Team Ninja’s Nioh has gone gold and people are actually looking forward to the combination of Dark Souls-like difficulty and hack and slash gameplay. That being said, has the game been made easier, especially according to those who played the last two demos?
As per director Fumihiko Yasuda when speaking to Destructoid, “We believe ‘streamlined’ is the better expression. We are aware of such voices claiming that by improving controls and camera, the beta felt ‘easy’ to veterans from alpha demo.”
However, it’s still really difficult. “Nioh is meant to be a masocore game so during development, we consciously avoided making the game easy.” “Masocore”, by the way, is a combination of “masochistic” and “hardcore” gameplay that’s meant for a niche titles (but still respected by mainstream players).
Yasuda further noted that Nioh had other influences besides Dark Souls. “Nioh was influenced by [the] Bloodborne and Souls series. For RPG/hack ‘n slash elements, especially the looting system, we looked to Diablo as well as Borderlands. As for samurai depiction, we took hints from movies such Lone Wolf and Cub by Kenji Misumi and Yojimbo by Akira Kurosawa, as well as numerous Japanese period pieces.”
Nioh is out on February 9th for PS3 and PS4.