As a fan of the hack and slash genre, Nioh is a series that is always on my radar, especially as it’s a Team Ninja/Koei Tecmo game. To see if I was going to like the series, I remember back in the PS4 era, I put Twitch on whilst doing the housework and logged on to a random person playing the first Nioh game. This player was taking part in a boss fight – one where he was in the bowels of a wooden ship trying to take a large humanoid figure down. After twenty minutes of watching, I got distracted and went off to do other things around the house.
A couple hours later, I remembered that I’d left the TV and PS4 on for that stream. I went back to the living room to turn it off. Imagine my surprise to find that the streamer I had watched over two hours before was STILL at the same boss fight and still not beating it. That was my first introduction to Nioh!
I mention this as Nioh falls into the realms of what I consider a very niche market of gamers who ‘love a challenge.’ I’ll get back to this later.
Nioh 3, obviously, is the third installment of the series, and from my limited amount of time with the two previous games before, it is the most polished and refined version by far. I’m not going to go into huge details in my review as the game is basically more of the same but of a better current gen standard.
If you are reading this review, you know what to expect, and it’s all here. Excellent world design, gorgeous artwork, tough as nails combat, deep RPG elements, and a decent story to string it all together. If you liked the first two games or the “Souls-type” genre in general, you will really get a kick out of this one. The game doesn’t do anything particularly standout to differentiate it from the crowded market, but it is just a solid good time, if this is your thing.
So, what is it like to play? To explain that, and to do things a little differently in my review, I’ll spend most of the time detailing my experience with the first boss, just at the end of the prologue, and shortly thereafter; mostly to give you an idea of what to expect and also not to give too much away from the roughly 50-hour campaign.
After the inevitable tutorials, I made my way into the world with some not so bad fights along the way. Item management between save points is very key, as is managing your stamina levels (called Ki) during combat. Blocking, rolling, swinging a weapon, all use up your precious stamina levels, which if are reduced to nothing, will momentarily freeze you on the spot, immobile.
Skills per weapon, stats upgrades, and a whole host of items were unlocked en-route to the end of level boss. You have two fighting styles to get used to before you get there: Samurai and Ninja. The Samurai stance is a harder hitting variation but is less mobile on the field. Ninja is very mobile but has less powerful weapons. The game and enemies do challenge you to understand and upgrade both types of styles, and each one has a variety of weapons to use. These weapons have different ranges that mean you have to judge distances from your foe.
So, this boss fight. I’d been at this boss fight with everything I had for around 20 attempts before I started to get that sinking feeling of “I’m not going to beat this as I’m not even close.” I was trying to desperately apply all I had learned to this point to no avail.
I turned the game off and had a think. What was frustrating was that this obss could kill you in just four quick hits. You, on the other hand, will need in the region of around 100 to 150 hits to fell him. The bit that was frustrating me was the stamina level management. This boss had a weapon with quite a long reach, so to get near him and avoid that weapon, you had to roll into his range (using Ki), swing a couple of times, (he can block), then have enough Ki left to double roll (more Ki) to get out of range with just a slither of Ki left to either roll or block for one more time. Mess any of that up, at any point, and his hits would devastate you. You are trained to also press the R1 button to recover extra Ki to negate this effect somewhat, but the amount you recover, certainly early on, was minimal at best.
Here’s the issue I have with this. You are an elite warrior tasked with saving the world, and in the tutorial, you have to prove your worth. But why design a game where an elite warrior can only swing his weapon 8 times before he’s out of breath, stationary, and vulnerable? I HATE the stamina level mechanic in any game but more so in this one.
Pressing the attack button once too often can be, and often is, the difference between a game over or not. There is also a mechanic that when the enemy glows red, it is about to launch a special attack. If you change stance from Samurai to Ninja (or vice versa) just at the right moment during this attack, you can counter the enemy and deliver big damage.
In the hour I took on this fight, I didn’t manage to time that change right once. The window of opportunity to get that change in at the right moment is so minute it’s not worth the risk of the reward to do so.
So, I tried a new attempt, this time purely as a Ninja. Ninja style uses far less Ki energy per movement, so you can move around and use the less powerful Ninja weapons a lot more before you need to have a break or are in danger of stopping mid fight for a breather.
The obvious issue here, though, was that I’d need to hit the boss a million times (not really, it just felt like it) with the less powerful Ninja weapons to defeat it. After another 20 attempts, I started to get a flicker of hope that this way of fighting the enemy was getting me a little further, albeit in a much more tiresome way. So, I had another break.
By my third attempt, I knew the boss’s moveset, and I knew how many times I could press the attack button before I had to retreat. I started to get further and further into his health bar. THEN, however, just on a run where I was doing really well, all of a sudden, my familiar started talking about a power move I had unlocked. I could now transform into a jazzed up version of myself that looked badass and that I assumed would hit harder and be less prone to damage so….too late. Stabbed again, dead again.
What a RIDICULOUS time to introduce new game mechanics. Right near the end of an incredibly hard boss fight with a game that doesn’t pause so you can read what the screen is telling you.
So now that I knew to expect this, I knew what would happen and not be surprised. The next time I got to the badass version of me near the end of the fight, I tried to use it and the two moves you can use with it, but it only lasted a couple of swings. SIGH. Not very badass!
Finally, I thought, next time I’ll just ignore it. I’m getting close just with the standard OG Ninja setup. I’ll just have to figure out what the game is trying to tell me another time. So finally, after around 50 attempts, knowing the enemy inside and out and ignoring the on-screen distractions, I beat this boss.
Entering the next area, I saw an animal off the beaten track, followed it, and was jumped by a new ordinary enemy that chewed through most of my health before I’m allowed to even move (it’s designed as a jump scare and a short cinematic). I messed up that fight and lost, and I had to go all the way back to my last save (just after the boss fight).
Now, some people will have read the above and salivated at the prospect of a game that always puts you, the player, up against the wall and earn your way forward, inch by inch, fight by fight. Did I feel a sense of accomplishment when I beat that boss fight? My word, yes, I did. Did I feel annoyed that just moments later a normal enemy beat me, and I lost all my progress from just after the boss fight? Also yes! I checked online and found a lot of people have complained that this first boss is the hardest in the game, so I felt even better that I have beaten it, though.
Feeling a sense of accomplishment in playing a whole game like this, I imagine, is such a great feeling. The question is, “Would I or you have the time and patience to do it?”. For the aforementioned gamers out there who love their Souls-like games like this, I get it. You have to plan every move, every swing, every fight, and learn every enemy. You will love this game.
Personally, I don’t enjoy the toughness. Correction, I don’t mind the endgame boss being tough but not an entire game of bosses like it. I’ve platinumed the last two God of War games that included beating the Valkyries, so I know a tough fight when I see one.
What rankles me with games like Nioh 3 is would it have killed them to put lower difficulties in to be more accessible to a wider audience? More players means more revenue and bigger budgets for next time, but no. An in-house decision made by themselves, as I see it, is self-destructive.
I’ll put it this way. If Nioh 1 & 2 had difficulty options, I would have bought them. Because they didn’t, I never got them (Nioh 1 technically does have difficulty options but not in the traditional Easy, Normal, Hard way). There will be those out there crying, “You’re missing the experience if you lower the game’s difficulty,” and they are right. However, there are ways around it. You only get trophies if you play the difficulty the game wants, for example. The point is here, expand your audience and at least give people the option!
At the end of the day, Nioh 3 is an excellent game despite my personal reservations about the difficulty of games like these. The game ran well, played well, and looked great. I also need to mention that the game’s audio is fantastic, especially the soundtracks. Therefore, enjoyment of the game will depend entirely upon you and your preferences as a gamer.
Even as someone who is not a fan of these types of games, I did really appreciate the overall experience Nioh 3 delivered. Its production levels are superb, and yes, I did get a little hooked on the tough as nails combat as well as it is, overall, a great game.
Developer: Team Ninja
Publisher: Koei Tecmo
Platforms: PS5, PC
Release Date: 6th February 2026
Gaming Respawn’s copy of Nioh 3 was provided by the publisher.
