I am not going to lie: I love Team NINJA. If you have been checking out my coverage over the past few years, you likely know this already. Ever since first picking up the PlayStation port of Dead or Alive, I was hooked. There is a specific feel to their combat that no other developer quite replicates. That admiration for the studio founded by the legendary Tomonobu Itagaki, who sadly passed away last October, only deepened as they pioneered the genres I love most: the high-octane character action of Ninja Gaiden and the punishing Masocore depth of Nioh. Even when they stumbled, as they did with the original Ninja Gaiden 3, their DNA remained unmistakable.

It is this refusal to be a mere imitator that allowed the Nioh series to thrive in the Soulslike flood of the 2010s and 2020s. While others were content to copy FromSoftware’s homework, adding a few tweaks on the way, Team NINJA went their own way, crafting what I’ve always described as a “Ninja Gaiden meets Diablo” hybrid. It was a match made in heaven, or hell, depending on how many times a boss has sent you back to the shrine.

Following Nioh 2, the studio entered a more experimental era that I still maintain is terribly underappreciated. Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, and Rise of the Ronin are all deeply engaging titles whose reputations were unfairly marred by underwhelming visuals and launch-day performance issues. But these games didn’t exist in a vacuum. On the contrary, the evolution of combat in Stranger of Paradise, the vertical stage design in Wo Long, and the movement and open world structure in Ronin were clearly stepping stones for Nioh 3.

What we have now is a journey through time that, simply put, is excellent. A journey that, for me, confirms the high hopes I had during my extended preview session last year. Nioh 3 is not just a sequel; it is the proper first new entry in the series and one of the best games Team NINJA has ever made, held back only by some technical issues.

A Journey Through Japanese History

Taking a page from the Nioh 2 DLC expansions’ overarching story involving time travel, Nioh 3‘s story is centered on traveling through time to different periods of Japanese history to put a stop to the evil that has been gripping the nation since Kunimatsu Tokugawa showed his true colors on the eve of the appointment as Shogun of Takechiyo Tokugawa, the game’s fully customizable main character.

Kunimatsu’s betrayal goes much deeper than just a struggle for power, as the hellish landscapes of the Crucibles, powered by the material known as Crucinite, are reshaping both the land of Japan and its history, giving extraordinary, and evil, powers to some of the central figures of Japanese history, such as Takeda Shingen and his generals, corrupting both their minds and their Guardian Spirits.

Guided by the Guardian Spirit Kusanagi, Takechiyo will travel to the Warring States period to assist his grandfather, Ieyasu Tokugawa, against Takeda Shingen and his clan, taking part in famous battles such as the Battle of Mikatagahara, before continuing their journey across time to multiple time periods, including the Heian and Bakumatsu period, meeting and befriending real history figures of Japanese history.

In terms of story and characters, Nioh 3 doesn’t differ much from its predecessors, combining real elements with a fantasy story featuring Yokai and other elements of Japanese folklore. While the plot isn’t particularly deep, it is definitely enjoyable, especially if you are into Japanese history, as many of the situations presented in the game are potential what-if scenarios of real history. With a few twists along the way, though far from being the central element of the experience, the story definitely gets its job done. I ultimately enjoyed Nioh 2‘s story a bit more for how it weaved the Shiftling Hide’s story with Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s, but it’s more a matter of preference than Nioh 3 doing something worse in this regard.

Nioh Reborn

While Nioh 3 doesn’t shake up the series’ typical narrative and themes, the new entry in the series significantly alters the formula of its predecessors and other Team NINJA games, doing away with the overhead maps from which to select missions and linear stage design in favor of a more open-ended approach.

Before release, the developer stressed multiple times that Nioh 3 is not an open-world game but an open-field game, which connects the more linear locations that serve as the typical mission setting from the previous entry in the series.

I have to admit I wasn’t too excited about losing the immediacy that Team NINJA’s games provided. I generally like open-world games, but I feel many fail at making traversing these big maps interesting after a dozen hours or so, bloating what could have been tighter experiences. However, after spending over 50 hours in Nioh 3, my fears have been allayed.

Though the open-field maps in Nioh 3 diminish the immediacy of the experience, they in no way feel like a pointless bloating of the experience. They essentially function in the same way as the overhead maps did in previous entries in the series, only that now the player can look around to find all sorts of secrets inside chests, which include some critical parts of character progression such as Skills, Samurai and Ninja Points required to unlock Martial Arts via the game’s numerous skill trees, fight formidable enemies and Masters to unlock new Martial Arts and Transformed Arts, unique variants of Martial Arts with altered elemental properties, start-up and recovery, rescue Kodama spirits and pray at Jizo Statues to unlock their Blessings and chase after Scampusses to find even more secrets.

If you played any of the previous entries in the series, you can probably already understand what Nioh 3 did: take most of the content upon which separate sub-missions were built on, and placed them on a bigger map for a more cohesive experience, where even usually shallow elements like enemy camps are twisted in a Nioh series fashion to provide even more challenges to face outside of the traditional missions. Delivering so many benefits that enhance combat and character progression, which are what Team NINJA always does best, exploring maps is both an integral part of the experience and one that is surprisingly fun.

Exploring these open-field maps in Nioh 3 is made even better by the solid, varied map design, which features increased verticality thanks to the introduction of jumping. While the first few regions of the Warring States starting map may not seem all that interesting, everything past the first Crucible is much more interesting, with the complexity of each region increasing in the other open-field maps. More often than not, you will find multiple paths available to you, each one with a good reason to explore fully.

Not Everything is an Open-Field

Not everything is an open field in Nioh 3, though their design philosophy permeates the game’s entire level design. The locations where main and sub-missions take place are more in line with what was seen in the first two entries in the series, but they are much more open, featuring multiple paths to the goal and optional challenges such as stronger Yokai, traps, and more.

These elements are brought to eleven in the Crucibles, the hellish landscapes that constitute the game’s main dungeons. Sporting a multilayered design with some platforming sprinkled it, these locations also offer an increased challenge with the Life Corrosion mechanics, which cause a reduction of your maximum health when attacked by enemies. These effects can be offset by the Jizo Statues’ blessings obtained while exploring the open fields, adding another element that ties into the game’s big gameplay features.

Nioh 3 also offers something to those who preferred how previous games handled mission selection via Battle Scrolls. Unlocked after completing select missions, these additional missions are accessed straight from the Shrine to offer some of the most challenging content of the game, including some intense boss rush-style missions that are very difficult to complete without proper preparation and a good grasp of the game’s mechanics.

The inclusion of Battle Scroll missions also increases the amount of content, which would be staggering already with just what can be found in the open-field maps. Although there’s only a few of them, they are packed with activities and meaningful rewards. To make an example, it took me nearly 30 hours to explore a good portion of the Warring States map, and I didn’t even complete every Myth sidequests nor find every item and point of interest. So no worries about a lack of content: Nioh 3 is as huge as its predecessors, if not even more so.

Samurai or Ninja? Why Not Both?

The gameplay changes over past entries in the series featured in Nioh 3 don’t stop at the introduction of these well-crafted open fields, but extend to the one element that defines a Team NINJA action game: combat.

The combat basics haven’t changed much, on the surface. You still get multiple weapons with unique movesets that can be wielded in three different stances and Ki Pulse to restore your stamina by pressing a specific button at the right time after completing a technique.

Appearances, however, can be very deceiving, as little has truly remained the same over Nioh 2. The biggest addition to the combat system is two fighting styles: Samurai and Ninja. Samurai style is essentially the classic Nioh combat style with the traditional elements outlined above, an Arts Proficiency mechanic that empowers Strong Attacks and Martial Arts, the special techniques performed with button combinations, whose effects can be renewed by stringing these techniques one after the other, and Deflect, a beneficial parry and the core defense mechanic of the fighting style.

Ninja style, on the other hand, is a mobile fighting style coming with a single stance but the ability to use Ninjutsu techniques, many of them brought over from Nioh 2, with the difference that their uses can be restored by attacking enemies, blocking, and dodging their attacks. Besides this, what sets Ninja style apart is its inability to use Ki Pulse, which is replaced by a Mist maneuver that can be used to dodge attacks. Both styles can also jump and attack from the air, but Ninja style has the edge in this regard, with more varied aerial Martial Arts, and the ability to jump off enemies for increased airborne time.

Besides the different techniques at their disposal, Samurai and Ninja styles differ the most in their weapon selection. While there are Samurai and Ninja style equivalents of the same weapons, such as Swords, Dual Swords, and Caestus/Talons, some are entirely exclusive, such as the Switchglaive and the Tonfa.

This locking specific weapon types to specific fighting styles, I feel, will remain the most controversial aspect of the game’s combat changes. I personally did not mind this, as one of my main weapons in Nioh and Nioh 2, the Tonfa, works as it always had, but for other weapons, the changes are big, and it’s undeniable that the Kusarigama and the Splitstaff do feel a little gutted compared to their Nioh 2 iterations.

The existence of the Samurai and Ninja styles, like the weapon mechanics, doesn’t feel limiting at all, except in some specific cases. In no way whatsoever the game forces you to switch between them like Stranger of Paradise incentivizes to switch between Jobs on the fly: if you so wish, you could play the entire game in either style and, after defeating a certain boss in the Warring States map, you won’t even need to switch to unleash Burst Counter, a very effective counter against the red aura-coded Burst Attacks.

However, sticking to one style only is definitely not the optimal way to play Nioh 3, as the two styles’ unique capabilities are so tightly interwoven that there will come a point when style switching will become a core strategy, also thanks to some Skills which grant you some very nice bonuses for doing so near enemies, including powering up Martial Arts and restoring some Ki when critically low.

The Samurai and Ninja styles are further enhanced by Living Artifact, a powered-up temporary state that mixes Living Weapon from the original Nioh and Yokai Shift from its sequel. This not only grants Takechiyo invincibility and elemental properties to their attacks, but also some new techniques which are perfectly woven into every weapon’s moveset and the unique abilities of each fighting style.

For every intent and purpose, the increased freedom offered by the open-field maps seems to have been replicated in the combat system (whose intricacies are explained in the guides in our Nioh 3 Walkthrough and Guides Hub). These changes not only make combat even deeper, but also move the experience closer to the Ninja Gaiden roots of Team NINJA, turning Nioh 3 into a game that’s closer to a character action game than a soulslike, matching combat depth and quality map traversal as few other action RPGs do.

The Growth of the Shogun

Besides being able to fully customize Takechiyo Tokugawa at the beginning of the game with a new iteration of Team NINJA’s solid character creation system, you have almost complete control of how to build your protagonist. You can allocate points to stats at bonfire-like Shrines after obtaining enough Amrita to level up, influencing everything from weapon damage to Ninjutsu potency, and mix and match every piece of equippable gear to further refine the character build with their passive abilities.

Onmyo Magic abilities, unleashed by using Talismans that have always been a core part of character building in the series, have been radically changed in Nioh 2 and fully integrated into the Soul Cores system. These cores dropped by enemies upon defeat can be equipped in the Onmyo Box in either Yin or Yang position to gain access to multiple passive skills, Yokai summoning Talismans, which were the Yokai Skills in Nioh 2, but without the same combo potential or the traditional Onmyo Magic Talismans.

Alongside the split of exclusive style weapons, the changes to Onmyo Magic, and the removal of the dedicated skill tree are among the most controversial changes to the series’ systems in Nioh 3, as most of the community felt the magic-focused playstyle was getting sidelined. In some ways, this is true: Onmyo is still effective for buffing and for fighting enemies with elemental spells, but it’s undeniable that introducing a hard limit to how many spells you can carry limits this playstyle. I do feel this was inevitable with the more action-oriented philosophy in which combat is now grounded, but it will inevitably disappoint those who played as Onmyo Mages.

What did disappoint me more, on the other hand, was the changes made to the Yokai Skills system, replaced by two set Guardian Spirit skills for each spirit, which work essentially in the same way as emergency animation recovery canceling and elemental ailments procurement. Make no mistake: these skills are quite varied and fun to use, but they lack the same versatility as Yokai Skills. The new system still lets you use them in some form, but the time required for the skill to activate makes them unsuited for the same intense combo play possible in Nioh 2, even with a specific skill learned fairly early on, which lets you cancel any animation with a Yokai summon. Farewell, Ippon-Datara stun combos, see you in my next Nioh 2 playthrough on who knows when.

Don’t let my disappointment for losing some of the crazy combos that could be pulled off in Nioh 2 with Yokai Skills fool you. Though maybe less creative (at least until I figure out how to use the new version of the Yokai Skills properly), Nioh 3 still has a lot to offer in this regard. Martial Arts are way easier to chain into one another in both Samurai and Ninja style, so it’s still possible to pull off some stunning strings with some practice, which is likely due, again, to the changes made to combat as a whole.

Much like Onmyo Magic, however, Martial Arts underwent a significant change in Nioh 3, and one that disappointed me. The Arcana System, which allowed customization of Martial Arts with different properties, is completely gone, replaced by the aforementioned Transformed Arts that alter select Martial Arts with elemental properties and more. Such a closed system, however, doesn’t make up for the loss of a complex system that probably only the most die-hard Nioh players used to its full potential.

Small personal disappointment aside, although streamlined in places, the Nioh 3 character progression systems don’t leave much to be desired. Obviously, their full potential remains to be seen, but as things stand, the depth has only been moved around to better suit Nioh 3 combat.

Wrath of the Yokai

With so many tools in the hands of the player, it stands to reason that enemy design would take this into account. However, this seems to hold true only for new enemies.

As expected, given its predecessor, Nioh 3 features many returning human enemies and Yokai, with some new variations equipped with new weapons and using different attacks. The vast majority of returning enemies and bosses haven’t changed much since previous entries, so if you’ve already mastered their patterns, you’ll likely find yourself taking them down with muscle memory alone.

The new enemy and bosses, on the other hand, seem to have been designed with the new mechanics in mind. For example, a good number of new Yokai have a very easy time hitting you out of the air, forcing you to pay attention before launching in an aerial combo that might be interrupted.

The new boss design is, as expected from Team NINJA, very good. Without spoiling anything, some of the bosses Takechiyo will face in their journey through time are all very unique and come with very personable fighting styles and gimmicks that will put your skills to the test, but never in a frustrating manner. In the past few years, I couldn’t help but start to dislike FromSoftware’s boss design philosophies, starting from base Elden Ring, with most bosses unleashing wide range attacks that are difficult to avoid, and I’m happy that Team NINJA isn’t following suit, preferring to further evolve their tough-but-fair design philosophy.

This is something I appreciated not only in boss fights but also in the general balancing approach. This time around, the difficulty curve is different. Nioh and Nioh 2 were difficult at the beginning, but much easier once you learned how to take advantage of the mechanics to destroy enemies and even stun-lock every boss with the right setup. In Nioh 3, the curve is more natural, increasing consistently with each new region and map. Also, enemies don’t stay out of Ki for too long, so touch of death combos require overpowered builds that are hardly possible in the first playthrough.

Although some veterans will inevitably be disappointed by what may feel like an easier game, especially in the Warring States first few regions, I feel this difficulty curve benefits the game both in single player and in co-op in the first playthrough, leaving any possible frustration for the higher difficulties that are sure to come with the DLC expansions in the future, in proper Team NINJA fashion.

Graphics and Performance

While Team NINJA has always delivered on gameplay, their latest efforts have left something to be desired in the visuals. On this front, Nioh 3 definitely fares better than, say, Rise of the Ronin, but it’s still far from sporting the best visuals of the current generation.

Still, this doesn’t mean that the game looks bad. The contrary, actually: it is definitely one of the most visually advanced games from the studio yet. Character models are a definite step up from previous games in terms of model complexity and detail, and this is easily noticeable with the returning Yokai, whose looks are improved over their previous iterations. Animations have also been improved, subtly but sensibly, making combat feel even more satisfying. The texture work has similarly been improved, building upon what was seen in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty.

Considering how Team NINJA games have often left something to be desired with their PC ports, there was some justified concern regarding Nioh 3 as well. Unfortunately, the new entry in the series is no different, and the full version is plagued by the same issues many have reported in the demo. High CPU usage in certain parts of the open fields, VRAM usage increasing for no reason during gameplay, and stuttery camera movement are only the tip of the iceberg

One major technical issue, aside from the low graphics settings generally looking terrible and the inability to run the game at native resolution without being forced to use NVIDIA DLSS (DLAA), AMD FSR, and Intel XeSS, significantly impacts the experience. This issue has forced me to cap my FPS at 60 for the best responsiveness in open-field areas.

The issue occurs when Dynamic FPS Adjustment is disabled with a 120 FPS cap. No matter the location, the tools report frame rates in the 100s, but the entire game is significantly slowed down. I tried changing every setting, reducing resolution scaling, and even dropping resolution from 4K to 1440p, but the issue persisted. If it is turned on, it automatically caps the framerate to 60 FPS. The only way I had to have the game run at the 120 FPS cap was by enabling Frame Generation, but then again, the experience wasn’t as responsive as it is in other games, as the base framerate is stuck at 60 FPS and not at the higher range my system (i7-13700 CPU, RTX 4080 GPU, 32 GB RAM) can hit in the game.

I had a similar issue a few years ago with Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin at launch (and on another system to boot!), so this is definitely an engine-level bug that needs to be sorted. However, after a few hours of adjustments, I have found the game sticks to its 60 FPS cap most of the time on my system, aside from the occasional stuttering, so if you are really looking forward to the game and don’t mind this issue too much, you can still have a great time until it is fixed.

Closing Thoughts

The more I played Nioh 3, the more I liked what Team NINJA has done. However, the fact that I wasn’t having too much trouble against humans and Yokai, for the most part, was something I couldn’t easily put to the side. Is the game too easy? Have the RPG mechanics been simplified so much that anyone could have the same experience I did, or am I so accustomed to Nioh and Team NINJA games that I have a distorted perception of the game’s difficulty?

This, alongside the technical bug which forced a 60 FPS cap to me, made me wrestle with the score for a long time. I have no doubt that Nioh 3 is the best game Team NINJA has ever put out – their true Elden Ring moment. However, a game of this caliber deserves a PC port that doesn’t feel like it’s fighting the player’s hardware. While the game itself is a 10, the technical issues hold the overall package back just a hair from that perfect mark. But make no mistake: this is the new gold standard for hardcore action RPGs.

PC version tested. Review code provided by the publisher.

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9.8

WCCFTECH RATING

Nioh 3