stiff, this is no fast paced action game with move cancels like NG. Once you attack you are locked in just like DS and you lose a piece of endurance (Ki) which is the system that governs the combat. Ki plays a far bigger role here as it depletes super fast with almost all actions you do and the enemies lose Ki quick as well and you see that bar as well as health. Depleting Ki can be a good strategy in combat as when they get tired you can execute a super attack. After every combo you have a second to hit stance R1 to recoup a chunk of your Ki, this is the key to staying active.

So I played a few hours last night and I feel like I have a grasp on the combat. I would advise you guys to not read this until you play and get lost yourself, that’s part of the fun. The stance system is the key, every weapon can be held in three stances high, mid and low. This allows all weapons to have a heavy and quick mode. Go high for strong attacks but slow, go low for quick attacks and better dodging, mid for a bit of both. Now each weapon his it’s own combos and move sets that are locked away in a skill menu. As you level up you gain skill points that allow you to level up weapon types.

So say all katana weapons, you can unlock combo finishers for each stance. For instance you can buy the strong attack finisher for high stance which after you do a light attack you can end the combo with string and now he does a rolling lunge attack. You can hit light up to a certain amount of times and end the combo at any point with strong. There is a chart showing the combos each weapon can do and you can customize the finishers any way you like. Right now I only have one finisher per stance but it seems like you will have many to choose from as the game goes on allowing for full combo customization.

Enemies are brutal, so far all are humans and basically move just like you do. If you get attacked by two or more enemies it’s almost certain death. These guys chase you attack all at once, it’s relentless. Using stones to get the attention of one enemy and pull them away one at a time is key. Soon you will gain many item weapons like shirukens and poison clouds that can stun enemies. There are parries but I haven’t messed with it much, I do the stick and move approach. It is far easier to comply turn and run away from an enemy in this game when compared to souls, even when locked on when you press back your character turns and runs full speed back rather than slowly stepping back like in souls. So forget the rolling of souls, won’t work here, this is all about moving or dashing if you have ki.

The combat is pretty different than souls but the structure is identical. You have “souls” that you earn as you kill enemies, die and you have once shot at reaching your souls to recoup them. You level up and save at a shrine. You have 3 elixirs which act just like flasks but I don’t know how to level those up, I find more but it doesn’t save when I hit the shrine, it only recoups to three. The world is the same design as souls games with multiple paths, items sitting in odd places where you have to fall or jump to reach them. I stopped after reaching the first shortcut which allowed me to drop a ladder next to the shrine.

All over the map are these red swords on the ground, I assume these are other players? This is all automatic and each sword has a level and potential drops. Activate it and a tough enemy will spawn, kill it for the drop rewards. Not sure the overall point of this yet but it’s everywhere and it has the toughest enemies by far. Speaking of loot it’s everywhere, enemies constantly drop 3 items at a time. You will have 20 or more of every piece of armor in no time. You can sell most of it at the shrine for souls and rewards, you will need to do this often as you collect so much crap. There is a color coded system to show the rarity of the loot so there is a loot game component to it.

This feels like mid tier game, it’s exactly what has been missing from gaming. It doesn’t look or control as well as DS, it probably won’t be as good as DS but at least its different. This is a game that is trying a new combat system inside an established game type, it’s the kind of experimentation mid tier games used to do. I don’t know if the full game will be great, I am still messing around with all the game systems as there are even more that i haven’t mentioned. I have no clue what a boss is like in this game. There is coop which I have yet to try. This could be special or just a different take on souls.

The name alone guarantees its a mid tier game.

I have some displeasures with some of the systems, but I kind of am close to liking it. It's not quite giving me the same boner that Ninja Gaiden gives me, but lots of things aren't as good as Ninja Gaiden. Souls games aren't as Ninja Gaiden for that matter. And while I get how some of these systems are related to how the Souls games do business, it's kind of odd how games using these same principles (Castlevania and Monster Hunter being the big ones) seem to get brushed past, because our way of describing "getting hit means fucked, and your attack animations are high committment" is "it's like Dark Souls, but"