2.5/5 ★ – GGGamerRightHere's review of Nioh 2.

Gameplay: 7/10 good. Not quite Sekiro, but a decent souls-like. Has a million systems to engage with, and each weapon had dozens of moves to customize from, especially in different stances, not counting all 14(?) weapon types to choose from. Honestly quite exhausting to deal with, especially considering the overwhelming but mediocre loot drop/farm system. I find it easier to follow guides and certain builds online, and instead focus on the combat, which is easily the best part of the game. Combat: Some pretty great boss fights, but certain fights are too overtuned and difficult, obvious input-reading and duels requiring you to never make a mistake, with no time to heal or dodge. Certain fights felt worse than the most unfair bosses in all of the souls games. Not just hard, but unjust and downright leave a bad taste in my mouth. There's also too many systems with ranged weapons, magic/ninjutsu, Soul core summon system, transform system, and makes it very hard to nail down what is best in combat for you. I had to ignore large parts of those and just picked a few from each system to make it bearable. Completely ignoring those systems would be a mistake and put you in a huge combat disadvantage, and some fights would be downright impossible, so you are forced to utilize the overwhelming amount of systems just to get by. Level design is quite meh 3/10, with traditional souls-like ladder and locked door shortcuts. Nothing surprising, but most levels feel quite small and limited. Also some runbacks are annoying. There's also forced gang-up in locked areas or boss arenas, making it impossible to separate the enemies. This happens quite a bit. Enemy design is mostly alright, aside from the certain unfair ones mentioned. Gear drop system is hot trash 1/10. A million drops and barely any felt useful/powerful/stylish. Mostly just there to clog up your playtime and force you to grind the right piece/upgrade for you. There's also an important upgrade item where you can farm 6 per 24 hours, and 1 per mission? A bad MMO/MTX promoting time-sink practice brought into a souls-like. Selling/disassembling takes a long while because you don't want to accidentally sell sometime you might actually use, but the sheer amount of loot forces you to deal with them after almost every mission. Annoying and made me quit the game for some time. Just give me Dark Souls-style gear, which would make drops more meaningful and less tedious, and upgrades actually rewarding instead of playing an impossible game of catch-up. Visuals: 6/10 alright Much better with reshade mods installed. Sometimes too much visual effects makes it hard to see enemy attacks, especially in the final fight. Story: 5/10 nothing special Music: 4/10 sometimes annoying and overwhelming, especially when dealing with gear management outside of a level, which can take a long time. Sometimes I find it better to turn the music off and put on lo-fi because the repeating motifs and riffs were driving me crazy. Content length and depth: 6/10 not bad. After the first 60% of the game I had to stop and didn't return years, simply because there's so much side missions/content, and they are rarely rewarding. The level designs of side missions are small and uninspired, fights are tedious and unrewarding, and the random gear drop are mostly trash. After I returned I just followed a build guide and beelined through the main story missions, which were a lot better in comparison. Overall: 5/10 barely okay. Some will rave about it because of its insanely deep and fast combat system, as well as huge amount of levels and NG+ cycles with increasing gear rarity drops, but I find that Nioh 2 is a prime example of 'more is not always better', and the opposite of the simple elegance that is Dark Souls/Sekiro. If anything, the sheer amount of mediocrity jammed into the game distracts from the gem that is the combat, and drags the experience down as a whole. It's much better when you ignore large parts of those, forget trying to figure out your own style, follow a build and combat/combo guide, and enjoy some boss fights. Even then, it still does not measure up to other souls-like in terms of quality or enjoyment.