Given their (in)famous habit of churning out Dead or Alive: Beach Volleyball sequels, it's easy to forget that Team Ninja can produce excellent games bereft of breast physics. Anyone with fond thoughts of Hyrule Warriors or Dissidia Final Fantasy can attest to this, but Nioh looks set to fully cement this fact among gamers at long last.
I have to say I'm hoping Nioh does really well, every demo I've played of it has made me think that it's like the took the sometimes clunky and rough Souls combat and made something very fine out of it, and except for the bosses (which in my opinion, the bosses in the demo were complete shit) the game was a blast to play. The levels too felt better as a whole, and the enemies felt like they suited the environments more, not to mention they didn't pull any of that bullshit Bloodborne did where an enemy would be 'hiding' so you couldn't lock onto it (not to mention they didn't have enemies that would suddenly fall on top of you without any indication they were there, and the grab attacks weren't broken).
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I'm not getting it if it doesn't have a pause button, and from what I remember the demos did not.
That was a deal breaker with the Souls games, that was one of the worst parts about Bloodborne (aside from getting your save file fucked over because you somehow got stuck in the scenery, though that was a regular Souls issue too) and to me it's a deal breaker with this game as well.
I'm not going to buy a game for full price if it doesn't have a pause button, regardless of how good it is, especially since there's been so many things that have happened while playing Souls games where I'd have to accept dying simply because I needed to get up and do something else that was a lot more urgent than trying to kill a boss again.
Honestly, I can completely understand the pause issue being a serious problem here, as it did go from paranoia inducing engagement to sheer frustration. The only thing I will say is that far more shrines are present here to help limit the irritation from that, but it can still catch you flat-footed plenty of times over. Also, yeah, I pressed ahead until the end and the bosses do significantly improve, even if I personally did feel as if the early ones were merely forgettable rather than bad.
DeleteAlso, one bonus I didn't get a chance to add is that this one felt a bit more tonally balanced than Dark Souls in some regards. Don't get me wrong, I love the lore and insanely grim atmosphere of those games, but this one didn't seem to try and double down on that and added a little more variety and some lightheartedness at a few points.