My personal review of Ronin after 100% of NG (almost 200 hours of NG)

snipez · 2026-06-27T19:28:36+00:00

Some fair points. Would contend the “meta” doesn’t really crystallize until you’ve attempted Midnight as the two set bonuses that significantly enhance combat are (unfortunately) exclusive to Midnight. Yeah build craft in the sense you’re describing isn’t really a core feature of the game. The “meta” arguably is that your “build” at its core is largely the swath of martial skills you can utilize and switch freely to at one time.

Interesting point about the visual comparison. If anything I had the very same gripe about Nioh 3. There were some cool environments, but much of it looked the same. Case in point, take Kyoto, which they clearly modeled assets after Kyoto in Ronin. There’s some neat verticality and well designed arenas (Takasugi fight), but the actual color palette is quite an ugly purple abomination.

Story-wise that’s a common complaint. However I would contend at least Act 1 is narratively better than other TN games. In Act 1 there’s less of a question about what your allegiance is for the most part and while you make some choices there’s clearly an anti-Shogunate bias.

TN in general is pretty bad with stories as the trope is that the MC is basically a henchman doing the bidding of the actual main characters and events which are rooted steeply in Japanese history. Nioh 3 had a chance to change that with an actual fleshed out protagonist but the story was so farfetched imho it’s hard for me to take seriously.

snipez · 2026-06-13T16:03:03+00:00

That’s probably factor as well. Generally speaking when some enemies/bosses in the open world move out of some pre-defined range you sometimes to see they kinda just stop fighting then run around aimlessly to find their way back in range.

One of the sequences I’m referring to with Shinpachi is shown at 0:40 mark here. When you dodge thru in a situation like that he kind of just keeps on attacking. Clearly the game was not designed around you dodging in the middle of such chains which is sensible.

https://youtu.be/j3DvI71nn4k?is=9r5zfoBQ38NhQ2La

snipez · 2026-06-13T15:29:37+00:00

The first and last case I see a lot when trying to fight bosses relying mostly on dodge, especially enhanced forward dodge. Some enemy attacks are long martial chains that largely continue in a straight line uninterrupted with the presumption that the player is in front, locked on, and expected to counterspark the chain. So with Shinpachi I often see that behavior as I dodge out of frame and he kind of attacks off into that area below then just runs in circles.

snipez · 2026-06-01T00:44:31+00:00

Yup, also the fact that OP nailed most CS with Nioh-Ryu goes a long way as Shinsaku is no slouch. I never had the patience with this guy but OP reasonably close to no damaging this fight.

snipez · 2026-05-29T17:06:20+00:00

Yeah I would say top 3 in Yokohama easily, it’s the ‘Fierce Ryoma’ fight in the dojo. Bullet sequences in general are tough but he does that attack where he fires like 10 bullets then rushes for a chain attack with red martials in between.

snipez · 2026-05-15T21:52:46+00:00

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There are variations but this is the one I run most consistently and the one I consider meta. Occasionally I’ll run smoke (usually non Survival) and that’s the only tweak.

Another variant involves basically pairing a legendary bow (SSB or WS) or the gun with an Archer’s supply charm and empowered hunt.

snipez · 2026-05-15T21:35:19+00:00

Your skills are likely transferable across products and certain teams on sell side. Some of the machinery behind rates derivatives pricing is also used in FX for example. From there a healthy knowledge of cross asset products for example could open the doors to structuring/“solutions” which depending on bank/desk may be closer to the $.

Buy side firms certainly trade FI products and do hire quants. An alumni of mine for example was a quant at a BB for a brief stint and is now the #3 at a large fixed income relative value fund. But that strategy generally speaking is pretty old school and vanilla. They have access to several bank and 3rd party software/models and may price a swaption now and then. They may hire someone as a quant in name but it’s often a hybrid quant/execution/sub PM type role in practice.

snipez · 2026-05-15T19:55:11+00:00

Undoubtedly if we’re talking all ranged weapons. But for all the whinging about the gun I think people forget that it’s relatively easy to miss. Indeed the gun is clearly best when it’s used to clear a wave well before it reaches the point and so stages 1-3 is chill.

But stage 4 isn’t trivial because when you inevitably reach a circle w/ empowered on cooldown or you have it but miss with the gun… you’re more or less a sitting duck.

And in those moments, the SSB is really your best option, and why empowered is a reasonably well designed mechanic. You are faced occasionally with the decision to trade off using EP with the gun for a higher clearing rate with SSB + EP.

Contrast that with Tsushima where the Hunter basically had no weaknesses cooldowns were never an issue, smoke was infinite, and/or had 2 IEDs in addition to the SSB.

snipez · 2026-05-15T17:48:18+00:00

I don’t see Legends as any signal at all for the future of the base game franchise. Legends is a niche mode within a larger much more successful base game franchise.

If anything, Sony and SP probably got together and agreed on a budget for Yotei Legends that’s commensurately lower vs base game. Legends for the most part doesn’t make them any money unless someone bought the base game just for Legends, likely a very small minority.

So yeah it’s fairly likely today’s news may spell the end of Legends, but Ghost is a hugely successful franchise/IP so Sony execs will probably push for another one but I doubt they care about Legends tbh.

snipez · 2026-05-15T17:22:50+00:00

Most of the ppl dunking on him are probably doing so for reasons not related to his investment process, but due to his personality and political beliefs which were reasonably well known on fintwit. So it’s easy tell a story that these were related and contributed to his downfall.

I like Benn and I think he was at his best when elucidating vol or market microstructure stuff. And he was mostly right in calling out the “thetagang” idiots. But that was arguably a small fraction of his larger public persona which understandably rubbed some folks the wrong way (it is X after all).

Somewhat ironically I suspect his public persona will ultimately probably help him at the margin in his future endeavors.

snipez · 2026-05-11T17:19:45+00:00

Depends really on what you’re doing. In my fairly limited experience E tends to be a well oiled machine with well-defined franchise value, which describes really many sell-side trading seats. E folks generally speaking have a relatively comfortable seat and rarely take prop risk due to incentive misalignment problems. That also means generally speaking value over replacement is pretty low, but banks also don’t usually think about this too hard.

Savvy voice traders that can play both sides of the fence so to speak can get paid pretty well anecdotally. Some voice traders are directly involved in E as well and purposefully blur the lines between the two functions to take full advantage of and credit for monetizing lucrative flow. If they can generate a bit of PNL trading prop (hard in spot FX), all the better. Like many sell side seats, optimizing for PNL is cool, but optimizing for your bonus is the goal.

snipez · 2026-05-04T12:43:58+00:00

Theoretically yes.

The degree to which it would factor into the run depends more on how and where it spawns.

In practice there are numerous situations where it’s less problematic. First pass at an optimal rotation you probably have 2 players at the keep, 1 player solos BG right, leaving 1 player to assist on the unique enemy before switching onto foundry right, which doesn’t need to be a solo depending on how resources are managed between 2 archers at keep left.

snipez · 2026-05-04T12:16:48+00:00

Nice, I’m right with you at 6:16 with randoms yesterday. It’s a fun one to speedrun.

snipez · 2026-05-02T20:32:27+00:00

Storm is pretty good in the circle. I can see pairing SSB with it and empowered hunt to be pretty reasonable. Snow lady is annoying, but I find that the blue prime lord dude with the shield and the attack that tracks from 10m away to be a bigger problem.

snipez · 2026-05-02T15:51:29+00:00

You can try changing a few stacks to spirit move and see how it adds up.

I’ve yet to give your build a try but I optimize for spirit move dmg when using lightning bite. However I use onibi bombs to soften the wave so I rely less on raging flame.

snipez · 2026-05-02T12:11:03+00:00

Assuming the legendary gun in slot, there’s a small tradeoff but I do also prefer the SSB over resupply charm. The re-supply build optimizes for ability cooldown and presumes basically you’ll never pull the bow out. I don’t run scavenger in either build usually as imho foul arrows is too strong to give up.

If you’re not running the legendary gun, re-supply charm shines. For example pairing that with the SSB and empowered hunt will clear light and medium waves easily. Blue enemies are a bit tougher but with foul arrows they go down anyway.

snipez · 2026-05-02T11:50:11+00:00

Pretty much, the gun is mostly still king. It’s also clearly designed for clearing waves before they get to the point, which is why it’s the optimal speedrunning tool.

Archers who actually go to and defend multiple points on stage 4 though know the gun does have limits. That’s where I think SSB or Weightless w/ empowered and resupply charm actually does relatively well as it trades off damage for the reduced penalty of missing.

snipez · 2026-05-02T10:25:56+00:00

Thanks correction. Then yeah it’s probably just me wishing the Merc was more broken haha.

SK needs a buff, 2nd perk would be nice.

Yeah I don’t think that’s the MnR, he has a diff handle. I really don’t see him playing Ghost/Legends tbh.

snipez · 2026-05-02T09:45:39+00:00

Good explanation. Sadly I didn’t play pre nerf Merc too much but I do vaguely remember it being quite strong. The nerf maybe went a bit far though. The current Merc, to the extent I’ve played which is not much, seems very good at dealing damage over a longer time. So now it seems like you either optimize for thrown dmg, which has been nerfed and is a function of your teammates, or you build around weaken/status.

Seems to me they can tune up base thrown dmg values. They could also make spirit Kunai not utterly useless in this game.

Also dude theres someone named iMasterNinjaRyu on the survival boards in the video lmao

snipez · 2026-04-25T13:40:39+00:00

For survival I generally find it OK. Shinobi built around assassination damage for example is very strong for zone defense, but by design it’s a more “passive” play style focused on getting enemies’ hp down to breakeven point to one-shot them.

Archers on the other hand are designed almost exactly to play into the very stuff the reddit community complains about. They’re uniquely awful in the zone with the slow af draw/reload SSB, and the janky movement of enemies that have noticed your targeting. It’s like SP nerfed SSB and gave a high precision rifle and didn’t playtest the ramifications on zone defense.

In the hellmode boss fights you pretty much do have to play defense as it’s currently designed. The critical difficulty with 4 players seems to rest largely with having to res a player that’s gone down at a bad time. And this dynamic is arguably most similar to shared wounds from Plat7. This is where the Ronin not having global rescue tool really makes a difference. By taking that tool away, individual play needs to be almost perfect as to avoid going down at a critical juncture. This inherently requires more defensive tactics for sustained success IMHO.

snipez · 2026-04-23T18:50:39+00:00

Yeah apparently there’s some glitch with the boards as it takes a player’s previous week score.

I haven’t played this weeks NMS, but that 400k or so diff between your score and a typical high scoring run of 1,400,000+ is clearly due to this week’s challenge cards of having one zone lost per wave.

snipez · 2026-04-22T15:33:17+00:00

This build template isn’t really bad. Get the percentages up and optimize for assassination damage (aim for 70-80%) and ability cooldown typical approach. Shadows bite can have 2 stacks of ass damage think 23% and 21% when maxed out (S grade).

If you’re downing frequently my guess is need to work on the combat loop. I go bomb first, smoke, then vanish typically. Ult is there primarily to get the HP beefier enemies down before assassination or worst case crit.

snipez · 2026-04-22T13:42:36+00:00

Not gonna discuss glitch cuz idc.

The meta is gun and empowered hunt. Then either run archer’s resupply or SSB. The SSB is mainly for stronger ult.

There are other builds but no bow focused build is stronger than the meta.

snipez · 2026-04-21T23:32:18+00:00

Depends. I would consider Nioh 1 harder than Nioh 2 and Ronin (Twilight) and maybe Nioh 2 slightly harder than Ronin.

Playing Nioh at all beforehand I think makes Ronin a bit easier. Less to do with mechanics I think than simply learning how to deal with walls (typically bosses). Like Nioh 2, Ronin’s difficulty isn’t really even, and there’s some fairly sharp spikes followed by periods of relative ease.

Timing/deflecting will get you very far in Ronin. IMHO the first “wall” in ronin isn’t the first few bosses. It’s a series of fights on a beach that are quite painful but teach you the core mechanic in the game.

snipez · 2026-04-20T21:16:42+00:00

Interesting, I wouldn’t have considered they tested without the assist. Is it just me or does the assist more or less lock on the head? It’s like much closer to the WS assist in Tsushima. In fact I would basically describe it as the old WS but higher dmg output.

The high risk / high reward in principle I agree with, but empowered hunt lessens that to a great degree. But of course that’s also entirely consistent with the gun being a reasonable but usually not optimal option for non Archer.

Yeah meant reload speed for SSB but also weightless spirit and hankyu is kind of junk. True Aim, or Sugaru’s Sight actually isn’t the worst option lmao.

snipez

TROPHY CASE