Nioh 3 Announced | State of Play 2025

I don't know why, but I thought the title said "NieR 3" and I got so fucking hyped for .02ms and then realized it said "Nioh". Sadge.
 
Demo is awesome and very meaty. When I heard it was going open world, I had concerns it was going to be a re-run of Rise of the Ronin. If not for the signature Team Ninja combat system, Rise would've been one of the most forgettable games of the generation.

What Nioh 3 shows us is exactly why Rise did not really work. Its over-reliance on human enemies paled in comparison to what Team Ninja can do with the yokai. We kind of suspected this at the time, coming from Nioh 2, but now that Nioh 3 cherry-picks the best mechanics of Rise and pits them against a more comprehensive enemy roster, we can confirm it.

The other issue with Rise was that its more grounded historical setting didn't give Team Ninja much artistic freedom. My main memory of Rise is riding across rolling hills with a ton of grass pop-in. The nightmarish world of Nioh 3 is dramatically more appealing because Team Ninja are now free to bathe its hellscape with tons of atmospheric effects, twisted structures and whatever color palette they feel like.

This aids in the 'level' design too. Seeing that monstrosity in the sky as the title card drops is the best Breath of the Wild-style emergence from the cave moment in a long time. As mean as it is to say, since I know Rise of the Ronin was stuck in development hell for 9 years, it almost feels like it was the training run for this...

Also really glad Yugo Kanno is returning as composer. Hearing the the amazing Nioh theme again got me so hyped.
I still really enjoyed ROTR, just because the parrying felt so good. For me, the biggest problem with ROTR was the simplification of gameplay mechanics. It lacked the depth and complexity of Nioh. It just felt like I was spamming buttons between parrying. Not to mention the performance was trash

I agree, the demo of Nioh 3 is fantastic. I was skeptical the first couple hours, but Team Ninja did a good job streamlining a few mechanics while continuing to add a bunch of depth. I love that they finally added proper parrying. And I'm really glad Team Ninja is taking chances rather than rehashing Nioh 2. An open hub world was always the next evolution of the franchise

I still do wish they built this game from the ground up on a new engine tho. I'm not too picky on visuals and performance, but Katana engine has got to go. Nioh 3 will have a really hard time attracting new players because of that, but the franchise has a strong hardcore fanbase to sustain it. If Team Ninja were given the time and resources, I truly believe they would be considered one of the best studios in the industry, which is frustrating as a massive fan
 
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I still really enjoyed ROTR, just because the parrying felt so good. For me, the biggest problem with ROTR was the simplification of gameplay mechanics. It lacked the depth and complexity of Nioh. It just felt like I was spamming buttons between parrying. Not to mention the performance was trash

I agree, the demo of Nioh 3 is fantastic. I was skeptical the first couple hours, but Team Ninja did a good job streamlining a few mechanics while continuing to add a bunch of depth. I love that they finally added proper parrying. And I'm really glad Team Ninja is taking chances rather than rehashing Nioh 2. An open hub world was always the next evolution of the franchise

I still do wish they built this game from the ground up on a new engine tho. I'm not too picky on visuals and performance, but Katana engine has got to go. Nioh 3 will have a really hard time attracting new players because of that, but the franchise has a strong hardcore fanbase to sustain it. If Team Ninja were given the time and resources, I truly believe they would be considered one of the best studios in the industry, which is frustrating as a massive fan

I hope they switch to Unreal Engine 5. Now that they're doing open world games and UE5.6 is promising up to Witcher 4 quality at 60fps on current gen consoles, seems like a no brainer.

I bet the Ninja Garden 2 Black remakester they did had the ulterior motive of giving them some training time with the engine.
 
I hope they switch to Unreal Engine 5. Now that they're doing open world games and UE5.6 is promising up to Witcher 4 quality at 60fps on current gen consoles, seems like a no brainer.

I bet the Ninja Garden 2 Black remakester they did had the ulterior motive of giving them some training time with the engine.
Yeah, that was a really good remaster. I would pay so much money if Nioh 3 looked like that. Realistically, it will probably be another few years before we see a UE5 Team Ninja game, if they do switch engines
 
just played the demo on the PS5 Pro

What the fuck was that absolute dogshit performance on "performance mode"?

game looks exactly like Nioh on PS4 and runs like SotC PS2

I played the demo for 4 hours on PS5 Pro as well, you're over-exaggerating here with the SOTC PS2 analogy. Performance isn't the best on the performance mode but it's in specific spots and not throughout the whole open world. Visually speaking, some aspects looked nicer than Nioh 2 while some didn't. But this is alpha and there's still a whole year before the game comes out.
 
I played the demo for 4 hours on PS5 Pro as well, you're over-exaggerating here with the SOTC PS2 analogy. Performance isn't the best on the performance mode but it's in specific spots and not throughout the whole open world. Visually speaking, some aspects looked nicer than Nioh 2 while some didn't. But this is alpha and there's still a whole year before the game comes out.
I have played through the demo 3 times. The performance was really shaky the first few days of release. It has been really solid since then tho. The more I play the better I feel that this game will be a home run

I also started a new game of Nioh 2 as well. Still amazing, but no jump mechanic and the sprint/dodge are annoyingly on the X button. Feels a bit archaic after playing Nioh 3
 
Visually speaking, some aspects looked nicer than Nioh 2 while some didn't.
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i mean, a good game's a good game, but... ehhhggghh
 
I have played through the demo 3 times. The performance was really shaky the first few days of release. It has been really solid since then tho. The more I play the better I feel that this game will be a home run

I also started a new game of Nioh 2 as well. Still amazing, but no jump mechanic and the sprint/dodge are annoyingly on the X button. Feels a bit archaic after playing Nioh 3
I started Nioh 2 after this announcement. Crazy how much more improved it is over the first game.
 
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