When I tried the trial, what I remember was having a really hard time remembering all the complex button combinations. I realize people say this all the time, but I literally couldn't make it past the first couple of mobs. Can players get by with only modest button mashing skills?

In terms of difficulty, how would you rate this against a BLIND first playthrough of any Souls game?

I don't think it's that bad, I find Nioh's menus to be far more convoluted.

The thing is Nioh has a really steep learning curve early into the game.

It has become a bit of a running joke, with people pointing out just how few people ever managed get past Onryoki.

As I recall, I found that the game was getting gradually easier on my first playthrough, until by the very end it was laughable.

Can players get by with only modest button mashing skills?

...No, not unless they learn. But you don't need to pull off every combo.

Having two decent attack options and learning how to dodge should suffice.

Well, the trials were there to adjust difficulty and see how things went mostly. The actual game is somewhat easier than the trials were, about on par with the third, final trial.

Nioh is difficult for the first game cycle, then once you start getting really good gear it turns into a Diablo-esque loot grinder and loses a little difficulty, at least until you get to Way of the Wise and higher.

The difficulty for me was adjusting to the control scheme, rather than anything else. But it flows very nicely once you get used to it.

One thing that really threw me was the three stances. I really had no idea when I should be switching, and started to wonder if they were more of a framework for using whatever your personal style is. Were these meant to be used on different enemies types (i.e. aggressive stance for fast enemies, etc)?

Well stances you can pretty much ignore for a while, as you don't have any good skills at first. High stance is high damage but slow, middle stance is balanced between damage and speed and low stance is fast, light attacks.

Once you get some skills, you'll find a lot of skills depend on stance to work. Certain skills only work in certain stances, and some skills even change the stance you are in.

Low stance works well early game for getting hits in and dodging away, but I stuck to the middle stance for the most part especially with katanas. Once I started using the odachi I would change stance by using certain skills.

@lich I see, that's good to know. Maybe I will have to give this a try later, on a sale.

Hey man long time no talk. I just started the Nioh journey myself a few days back (bought it on my pc to play since it was 50% off to get the game and all it's dlc and my bro is going to be using the my xbox one to play fallout 76 a lot.)

Anyway, At first yes seeing all the buttons and different combinations of presses was overwhelming. But i've gotten semi used to it. I think i'm using scheme B which is similar to dark souls RB being lights and RT being heavies. It was a little weird to get used to blocking with x. But I got used to it. As far as stances go the above people are right. They don't matter too much early on. Just find a stance on a weapon you're comfortable with for the moves and then stick to that. I myself run tonfa and odachi. Switching between stances really isn't an in combat thing unless you have moves that do so.

Stance switching imo is meta thought. Meaning between engagements what do you want to use. Or if you're fighting a stronger enemy (not a push over but not a boss) you might switch stances when they aren't charging you to fit the situation. In my case I use low stance on scrub enemies and when i'm sizing up a boss. Then when I feel comfortable with a boss I go medium stance for the bit of extra damage. I never use high stance (at least so far) because you're exposed in that stance guard wise. Not to mention the ki drain on the attacks is pretty brutal.

I've heavily invested into the skills that let me dodge to activate ki-pulse and the ability to dodge back after using a ki pulse. This is really helpful. As ki pulse on dodge lets me always get some ki back while focusing on avoiding enemy hits. And dodge on ki pulse lets me be a bit more cheeky with more hits once i've gotten comfortable with the enemy.

I'm not super far in. I'm on the second boss of the game right now (no spoilers but she fast and paralysizes a lot) And this is what i've done so far to help me get through.

BWO_RazrSrorm wrote:Hey man long time no talk. I just started the Nioh journey myself a few days back (bought it on my pc to play since it was 50% off to get the game and all it's dlc and my bro is going to be using the my xbox one to play fallout 76 a lot.)

That's awesome...I'm glad at least one person around here is still playing. I just grabbed the game on the sale they're having for PS4 and I can only imagine the questions I'm going to have.

I remember getting completely stuck in the demo they had, because of the dumbest thing: I absolutely could not get the timing of the ki pulse. Tried for ten minutes and just gave up. This time I skipped the tutorial so that didn't happen (maybe you can quit the tutorial, but I wasn't sure). So far I'm just not doing anything with the pulse, and just managing the green bar.

Played for a while today and really got into using the spears (for the reach). I noticed on the stats screen that "body" governs both health and spear damage. This seems like a dream come true...is there a catch I'm missing? Can I really add to my health and weapon damage in one point category?

As far as leveling, do you basically follow a similar template as in Souls, concentrating on health, stamina, and whatever raises your attack skills. My secondary weapon is swords.

I took the shark thing as a guardian, and noticed when I die that it's on the ground. Do I also lose my XP like in souls, and have one chance to grab it?

There are a number of other things that confused me, but I need to play a bit more before I can even come up with a question

Back_Lot_Basher wrote:

BWO_RazrSrorm wrote:Hey man long time no talk. I just started the Nioh journey myself a few days back (bought it on my pc to play since it was 50% off to get the game and all it's dlc and my bro is going to be using the my xbox one to play fallout 76 a lot.)

That's awesome...I'm glad at least one person around here is still playing. I just grabbed the game on the sale they're having for PS4 and I can only imagine the questions I'm going to have.

I remember getting completely stuck in the demo they had, because of the dumbest thing: I absolutely could not get the timing of the ki pulse. Tried for ten minutes and just gave up. This time I skipped the tutorial so that didn't happen (maybe you can quit the tutorial, but I wasn't sure). So far I'm just not doing anything with the pulse, and just managing the green bar.

Played for a while today and really got into using the spears (for the reach). I noticed on the stats screen that "body" governs both health and spear damage. This seems like a dream come true...is there a catch I'm missing? Can I really add to my health and weapon damage in one point category?

As far as leveling, do you basically follow a similar template as in Souls, concentrating on health, stamina, and whatever raises your attack skills. My secondary weapon is swords.

I took the shark thing as a guardian, and noticed when I die that it's on the ground. Do I also lose my XP like in souls, and have one chance to grab it?

There are a number of other things that confused me, but I need to play a bit more before I can even come up with a question

You can deff play like that. At least from what i've seen so far. But considering the bosses (so far anyway) leave yokai spots on the ground a lot you might want to learn how to do do proper ki pulses at some point. As you don't always have the luxury of space to simply avoid those spots.

No you're not missing anything. Quite a few of the stats effect something besides weapon damage. I'd imagine this was intentional design as enemies in this game seem to hit harder than the souls games even with heavy armor on.

Sort of. You'll not want to neglect things that boost your magic and spirit though. As unlike souls status/elements play quite a big part of combat. And spirit is super helpful if you plan on using your living weapon a lot. Which you should considering it's an extra health bar while it's up. allowing you to be semi reckless and not worry about actual health damage.

Yes when you die your spirit "protects your grave." You can go back and get it. But if you die before picking it up you lose all of that exp. Just like stains in souls. Only difference is because your spirit is guarding your grave you can't build your spirit meter or use living weapon while it's doing that. If you don't care about the exp in the grave you can use the shrine you respawned at to call the spirit back and abandon the grave. The nice thing is before you choose to do that the shrine will tell you how much exp you have in that particular grave. so you can make an informed decision if you want to call the spirit back or not.

I'll do the best I can to help. But keep in mind i'm also playing through just like you. So I might not know how one thing works entirely. and there are some things I might not know about at all.

BWO_RazrSrorm wrote: I'll do the best I can to help. But keep in mind i'm also playing through just like you. So I might not know how one thing works entirely. and there are some things I might not know about at all.

No worries...I learned quite a bit from your post. I'll dig through the wiki here and try to learn a bit more about the magic/elemental stuff you mentioned.

This ki pulse...what exactly is the prompt for triggering it?