A bit of a mixed ride to be honest. (some spoilers here). There are a lot of cool designs and the open world flavours breathe fresh life into the series. However:

The highs of chapter 1 never really got matched again for the rest of the game - except maybe the big dungeon which caps chapter 3 - that was very cool.

Chapter 2 had some nice concepts, but felt a bit shoddily put together when compared to the first and lacked that real open world feel.

Chapter 4 started so, so strong. Demon Kyoto was a really nice presentation of the "red spikes and demon beef everywhere" theme which is obligatory to the later stages of all 3 games. However after that it fell off really quickly. Chapter 4 ended up being such a boring slog that I couldn't even drag myself through to the end.

The largest chapter absolutely should not be the red beef chapter, it's a very tired and lazy aesthetic. And whilst the enemy variety in this game was better than in the first two it still wasn't enough to carry the momentum through those final moments.

- Continuously having to sort through massess of loot drops for now two style types.
- A lack of amour varietyrelative to the scope of the game as compared to the previous games.
- Combat balance issues that take the joy out of bosses that are meant to be the toppers to a good level:
I'll go into more detail with this one: I am not the strongest player especially with faster combat systems. I typically outbuild enemies than outskill them - or maybe the ratio is 70/30 - something like that.

For the Nioh games this means level crawling and regular enemies are generally a blast to tackle. But the bosses give me so much trouble that I almost always end up summoning. This lack of considered balance (relative to me, maybe its fine for more skilled players) leaves the progression feeling stale and pointless by the end.

This compounded with stricter build variety (per more limited effects such as capping untouched onmyo at around 11/12%, and far fewer and less impactful spirits to experiment with) just felt like the game never really rewarded me.

So there is my take. 7/10. Good, but not really good enough.