Nioh is a Playstation exclusive action role-playing game developed by Team Ninja of Koei Tecmo, which gave us amazing games such as Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive. Nioh has been compared with games from the Souls series because of their common trait of being particularly hard. However, other than death, death and more death, Souls games and Nioh are quite different.
Nioh is set in 1600 Japan's late Sengoku Period, where many clans in Japan were at war before the unification of Japan. The main protagonistin Nioh is an Irishman named William who pursues a man named Edward Kelley who stole his guardian spirit from him. This causes William to be part of the war in Japan, allowing to meet new allies and more guardian spirits, while learning the ways of the Samurai.
Just like Souls games, the main feature of Nioh is death, where players get to experience many different ways of dying, which are all very frustrating. Jokes aside, Nioh's combat system gives a lot of customization for combos for each weapon set. High Stance allows for high damage but lowering the ability to dodge effectively, Medium Stance allows for enhanced blocking, allowing for timed strikes, and Low Stance allows for quick dodges and fast attacks, at the cost of lower damage.
Each of these stances have their own unique animations for all weapons. Speaking of weapons, there are 5 melee weapon types, the Katana, Spear, Dual Blades, Axe and the 'Chain-Sickle' Kusarigama, all of which have their own advantages and disadvantages.
Just like in Souls games, there is there 'Stamina' bar, but in Nioh its called the Ki bar, and this bar is the most common cause of death in this game. When William's Ki runs out, he will be stunned, which welcomes a critical hit from enemies which usually result in death. But there's a way to quickly regain Ki and that is the Ki pulse, which is similar to Bloodborne where quickly attacking enemies after getting damaged can regain HP.
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