Nioh 3 Co-Op Review - Ghosted of Yokai
The biggest and boldest title in the series to date, Nioh 3 is very much releasing in the wake of Elden Ring, Rise of the Ronin and Nightreign, entries in the ‘Soulsborne’ genre that push expansive open areas over smaller suffocating levels and loops. Team Ninja have taken the time to really capture not just what made both previous Nioh titles standouts in the field, but also made the necessary changes to ensure another sequel would not only go toe to toe with its contemporaries but push the Nioh franchise itself to the next level.
Nioh 3 contains a hefty degree of change, that’s for sure; a new Ninja stance, an overhauled approach to structure and world design, the ‘Burst Break’ parry to deal with ‘unblockable’ attacks – for every familiar feature, there’s another brief tutorial or entry explaining a new mechanic. To tackle such a behemoth we had Jason, a Soulsborne player extraordinaire, and Stephen, a deprecating genre washout, each bring their own perspective to one of the most time and skill intensive titles releasing in 2026.
Stephen: Jason, while we may both be fans of this genre it’s safe to say you have lapped me quite neatly in terms of Nioh 3 – what’s your history with the series leading up to this third entry, and what stood out to you compared to not only its direct predecessors but other titles from Team Ninja in the same vein? I put a fair few hours into the original Nioh but barely touched Nioh 2 for context, yet Nioh 3 has felt more compelling than both even in these early stages.
Jason: I’ve earned my stripes, for sure. Most relevantly, I’ve played a few hundred hours across all the Nioh games, and maybe a hundred in Rise of the Ronin. I think in many ways, Nioh 3 is the amalgamation of all the experience Team Ninja has had with ARPG/Soulslikes, with most of the best bits from all their previous games in one. One of the biggest changes this time around is the open world, straight out of Rise of the Ronin. For me, I thought that the change from mission-based structure to an open world wasn’t the most deft. I kind of missed those tight missions, and it reduced a bit of the tension. The collectibles were pretty cool, and all of them were useful, which I think makes it stand out from other ‘icon janitor’ games, like some Ubisoft games. How did you find the world?
Stephen: The division of the world and the way each area is scaled to a particular level is something I find ideal compared to other expansive maps that are sort of vaguely intended to be done in an order, kind of. I was glad to have you take on Rise of the Ronin because it didn’t manage to capture me for very long at all, which came as a surprise given on paper it should have been something I sunk countless hours into. There’s the occasional ‘Battle Scroll’, items that transport the player to an instanced version of an existing location and hearken back to the tight missions of yore as you’ve mentioned, but this new method does give the overall experience a different feel, shifting the tension and tempo in both exploration and combat – perhaps for the better for more casual players, but then again…
Compared to Rise of the Ronin and other contemporaries in the genre, Nioh 3 absolutely stomped me for the first few hours; really until I’d defeated what I would consider to be the second ‘proper’ boss, Jakotsu-baba. Gear and skill and stats work in tandem, because no amount of high-end gear was going to get around the fact I was well out of practice for what Nioh 3 was throwing at me. So I spent quite a bit of time puttering around those low level areas working on my Ki Pulsing and such advanced tactics as ‘blocking’ – no joke, one of my worst habits formed over years of Soulsborne games is building a character like a tank whilst also wanting to dodge everything. The first boss taught me I needed to be more aggressive, the second that I needed to find the block button, the third that maybe I’d actually started to get a handle on how to play. Such a clear thesis behind each notable encounter sharpened me as a player, but I feel like I’ve merely gone from flailing to capable rather than achieving full-blown confidence; the level and encounter design here is as devious as anything in the genre and I will usually be creeping around, trying to see if I can lock on to anything lurking in each new corner. I think I’d go so far as to describe the overall location design as ‘generously economical’ – unlike a ‘proper’ open world, nothing here feels purposeless or merely connective tissue. It deftly pulls that magic trick of making a small section feel much larger with a few twists and turns neatly sidestepped by the occasional shortcut. Outside of this shift in scope, is there a particular new aspect of Nioh 3 that stood out to you over the others?
Jason: I think the one thing that stood out to me more than anything else is the switch to having two ‘main’ combat stances — ninja and samurai, each with unique weapons. Samurai is your more traditional Nioh style. It has high, low & medium stances and each stance has its own combat moves. Low stance is great for when you need to be hyper defensive, high stance is the opposite. Ninja though is a bit different. You can no longer cleanse demon realm areas on a ki pulse — your ki pulse is replaced with a mist form, which I didn’t find as easy to weave into combat. Due to the speed of attacks and inability to (easily) cleanse demon realm pools, I found ki management a lot more difficult in ninja mode.If you run out of ki it’s akin to a death sentence, where you can’t block, dodge, attack and are open to big attacks from the enemy. The advantage of this mode is that you’re a lot quicker on your feet, you get access to ninjutsu (which regenerates on hit now), your attacks are a lot faster and combat tends to be a lot more aerial.
Whilst you can stay in samurai or ninja for entire fights, it’s clear the intent is to have you switch depending on the situation. Big attacks can be blocked by perfectly switching between forms as the attack hits with a ‘Burst Break’. The rest is by feel, switching based on need. Weapons also play into this. Some have more range than others, or are faster, or slower. More than any other soulslike or even Team Ninja game, combat feels very much like an artform. Enemies hit intensely hard and you’re meant to play aggressively but smart. Each boss encounter had only two main feelings for me. Either I didn’t feel like I understood it at all, or it mostly all clicked into place and I could block, dodge and punish attacks until I got them down. It never felt like there was an inbetween. They’re intense, fairly short (2-5 minute) fights where you have so many tools at your disposal that it made me wish I was younger to really get that dextrous controller use down-pat. I think this’ll be an amazing game to watch people that are really experts play, and I have no doubt people will be doing no-hit runs of all bosses in no time. Between the ability to use two weapons in each style, myriad skills to use for each weapon, two styles to play with and then armor/weapon abilities and Guardian Spirits, this is a game that really is begging to be experimented with. Did you play with the style switching much?
Stephen: I think it’s basically mandatory as you’ve said, especially since it will happen anytime you use a ‘Burst Break’ block – it also ties into the tempo of the boss battles I feel, with Ninja style encouraging really fast hit and run tactics, while Samurai feels more measured and defensive by comparison. I’d say it was only after 20 hours in that I began to feel more at home using Ninja, which could be tied to having a better set of gear options and speccing more into the style. I have to say, the skills system I have found underwhelming and it’s for much the same reasons it never really stood out to me in previous Nioh games as well. Once I feel secure in a weapons move set, there’s very little chance I want to memorise a new move, especially when it usually coincides with pushing forward in the world and fighting new or more difficult enemies. Ninja skills make a little more sense, as they tend to provide new items, but unlocking more options with a weapon to me feels like more ways for me to fumble my controller during a tough battle. There are also Prestige points which come from completing certain things like getting headshots with arrows, or attacking enemies from above – these are fairly minute adjustments like ‘2% Ki recovery during a pulse’ or similar, but that’s kind of Nioh’s approach to skills and gear in a nutshell – these tiny incremental advances that over time start to feel significant. Does this ring true with your experiences? Do you think there might be just a little too much going under the hood with all of these systems overlapping?
Jason: It does feel that way for sure. In combat you’ve got so many things that you need to be aware of on a moment-to-moment basis. It’s extremely overwhelming quite a bit of the time, until you get a feel for the boss. But every death is a learning experience. What’s the boss weak to, what are their movesets, how quick are they? When you die, you can play around with almost all of those systems to make something that’s suitable for that specific boss. I did it a bunch for bosses I was having troubles with. Did I need quicker weapons, or more elemental resistance? I could adjust my armour to make that work, or my weapon to hit their weakness better. Stats too, can be readjusted with no penalty. If it’s a fight with tonnes of movement, I might dump more points into stamina, to make sure I had ki to spare.
The one place it fell apart for me though is in inventory management. Holy hell, it was rough in every other Nioh game and they still have not nailed it. Searching for say, a crucible weapon; I go into weapons, go into filters, select the one filter I need then scroll all the way to the bottom to apply it. If I left the menu at all, those filters are reset and I’d need to do it all over again. It’s incredibly cumbersome. Selling gear was just as awful, maybe even more so. Select all the gear you want to sell, hit sell. Great. Oh, you’ve got gear that’s not common, it’ll ask if you’re sure. Gear that’s full familiarity, it’ll ask if you’re sure. Gear that’s crucible? It’ll ask if you’re sure. Even if you tell it not to ask you again, it will. And a final confirmation again, just to make sure you’re absolutely sure. Intensely frustrating. I ended up letting my gear fill up before I had to handle it, because it was just so awful to manage. That’s only the beginning of the systems too. There’s the upgrading system, soul matching, the ability to change which stats are used on your weapons and more. The rub is that most of the time gear is completely useless until NG+ anyway, so it was just busy work for little benefit. It’s actually a bit worse because you need two sets of gear, between ninja and samurai stance. As you said though, the little upgrades you get from collectibles do really add up. Even the skill books can be really useful, to make sure you’ve got a full suite of skills when you switch between weapons. It’s a lot, but I think the people who really enjoy fiddling with the intricacies will get a lot of enjoyment out of it, but some of those systems were weighty in a way I wasn’t a fan of.
Stephen: You’re probably right in that these systems really serve players who put more into the game, and will be essential at those higher difficulty levels – basically the ceiling is incredibly high. It could be that many of them aren’t intended to be used until NG+ by the developer, and I’ll admit there’s a few of them I didn’t engage with at all, but I’m not pushing myself with a challenge run or NG+ either. Something that has really enhanced my experience is the presentation, as this is the first Nioh title exclusive to current gen. Visually I think it’s quite pleasing in terms of art direction and there are certainly more than few breathtaking vistas, but there are a few things that are bugbears for me that may be just aspects of the genre itself I don’t care for. Playing on the PS5 and focusing on performance seems almost mandatory – this isn’t a game I want higher resolution or effects in, I want that silky smooth framerate. For the most part, enemies are cleanly delineated from the setting, but there have been a few bosses and larger enemies that have a lot of ‘business’ to their garb and in the heat of battle, it can make positioning tricky. Of course there are going to be enemies that purposely blend into their surrounds, but the sound design is quite good at alerting the player to their presence, especially when playing with headphones. Where does Nioh 3 sit for you in terms of presentation?
Jason: I found the sound design really good. I love the sound of weapons, and I’ll always be a sucker for traditional Japanese music. I love the switching between time periods too. Each one had its own unique style, and it was a breath of fresh air to explore new environments. The environments for me were a bit hit-or-miss. Some of the vistas, as you said, were fantastic, but I feel like it’s using similar graphics to the first Nioh game. I wish it had pushed the envelope a bit more in the graphics department. The trade off though is that on PC I got very consistent framerates and that’s going to be immensely more important in a game like this than a better looking game. It’s not even ugly, by any means. As has always been the case, I’ve always loved the yokai design, and the bosses are fantastic too. I’m a sucker for folklore of all kinds, and Japan has such rich folklore used across myriad enemies that I could pick out quite a few just from sight alone. I think that single, cohesive style across the entire title is really important.
One thing that lost me a bit though was just how long the game is. Apparently I’ve forgotten that Nioh games are hugely long experiences. I managed to snag everything possible in one playthrough (all collectibles, bosses etc) in around 80-90 hours. But that doesn’t mean I’m done, as there’s new difficulties unlocked after credits in case you didn’t find the game difficult enough as is. I found it really challenging, but I also only really got to play around with maybe 6 weapon types for a long time, and the prestige system encourages you to mix up your play style. I noticed there’s also a challenge to complete all bosses without taking a hit. I’m definitely not at that level yet, but I do want to try it a bit down the line. As I said before, this is a game screaming for experimentation. Did you have final thoughts before we finish our long ramble about what I think has been a mostly incredible title?
Stephen: Perhaps Nioh 3’s greatest strength is that a first playthrough is relatively tame, even with such a lengthy journey to the end credits. Team Ninja supply players with many of the tools they need to find success, but it might mean completely altering your desired playstyle, spending a lot of time fiddling around in menus or poking at every other corner of the map in the meantime when a boss is proving to be a brick wall. Of course, we’re in the thick of things without any of the community aspects that give support and longevity to the genre, so I expect a fair amount of tweaking and adjusting as Team Ninja and the community at large try to find a nice balance. That open world though… the freedom to warp around at will and revisit areas that you can absolutely breeze through is where earlier Nioh games missed the mark for me a bit. The cohesion of the overall experience compared to bespoke missions might be a reason for those who didn’t quite gel with the previous two titles to give Nioh 3 a fair crack – plus there’s little excuse not to with a decent demo provided by Team Ninja to boot. Is it the best Nioh game? Despite how overwrought it is in some areas, it’s the Nioh title I’ve felt the most driven to keep returning to.
Nioh 3 was reviewed across PlayStation 5 and PC by Stephen and Jason respectively using code kindly supplied by the publisher
