Most Anticipated Video Games

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

TS17's walkthrough/impressions of Nioh are up: https://youtu.be/biocrw7aI1g

This is personally really interesting for me to hear, since I know that TS17 went into this game as a huge fan of the Souls games as well as the Ninja Gaiden games. So, I know that unlike some other people, his praises and critiques would be genuine, and not overly-biased like Souls fanboys who want to call this a rip-off or Team Ninja fanboys who will blindly love anything that they do. I also know that he doesn't talk out of his ass and actually has an understanding of nuanced mechanics, so he won't blindly call something cheap or unfair unless it actually is.

Overall, in its current state, he feels that the game isn't nearly as good as Souls, but also finds it to be charming and fun in its own way. His biggest gripe is that it feels overly difficult for the sake of being difficult, though he also suspects this to be intentional of the Alpha demo and that Team Ninja will tone down the main game's difficilty. They know what they're doing. They just want people to react: "Wow, this game is harder than Souls!" This would theoretically spark interest in the game by word of mouth.

However, his follow-up to that really cements why I often respect his opinions so much. I'm going to paraphrase him here, but he basically said something along these lines: "I personally don't get this 'Ready To Die' bull-shit. Team Ninja created much harder games than any Souls game before they even existed, and back then they didn't need to gloat about it or advertise them as being difficult. They were just challenging games for people who wanted a good challenge." I'm so glad that he pointed that out. I never liked that "Ready To Die" slogan for this game, either.

Anyways, as for Nioh, he essentially says that it's difficult and "technically" mostly fair, but that it's not difficult for all of the right reasons, and thus isn't as fun as either Ninja Gaiden or Dark Souls. However, he's still interested in covering the full game and feels that it will most likely polish a lot of the flaws from this alpha demo.

So yeah, bottom line: Nioh needs some work for sure, but the potential is there.

[Foggle]

Goddamn, he is way better at Nioh than me. I just beat the demo a few minutes ago and I loved it. However, I found the final boss to be incredibly frustrating until my friend introduced me to a good strategy, and even then, it was still tedious. Awful fight.

I agree with his criticism that it seems difficult for the sake of being difficult at times, though I honestly didn't find it much harder than the "real" Souls games. That said, From Software's games are a lot more satisfying for some reason I can't quite explain. This is definitely Team Ninja's best game since Ninja Gaiden 2, though, and while it doesn't hold a candle to the best NG or Souls titles, I did enjoy the demo a lot more than my second playthrough of Dark Souls 2 and what I've played so far of Dark Souls 3.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

To be fair, I believe that the whole point of this alpha demo being released was for people to give them feedback on the flaws of the game in order to better balance it, so I fully expect the final product to be significantly improved.

The only thing that really concerns me is what TS17 said about the movement being shit. Using NGB as a frame of reference, you'd think that Team Ninja has movement down since those games control perfectly (which he also points out in his commentary), but since they're trying to be more like a Souls game, they have compromised the character motions such as running and dodging to be considerably slower, and as a result they feel clunkier and less responsive than a Gaiden, Souls, or Onimusha game. Out of everything, that's the first thing that I want Team Ninja to fix for the full release of Nioh.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Goddamn, he is way better at Nioh than me.

TS17's whole shtick is that he beats games on their highest difficulties IN ADDITION to forcing extra handicaps on himself or going for perfect ranks, most of the time. He's done a no damage run of RE4 on Professional difficulty, an SSS rank run of DMC4 on DMD mode, Pure Platinum runs of both Bayonetta games, The Evil Within on AKUMU difficulty, and has cleared several other games on max settings, including Ninja Gaiden and almost every major Platinum game. So it goes without saying that he'd make most of us look like shit in comparison when it comes to character action games.

I just beat the demo a few minutes ago and I loved it. However, I found the final boss to be incredibly frustrating until my friend introduced me to a good strategy, and even then, it was still tedious. Awful fight.

I hope that Team Ninja rebalances the boss fights to be much shorter like in Ninja Gaiden. As hard as they could be, you could kill most bosses in a matter of seconds if you knew what you were doing.

[Foggle]

To be fair, I believe that the whole point of this alpha demo being released was for people to give them feedback on the flaws of the game in order to better balance it, so I fully expect the final product to be significantly improved.

Yeah, that would make sense. Honestly, the demo feels about as polished as a lot of released games do these days. I'm not sure if that says more about Nioh or more about modern gaming...

The only thing that really concerns me is what TS17 said about the movement being shit. Using NGB as a frame of reference, you'd think that Team Ninja has movement down since those games control perfectly (which he also points out in his commentary), but since they're trying to be more like a Souls game, they have compromised the character motions such as running and dodging to be considerably slower, and as a result they feel clunkier and less responsive than a Gaiden, Souls, or Onimusha game. Out of everything, that's the first thing that I want Team Ninja to fix for the full release of Nioh.

I wouldn't say the movement is outright horrible, but it is fairly clunky compared to the Souls series, Onimusha, and Team Ninja's past work. It threw me off for the first 15 minutes of play, but I got used to it after a while. There were a few times my character randomly started slow-walking, though, which thankfully never happened in any particularly dangerous situations, but I could see that being really horrible if it persists into the full game.

Speaking of which, considering that this demo has almost no story to speak of and the protagonist appears to be completely silent, I'm a little disappointed I couldn't create my own character like in Souls.

TS17's whole shtick is that he beats games on their highest difficulties IN ADDITION to forcing extra handicaps on himself or going for perfect ranks, most of the time. He's done a no damage run of RE4 on Professional difficulty, an SSS rank run of DMC4 on DMD mode, Pure Platinum runs of both Bayonetta games, The Evil Within on AKUMU difficulty, and has cleared several other games on max settings, including Ninja Gaiden and almost every major Platinum game. So it goes without saying that he'd make most of us look like shit in comparison when it comes to character action games.

God, anyone who can suffer through Akumu is definitely talented/dedicated. That setting just sucks all the fun out of the game IMO, but if you're hardcore enough, I guess I could see it actually being a fun challenge. Has he done a Hard difficulty Kick Me Sign run in God Hand?

I hope that Team Ninja rebalances the boss fights to be much shorter like in Ninja Gaiden. As hard as they could be, you could kill most bosses in a matter of seconds if you knew what you were doing.

I didn't really mind the first boss. It takes about 3-5 minutes to kill I think, which is par for the course in this type of game. The second one took me like 10+ minutes per attempt, though, and that just felt horribly tedious. I also prefer the Ninja Gaiden style of boss fights that are short but sweet and incredibly challenging, but I must say that Demon's Souls and Bloodborne have some of my all-time favorite boss fights.

If I had to rank the Souls and Ninja Gaiden games together along with Nioh, I'd probably say:
Ninja Gaiden Black (also 1 and Sigma) > Bloodborne (particularly with Old Hunters DLC) > Demon's Souls > Ninja Gaiden 2 (Xbox 360 version only) > Dark Souls > Nioh (demo) > Dark Souls 3 > Dark Souls 2 (really didn't hold up on a second playthrough) > Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge >>>>>>>>> Literal garbage > Ninja Gaiden 3 > Yaiba

Though keep in mind that I haven't really played enough of DS3, either version of NG3, or Yaiba to form a valid opinion on them.

[gunswordfist]

Hehe Kick Me Sign...

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, if nothing else, Team Ninja games usually feel pretty polished when the final product is released. Even if the game is bad, it's typically still functional and mostly devoid of bugs and glitches. Oddly enough, Ninja Gaiden 2 is the only exception to this, despite being one of their better games. So, I'd be surprised if Nioh came out as an incomplete mess.

I've heard other people mention the slow-walking problem as well. I expect that it will be removed by the time the final version of the game comes out.

I do know that TS17 has covered God Hand in the past, but I have no idea if it was a Kick Me Sign run.

As for story, this game is supposedly based on an unfinished movie script by Akira Kurosawa. From what I can gather, the people at Koei were mostly responsible for developing the story elements of this game, which itself was in development since over a decade ago. Perhaps the demo purposely cuts that stuff out in order to keep it a surprise for the main game, but there should still be more character customization options regardless of whether this game is story-driven or not. Team Ninja has put up an online survey for feedback until May 5th. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to mention the possibility of adding in a character creation feature for the full release of the game.

According to both TS17 and Bick Benedict (a YouTuber similar to TS17 who I used to follow, but stopped listening to due to his obnoxious personality), AKUMU is really only incredibly tough in a few key areas, and mostly in the beginning at that. It's really manageable for them since they remmeber where enemies spawn and how best to set traps for them or take them out from a safe enough distance.

As for long boss fights, I don't particularly mind them when the boss in question has multiple different phases to it, but when the fight is long simply because the boss is just an attack sponge, it tends to feel tedious and infuriating. This was a big problem that I had with Devil May Cry 3 on Dante Must Die mode. Conversely, I love the boss fights in games like NGB and MGRR because of how quickly you can end them if you're skilled enough.

[Foggle]

As for story, this game is supposedly based on an unfinished movie script by Akira Kurosawa. From what I can gather, the people at Koei were mostly responsible for developing the story elements of this game, which itself was in development since over a decade ago. Perhaps the demo purposely cuts that stuff out in order to keep it a surprise for the main game, but there should still be more character customization options regardless of whether this game is story-driven or not. Team Ninja has put up an online survey for feedback until May 5th. Perhaps it wouldn't hurt to mention the possibility of adding in a character creation feature for the full release of the game.

Well, there are little pieces of story in there, and the setting itself is extremely interesting. The main character doesn't appear to talk, though, and the plot doesn't really seem to involve much more than "dude goes to different areas of Japan and kills demons." But, it's a demo.

According to both TS17 and Bick Benedict (a YouTuber similar to TS17 who I used to follow, but stopped listening to due to his obnoxious personality), AKUMU is really only incredibly tough in a few key areas, and mostly in the beginning at that. It's really manageable for them since they remmeber where enemies spawn and how best to set traps for them or take them out from a safe enough distance.

Yeah, I think if you have a good memory it might not be too bad. I've only played the first couple of levels on Akumu, and Chapter 2 especially was just so brutal that I wasn't having any fun.

As for long boss fights, I don't particularly mind them when the boss in question has multiple different phases to it, but when the fight is long simply because the boss is just an attack sponge, it tends to feel tedious and infuriating. This was a big problem that I had with Devil May Cry 3 on Dante Must Die mode. Conversely, I love the boss fights in games like NGB and MGRR because of how quickly you can end them if you're skilled enough.

Yeah, most Souls bosses have multiple phases, particularly in Bloodborne and Dark Souls 3. The first boss of the Nioh demo has two phases, the second of which is more interesting than than the first, but the second boss is just an obnoxious damage sponge with many instant-kill (or just about) attacks.

[Foggle]

Been playing the free Overwatch beta for the past couple of days. This is, quite honestly, one of the best games I've ever played. Everything about it is fucking amazing (except for some occasional server issues, which I assume will be rectified by the time it officially comes out). Tracer is especially fun to play, almost reminding me of Vanquish in terms of exhilaration. This is some of the most incredible multiplayer action I've ever experienced, and it will be a nice replacement for Team Fortress 2 and Payday 2 now that my friends and I have tired of them.

[Daxdiv]

I've been playing the Overwatch Beta as well. My personal favorites are Roadhog, Winston, Mercy, Widowmaker, Torbjörn and Bastion. I just like how pick up and play this game is and looking forward to picking up my copy of the game soon. I swear, it does feel more like TF2 with MOBA like elements with everyone having a special ability and not feeling like the same character. Hell, even for more traditional FPS players, you even have Soldier: 76 to play as.

[Foggle]

Torbjörn is so good. I love Mercy, Bastion, Reinhardt, and Reaper too. Pharah and Widowmaker are fun but I'm absolutely dreadful with them. I also enjoy using Roadhog, D. Va, McCree, and Soldier 76, but not as much as those others. Tracer is definitely my favorite, though. Still need to try Junkrat.

Can't wait to play it again in two weeks. The beta convinced me and all my friends to pre-order. I wish it was out already!

[Foggle]

Oh yeah, I heard that the main character in Ni-Oh is actually supposed to be the first white dude who ever went to Japan and became a samurai (in real life). That would explain why there isn't any customization and could also open up some interesting paths for the story to take.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Yeah, apparently the film that Kurosawa wanted to make was a more historical one about the real-life William from history. Ni-Oh seems to reimagine that concept in a dark fantasy setting, though if you look at the original concept art for the game from over ten years ago, it looked much less like a fantasy. This game has certainly come a long way from what was originally going to be a modified Dynasty Warriors game.

[Foggle]

Yooka-Laylee is still on track for October. This may very well be the first Kickstarter game to release on time.

Spoiler

[close]

"A flurry of excitement filled the factory floor. Everyone had assembled, from the top-tier boss characters to the tea minion from sector C. it was finally here; takeover day.

"The ingenious tech firm Quack Corp had been subject to a hostile swoop by diabolical publishing corporation in Hivory Towers. Together they were about to launch their most devious scheme yet, all under the leadership of cunning buzzness executive Capital B!"

Yooka and Laylee's adventure will take them deep inside the work halls of a baneful business, as the buddy-duo seek out the magical Pagies required to explore the mysterious Grand Tomes. The dexterous pair will seek to unlock the ancient secrets of these bewitching books, as they battle to thwart corporate creep Capital B and his devious scheme to absorb all of the world's literature... and convert them into pure profit.

An evil corporation that wants to ruin art to make the most profit? Subtle.

[Spark Of Spirit]

I was about to post this in the Rare thread, but yeah. Looks great. I can't wait to see some new footage.

They've also been pretty fast making this game. It's only been a year and they seem close to completion. Guess that's what happens when you know what you want to make but have been unable to do so for over a decade.