Nioh 3 is without a doubt one of the best Souls-like games I've ever played. It can stand tall and proud next to even giants like Elden Ring, and I don't say that lightly.

But, that greatness does come at a cost - some of it expected, and some of it just kind of... weird. Let me show you what I mean, and don't worry - I'll keep the spoilers to a minimum. The stuff you'll see will be from the first chapter only.

Video version of this review (~11 minutes)

Samurai Vs Ninja

The Nioh series has always had very technical combat, and Nioh 3 takes that to the next level. Not only is every weapon full of complex combos, but you're also essentially playing as two different characters at the same time. Your Samurai form is classic Nioh - it's all about dodging, parrying and overwhelming the opponent with big bursts of damage.

But if you need to go full Sonic the Hedgehog and just bounce around the arena, you can swap to the new Ninja form at any time. It's a hyper-mobile, death-by-a-thousand-cuts sort of playstyle, and it's the perfect complement to the more methodical Samurai form. And since the game lets you build both of them up at the same time, I found myself constantly swapping between them.

But there is a catch - learning all of this is a struggle. Even a single form is overloaded with complexity that, while not mandatory in your first playthrough, is always there - tempting you to embrace the madness and become a one-man fireworks show.

And embrace it I did, because getting better at the combat feels amazing. The game rewards aggression. It encourages you to go wild and combo enemies to death, which makes you more likely to take damage, which then makes the fight more intense, and so you get sucked into this escalating cycle of over-the-top action.

I like both, but I'll forever be Team Samurai

Brutal but Fair

The boss fights against the Yokai are where the action peaks. They are utterly brutal but fair - bosses that will use your face as a mop the first couple of tries, but once you figure them out you'll be able to straight up humiliate them.

One of the early bosses is a returning champion - the big ol' horse demon. I have a major soft spot for him because he kept beating my ass like a bongo back in Nioh 2. So when I saw him in Nioh 3, I equipped my biggest sword and ran straight at him... at which point he proceeded to beat my ass like a bongo.

Yet I kept coming back, over and over again, because the struggle never felt pointless. I was getting destroyed, but with each attempt I was also getting noticeably better. So by the time I finally beat his ass, I didn't just win a bunch of loot - I became a better player. Same thing with the next boss, and the next, until eventually all the combat systems clicked together and I stopped thinking about how complicated it all was... and just focused on having fun. And let me tell you, there was a lot of that!

I died an embarrassing amount of times here, but I also learned how to love the game

A Strange Contrast

And speaking of the Yokai, the main reason I bought Nioh 1 many years ago was the weird and creative enemy design, and I'm delighted to say that has continued in Nioh 3 as well. Many of the cooler ones like the horsey boy or the scythe-weasel have made a return, and there's a whole menagerie of new ones to backstab and dissect. And honestly, they're all really cool - just the right balance of horrific and goofy.

So if you wanted to fight some bizarre and unique demons, you'll get your wish here... but then the monkey paw curls. While there is a good variety of enemies, the game doesn't actually utilize them well. Some are seen only a few times, while others like the pig-headed pokey guys are bloody everywhere. They look awesome and they're fun to fight, which is probably why they're everywhere, but man... did they really need to be everywhere?

As for the visuals themselves, Nioh 3 mixes the quiet Japanese countryside with horrific death and destruction. And while this probably speaks badly of me, I really like that. Seeing something pretty desecrated is a lot more striking than just watching a dumpster fire. Unsurprisingly, this gives the game a really good atmosphere - sneaking through a burnt city covered in weird demon goop, or watching a giant eyeball monster blot out the entire sky are moments that will stick with you for a very, very long time.

I just wish I could actually see all of them. For whatever reason, the contrast is all wrong. The dark areas are vanta-black while the bright ones are so shiny you might go blind. Usually you'd just fix this in the settings, but there's no such thing. All you have is a brightness slider that can help with one problem, and make the other much, much worse. Truly a bizarre oversight.

It's noon, yet everything is pitch black

A Fragmented World

After Elden Ring's 'ridonculous' success I wasn't even slightly surprised to see that Nioh 3 ditched its predecessor's mission-based system in favor of a large open world. And as you'd expect, it comes with all the stops - enemy bases to crush, collectibles to find, bosses to hunt down, and more loot than any samurai could ever hope to carry back.

But the open world comes at a heavy cost. Despite having a latest generation CPU, some locations would absolutely hammer it and make my FPS go up and down like a rollercoaster. I ended up massively reducing my settings to combat this, and while that got me a - mostly - stable framerate, it also made the game look Nioh 1, which is... not ideal. On the flip side, you don't need a good GPU to run the game. My 12GB 3060 didn't even come close to struggling. I also never had any crashes or notable bugs - it's really just the CPU optimization holding everything back.

But was the performance hit worth it for a big, open world? Yes and no. On the positive side, it's genuinely a lot of fun to explore. It's not just a bunch of open fields and forests - there's a lot of hand-crafted areas to turn upside down looking for secrets. And since the world is divided into smaller chunks with level recommendations, I never felt overwhelmed or confused about where to go. I could just pick a direction and keep going until everything was stripped of shinies, and as a certified magpie, I found that to be quite compelling.

Even in the late game when the whole thing got a bit old, I still enjoyed exploring as there was enough unique and interesting stuff sprinkled throughout to keep things exciting.

As for the problems? It's really just one - the same one Elden Ring had. Since you can approach the game from any direction, there's no tight difficulty curve or pacing. Instead, some areas and bosses can be insane roadblocks because you met them too early, while others are complete cakewalks as you can just power through them with raw numbers. So much like Elden Ring, I think Nioh 3 needs an optional setting to let the world scale with you, just to make sure you're not punished for being curious and exploring as much as you can.

The world is absolutely massive, and when you think you're done, it opens up again!

It's About Time Travel?

While I know few people go into Souls-like games looking for the story, I'm one of the weirdos who really care. So how was Nioh 3? Honestly, kind of eh. There's a lot of time travel involved so it was hard to truly understand or care about what happened. And since the big bad guy was kind of a wet blanket in terms of personality, I found myself more interested in cuddling all the cute spirits than the story itself.

But what really surprised me was the voice acting. I know I can barely speak so I shouldn't be throwing any stones here, but almost all of the dialogue was weird, stilted, and strangest of all, the actors mispronounced words. Not that often, but often enough that I really started to notice. It ended up reminding me of old dubbed samurai movies I watched as a kid, and you know what? I kinda love how cheesy it is.

Putting time travel in an already convoluted story was certainly a bold choice

I Hope You Like Loot

And you know what else I love? Loot, tons and tons of it, which is exactly what Nioh 3 delivers. Pretty much every enemy explodes in a shower of items like it's a Diablo game. Naturally, most of it is complete garbage you'll scrap or sell, but going through my haul and picking and choosing the few exceptional pieces has been something I've greatly enjoyed since I like making my own builds.

I certainly hope you do as well, because the game has a truly absurd amount of customization options. Every time you think you've seen it all the game will roll up and go 'oh yeah, I forgot - here's one more thing you can put points into'. They're fairly minor upgrades, but you can still use them to push your character in a variety of different directions, especially given the whole Samurai/Ninja divide.

And yet, it's never overwhelming because Nioh 3 does something very clever - it lets you respec literally every part of your character, for free. You can't actually make a mistake. If you try something and it doesn't work, you can just go 'boop, boop, boop' and you're suddenly a completely different character.

I can't even begin to describe how much I love that, because as someone that has commitment issues in any game I play, being able to just swap around at whim is truly wonderful. So much so that I'm probably going to do something I usually don't and push into New Game + to see just how far I can take my character.

Is Nioh 3 Worth Playing?

And now for the big question: would I recommend Nioh 3? Absolutely... as long as you have a powerful CPU or wait for an optimization patch. It's one of the most addicting, satisfying games I've played in ages, and while it does stumble on occasion, I've never actually stopped having fun with it.

But perhaps the biggest piece of praise I can offer is that I'm currently looking for any excuse to finish this script and go back to playing. So if you're on the fence, definitely give the free demo a try - it's a blast!