There was a time when you could have said that FromSoftware was a singularly dominant presence in the Soulslike space, and you could have been right. But the intervening years have seen many talented studios bring interesting twists on all of its innovations, but only the best ones have put their own spin on the formula.
Nioh 3 is the result of several titles that did very exciting things with the Soulslike concept, and is a culmination of Team Ninja’s journey over two past entries and a couple of other great titles.
They’re both giants in their own right, with very different philosophies that govern how they interpret the combat, exploration, and general vibe of a Soulslike. They represent differing design goals that underline core aspects like how player freedom and agency can be woven into combat in a manner that gives it depth, or how difficulty and a challenge is balanced against fairness, and even in how you express your build and how that carries over to New Game Plus.
There’s no way we’re saying that either one of these masterpieces is better than the other. But we think that it’s fascinating that they both deviate and intersect with one another in important aspects of their gameplay loops. Their design goals merit closer scrutiny, and that’s exactly what we’re setting out to do. Let’s get started!
Clear Visions, Forward-Thinking Directions
While Nioh 3 takes a very clinical approach to the open-world, combat, and its take on the player agency that a Soulslike provides, Elden Ring is focused on being an experience that puts you right at the center of an epic tale.
The story in Nioh 3 is there, but it isn’t where Team Ninja has focused its efforts, existing to give you an excuse to do battle across time periods which almost feel like a logical extension of the Spirit Stones’ utility after the first two games. Team Ninja, however, isn’t trying to tell a good story in Nioh 3, aiming to bring a combat-focused game to a region-based progression system that improves on the mission-based one in its previous Nioh games.
The focus on creating builds that suit you, and unleashing your best moves after a lot of practice, potential min/maxing, and a lot of grinding to gain mastery over your chosen weapons. You could choose to ditch your build entirely, with no costs associated with doing so. Nioh 3 is all about the action, and unabashedly so, and it’s a choice that works well for the experience it is trying to be.
Elden Ring, on the other hand, was targeting a different gameplay loop, with a sense of discovery underlining a player-authored adventure. Yes, it does have a lot of build-freedom and multiple options to suit your playstyle but switching things up midway does come at the cost of a Larval Tear, a fairly rare item with a limited number being present in each playthrough. Its story backs all of that up while giving the game a distinct identity, going for a fantasy-adventure vibe instead of Nioh 3’s mythology-driven approach.
But where both games come together is in their pacing, with an exploration-driven focus on allowing your character to gradually grow more powerful and take on more dangerous regions of their maps. They’re both Souslikes in that regard, but their priorities differ wildly enough to make them very different experiences in terms of their combat and gameplay.
Similar Fights, Different Techniques
As far as combat is concerned, it’s a good idea to see where the two titles intersect in terms of how fights are structured before we examine how they vary. They’re both challenging games in their own right, and you’re going to find that out within an hour in either ancient Japan or The Lands Between.
That’s true for both the grunt enemy and boss designs in both titles, as they come with well-telegraphed, readable animations, and openings that you’re meant to exploit as well as you can after considering the situation in a matter of microseconds. That’s a very specific vibe that Soulslikes bring to the table and is almost a given in any title that now enters the genre.
But then you see the differences in pacing and the tools you’re given to do damage in each game. Nioh 3 frankly brings a whole array of systems to the table to better support its faster pacing and a more aggressive playstyle for your character. Deflections are now a thing for the Samurai style, adding on to Ki pulses, stances, and Onmyo magic that can either summon yokai or use spells.
Couple that with the evasive Ninja style and you see a combat experience that has you constantly on the move, seeking an advantage against foes that hit hard and hit fast. It’s pressure-heavy to the point where every fight feels like you’re freestyling a very complex and nuanced dance, and once you get good enough, the consistency of your wins is a reward in and of itself.
Come over to Elden Ring and things are a tad more slow-paced although you’re always in danger of being summarily dispatched towards the nearest Site of Grace. Enemies, especially bosses, come at you with long combos with delayed strikes that vary their timing, requiring a more methodical approach and solid positional awareness for you to exploit openings that they provide.
The timing of each attack, dodge, and counterattack is more deliberate, and you’re meant to recover stamina the old fashioned way without opportunities to quickly regain it in the heat of battle. While you could argue that stamina isn’t an infinite resource in Nioh 3, and with good reason, it’s a lot more precious in Elden Ring thanks to the fact that you don’t get to pulse back chunks of it right after a combo.
But Elden Ring has its own tricks up its sleeve, with the Ashes of War, spells, a hidden poise system, and a focus on moveset mastery to let your Tarnished take on even the most fearsome of foes. Its combat is about spectacle, and a sort of push and pull in which you’re almost always the underdog until you see more of the world it presents and begin to give your Tarnished a distinct identity. Nioh 3 gives you everything you need to dominate its early game and trusts you to make the most of it, in comparison.
And that brings us to an aspect of the experience that is both crucial, and one in which the intersectionality and divergence between these distinct design philosophies begin to be more prominent. And that’s the open-world and their respective approaches to it.
Encouraging Exploration
From the very outset, Nioh 3’s version of Japan stands out in contrast to The Lands Between. The spaces are tighter, and getting from point A to point B is distinctly faster thanks to the Gale Sprint, and perhaps even the fact that you’re travelling on foot instead of a horse. The semi-open level designs are structured around a density of activities packed tightly in every region, and each of them leads back to combat in some way.
That helps with tying the world neatly to your character’s progression, and the approach to loot helps with that. You’re meant to keep updating your Samurai’s and Ninja’s loadouts, trying new combinations to create synergies between your gear, weapons, and stat investments. You’re meant to try and squeeze out as much damage as you can from your build, and exploring the world to make that happen is the way to go.
It’s more like a build-engineering system that’s backed by the exploration loop, the two of them working in tandem to keep you constantly trying out new builds or ideas, or even changing things up entirely if the situation demands it.
In Elden Ring, it’s more about forming an identity for your build, directing your take on the Tarnished in a way that encourages planning your stat spread early for the type of weapons and gear you’re looking at. Are you going to channel your Strength and deal devastating blows to your enemies while tanking their attacks? Or do you prefer a more agile approach, weaving in and out of enemy combos while dealing damage with quick slashes or stabs, or perhaps staying away and using your spells? All of it is viable, and any approach still results in a potent character.
However, new weapons, spells, Ashes of War, and gear are not dropped all over the place. They’re earned in a design choice that ties in to the game’s exploration loop just like Nioh 3, but diverges from it by encouraging a more calculated approach to the open-world. It helps that a plethora of side quest chains and hidden events constantly underscore The Lands Between, encouraging you to take as much of it in as you can with every session of play.
Elden Ring also has The Shadow of the Erdtree, a DLC that feels like a whole game all on its own. It’s going to be interesting to see what Nioh 3 does on that front. But both games do have an excellent replay value in common, with New Game Plus being almost a requirement for players who want to actually enjoy the characters they’ve invested a lot of time in building. Elden Ring a more sprawling, larger map that encourages you to explore it, yes, but for a set of reasons entirely different from Nioh 3.
Where Elden Ring is about an adventure that is built around a sense of wonder, Nioh 3 is one that’s built around a sense of constant danger, and a need for vigilant responses to threats that come at you. And yet, both their gameplay loops drive you towards a throne.
A Shared Crown
Elden Ring and Nioh 3 are excellent at probably the best titles to represent the distinct ambitions they bring to the table. As an adventure myth, Elden Ring places a spotlight on rewarding discovery, weaving in a sense of awe and adventure into its world that’s reflected in the spectacle of the battles you fight in it.
Nioh 3 takes a more combat focused approach, constantly keeping its players engaged through a more technical approach to combat that can get very addictive, very fast. It’s about taking down anyone getting in the way of your rise to the Shogunate with brutal efficiency and stylish grace.
Nioh 3 is sort of a combat laboratory, where you’re constantly looking for ways to tackle its new world design via experimentation and exploration. Elden Ring, on the other hand, is about an adventure that’s uniquely your’s, discovery-driven rewards and a sense of wonder woven into a story and gameplay loop that can have you thinking about it long after you leave The Lands Between.
And yet, despite their differences, the main thing that they share in common is that they’re both excellent titles, and brilliant showcases of what a good studio can do with the Soulslike formula.
Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.