Nioh 3 Review – An Evolutionary Leap Forward

Nioh 3 Review

Threading the needle between fan service and innovation, Nioh 3 accomplishes many of the same goals as FromSoftware’s Elden Ring. Comparing games isn’t always useful, but in this case, I think it makes sense. Whether by accident or design, Nioh 3 – like Elden Ring – is the best iteration of the franchise to date. It makes the game more accessible without sacrificing core design principles. widening and deepening both the gameplay and the literal areas to explore. It has some minor pain points, but they hardly detract from a thoroughly enjoyable experience.

History Lessons

One of the earliest so-called Soulslikes, Nioh (2017), distinguished itself through difficult and exacting combat and complex mechanics. It was set in a fantastical, supernatural-infused version of feudal Japan, weaving together history and fantasy. The same was true of Nioh 2 in 2020, albeit with several new mechanics and a prequel timeline. Nioh 3 is set in the early 17th century after the events of the first game, with some overlap. 

In the broadest possible strokes, Nioh 3 is the story of two siblings vying for the title of shogun. You play as Tokugawa Takechiyo. Your jealous brother, Tokugawa Kunimatsu, harnesses the power of darkness to corrupt the world and unleash hordes of yokai. Your task is to clear the world of supernatural corruption and defeat Kunimatsu. That’s a little like saying Hamlet is about a dude with a twisted relationship to mommy.

No, I’m not remotely comparing Nioh 3 to Hamlet. Still, Nioh 3’s narrative is well written and (especially in Japanese) effectively acted. There are some interesting characters, including a few cameos from earlier games. However well-conceived, Nioh’s stories have always taken a distant backseat to the action. That’s still true in Nioh 3. It’s possible to play many consecutive hours without truly engaging in the story aside from the setting. Nioh 3 lacks the compelling environmental storytelling that would more thoroughly ground the action. 

Out in the Open

Nioh was very linear, and Nioh 2 had a mission-based structure that was more flexible. Nioh 3 blows the doors off the barn and gives players an expansive world of connected zones. Call it open field or open world, it’s also one of the best iterations of the design I’ve ever seen. There’s no bloat and no dull, empty space. It strikes a perfect Limgrave-ian balance. Nioh 3 might not have a Rise of the Ronin-size land mass, but it feels big because there’s so much to explore.

However, Team NINJA doesn’t have George RR Martin or the luxury of a pure fantasy world. The game has to be grounded in some version of Japan. In addition to different biomes and time-hopping diversity, the game includes  vast underground caves and corrupted areas called Crucibles. After the player clears the supernatural evil, they have the uncorrupted areas to explore again.

In addition to placing something worth exploring, fighting, or gathering around every corner, Nioh 3 takes considerable effort towards making its world painless to negotiate. There are plentiful fast travel shrines, and the map can be configured in many different ways by turning icons off and on. Missions are extremely well explained. Not to mention, this time around your character has the ability to jump, double jump, and even wall run in specific places. 

Combat Refresh

Nioh’s combat has always been built around stamina, called ki. Techniques for managing, conserving, and restoring ki are the most important core skills to learn. The difference between success and a very bad time always meant mastering the ki pulse, which restores stamina in an almost rhythm-game kind of way. Nioh 3 doesn’t really change that requirement. At least in part.

Nioh 3 does include one huge, potentially controversial change. This time around, players must switch between two combat styles, samurai and ninja. Samurai style is much like that of earlier games, with high, middle, and low stances. Ninja style is fast, acrobatic, and instead of a ki pulse, uses a technique called Mist to confound the enemy. It’s almost like Team NINJA brought together ideas from not just Nioh, but Rise of the Ronin, Wo Long and Ninja Gaiden. Samurai and ninja styles are both satisfying enough that players might be tempted to specialize. However, Nioh 3 bosses are often built around mastering the two styles. And besides, seamlessly switching between the styles is exhilarating. 

Like FromSoftware’s games, Nioh 3 doesn’t have difficulty options explicitly built in. Instead, players use the open world to grind and progress, master and upgrade weapons and skills, and call upon other players to help mitigate the challenges. By and large, the game’s bosses are tough – sometimes extremely – but fair. The tools are there in abundance.

Too many to list here, there are literally dozens of other small and larger changes to Nioh’s complex mechanics, the UI, item use, character progression, and more. Nioh has always relied on a synthesis of systems. Nioh 3 does a very good job of tutorializing new players, but there’s still a lot to take in. Returning players with dozens of hours of Nioh muscle memory and systems savvy will need a period of adjustment. 

Issues of Performance and Aesthetics

To be honest, I’ve never loved Nioh’s art direction. The games have always tended toward dark and muddy lighting contrasted with retina-burning combat effects. Nioh 3’s environments are cleaner and easier to parse, with effective lighting and lots of variety in biomes and zones. The excellent character creator from Nioh 2 returns. Overall, Nioh 3 looks great but perhaps not as awe-inspiring as the generally less ambitious Wo Long Fallen Dynasty. Of course, a lot of the prior games’ architecture, yokai monster designs, and spell effects make an encore appearance. The new bosses, on the other hand, are uniformly visually interesting, and character movement in combat and exploration is extremely fluid.

Nioh 3’s music — a combination of traditional instruments and orchestral textures — is often excellent, but gets very repetitive, to the point where I muted it for long stretches. Repeated boss attempts are already exercises in patience without a music track on loop. Aside from that, overall sound design is good and borrows a lot from the prior games. Sound plays an outsized role in combat, providing the players with satisfying feedback, audible cues and environmental guidance.

I played Nioh 3 on a vanilla PS5, and there were some issues with large areas glitching in and out and what felt like network lag. At least on console, the array of options for tweaking sound, graphics, and accessibility is fairly limited. Nioh 3 makes up for this by having a huge number of in-game options for shaping the experience.

Already Good Gets Even Better

Nioh 3 is the most ambitious and densely featured entry in the series, with a vast world to explore and extremely satisfying systems and combat to master. It does for the Nioh franchise what Elden Ring did for the Dark Souls world. Nioh 3 offers a huge amount of content and flexibility. It can be immensely challenging, but there are plenty of ways and an array of tools and approaches to mitigate the difficulty. Nioh has always perched between being niche and mainstream. Nioh 3 should help this excellent series broaden its audience while appealing to long-time fans as well. Lovers of Soulslikes, Team NINJA’s games, and well-made action titles in general won’t be disappointed.

***PS5 code provided by the publisher for review***