Nioh 2 Review - Meticulous Masochism

Publisher: Koei Tecmo

Developer: Team Ninja

Release: 2020

Reviewed on: PlayStation 4

Nioh 2 is an incredibly punishing game where even the lowliest enemy can kill you in mere moments. Through perseverance, precise combat, and careful preparation, you can emerge from a world filled with duplicitous demons and humans. If you love systems and mechanics, your cup is overflowing here as you master elements like guard-breaking to ninja items. But be warned, this teacher is not a kind or cuddly sensei. Nioh 2 can break your spirit through constant, grueling punishments that push you well beyond your limits, but perhaps you have the spirit of the samurai to soldier on and taste victory even when all seems lost.

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Deep and highly customizable combat is the shining jewel that carries Nioh 2. You train in a weapon (or weapons) of your choice, determine where to place your stat and ability points for the maximum benefit, and perfect the timing of blows. Nioh 2 introduces new features that add even more complexity to those systems, including the dark realm and yokai abilities. Burst counters are my favorite addition; through masterful timing, you can wait for an opponent to flash red before unleashing a deadly attack, but then turn that move into an opportunity for you to counter and destroy your assailant. Early in the game, you, you dread those red-flashing lethal strikes coming your way. By the end, you’ve mastered the technique and you can’t wait for enemies to try and hit you with a big one as it may be one of your best chances to get in some serious damage. This all makes burst countering a fun way to add variety and prevent you from relying too heavily on your old standbys.

Your gameplay time is occupied by tons of main missions and rewarding side missions that provide skill points, gestures, and extra gear. I had the most fun with optional sub-missions that amount to fast-paced boss rushes, while main missions have a wide range of experiences from passable to maddening. As in the original, you can also take on more difficult missions for bigger hauls and get help from up to two other players. Teaming up with friends is easy, and it makes incredibly difficult encounters much easier, so it’s a great lifeline if you are stuck on a tough boss.

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While some games foster a sense of triumph by challenging players, Nioh 2 has a penchant for extracting the ultimate price in sadistic ways. Even the lowliest peasant can kill you with a stray slice of a sword, and many of the levels set up gruesome breadcrumb traps of death that force you to inch forward examining every possible scenario. Rush the first ranged enemy? It has two others covering it from afar, and you should have spotted them and used your rifle first – but there’s also a yokai patrol that can see you if you peek at them, so make sure to take that out first. This type of thing is common, and while it can be satisfying to check every corner before looting an item in the early stages, later on it becomes just a tiresome chore. You don’t have to wonder if something is hiding behind the wall or if something is going to fall from the ceiling; you just know it is, and it’s more fatiguing than inspiring. 

Now, that said, you’re still getting treated to a smorgasbord of fun boss battles and awesome customization. Refining your weapons into murder machines, gaining levels and skills, and collecting buckets of loot to complete gear sets is satisfying. Boss battles take a quantity-over-quality approach, with dozens of encounters and erratic difficulty. Some are extremely tough, while others are pushovers that leave you scratching your head waiting for a phase two that never comes.  Despite the inconsistency, I enjoyed many memorable fights among the deluge of “This guy is a samurai with a guardian spirit you probably won’t remember in 20 minutes” encounters. 

Nioh 2, like Nioh before it, is an unrelenting and extremely punishing ride that has you weighing every resource available. Despite some flaws, this experience carves you from an unrefined button-mashing flailing pustule into a precision-striking samurai.

Score: 8.5

Summary: Nioh 2 adds some cool new features to a familiar experience.

Concept: Embrace the demon inside you as you wreak havoc across a fictionalized Sengoku-era Japan

Graphics: Environment variety is seriously lacking, with most of the game falling into mundane browns and grays in castles, villages, and caves. Moments when you’re using impressive abilities look beautiful, though

Sound: While it’s pleasing to hear your rifle hiss before letting loose, most of the audio is completely standard and forgettable.

Playability: With new mechanics layered on familiar gameplay, you must master additional maneuvers to survive. This is an extremely challenging and punishing game that should be approached with some expectation of failure

Entertainment: Offering a host of bosses to battle, challenges to overcome, and massive customization opportunities, Nioh 2 is a tantalizing treat for those with a thirst for serious and sometimes frustrating adversity

Replay: High

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Ori And The Will Of The Wisps Review – Even Better Than The Original

Publisher: Microsoft Game Studios

Developer: Moon Studios

Release: February 11, 2020

Rating: Rating Pending

Reviewed on: Xbox One, PC

Ori and the Will of the Wisps strikes the perfect balance between life and death, filling your heart with joy one second and then crushing it the next. Developer Moon Studios tugs at the player’s emotions whenever possible, both through a beautifully penned story that sees Ori racing to rescue a friend, and also nail-biting gameplay that demands precision and patience every step of the way. Will of the Wisps is more carefully designed than Ori and the Blind Forest, dazzling with the basics and upping the tension frequently through explosive setpiece moments.

This is not a game for the faint of heart – it’s as challenging as it is clever. Even if you figure out a jumping pattern required to solve an environmental puzzle, you need to be able to make those leaps, which are often ridiculously hard. Ori needs to jump, double jump, roll, glide, and latch onto objects – and sometimes he does all of those things in a single elaborate maneuver. The movement chains you are often pushed to meld are intense, but the payoff is well worth the effort.

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Moon Studios doesn’t back down from the original’s difficulty, and though you may die over and over, Will of the Wisps is a more approachable experience thanks to a new checkpoint system. Instead of sacrificing valuable energy to create save points, you now have more forgiving checkpoints that are activated when you reach certain spots. The checkpoints are everywhere, and make sense for each challenge area. If you reach a ledge free of threats, it’s likely a checkpoint. Just getting to some of them can be a stressful (and satisfying) workout.

The only area where Will of the Wisps doesn’t save progress is during Ori's escapes. Yes, these chaotic sequences are back; Ori must dash over tumbling terrain as an avalanche roars toward her, and dart in and out of sand to stay ahead of a tunneling worm. These tests of skill require split-second thinking and perfect movement. They make you hold your breath and exhale profanity, but are easy to read in terms of navigation and are not nearly as tough as they were in Blind Forest. They’re still difficult, but you should be able to get through them after a few tries.

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While the story focuses on Ori trying to locate a little owlet named Ku, the game is mostly a pursuit of power. The opening section is fairly guided, but then it opens up and lets players figure things out on their own. A journey into the watery Luma Pools to the east may lead to little progress being made until you first gain a power from the north, yet you don’t know it’s there or what it may be. You just need to keep exploring, and pay attention to the environments for areas that you think you can eventually reach. Using Ori’s moveset to navigate these spaces is a blast – I never tired of it and I love how it expands. The map does a fantastic job of tracking progress and visually showing you areas that haven’t fully cleared out yet. Even if you're stumped, the gray areas on the map serve as waypoints that will likely hold an answer.

The entire forest delivers the sensation that you are exploring one giant, sprawling dungeon, even though each area is visually distinct. The powers Ori unearths are varied and fun to use, including a surprising number of abilities dedicated to combat, which plays a larger role across the entire game, and is a welcome addition.

Ori’s story delivers a mix of playful and tender moments, yet gets dark and goes places you wouldn’t expect.

The arsenal of attacks players find allow Ori to be up close and personal with energy sword strikes and an aura that deals damage, or to be more elusive and use ranged attacks like a boomerang or sentry. The abilities can be switched with ease on the fly through a wheel and are all powerful in their own right.

Players can also invest spirit shards into enhancing these attacks, as well as Ori’s base statistics, like taking 25 percent less damage or being able to shoot projectiles faster. The shards can also enhance abilities, such as a jump doubling as a ram attack, and the Spirit Arc splitting into three shots. All of these light RPG systems are awesome, as they just push players to explore more and battle every enemy, as most drop shards. Each purchase ends up feeling significant as it can make encounters and traversal easier.

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They also help with bosses, towering creatures that have plenty of health and are incredibly aggressive. These fights deliver frantic fun and push players to wait for openings to attack. I took on a spider boss way too early in my playthrough, and barely took any health off of it, but then returned later with a more powerful arsenal and more health canisters and took it down on my first attempt.

That’s part of what makes the Will of the Wisps such a fascinating game. I could have taken on that spider 100 times and eventually beaten it early on, but I instead backed away and came back when I was better suited for the fight. Whenever I hit a part that felt too hard, I came back later with something that served as a solution. Fast travel is handled nicely, but I would often hoof it to most places, as there are numerous side quests along the way (like finding lost trinkets). Helping others in need, Ori’s efforts help build up a small village, which serves as a hub for upgrades and other various functions. There’s plenty of side content that is enjoyable to explore.

The story is fantastic, the world is breathtaking, and all of that pales in comparison to the wonderfully made gameplay that soars both as a platforming and combat game. Moon Studios has outdone itself with Will of the Wisps, delivering an experience that doesn’t have any lulls, makes the player feel clever, and just keeps getting better as it goes.

Score: 9.5

Summary: Developer Moon Studios has made a sequel that shines brighter in platforming and combat.

Concept: Brimming with heart and challenge, Will of the Wisps is a brilliantly made Metroid-inspired experience that excels in combat, story, and platforming

Graphics: Simply stunning. The forest is lushly detailed and filled with swaying trees. The animations for Ori and the many creatures are also top-notch

Sound: The soundtrack is magical and foreboding. No particular melody leaps out, yet each tune sits appropriately in the background to elevate the tension or drama

Playability: Environmental exploration is rarely this good. Most areas are filled with platforming puzzles and challenging combat that demand pinpoint precision

Entertainment: Better than its predecessor and a little longer, Will of the Wisps pounds out excitement at every turn

Replay: Moderately High

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Zombie Army 4: Dead War Review – Rewriting And Repeating History

Publisher: Rebellion Developments

Developer: Rebellion Developments

Release: 2020

Rating: Mature

Reviewed on: Xbox One

Also on: PlayStation 4, PC

In a last-ditch effort to avoid losing World War II, Hitler has enacted a plan that turned all his followers into flesh-eating zombies. Now, it’s up to you and up to three friends to shoot, slash, and blast your way through seemingly endless droves of the undead. The premise of Zombie Army 4 may be absurd, but it’s a consistently fun, albeit repetitive, adventure across an alternate-history version of 1940s Europe.

Pushing through hordes of zombies across the European front is a gruesome and vicious affair. From standard brain-eaters that mindlessly wobble your way to upgraded undead with flamethrowers and sniper rifles, you never know what’s standing between you and the next safe room. Firefights seem manageable enough at first, but often devolve into adrenaline-fueled messes. I can’t tell you the number of encounters I had where I was performing crowd control with lower-level zombies, only to have a minigun-wielding monster come around the corner and ruin everything.

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Movement in tight spaces is clunky, and getting stuck on furniture and walls is infuriatingly easy when you’re in panic mode. Thankfully, you can often get yourself out of tricky situations with a supercharged melee attack or by whipping out your shotgun. Zombie Army 4’s gunplay compensates for the temperamental movement mechanics, delivering smooth and satisfying shooting buoyed by an upgradable arsenal of weapons. I loved slapping supernatural attachments on my weaponry; I moved down the upgrade tree to give my shotgun an electric attachment that arcs damage between enemies. I also got a sniper-rifle upgrade that provides a small health boost with each headshot.

That health boost upgrade is crucial, as you can only hold one medkit at a time, and outside of safe rooms, they’re hard to come by. Zombie Army 4’s encounters are great at getting you to make mistakes in the panic. I loved the rush that came every time zombies started pouring in from directions I didn’t expect, and the area I planned on defending to my death was rendered useless. Those moments, where you must think and react on the fly, are where Zombie Army 4 shines brightest.

Unfortunately, the encounters frequently repeat themselves and become predictable in the process. While the enemy types differ, I lost count of the number of times I needed to kill every zombie in an area to open a seal, eliminate zombies within a certain radius to sate a Blood Fountain, or defend a mechanism from an encroaching horde. Because of this, I began establishing certain strategies that could be generally applied to each encounter type, removing the thrilling wildcard element and making fights feel more routine.

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If you don’t want to deal with the campaign’s standardized encounters, you can get the action delivered to you over the course of 12 intense waves through Horde mode. I love how the maps open new areas and relocate your supplies so you can’t just dig into one spot. However, my favorite part of Horde is how it drives you to get creative with environmental traps, different kinds of explosives, and your ammo supply. I don’t anticipate spending a ton of time in Horde trying to top my previous high score, but it’s a fun diversion from the meat of the game.

While the campaign suffers from a lack of variety, the shooting mechanics are solid. Zombie Army 4's action is fun and over-the-top, but slaughtering the undead shouldn't feel this routine.

Score: 7.5

Summary: Zombie Army 4: Dead War is action-packed and fun, but the experience is too often hindered by relying on familiar conventions.

Concept: Battle hordes of the undead on a silly, fun, and repetitive adventure to stop the Nazis

Graphics: The X-ray kill-cam adds a fun flourish to the otherwise unremarkable visuals

Sound: Characters helpfully call out threats and items, but most of the sounds you hear are the splashes of zombie guts

Playability: While movement is clunky, blasting through groups of zombies is satisfying

Entertainment: Despite some fun gunplay, the repetitive nature of the campaign means that the undead aren’t the only ones wandering mindlessly

Replay: Moderate

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