This guide for Nioh 3 is all about earning souls as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Repsawn Point Reset

The simplest method to amass souls is to simply farm enemies in the vicinity of any given Respawn point. Plot a route that takes you through as many enemies in the surrounding area as possible, in the shortest amount of time, and then fast travel right back to the Respawn point in order to respawn them and do it all over again.

Battle Scroll

Later in the game, certain side missions can be replayed ad nauseum using the Battle Scroll option. Boss completion is not necessary for farming the souls you are seeking, though it does provide a significant bonus if you can do it efficiently.

Instead, simply fast travel to the respawn point at the beginning of the Battle Scroll in order to reset and repeat the run. Sometimes the run can be as short as the nearest mid to high-level enemy you can encounter, rather than a full gauntlet of low-level enemies.

Equipment Bonuses

Be sure to hold on to any equipment that grants you bonuses to souls, so that you can then equip them specifically for souls farming runs. These particular Special Effects are listed as ‘souls Earned’ or ‘Gain souls’ alongside either a percentage or a flat bonus.

Trade

Trade in all of your excess equipment, and receive souls in return. You will be looting a great deal of weapons and armor, most of which will soon be made defunct by something better, so keep trading up and earning souls for your efforts.

Items with higher Familiarity will earn more souls as well.

Be sure to turn on Item Auto Pick-Up to avoid having to mash buttons in order to recover loot, saving both time and effort.

Skill Bonuses

Certain Skills such as ‘Vital Spirit’ confer passive bonuses of extra souls for defeating enemies. This secret skill in particular offers a 4% bonus and can be found inside a chest atop a wooden lookout platform on the edge of the Enemy Base. This base is situated north of the Prospect Hill respawn point. Once acquired, fast travel back to a respawn point to learn it via Skill Management.

Clan Pledge Bonuses

When you finally get the opportunity to make a pledge to a clan, the Toyotomi clan in particular offers a 5% bonus to all souls earned. This will add up massively when grinding specifically for souls on farming runs.

Do Not Hoard souls

Since respec is both free and easy via the Reset button on the Level Up screen, be sure to spend souls as often as possible, rather than hoarding it. This is to avoid losing large amounts of souls in the event of your death. While you can always recover lost souls, it does carry with it the potential risk of dying yet again to whatever killed you the first time.

Those are all the tips and tricks you can use to farm souls and level up quickly in Nioh 3.

It can get pretty daunting to try and survive the brutal landscape you’re trying to navigate, with enemy soldiers and yokai waiting to take you on nearly every step of the way. However, take heart! We’ve put in the hours and have come up with a few things that the game doesn’t really tell you to prioritize, but you should thanks to how easy they can make your time with it.

Let’s dive in!

1. Master Your Burst Counters

Every enemy in Nioh 3 has one or more Burst Attacks in their arsenal. These are telegraphed with a red glow and an audible cue to show an impending attack. You can’t block these attacks, and while you can dodge them, countering them with a well timed Burst Counter can negate the attack and do a sizable amount of Ki damage in the process.

Try to learn the timings of these attacks when you encounter an unfamiliar enemy or boss to gain the upper hand every time they try to hit you with one of these. It’s tricky, yes, but all it takes is patience and practice.

2. Learn Enemy Attack Animations

Combat in Nioh 3 is all about finesse, and patiently wearing down your opponent’s defences with caution and deadly precision. To that end, it pays to hang back and observe an enemy’s attack patterns. That’s doubly so for the game’s bosses as they hit hard and rarely offer you any respite with their onslaughts of attacks.

Knowing your foe’s attack patterns goes a long way towards giving you the scope to formulate a strategy to take them down. Early bosses in the game have a fixed set of patterns that you can learn to make them far easier to take down, exploiting every tiny opening to your advantage. They’re a stepping stone to harder encounters so take your time with them.

3. Master Ki Management

While it’s important to manage your own Ki (or stamina) in this game, it’s equally important to keep up a constant flow of attacks against your enemies to drain them of their Ki. As long as you’re patient and unrelenting in your offence, you’ll find that they get exhausted a lot faster, allowing you to deliver a blow for some massive damage.

The Ninja style is a great way to keep up the assault even if you’re forced to withdraw from enemy attacks. The Samurai style’s Parry is another great way to achieve this, as each one does a significant amount of Ki damage.

4. Don’t Sleep On The Samurai’s Stances

It can be easy to overlook that the Samurai style brings back the stances from Nioh 2, and they’re every bit as effective as they were in that one. While you begin the game with Mid stance unlocked, It’s a good idea to invest a few skill points into the Low and High stances as quickly as you can.

The High stance gives you a good way to deal a bit of extra damage with your combos while the Low stance is a great way to attempt draining enemy Ki bars. Constantly switching between them and using Ninja style when you create some distance can have you draining enemy Ki bars a lot faster than the effort would otherwise take.

5. Explore, Explore

The main missions, or Crucibles as they’re called, are gauntlets that can send you packing to the nearest respawn point faster than you’d care to admit. But explore the area in which they’re located, and you’re going to come across a lot of ways to level up your character and have an easier time of things once you’re in them.

You could happen upon an Enemy Base with a few grunts to take out for some valuable XP and guaranteed loot. Or you might happen upon a Lesser Crucible that’s going to be challenging but definitely worth it.

6. Check the Recommended Level Of An Area Before You Explore It

Nioh 3’s map is massive, there’s no denying it. But the developers have divided it up into smaller chunks, each of which comes with a recommended level which you can view on the map screen. It’s a good idea to keep track of your character’s level and try to explore areas that are either close to it or slightly above it to gain XP efficiently as you explore.

Of course, you could always level up above the recommended limit via farming and then go on an absolute power trip through the region. We tried it and it’s a lot of fun!

7. Abuse Your Ninja Style

As you explore, you’re going to come across grunt enemies hanging out on rooftops or in the air, staying just out of your reach while annoying you with projectiles. The Ninja Style is your answer to all of them as it lets you stay at range and take them down without too much hassle.

But it’s more than that. You soon gain access to elemental bombs with AoE damage that can be quite handy in taking down groups of fodder enemies like the Gaki. They’re also quite effective at building elemental status effects and exploiting any enemy weaknesses you may find. It’s also a great way to create distance in battle, its evasive capabilities getting a massive boost with a few early upgrades.

8. Complete Enemy Camps ASAP

We highly recommend completing Enemy Camps as soon as you uncover them, as they’re generally easier than Lesser Crucibles, and often house either Samurai or Ninja Locks, both of which are essential to upgrade their respective skill trees. There’s also a strong chance that you can pick up new skills that you can then equip to your character at the nearest respawn point.

With the game’s new stealth options, it’s going to be quite easy to pick off a few isolated enemies before challenging the others if you’re looking to even the odds a little. Take things slow and you’re golden.

9. Activate Auto Pickup

Like past titles in the franchise, Nioh 3 comes with a ton of loot from enemies and chests that you find out in the world. It can get quite tedious to keep having to pick them up one by one but thankfully, the game’s settings come with a nifty auto-pick up option. Turn it on before you begin your playthrough and let your inventory fill itself with useful items and gear which you can then browse at your leisure.

Just remember to keep checking your equipment and ensuring your Samurai and Ninja Styles are geared up to maximize their damage, defense, and passive utility while you’re slashing and hacking away at any yokai unfortunate enough to meet the pointy end of your blade.

10. Time your Ki Pulses 

Speaking of slashing and hacking, the Ki Pulse mechanic doesn’t tell you to wait before triggering the Ki Pulse. Keep an eye on your Stamina gauge and hit the button only when your expended stamina is fully white to generate the entire chunk of it back in one fell swoop.

The timing on each weapon type can vary but it’s going to become second nature once you get the rhythm of your combos committed to muscle memory. Managing your Ki well could mean the difference between life and death in Nioh 3, and your Ki pulses are a huge part of that aspect of its combat.

11. Use The Ninja Right

The Ninja is a masterclass in chipping away at your enemies from a distance, but don’t neglect its ability to dish out some serious damage in close quarters. Its boosted evade abilities are perfect for dodging through enemy swings and exploiting the increased damage that the Ninja deals when attacking them from behind.

We found enemy health bars melting away faster than even the Samurai’s high stance could achieve and getting back into position is as easy as a well timed dodge guided in the right direction. It’s also a good idea to use all of the Ninjutsu in your arsenal before you switch over to the Samurai style for a few hits to refill them before you rinse and repeat.

12. Use Your Ranged Weapons Right

The Longbow and Matchlock Rifle are great options for dealing with foes from a distance as long as you line up your shots well. Take your distance from an enemy into account and try to approach them unseen before letting loose an arrow or bullet to their head. This can one-hit kill fodder enemies who don’t have a helmet on, and might even work on some who do have one depending on your level.

They’re also great options for taking out weak points on yokai, significantly draining their Ki before they even know you’re there. It could also open up an opportunity for a Killing Blow if things play out well.

13. Pick A Couple Of Favorite Weapons

There are a lot of skills for each weapon type in the game. And we mean a lot! You’re going to want to pick a couple of favorites and slot them in for your Samurai and Ninja and stick with them, as this lets you focus all your skill points on two weapons, gaining access to more powerful moves and techniques earlier in comparison to trying to unlock them all.

Your skill points aren’t infinite, especially in the early game, and this lets you focus on a playstyle that suits your preferences before you begin to branch out and experiment. You’re going to want to try maximizing your familiarity with the ones you do use, as this improves their damage output by a long shot. Just stay the course with the weapon you like and you’re going to find that you build familiarity with it fairly quickly.

14. Be Smart About Your Stats

While the open-world does make level farming a tad more convenient in Nioh 3, you’re still going to want to be clever about where you invest your stat points. We recommend picking weapon types that rely on either Strength or Skill, assigning them to your Samurai and Ninja slots and focusing on the stat that gives them a damage boost. Constitution, Heart, and Stamina are the other three stats you should go for while Magic and Intelligence are for those of you who prefer to use spells over blades.

That’s going to be quite the boon in difficult areas where the enemies you face hit harder and take less damage.

15. Pick Your Revenants Wisely

Bloody Graves are a great way to get your hands on some cool loot and some much-needed Ochoko Cups which you will need to summon help during tough encounters at Lesser Crucibles or boss fights. But if you pay attention to the Revenant’s levels, you’re going to be efficient at farming great gear, as fighting ones at your level or a tad higher nets better loot for you to use in the field.

Better loot means more durability and damage, both of which are almost necessary for survival in the harsh world that Nioh 3 puts you in.

And that’s a wrap on our hidden tricks to make your time in ancient Japan a tad easier. The title of Shogun is going to be easier to obtain as you make your way across your kingdom. And rest assured, we’re going to be at your side every step of the way once you begin your journey.

This guide is all about raising weapon Familiarity, and how to do it quickly, in Nioh 3.

How To Raise Weapon Familiarity

The Familiarity meter is located directly beneath the weapon name in the center of the screen when viewing your Equipment. Starting out a zero, you can fill the gauge by simply attacking enemies and dealing damage, not necessarily killing them outright. As such, it may be ideal for you to identify a particularly high HP enemy that you can use to farm weapon Familiarity, rather than slicing and dicing your way through many low-level mobs, which would force you to waste time travelling the map in search of further targets.

The Battle Scroll will be a great resource for farming Familiarity for each of your weapons.

Why Raise Weapon Familiarity

Aside from keeping the statistics of the weapon almost on par with newer equipment for a while at least, raising Familiarity also increases its souls exchange value. Filling the Familiarity gauge is unnecessary, as just 5% of the bar is enough to drastically increase Amrita value.

You can observe this for yourself from the Offer menu: while at zero Familiarity for a given weapon, note the ‘Amrita Earned’ value in the lower-right corner. Next, deal some damage to enemies until Familiarity is about 5-10% of the maximum amount displayed. Check the souls earned value again. It will be significantly higher.

Continuing to level up the weapon beyond that point does not seem to impact Amrita Earned value enough to make it worth your time and effort, though unlocking the Crucible Art from a full Familiarity meter would be.

In fact, that is one major reason to maximize the Familiarity for weapons that you do not necessarily intend on holding on to for the long haul. While only Crucible weapons have locked Crucible Arts, once you have unlocked it, you can dispose of the weapon if you wish, and find the Art itself under Customize Martial Arts. This allows you to then use the Crucible Art with any weapon of the same type.

That is everything about farming weapon Familiarity and the benefits from doing so, in Nioh 3.

This guide for Nioh 3 lists the best weapons for Samurai and Ninja builds, as well as the recommended weapon skills for them.

Samurai Martial Arts

Sword/Katana

The medium range of the tried and true Sword class is mitigated by a faster attack speed in comparison to long arms. Crowd control can be difficult however, and combat positioning can be the difference between winning and losing battles.

• Iai Quickdraw
• Night Rain
• Swallow’s Wing

Odachi

The Odachi has maximum reach and offers excellent crowd control, allowing you to sweep around while dealing damage and simultaneously keep enemies at bay.

Relying on heavy armor becomes necessary with this weapon, due to its lowered speed which can often leave you wide open to counterstrikes.

Management of Ki consumption can pose a problem initially, when you lack experience with the weapon.

• Ground Sweeper
• Groundquake Lightning
• Sunset Breeze: Earth

Cestus

The Cestus affords a Samurai high speed combat potential that is almost, but perhaps not quite on par with the Ninja Talons. Distance to the enemy will be extremely close range, but rapidity of strikes and chaining of combos can melt enemies far quicker than their ability to retaliate.

• Rising Gale
• Limitless
• Dancing Kick

Ninja Martial Arts

Dual Ninja Swords

What’s better than a single Ninja Sword if not dual-wielded Ninja Swords. Not only does attack speed increase significantly, but so does the opportunity for chained combos and multiple strikes.

Proper Ki management becomes critically important with Dual Ninja Swords, and range is also somewhat reduced in comparison to the lone Ninja Sword.

• Drifting Counter
• Water Sword
• Spinning Drill

Kusarigama

A weapon with dual-range potential, the Kusarigama can be used for both up close and personal attacks, as well as crowd control from a safe distance.

Problems can occur if you lack a feel for timing combos against mobs, though you can use it to quite effectively kite and deplete the health of enemies.

• Crimson Flurry
• Foot Sweep
• Whirlwind

Talons

The fastest weapon class available to Ninjas, the Talons are all about damage output based on pure speed. Rapid combos chained together are the name of the game, with all kinds of elemental status effects stacking up along the way.

Extreme close range is obviously an issue, but speed and skill can make up for it.

• Mist Slash
• Whirling Tiger
• Spinning Kicks

Those are the best weapons and associated skills for both Samurai and Ninja Martial Arts playstyles in Nioh 3.

I’ve put in way too many hours just going on rampages in Nioh 2, using my Tonfa and Swithglaives to devastating effect against vicious yokia. It makes sense, then, that I’d definitely like what Nioh 3 has brought to the table. But it’s more than just the addition of new ways to take down enemies with deadly efficiency; the possibility of a single mistake screwing up what could have been a glorious run often at the forefront of every encounter.

Team Ninja’s effort to weave in the best parts of all the titles it has made over the years has made Nioh 3 a game that I see as something that I could easily play for a weekend marathon or even a title I could jump into when I have an idle hour to spare. But what makes it so darn addictive that I’m thinking about it when I’m away from my console? Well, I’m certainly glad you asked.

Mechanically Marvelous

Let’s get the obvious part of what keeps me coming back to Nioh 3’s excellent combat system out of the way first. The new mechanics that it adds to the returning features are a sublime blend of innovation and excellent execution.

The Samurai style is Nioh as you know it. You weave in Ki Pulses into your attacks, taking care not to put yourself in a situation where you’re lacking the energy to move or lift your weapon. You’re carefully attempting to wear down your enemies and deal massive damage with a killing blow. You switch between your High, Mid, and Low Stances depending on whether you’re looking to deal damage to your enemy’s health, Ki, or a bit of both.

But things have changed this time around. One of the earliest skills you can unlock is the Deflection ability, which is essentially a Parry that works on anything other than the red Burst Attacks that your opponents dish out from time to time. On its own, it’s been a major part of why I’m finding Nioh 3 so hard to put down. I’ve caught myself baiting new enemies into attacks just to learn their attack patterns so I can nail down the timings on my deflects, and it’s just so damn satisfying I’ve stopped attacking first altogether!

What’s more, the parry works across weapon types, and it really changes the way I approach combat in this game. It gives me a way to just stand my ground and take fights head-on, my dual blades shredding through my enemies’ health and ki while each parry helps me recover Ki every time I pull one off. It kind of feels like a mix between the Clash system from Wuchang with Team Ninja’s own Wolong, and I’m all for it. The parry is literally a game-changer, but it isn’t the only one. There’s also the Ninja style.

Having the option to switch to a more nimble and agile character in the heat of battle has been a lifesaver on so many occasions, where I managed to create the space I needed to down an elixir when a particularly nasty attack had me down to a sliver of my health. Where past titles in the franchise would have had me desperately dodging or rolling away from attacks in order to recover, Nioh 3 handles that a touch differently.

A simple press of a button gave me the ability to just leap away to safety, while a dodge ability unlocked pretty early on from the Ninja skill tree took that to the next level. Getting in and out of attacking range is now so stylish, I can’t get enough of it. But the Ninja style isn’t just about creating space. It’s about controlling it.

If you’ve been playing the game, you know that attacking an enemy from behind as a Ninja gives you a damage boost. But what the game didn’t tell me was just how much of a boost that was. It’s a lot, and when you combine it with the extended dodge, you start to see why the Ninja style is not just a great addition from a mechanical perspective, but an absolute necessity when it comes to tackling large enemies with wacky hitboxes.

Nioh has always been about using every trick in your pocket to eke out an advantage against unforgiving enemies. Nioh 3 follows that trend, and combat in the game is built around weaving between enemy attacks, switching styles on the fly in response to your enemy’s actions, and dishing out some damage before you disengage and look for your next opening.

It’s a combat loop that has you absolutely locked in, and the addition of magic attacks, alongside martial arts for your Samurai style, can make your build look and feel like a killing machine that’s nigh on impossible to defeat. But defeats happen more often than you’d think, with my character being freed from their mortal coil almost as much as I was releasing the yokai and enemy soldiers from theirs.

Why is that, you ask? Well, your player character is only one side of the equation in a great combat system. It’s time to take a look at the opponents you face and the way in which they have been designed to encourage improvisation and tactical attacking on the battlefield.

Worthy Opponents

One of the things that I noticed as soon as I entered the open-world in Nioh 3 was how many enemies from Nioh 2 were a part of its roster. I found the Gaki to be morbidly adorable the first time I encountered them in that one, and I smiled to myself when I saw one of them gorging on the remains of a soldier in Nioh 3.

They’re the same, and yet, the way you can now tackle them is different. I parried their feeble swipes with ease, my muscle memory already kicking in from the many hours I spent taking them down. There are several other familiar faces from the previous game’s roster, but their timings have been shifted ever so slightly to keep you on your toes as you fight them.

The weird hybrids between Medusa and a snake are back, but their tail slams are now delayed attacks that you need to pay attention to and time either a parry or dodge just right in order to gain an advantage against them. The Jailer Oni come with the usual slams and stabs that are now a whole lot easier to deal with.

What has me so enamored with fighting off grunt enemies is the sheer number of options I have at my disposal at any second. I could choose to switch to the Ninja style and position myself behind an enemy that tries to slam its weapon down, using the brief recovery period it has to deal some additional damage to its back. Or I could try and parry the slam as a Samurai, dealing massive damage to its Ki while recovering some of my own.

I could choose to back away altogether, using my Ninjutsu to throw homing spells, bombs, and pinwheel shurikens at them from afar before closing in and switching styles for a Burst Counter. I could unleash a Martial Art attack. It’s honestly hard to stick to a specific pattern when there are so many cool ways to take the fight to your opponents.

The new enemy types are another reason why I love Nioh 3’s combat as much as I do. They’re built to force mistakes, making you learn their movesets before you can begin to formulate a plan of attack. Many of their moves are designed to have you switching styles, like the sonic bat that shrieks at you to instantly drain your Ki, the only way to counter it being a quick switch to the Ninja style and throwing out a shuriken to interrupt it.

When taking on these enemies in groups, Nioh 3 really puts its players to the test, the Lesser Crucibles being an excellent showcase of just how challenging the game can be despite all of the great options it gives you against its enemies. The very ground you’re on can become a more dangerous foe than the yokai you’re up against.

A very memorable battle between some lowly Gaki and me quickly turned into a desperate fight for survival as I kept getting shoehorned into a lava-filled corner of the arena, a situation made worse by the arrival of the Gaki Chief, a massive version of the base enemy whose sweeps and slams came with AoEs that needed to be dodged at all costs.

Nioh 3’s roster of enemies, both old and new, is designed to create pressure so that all of your techniques then become options for you to think tactically in the heat of battle. That’s the underlying beauty of its combat system, the constant struggle to control the flow of the fight and make it go the way you want, being as much of a pleasure as the moment your plans come together for a glorious victory.

Nioh 3’s combat isn’t addictive simply by virtue of being an excellent take on the Soulslike formula. It goes beyond that to make each fight a sort of deadly dance between your character and their opponent, your moves all forming a rhythm that’s all your own. You control the beat while your foes try to wrest that control from you.

And that sense of agency is precisely what I find so compelling about the game’s combat system. You have everything you need to be a Shogun for the ages. All that matters is using it well enough to get there. And that is the combat system’s biggest strength, and why I’m going to spend many more entertaining hours with it.

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.

Underlining each of these innovations is a certain fearlessness to try out new ideas in its games, and, more importantly, learn what works and what doesn’t once they make their way into their players’ hands. It’s that bold approach to innovation that now has us believing that Nioh 3 is going to be a title that brings all of their experience to the table. The playable demo has been the only slice of the game that players can experience, but it does showcase that it’s a title that isn’t backing down from its vision.

It could have been easy to make the game an iterative improvement over Nioh 2, which was already a solid title to begin with. But with sweeping changes to its combat and level design spurred on by all of the things it has tried in the intervening years since Nioh 2, the studio is making this threequel stand tall as a true (and worthy) successor to the franchise’s legacy.

Standing as a cornerstone of it all is the new open-field design, which serves as a testament to the ambitions that Nioh 3 is bringing to the table. Every facet of the experience is made better by a bold approach to its world design, and we could not be more excited to dive right in. Let’s take a look at how the open-field in Nioh 3 makes it all the more attractive to us.

A Distinct Visual Identity Made Grander

Nioh and other Team Ninja IPs have often drawn flak for a rather safe approach to their visuals. But love them or hate them, there’s no denying that these titles have become a distinct visual identity for the studio. When we first booted up the demo for Nioh 3, we instantly saw that the signature style that the franchise was known for was right there, but things were different this time around.

There was a layer of polish to the whole thing that shows how the developers took the feedback about their visual style constructively and worked to make the most of it. Intricate details pop out of the environment, lending immersiveness to the flourishes that Nioh 3 aims to present visually. Character models and skin textures were excellent, even in what was likely an early build. The visuals in Nioh 3 are better than any of the titles that have preceded it, even as they retain the distinct visual language that has set them apart over the years.

But the new open-field is where those visuals truly get a chance to shine. As a title for both the PS5 and PC, Nioh 3 gets to leverage current-gen hardware and harness it to present a title that’s immediately more ambitious than the franchise’s best ones while weaving in ideas from other IPs in the studio’s back pocket.

For starters, it mixes Rise of the Ronin’s excellent open-world design, condensing those ideas to a more focused experience. As an open-field, that one certainly made the search for our Blood Twin feel like a journey worthy of the best adventurers. We met so many people along the way and navigated social complexities that were well-integrated into the world-building.

While Nioh 3 may not need to be as grand as that world, having an open field allows it to address an issue that is often pointed out in games of its calibre: that of linearity. Nioh 2 did give you the option of tackling side missions on your own terms, but the levels you explored were often different routes through familiar areas. That’s easily addressed with an open-field that encourages exploration over a rush to finish the story, and Nioh 3 is a way for its makers to tackle those complaints head-on.

Just like it aims to let you experience the game on your own terms in ways that the franchise previously couldn’t achieve, Nioh 3 being open-field is a great way to bring area variety into the mix. It adds flavor to the experience in a manner that gives Team Ninja the scope to go big on its own terms, preserving its unique visual style while taking things to the next level.

Similar to its visuals, Nioh 3’s mechanical changes are also made even better by the open-world design.

Great Gameplay Made Greater

While Nioh 3 might not have you fighting for every square inch of the land you’re exploring in the manner that Wolong did, its reputation system is supported by the open-world design. Indeed, by encouraging exploration to take down different enemy types and achieve a variety of milestones to unlock bonuses for your character, exploration forms a great way for you as a player to achieve a sense of momentum.

That’s always welcome in a Soulslike title where diligent players are rewarded with abilities that may not necessarily make the battles to come easier, but do confer them with advantages that make those battles worth fighting. An open-field design lends itself to that sentiment, something that Elden Ring used to great effect. It’s more opportunities to engage with a combat system that brings interesting wrinkles to an already great one from the previous game, and that’s definitely not something we’re going to complain about.

But Nioh 3 takes things up a notch with stealth mechanics that are finally viable as a way to thin out crowds of tough enemies before you take on the ones who remain. Once again, an open-field design means open areas in which you’re not limited by set pathways to take enemies down, with the potential to avoid enemy sightlines being exponentially greater than an experience with linear level designs.

Another aspect of a Soulslike experience made better by an open-world is that level farming is set to be more fun than it could be in linear titles. The option to flit between areas to grind out a few levels and cheese a potentially tougher enemy might have some purists scoffing at the very idea, but to most players, it could mean the difference between a reasonably easier win versus hours of staring at death screens.

More ways to do that and familiarize yourself with the Samurai and Ninja stances, and the potential variety that comes with it is always welcome in our book. It could mean an easier path to completion for players who might be balancing real life against a gameplay loop designed to keep them coming back for more. And speaking of completion, we believe that the open field in Nioh 3 could work wonders for its story.

A Personal Narrative

Team Ninja might have had a reputation for putting its stories on the back burner to focus on the action in titles like Nioh 2, but after Rise of the Ronin, we’re cautiously optimistic that Nioh 3 might be a pleasant surprise on that front. We know that it’s already quite personal for your protagonist as they seek to ascend to the position of Shogun despite their younger brother betraying them and channelling the power of yokai to do so.

The open-field lends itself to this story, making the entire map your future kingdom and lending a layer of authenticity to the story. In that sense, every activity in the world reflects your goal as the story’s hero, as you’re literally fighting for your kingdom whilst earning your place in it from the ground up. If things turn out as well as we hope they’re going to, the open field in Nioh 3 could feel like a place that should feel like home but isn’t, thanks to the machinations of the game’s antagonists.

That makes the world feel less like dressing for the gameplay loop and more like the beating heart of the story that Team Ninja is trying to tell. Exploring it isn’t just about clearing out enemy presences and collecting cool gear. Instead, it’s a fight to protect the land you’ve been entrusted with against those who clearly intend to bring harm to it and its people.

A Bold New Direction

The new approach to Nioh is a welcome step that does take inspiration from titles like Elden Ring, but does so in a manner that’s true to the franchise’s roots, making it feel familiar and personal in ways that matter. From what we’ve seen so far, Nioh 3’s open-field is a flag-bearer for its vision, blending the franchise’s signature difficulty with a design that gives us more of what it does best.

It’s a sublime approach and is one that brings all of the developer’s past innovation to a single destination that could allow the game to stand out in a genre that’s been getting quite crowded lately. It is the culmination of years of solid games, and a true evolution of the franchise and the perfect stage for all of its ambitions to play out.

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Fire Emblem: Three Houses is going to carry on the series’ tradition by offering players a meaty experience that lasts for dozens of hours, on top of side content and plenty of replayability. But though it’s going to be a game with a ton of content, it won’t need you to clear up too much space in your Switch’s storage.

An image of a download card for the game’s digital version has popped up on Reddit from a user in Japan, and it confirms that its file size is going to be less than 12 GB- 11.9 GB, to be exact, which is a very reasonable file size considering how content-rich the game is planning to be, an also about the average expected file size for such a game on the Switch.

The download card also confirms that there will be DLC added to the game after release, and that it’ll add new quests, new side stories, as well as new costumes, all of which will most likely be coming in the form of Paralogues.

Fire Emblem: Three Houses is a month away from launch. It’ll be out on Nintendo Switch on July 26. Take a look at its latest story trailer through here.