Recent reviews by DeepZone

When I was playing the first Nioh, I remember thinking, "This is a great game, I just wish they fixed..." and then they actually did it in Nioh 2. While playing Nioh 2, I had the exact same thought: "Amazing game, I just wish they tweaked..." and sure enough, they did exactly that in Nioh 3.

Team Ninja clearly understands the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule. Instead of taking huge risks or completely overhauling the formula, they just focus on making a better game every time. You get a new story, a cool new cast of characters, and a few smart tweaks to the gameplay style, but it still absolutely feels like Nioh. It's exactly what a sequel should be.

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I also want to touch on the multiplayer because I played through almost the entire game with a good friend. The co-op progression is fantastic. We played in "Expedition" mode, and every single thing we did, from side stories to open-world unlocks, was completely saved and done when I went back to my own solo game.

I’ve seen some people in the forums complaining about co-op progress not carrying over. Honestly, from my experience, that probably only happens if you jump into someone's game mid-mission or mid-quest. If you actually start the sessions together, the shared progression works flawlessly.

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While the gameplay is top-tier, the PC performance is rough. I originally tried playing this on an RTX 3070 Ti, and the FPS and stutters were terrible. I had to upgrade to an RTX 5070 Ti just to continue playing with decent FPS. The game is extremely demanding on your system, and it definitely feels like Team Ninja still has some engine optimization issues to work out.

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Bottom line: Team Ninja nailed the gameplay again, but be warned that you need a seriously beefy rig to run it smoothly. Highly recommend the game itself, but keep the hardware demands in mind.

While this game is fun and worthwhile to play, I can't in good faith recommend it due to its predatory gacha system.
(I've got hundreds of hours and I plan to continue for now)

The gacha is completely cosmetic, there isn't much to gain, but it's also extremely expensive. You can ramp up to $400-600 to gain a single banner outfit. More if you also want a mount, and other special cosmetics.

The game uses psychologically traps everywhere, employing every single trick in the book to bait you, or make the numbers look bigger.
But truth is, the pity pull at $200, only gives you 6% chance of actually winning the banner pull, with 94% chance of getting a currency you need 2 or 3 to buy the thing that should've been guaranteed at pity.

The game is alright F2P, and has a decent combat system, enough to keep me hooked for *this* long.
But the moment you decide to want an outfit, be prepared to pay at least $100 for the regular shop outfits, or hundreds more if you're planning to spin the gacha.

Majority of the players are either playing F2P until it burns out, or whales that spend thousands of dollar every time a banner comes out, then afk on their $40k boat, it's absurd, I've never seen anything like this, insanity.
It feels like such short term business plan.
The whales will get bored or grow out of the attention soon, and those handful of whales are funding the entire player base.

• Completely F2P. Only thing you can buy are cosmetics, there are some puny in-game currency rewards from season pass but you can cover them with an extra run or two.
  
• Class variety is outstanding right off the bat, you have access to the lowest 5 difficulty classes, but if you click "Experienced Player" you'll have access to all 5 subclasses of the original 5. Making the pool as big as 25 classes.
  
• The game has great visuals and fun combat system. Some passives interact with each other in a funny way and it feels good to discover them.
  
• Available on Phone and PC. Can take it seriously or have a laidback session any time you feel like it.

• Grindy after the first few hours. Once you've chosen your build you'll need hundreds of runs to max out item level.
  
• Needs an undo option. I often miss-click and do an obvious misplay (especially on phone) that can cost the game.
  
• New battlepass missions are annoying, it was better when all it took is just playing the game, instead of having to finish a set of missions.
  
• This is my personal taste but most maps had terrible repetitive background music that I had to mute music altogether, especially since I had to farm these maps for hours, because again, it's grindy.

Good game

Beautiful graphics and sceneries, kind of cryptic and mysterious story that is fun to crack.

-The PvE content is too short (5 hours with a lot of dying and repeating the same boss, also a lot of running and wandering aimlessly due to the game lacking a proper map)
-The combat mechanics are too hard, you actually have to memorize every single attack and react toward the attack's direction to pull a parry off, but then, that parry isn't really rewarding enough for what it costs if you fail the parry.
-The game itself isn't hard, but it's hard to feel good playing it, whenever you're in the middle of an amazing streak and you feel like a God, a few punches will land on you and remind you that the world is cruel.

The combat gives a lot of room for the player to improve, but it's also punishing for someone that is not willing to learn & memorize every single attack pattern, I'd need to engrave at least 20 hours of combat into my brain to be a good player, but the PvE content barely provides 5 hours. This feels like real life fighting, you only get better after losing a countless amount of fights. Some attacks are also so fast you need real life martial art experience to react to them fast enough, lol.

I'll keep this short since there are some big reviews.
My problem is the action camera and the UI adjustments lacking.

Everything else can be fixed but these are issues on a fundmental level. If the combat & visuals are not fun, nothing you can do will keep the players.