Nioh 3 has certainly done quite well for developer Team Ninja and publisher Koei Tecmo. However, in a new interview with GamesRadar, producer and studio head Fumihiko Yasuda has acknowledged that, while the Soulslike RPG is a “great game”, it’s still not quite “perfect”. He went on to say that there are plenty of things that can be improved.
“Nioh 3 is a great game, but it’s not perfect,” said Yasuda. “I think there are a lot of things that we could improve upon. We want to take that knowledge that we gained with Nioh 3 and open-field elements and to be able to work on that, and hopefully incorporate and improve upon that in future titles as well.”
Further in the interview, Yasuda discussed some of the improvements that could be made to Nioh 3 going forward. Yasuda spoke about the game’s narrative and environmental storytelling as being particular vectors for improvement. While he acknowledged that the game’s density and immersion are well done when it comes to telling the world’s story, the studio wants to go into deeper details about the yokai. He wants the Nioh franchise to be more about just going to a place to beat some yokai and getting new loot.
“While we were successful with the immersion as well as the density of the game itself, I think in terms of being able to convey a lot more about the world, the narrative element, I think we could improve upon that,” he explained. “As well as the artistic elements, to give it a more distinctive look. Really understand why the yokai, or why that particular yokai, is in that environment. And why does that environment look like that? I think we could have done a lot more to really convey that aspect.”
“It’s not just a game where you sort of go in there, defeat the yokai, obtain the equipment or items in that area. There’s a little bit more to the narrative that we could have added. And I think that’s what we can see in some other titles that really give more to that experience as well. So that’s something that we saw that we could improve upon, and something that we do hope to do more in the future.”
Producer Kohei Shibata, on the other hand, believes that the studio could have done better with the variety of enemies it presents throughout its world. He noted that the studio tried to bring in brand new enemies based on Japanese folklore, as well as yokai that had popped up in previous Nioh titles. When it comes to variety, however, he said that “we do hear the criticism.”
“We are aware of the criticism on this,” he said. “In terms of how we respond to that, I think, with the yokai, these are creatures that have existed, in Japanese folklore, even before wild animals, even before humans had existed. These are creatures that existed much earlier. There is that element, that they appear as things that have been here in Japan before. We also wanted to incorporate some of the enemies that were in previous games, and we tried to make sure that there was a lot more variety to the battles against them so they didn’t feel repetitive.”
“But some people might have felt that there was a little bit of variety lacking there. So we do hear the criticism, and we do hope that, if there’s future titles, we can improve upon this. We would like to take that opportunity to look into that and see what we can do better.”
Nioh 3 is available on PC and PS5. For more details, check out our review. Also take a look at our thoughts on how it stacks up against FromSoftware’s Elden Ring.
