Nioh 2

Embarrassingly late into my development as an amateur philosophist, I decided that I believed that the most important question one could ask is why. All actions worth making and statements worth stating must surely be purposeful, and interrogating the purpose which drives actions and speech is surely the key to greater understanding, or so I once reasoned. Nioh 2 had me asking two why questions. Each why was a killer of my enjoyment. The first is of potential players: why would you play this? What would attract one into the Nioh 2 experience, and what would carry them through it? Unfortunately, the two main selling points of the game fail to mesh, instead undermining each other. You could be sold on it as a technical, demanding action game from the developers that made Ninja Gaiden 2 (or whichever entry of the series you claim to be the best), or you could be sold on it as a Diablo-esque loot game where enemies die in explosions of loot. There’s a market for both experiences, and on paper the sales pitch of “it’s Diablo but a 3D action game” looks like easy money. In practice, however, I don’t think it works. It definitely didn’t work for me, a known hater of the “number go up” mentality and the damage it’s done to the video game industry as of late, and it leaves me asking Team Ninja a different question: why the fuck would you do this?

 

When I first tried out Nioh 2, a game I hadn’t really intended to try before I got free access to it via PlayStation Plus, I bounced right off. I could handle the numbers dancing around the screen as I slashed at enemies, but I just couldn’t look past how thoroughly they permeated the menus. That kind of game just isn’t to my taste, and I wasn’t in the mood. I never finished the original Nioh (and I think I own the DLC), in part due to tiring of both the action gameplay and the numerical progression which surrounded it. The sequel improved enough that I doubt I’ll go back, although unfortunately I’ve since realised that I view the series as built on this rotten foundation. Nioh 2 has better gameplay, and when I returned to it for a second try I sank my teeth into that. I particularly loved the crunch of grapples, a rewarding mix of animations and damage that tops off the successful sequences of the ki dance. That’s what the best action games are made of: interacting with enemies, that life-and-death back-and-forth culminating in a meaty clash. Great stuff. 

 

Unfortunately, there's two sides to the Nioh series (and to the other Team Ninja games they released in its wake). One is the satisfying combat, and the other is the slimy layer of stats that covers it up and fills its cracks. What turned me off initially was that immediate burst of numbers: damage numbers, level numbers, loot explosions. It drips over every facet of the game, thoroughly tainting it. To move past that, I had to accept Nioh 2 for what it was. No longer does an action game mean a tight series of levels which last around 6-15 hours. No longer is replayability found in mastery of mechanics and understanding enemy design. Instead, the modern action game is an action-RPG, a merging of two gameplay types which unfortunately grate against each other. SuperBunnyHop discussed this issue years ago, referring to a sense of ludonarrative dissonance in applying the abstraction of stats to the directness of action games (the example is a damage increase in a first person shooter justified as the character learning to aim better; SuperBunnyHop points out that the player is responsible for aiming in an FPS). Nioh 2 sidesteps the ludonarrative issue but fails to resolve the true ludic discomfort. It makes sense that a particular magical sword has more power than another. It makes sense that a mystic warrior gains in physical and magical power. Making sense does not make it fun.

 

To its credit, Nioh 2 does a better job at reconciling the two halves of the action-RPG genre. Most struggle to make action meaningful, with the progression mechanics the clear means of increasing player capacity. Many developers don't have the interest, incentive or ambition to create technical action systems. Where other games in the genre reduce action to superficial button mashing, at second glance Nioh 2 sidelines its stats. An extra few points of damage don't mean much when a yokai is slashing your face off every other minute. Where Souls games once challenged the mainstream by encouraging players to think like an adventurer, to be aware of their surroundings, to show enemies appropriate respect, Nioh 2 encourages players to master their own movesets, with a range of weapons, onmyo magic and ninja techniques, systems like ki pulse and yokai abilities. It often felt like optimising stats was for keeping up, to make sure my range of options actually had a reasonable impact. When I respecced, I felt uncomfortable with my new choices, and soon switched back to something closer to how I'd built originally (faster weapons, magic over ninjutsu). But over time, the feeling that the various stat systems expanded my options faded. Instead, I returned to that initial impression, that the numbers and the build was all that mattered. For all of the action chops of Team Ninja, I no longer felt any drive to engage with these systems. The slime had covered my eyes, and all I could see was its numbers.

 

I know there’s more powerful options than I was using. Hell, I’d unlocked some of them - an onmyo skill called the sloth talisman slows down an enemy, drastically reducing the difficulty of bosses while it is active. I think I carried about 3 of them in my item slots for a while, and yet I barely used them. With Nioh 2 seemingly so easy to break in either direction, it raises the question of what purposes all these stats and systems and unlocks serve. To mark off the development and marketing checklists of the modern skinner box-derived video game, yes, of course, but what do they actually do? They destroy it. Not just artistically, as I so often complain about, but they destroy any hope of players like me engaging with it as an action game the same way we would engage with Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, God Hand, or, yes Ninja Gaiden. Games like these are relatively short, their long-term offerings designed around remixing encounter design through harder difficulties, pushing players even as they master the mechanics. Numbers still exist in purer action games, but they are largely hidden, there to ensure tight balance. The action-RPG shifts some of the onus of balancing onto the player. It is up to them not to overlevel if they desire challenge, or allow themselves to become underleveled if they desire completion. It would be easier to keep players within the happy medium if they could not brute force their raw numbers. The combat space becomes open in an unsatisfying way, not open mechanically but rather open to failing to work as intended. Players cannot be responsible for balance, and to give them this power is to end any ambition of crafting an interesting action experience. In another world the developer and publisher keep their head down, unswayed by the trends of yesterday and today, and release a flurry of modern action classics. Versions of Nioh and Wo Long (I’ll admit that their Final Fantasy game needed RPG elements to fit into the series) influenced in part by Souls but staying truer to the 3D action genre could have been masterpieces, more grounded than most technical action games but still high points of the genre. Instead, they waded into the realm of action-RPG slop, into the space where two incompatible elements are mushed together. Like combining an acid and base, the result is neutrality - something lacking the qualities of either side. Nioh 2 is not a mindless looter - I did not breeze through it the way I breezed through Diablo III, which I quit because it promised me that I would get no more than the experience of watching numbers go up. But neither is it a real action game. The best action games are like a body tuned for combat: lean, being trimmed of fat with a clear purpose, and with the stamina to go forever. Stats are empty calories. While the loot grind might help the game last longer, it’s largely meaningless and replaceable busywork. In existing, it undermines the joy that should have been found in the technical action gameplay. Nioh 2 is yet another distilled example of the endlessly repeating tragedy of modern video game design. I can only wish it had been a positive example of action greatness instead.