Nioh 3 GBAtemp review
PlayStation 5
Product Information:
- Release Date (NA): February 6, 2026
- Release Date (EU): February 6, 2026
- Release Date (JP): February 6, 2026
- Publisher: Koei Techmo Games
- Developer: Team Ninja
- Genres: Action RPG
- ESRB Rating: Mature
- PEGI Rating: Eighteen years and older
Game Features:
Nioh 3 is quite plainly the third game in the highly acclaimed Nioh series, rounding out the current trilogy with their most ambitious and possibly the boldest entry to date. With Nioh 2 standing as a prequel to the original Nioh, this third installment takes place after the events of the first game, and encapsulates the turbulent Sengoku period (15th-16th century), starting out with a demon infested vision of 1622's Japan and the fall of Edo Castle.
Nioh 3 centers around Tokugawa Takechiyo's journey to become the next shogun and his adventures and experiences that lead to to his ascension to the role. You get to fully customise your player at the beginning, with a variety of faces, hair styles and colours. Most of them are utterly bizarre, but there are plenty to choose from to make your player unique. Alternatively you can retain your stock look, or just hit randomise and roll out with an absurd and fantastical flow in an otherwise relatively realistic-looking title.
I will give a brief overview of the game, trying not to give any crucial hints or spoilers, because Koei Techmo really has this game on lock down during review periods, and I want you all to approach this as freshly as possible only knowing the bare essentials.
Team Ninja Know What they're Doing
Building on Team Ninja's fantastic pedigree through the Ninja Gaiden games, Nioh 3 brings back the incredibly balletic weapon-based fighting while introducing a new parrying mechanic that helps to engage the player further when it comes to the heat of the battle. Rather than an outwardly hack-and-slash-looking game, this game zeroes in on the minutiae of individual confrontations and even leans into evasion-focused strategising of each encounter, thanks to the tantalising tech that's been included in this sequel for the PlayStation 5.
As well as the obligatory yet brilliant haptic feedback, adaptive triggers and all encompassing 3D surround sound modes for headset adorned players, there are now also two distinct play-styles to experiment with, Samurai-style and Ninja-style. The former brings the player up close and personal with its heavily armored style with various stances. The latter style adopts a more distant and evasive manoeuvres, which is complemented with throwables like shurikens, for example.
Samurai has Ki pulse which allows you to restore stamina, whereas switching to the Ninja style grants you mist, a way of cloning yourself with a decoy, dashing out of harms ways and ultimately confusing the enemy. These are great mechanics that clearly allows for a lot of new approaches over the initial entries in the series.
Along with this, you get a selection of weapons at your disposal, a selection for each style, and each load out you build has its own skill tree to build and maintain, be it Martial Arts or Ninjutsu. I opted for the dual swords in Samurai style, and the dual hatchets for Ninja style play. However, there are ample opportunities to change these up and swap to something bigger, more aggressive or more specialist depending on the foes you're dealing with.
Controlling the game is extremely straightforward, but for those who want to jump right in, the R3 clicker locks onto enemies, the R1 button is used for actions and L1 is used to guard. The Square and Triangle buttons are used for quick attacks and heavy attacks respectively, and crucially, the R2 buttons swaps between your two styles at any time you wish.
Swapping styles isn't just a fancy gimmick, it can be critical for offensive and defensive strategies alike because you can knock back enemies in one style, and then launch a flurry of attacks at them with another. Equally, if you're making no gains against another enemy as one style, you can switch to the alternative and test for weaknesses with a whole new set of moves.
Guardian Spirits Guide & Assist, But Detract From Seriousness
Each of the main characters have a guardian spirit, and the lead character gets Kusanagi from the start. Your spirit pals guide you through exploration as well as being able to be called into battle to assist you, and as you progress you unlock new spirits that you can select from that complement your play style, be it Samurai style or Ninja style.
You're soon joined by several spirits, all of which you can choose to fight with at your beck and call. These spirits have Pokemon-like evolution paths that you can choose throughout the game, enhancing specific traits and honing a specific skill set. Kusanagi, for example, gets upgraded with red or blue options, which not only alters it's stats, but alters its appearance to suit it's upgraded specialisations.
I felt like the gravity of the overarching situation was somewhat undermined by being spoken to by these weird and wonderful creatures. Specifically, in overly characterised voices that mix cute and cuddly high pitched sounds with personified cues that blend animalistic vocalisation traits with what I perceived as heinously hammed-up human, English (if you opt for that dub) tones. I wasn't a fan. I would rather them not have a voice, and just communicated by projecting their thoughts into my head or something.
I get that this is, at its core, a fantasy game, and it's a personal thing I guess because I'm not hugely into these type of games, or Manga, Anime, or Pokemon if I'm brutally honest. I own two cats, but if they somehow managed to speak to me with a campy hybrid cat-esq human tongue I would probably have their voice boxes removed instantly. I don't know. I just didn't enjoy these niche intricacies that seem to be so prevalent in Japanese pop culture.
"Open World", Menu Obsessed & Extremely Niche
Within your pause menu is eight, yes eight, sub menus for each of the in-game mechanics. Be it leveling up with Amrita, changing your guardian spirit or replaying levels with battle scrolls, there are a plethora of additional sub menus and items within each option.
I personally found this extremely overwhelming and as a first time Nioh player, there was simply too much going on to get my head around. There is a menu explanation system in place, but still all of these walls of text and spreadsheet-like lists of items with copious amounts of stats next to them. This really did nothing for me, other than wanting to close them off and get back into the story and hack and slash bouts.
I'm sure the fans of the series will praise the granular nature of what the developers have done here, and I can definitely appreciate the care and attention that has gone into this games core mechanics and data-driven inventory and balancing systems, however, anyone wishing to jump into this game without a lengthy and steep learning curve will be sadly mistaken.
Though I can see how accessible Team Ninja has made the game, it still feels like I'm missing something because I haven't cut my teeth on the original two. There is a barrier to entry, but its variable. Some things are obvious and easy to grasp, others are buried in menus, and not so obvious for the layman to bind to muscle memory quickly enough to really enjoy the game immediately.
You can eke out a lot of fun without utilising a lot of the menus, but gradually you come to rely on them for managing your items, guardians and weapons, and you will need to make use of them in order to turn the tides of the increasingly toughening game play. The don't call it "Masocore" for nothing, but thankfully, the game gives you unlimited attempts (lives) and plenty of variables to work through to find the best combinations to deploy to level yourself up and make the game manageable.
Speaking of which, the "less linear" structure of the game still feels extremely linear, at least to me. There are huge sections of following paths, and it's not really feeling like what I would consider to be a truly open world game. The scenery, while littered with environmentally relevant objects and bodies to search, is a little repetitive and the breakables simply disintegrate, with nothing collectible within, by running through them. It's a minor quibble, but I felt it was a little immersion breaking that the same objects appeared multiple times, and running through them served no purpose whatsoever.
There is a playable demo of Nioh 3, which was made available from the 29th of January and people hoping to give it a whirl will be pleased to know that any progress made in the trial will carry over to the main game once purchased. It should also be noted that two DLCs have been announced for the game as well, with new weapons and stories to play through.
Verdict
- Loot-driven game play is appealing.
- Visually stunning cut scenes.
- More explorative than the previous games.
- Additional cooperative modes.
- Complexity of the mechanisms and menus is overwhelming.
- Mundane scenery and breakables in places.
