Finished it last night, the game is literally Nioh 2 spliced with Sekiro and that's not a bad thing though it's funny just how much it apes Sekiro, right down to a final battle on a moonlit field lol. Despite there being all these magic spells to unlock this is almost purely a melee game and all that stuff was mostly useless fluff. Used the roar that boosted defense, sometimes used lightning weapon, that's about it.
While there were some genuinely cool, standout battlefields the rest were indeed average at best and none of it was helped by the utter lack of enemy variety. One of the beautiful things about FROM games is entering a new area not knowing what to expect, each region bringing it's own, unique monstrous surprises by the handful. Here we're left with the same tiger, hedgehog, generic soldier, Medusa bitch from start to finish with few exceptions (stone and giant soldiers later in the game).
I loved the combat though, deflecting remained satisfying throughout, the "whiplash" sound effect upon spirit break was a fantastic choice, makes everything feel more kinetic and impactful. Weapon variety was alright, mostly found myself sticking to single or dual swords. Overall the loot felt kind of boring, Tiger armor set coolest looking one, Nioh definitely has the edge here, felt like that series had a lot more inspired sets, Samurai ftw.
Brings me to my final point, thought Nioh 2 was far superior as a total package from it's level design, to loot, to finding Kodama (vs panda demons) to bosses, to spirit animals etc. Almost wish that if we got a Nioh 3 it would take Wo Long's deflect/spirit mechanic, get rid of Ki and keep the rest (cue defenders of the Ki mechanic crying sacrilege, it's cool, relax). Don't want to sound down on the game because I sincerely dug it, just could have and should have been more, I'll leave it at that, no regrets buying it full price
Even if I arrived to the end and finished Sekiro, I'm not very good doing parries, it's a game mechanic that stress me a lot.
