This game is more than the sum of its parts. It's an amalgamation of play styles taken from Ninja Gaiden, Dark Souls, and Diablo. That's what so cool about it. Arguing about which game it cribs more from is stupid and missing the point. So like, stop it.
You are calling everyone stupid after you pit your opinion on what the game is too.
It's quite frankly a Souls game. It has exactly 0 gameplay similarities with Diablo and there is not a single trace of Ninja Gaiden gameplay in this game. I'm super confused why the fact that Team Ninja developed it and a samurai/ninja setting has people unable to identify the gameplay has no roots with Ninja Gaiden whatsoever.
Ninja Gaiden is hyper-fast continuous combo action. Nioh is deliberate and plotting. Ninja Gaiden has a combat system that requires the correct moveset for the correct enemy type. Nioh's combat is about your character's gear and the build thereof. Ninja Gaiden is about crowd management. Nioh is about stamina management.
Souls games on the other hand are deliberate and plotting games that require proper stamina management and character builds. It's almost as if Nioh not having any of the core mechanics of NG or Diablo, and all of the Souls ones, make it a Souls game. 'Completely surprisingly' however, Team Ninja stated this is them doing a Souls game. Crazy.
It would be naive to assume the game did not have influences from Omnimusha and Diablo, but it is super clear those are setting and gear respectively. Anyone who claims Nioh plays like a Ninja Gaiden game or a Diablo game is just wrong. It plays, exactly, like Dark Souls.
@ares42: But that's probably just Souls-experience though. I played DSII my first time through extremely aggressive as well because I had over 300 hours of Dark Souls under my belt. It's also why, perhaps, Bloodborne seemed so easy to me. Because it made my preferred style more or less the only valid way to play and the entire game was built around it so I blasted through that thing.
I'm really not playing Nioh that different to be honest. I really like the parts where it reaches more depth and expands on existing systems. It will most likely end up being one of my favorite Souls games, though probably not the actual favorite since the environments aren't that amazing (the setting is awesome though) and I don't think the mission structure is more engaging than the singular interconnected world.
@pyrodactyl: No, once you figure out how to Ki Pulse effectively you can just engage and combo down enemies with a long string of attacks, like DMC. There's a bunch of tricks and abilities that allow you stun, stagger, knock down (etc) enemies, and with the Ki Pulse you can recover something like 2-3 times your total stamina in a single string.
Let me prefix this by saying I love Ninja Gaiden, I love DMC and I love Dark Souls. You saying this is like DMC or NG (or Souls) is never something I'd consider bad praise, because those games are fantastic and have very deep and challenging combat systems.
But in the interest of classifying this to the particular genre it belongs to, it most certainly is not like DMC. Nioh elaborates on the stamina mechanic that is crucial to Souls games' gameplay by allowing you to regain it faster. If you master the system, you will rarely run out, but that means you do have to stop attacking frequently to engage with that Ki Pulse mechanic. DMC and NG are relentless action games. The second you stop attacking, you're underperforming. There is no stamina management like core to a Souls game. There is crowd control and hyper aggressive combo use.
I don't mean this as the elitist insult it appears to be, but if 'poking enemies and running away' is the crux of the Souls experience for you, then you haven't mastered those games at all. 'Dancing your way around them while stabbing them to death' has been my preferred style in Souls games since the first Dark Souls. It isn't any different here in terms of approach, the mechanics around it are just a bit different (in a cool way I appreciate mind you).
Yes, Nioh is a bit faster than the average Souls game, but it is crawling baby-slow compared to Ninja Gaiden or even DMC.
Nioh is just Souls with everything turned up a bit. However, it doesn't matter how much you turn up Souls, it will never become DMC. If anything, you can probably create a Souls game that is even faster than DMC, but still very much a Souls game. Speed is not necessarily the core of those gameplay systems.
@zevvion: The moment the game operates with a few weapon classes instead of unique weapons and a stamina mechanic you can mostly ignore it stops being a Souls game in my book. Add to that the meta layers of separate levels you replay in different ways and player abilities and there's not much left. Once you know what you're doing the combat barely resembles a Souls game (I'd say it's closer to something like a God of War or DMC) and without the "exploring a big epic world" experience you lose a giant part of what makes Souls games so engrossing.
Souls games have weapon classes and always have. You cannot ignore the stamina mechanics in Nioh any less than you could in Dark Souls. The combat most resembles Souls and most definitely not DMC where the player is all-mighty and has elaborate combo's that Nioh does not have.
Nioh is in every sense a Souls game. I am using the exact same approach as I do a Souls game and the game responds to that in favor. If you play this game as if you were playing DMC you're going to have a bad time. Not to mention the fact that Team Ninja came out and said this is their take on Dark Souls and when they decided to create a Souls game in their long development of this game, it got back on track and they knew which direction to take it in.
With the random loot, skill unlocks, overall structure, etc etc this game is more Diablo than Souls, which is why Jeff is into it. I'm with Brad on this one, it's way less Soulsy than people have been portraying it. While there are certainly things that look very much ripped out of a Souls game (like the shrines and levelling system) there's way more things that are vastly different.
The gameplay is a near-identical copy of the Souls template. It has 0 similarities with Diablo in that regard other than having loot. And having loot doesn't mean your game is like Diablo. That's like saying GTA is like Call of Duty because it has guns.
This is most certainly a Souls game. It pushes the genre forward without a doubt and I am thoroughly enjoying it, but it is very clear that the core of the game is what it is.
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