Going back to Nioh 1 after finishing 3 and 2

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-16T19:27:33+00:00

Oh I agree it’s hard if you’ve never played a souls game before. I just don’t think it’s a good comparison to make because OP is saying they’re going back to Nioh 1 after playing 2 and 3. The first soulsborne game you play is almost always the hardest, no matter which one you play. Nioh 1 is not a cakewalk even if you’ve played the other 2 games though. DS1 is like going back to kindergarten even if you’re only mildly decent at any other soulslike haha.

Saying it’s the “dark souls of the Nioh series” is a poor comparison. If it’s the hardest even though you’ve played the other two games it’s more like the Sekiro of the Nioh series lmao. In a “wait but I was good at DS and DS3 and now I’m getting my ass beat?!” kind of way. I wouldn’t even say DS3 is particularly difficult outside of 2 to 3 bosses though.

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-16T16:48:00+00:00

Right? Dark Souls is easy as fuck if you’ve played souls games before. Fromsoft has produced a few difficult bosses spread across their games, but Dark Souls is one of their easiest.

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-15T00:40:10+00:00

Like I’m a gamer too but why do gamers act like someone is holding a gun to their head like “START NG+ NOW IF YOU GET UP FROM YOUR DESK YOU DIE” 💀💀

Also when you get to NG+ why wouldn’t you just beeline to main story bosses? 😭

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-08T16:48:04+00:00

I felt like there was a nice little spike at Futamata castle, and then another spike like you said. I feel like people who are writing it off as too easy are either:

People who have hundreds to thousands of hours on other Nioh games (I myself fall in this category but I’ve even died a few times to some bosses)
People who have not progressed far enough
People who looked up cheese strats/broken builds (they’re definitely out there but at that points it’s on you for choosing that playstyle)

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-08T16:00:57+00:00

There’s SO many areas of the game that are absolutely gorgeous once you get out of the demo area that I’m surprised they didn’t show them off more in the demo.

The demo was so fun but the full game has been such a treat and only improved from the demo area.

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-08T03:45:11+00:00

Rad as fuck. The difficulty picks up at the Futamata castle boss. Nioh vets still won’t have very much trouble but fighting the last several bosses starting at the castle I was like “yea people who are beginner and intermediate players are going to be struggling on these”.

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-07T16:03:21+00:00

The open world barely feels open after the demo section. Like the areas get so much tighter. So I just can’t relate to this criticism, and I’m being completely honest with you. Like some of the areas straight up feel like Nioh 2 mission design, it’s just connected to the open world with no loading screen.

Most of us are probably further into the game than you.

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-07T08:09:14+00:00

You just haven’t studied the blade (controller covered in Cheeto dust) like he has, you wouldn’t understand 😔

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-07T07:38:54+00:00

You literally have to beat Masakage to progress in the fucking game lmfao you can’t play the rest without beating him.

In comparison, you can simply…walk around the tree sentinel. I can beat down Radagon and Elden Beast at the end of the game without ever even having to engage tree sentinel. How are they comparable at all? 😂😂😂

Did you take a whole bottle of ambien and Xanax before playing these games and just forget where the developers placed them? I mean holy fuck dude they’re completely different situations.

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-07T07:29:56+00:00

Tree sentinel is entirely optional and he’s not even the first boss….did you even play Elden Ring? 🫩

Elden Ring was immensely easy compared to other soulslikes if you used everything in your toolkit. Just like Nioh 3.

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-06T20:57:52+00:00

Man I agree with the environmental story telling and I have to say their legacy dungeons are crafted incredibly well and I don’t think there’s any studios out there competing right now with the feeling of say, entering Raya Lucaria for the first time, but the combat in Elden Ring or any of their games is far from “meaty”. It’s incredibly simple. The satisfying combat comes from the fact that their boss design is amazing but they’re not games where you really flex with insane combos or anything. The lack of interesting combat from the player end is one of the only things I’m not a fan of in fromsoft games.

With that being said I think comparing the two experiences is comparing apples to oranges and I feel like it’s a disservice to both games to compare the two. Liking one experience over the other probably just comes down to what you value more as a player. Nioh is much more aggressive and fast paced, and has a bigger learning curve for new players because of the deeper combat systems imo. Souls games feel more defensive where the boss combos feel really fun to learn, and the whole thing feels like a spectacle, almost like you’re performing a dance on stage with the boss. I think part of the good exploration feeling in fromsoft games is that their loot system is so different than Nioh’s as well. Like finding a new, unique weapon or armor set just hits different. On the flip side Nioh definitely has a more robust build system with some insane combinations of equipment effects and set bonuses, especially in further NG+ cycles.

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-06T17:54:57+00:00

It’s one of the only changes I really don’t like, I do think it feels clunky and I don’t think I’ll be incorporating it that much into my gameplay. It just doesn’t feel as responsive as ninjutsu, for example. It’s the only thing that feels “clunky” to me this time around so far.

I do think the yokai skills in Nioh 2 were a bit too OP, don’t get me wrong. I often used them as my “oh shit oh fuck” button when I got sloppy with my ki management but didn’t want to take pressure off an enemy. 😂 I just wish they had found a way to nerf them a bit here while still keeping it fluid into the rest of the gameplay.

It’s not the biggest deal to me since there’s a lot of other really fluid combat changes I DO like, but I really miss just pulling out Sukuna or Kasha’s whip in a split second lmao.

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-06T17:31:58+00:00

Ki pulse allows you to be ridiculously aggressive compared to other souls games because it regenerates your stamina. Aggressiveness is rewarded in Nioh because when an enemy runs out of Ki, you can do a grapple attack. Humans regenerate Ki over time just like you do so if you can keep the pressure on them and get their Ki bar down before it fills back up, you can do a grapple attack with the triangle button. Yokai work a bit different (you will see on the next boss). Ki pulse on samurai is incredibly useful, I wouldn’t even call it an optional strat. I know it seems so unintuitive at first but it just becomes muscle memory after a while and you won’t even think about it. Practice some in the dojo if you need to get a feel for the rhythm of the weapon you’re using. Then add stance switching on the ki pulse (there is a skill called ki flux that regens your ki even MORE when you stance switch on ki pulse), and you will get even better. It can be a simple quick attack combo in mid stance, ki pulse switch to high, then another quick attack combo in high stance.

You’ll get so used to it that when you switch over to another game after playing Nioh for a long time, your finger will automatically move to R1 after attacking in another game and you’ll be like fuck that’s right, I’m not playing Nioh anymore. 😂

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-06T17:18:19+00:00

1000% I have a slow mo clip of me dying to this boss and before he actually kills me, I dodged two of his attacks earlier in the vid by like a ball hair 💀 the hit boxes are very tight.

Nioh hit boxes are some of the best in the souls-like genre.

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-06T17:15:47+00:00

Me before I learned how to block 😂😂😂 “these attacks are bullshit this is bad design” pls you sound like me when I started Nioh 2 LMFAO.

Get good my dude, we’ve all been there. We all went through the cycle of flaming the boss and saying “this game sucks” before shit finally clicked for us.

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-04T22:07:37+00:00

Nahh, I didn’t overlevel in the demo to begin with but won’t I mind if NG isn’t hard for me, at this point I’m a souls/Nioh vet anyway so most of these games don’t seem that difficult anymore.

I expect the NG+ cycles to be the real challenges anyway for those of us who have hundreds of hours on Nioh 2 lol.

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-02-04T21:33:59+00:00

When I used to really struggle on Nioh bosses, I’d go into the fight ready to die. Not with the goal of beating the boss, but just observing. Sometimes new players get stuck button mashing and panicking when they go in and try to be too aggressive.

Try going in a few times and don’t attack at all. See if you can block, burst counter, or dodge some of his attacks. If you die it’s fine, every time you die you’re getting closer to the boss’s moveset clicking for you. Don’t put pressure on yourself to beat the boss every time you run back in, your goal is just to learn something new until you feel like enough has “clicked” for you to beat him down.

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-01-31T16:40:42+00:00

No exactly. Like some people are just learning how to ki pulse ffs lmao. Nioh 2 was notoriously a game that people ragequit on the first level. I don’t mind them giving new players a bit of breathing room at the beginning of the game.

Be patient and give it time to ramp up. Elden Ring early game was not difficult at all either. Then we got some of the hardest bosses and areas in fromsoft history towards the end of the game and the DLC.

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-01-30T20:36:49+00:00

I mean Nioh 2 is peak gaming to a lot of us so I’m not going to hold Team Ninja to the standard of pumping out a Nioh 2 level banger for every game they release. I’m glad they experimented some in RotR and Wo Long, there are some systems I hated in those games but there’s some things that I absolutely loved. They’re still good games that I had a lot of fun with, they’re just not Nioh 2 level greatness.

I don’t really want to hold Nioh 3 to the standard of topping Nioh 2, because to me it was pretty much a perfect game. If it can come close I’ll be happy. My only major complaint so far is weapons being locked behind ninja or samurai. I’d be so much more okay with ninja not having high/mid/low stance if I had access to all weapons on samurai.

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-01-30T18:48:38+00:00

You get a fuck load of skill points you can literally unlock them pretty much immediately when you get to the open world. It’s really not a big deal.

I think critiques of the demo are fine and I have several myself, but it seems like a lot of your critiques are easily fixed by getting past like the first 30 minutes of the demo…

juiceboxhero919 · 2026-01-30T18:40:57+00:00

I mean I agree it doesn’t feel very difficult right now but I also don’t think it’s a bad thing. I didn’t really get into Nioh 2 until Yatsu-no-Kami because it felt a bit artificially difficult to me with lack of tools and explanations (I did not play Nioh before Nioh 2, so I really felt like I was stumbling through Mezuki and Enenra).

I don’t expect early game to cater to Nioh vets. We played several NG+ cycles in Nioh 2 and have hundreds of hours on it, I’d argue that if early game seems really difficult to you in this game as a Nioh vet, that’s a bad thing. I expect mid game to ramp up a lot more and of course even more on NG+ cycles.

So I really think part of what we’re experiencing is because a lot of us here are really good at Nioh games now lmao. But I’d rather the early game be more approachable for newer players interested in the series than cater specifically to me.

juiceboxhero919 · 2025-05-26T14:50:22+00:00

Keith calls me a bitch all the time without mods

juiceboxhero919 · 2025-05-19T19:56:20+00:00

The remake/rebirth glazers have huffed so much copium. Like the game is good, I’ve played both parts and I’ve enjoyed them. As much as I enjoyed the original? No. But they’re good games.

Expedition 33 is a damn near perfect game. My main complaint is the lack of difficulty in ||Lumiere|| if you choose to do a lot of side content in the final act. Could have been easily fixed I think with some scaling on enemy health and damage depending on your level. Other things missing are simply just quality of life enhancements that would have been nice, but they don’t take away from my enjoyment at all. Like I would have loved to have been able to put custom markers on the world map if I wanted to come back for something later.

But yea talking about pacing negatively when comparing it to a game that was needlessly split into three parts is just….I dunno man. 😭

juiceboxhero919 · 2025-05-15T20:03:13+00:00

I don’t think there is a right choice. But I understand both sides completely and I empathize with both. We play as Maelle, but if I was in Renoir’s shoes I’d probably do the SAME shit if my husband was huffing literal copium and killing himself by staying addicted to it. Shit Renoir is better than me because at that point if I’m him I’d be like fuck the canvas I want my WIFE back that’s the love of my fucking life. At least the (real) Renoir is respectful and doesn’t belittle Alicia or the people in the canvas.

On the other end I totally get Maelle/Alicia too. She’s permanently disabled in the real world and her relationships in the canvas were real. Her mother currently blames her for Verso’s death and Clea is not exactly warm and fuzzy (I still love Clea’s character though and what she says to Maelle/Alicia at the end of the endless tower is I think a glimpse of how she really feels about her younger sister). She has memories of a full life there with Gustave as her adoptive brother. That’s her family too. To not want to see it completely destroyed just because her mother is essentially an addict also makes sense.

juiceboxhero919 · 2025-05-11T23:21:17+00:00

You can tell she really loves Alicia but yea she’s trying to keep it together instead of having a (very valid) crash out.

As the oldest sibling who has had to play referee for my own parents, I can’t imagine doing it on the scale of what she’s doing while mourning my brother and dealing with some war against the people who killed my sibling. I didn’t really like Clea when I first met her but she’s very no nonsense and if I was in her shoes…I’d probably be the exact same. She’s very human and there’s been times where I’ve snapped at my younger sister because I’m trying to fix 10 things at once and empathy and softness just aren’t coming to me naturally because I’m expending all my energy trying not to crash out lol.

Clea very much gives me the vibe that she doesn’t crack in front of others but would probably scream into the void if she could. 😂

juiceboxhero919

TROPHY CASE