For all of the success of KOEI TECMO and Team NINJA's Nioh it seems too often that it is brushed aside as "Dark Souls with Samurai" which is a criminal understatement given how good Nioh is. Though well-received on PlayStation 4 when it launched in early 2017, as the year wore on it was increasingly more difficult to hear about the beloved grimdark action-RPG set in an alternate of the late Sengoku Period in Japan (1460's to about 1610) and features stunning level design, weapon and armor art straight out of the Azuchi-Momoyama period. Rounding out the trifecta of excellence is a wonderful story following William, a conscripted pirate on the hunt for Amrita, a golden stone that is found primarily in Japan, and is a dark yet strangely serene experience. A shame that only eight months or so past the PlayStation 4 release that the PC port is at times, marred by technical issues.
Nioh was a wildly popular title here at Chalgyr's Game Room; prior to its early February 2017 release there were numerous closed and open betas as Team NINJA worked to improve and perfect its balance and multiplayer support. We literally lapped up every demo that we could and sunk dozens of collective hours into them all and we were hooked (we had nearly a dozen articles starting as far back as 2015. The primary downside to all of that exposure along the two+ years of waiting? It may have built up a bit of the hype surrounding it as I was a bit shocked at the total score that Pierre-Yves gave the title shortly after launch, check out the review here for a more in-depth look. Though his score is perfectly acceptable, I found that I would continue to go back to Nioh far more-so that I would Bloodborne or Dark Souls, the latter of which I have at least a thousand hours into across the trilogy, and still Nioh is one I would continuously revisit.
Why? Because it is damned fun, that is why and that means that when the Complete Edition was ported over to the PC I was immediately on the bandwagon and ready to give it a go. Imagine my dismay when I fired it up and ran into some wonky technical issues, mostly having to do with the framerate dropping. Fortunately things seem to have largely worked themselves out, but the issue was likely related to forcing resolution as one of our other contributors here, Chris, also experienced similar issues. Since I tweaked the settings a bit I do not experience the framerate droppage or nearly any of the crashes that some users on Windows 7 are experiencing (full disclosure, I am on Windows 10 and have not been able to test it on Windows 7).
Technical annoyances aside (as there was nothing game-breaking), the complete edition includes all three DLC, Dragon of the North, Defiant Honor, and Bloodshed's End and pits the resilient pirate-turned-pseudo samurai William against ninjas, foot soldiers, and demonic abominations called Yokai. Similar to other brutal action RPG games, you will find yourself thrust into a dark time in Japan's history where you fight through hordes of mighty-nasty bosses by yourself or via co-op multiplayer (side note; that stupid jumping frog boss is the absolute worst - I hated that guy). The added DLC are a welcome extension to the core game and provide even more reason to grab your spear and katana and rush out to cleanse the land and battle dark forces.
Though I have sunk dozens, hundreds, of hours into Nioh on PlayStation 4 I still feel the itch to pick up the controller and play on the PC on occasion, though there is little reason to do so since I have it on console. This is where Nioh: Complete Edition could have done more to entice players off of the PlayStation 4 and onto the PC platform, because outside of the Steam-unique kabuto it is a straight port and by and large is one of the better Console-to-PC ports that I have seen. With a modern system and a modern operating system, gamers should have relatively little trouble trudging through the dark fantastical world that is the late Sengoku period Japan.
Game Information
PC
Developer(s):
Koei Tecmo Games Co., LTD.
Publisher(s):
Koei Tecmo Games Co., LTD.
Genre(s):
Action
RPG
Mode(s):
Single Player
Online Multiplayer
Online Co-op
Other Platform(s):
None
Source:
Provided by Publisher
Article by Nick
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