Nioh opens on a man in a cell, and it never lets him fully out. Team Ninja’s 2017 action role-playing game drops players into Japan in the year 1600, during a fictionalized version of the late Sengoku period, and hands them William — a blond-haired Irish swordsman who arrives chasing an enemy and stays to fight a war that is not his.
The premise sounds like a history lecture. It plays like a knife fight in a dark hallway.
Trailer, via IGDBcom.
William Adams and the Warring States Period
William is not a native. He is a foreigner in a land torn by war, and the game never lets him forget it. He crosses paths with the warlord Tokugawa Ieyasu and his ninja ally Hattori Hanzo, and the three form an alliance against two threats at once: the yokai, supernatural creatures that have begun to appear and spread chaos, and the Western sorcerer Edward Kelley, whose dark alchemy drives much of the conflict.
That structure gives Nioh its pull. William is hunting the man who wronged him, but the hunt keeps getting swallowed by a bigger fight — the struggle to unify Japan. The game is based on a fictionalized history of Japan and features real historical figures who have been heavily altered, alongside the supernatural elements. Ieyasu, Hanzo, and a long roster of daimyo and samurai pass through the story.
It should feel like a history lesson. It does not. The alliance gives the campaign a spine, and Kelley gives it a face to hit.
Ki, Stances, and the Combat That Carries Nioh
Combat is the reason to stay. Nioh runs on fast-paced hack and slash fighting, close to previous Team Ninja work, and the whole system hangs on stamina — the Ki bar. William can run, dodge, and sprint, and every one of those actions drains Ki. When the bar empties, he is left vulnerable to attack.
That single rule changes how the game feels. You are not just managing health. You are managing the right to move.
The fix is the Ki pulse. Timed correctly, it restores lost Ki, grants status buffs, and dispels patches of miasma generated by yokai and other supernatural enemies — miasma that rapidly saps Ki if you leave it alone. Sword stances add a second layer: different stances are strong or weak against different enemies, so the fight is partly a reading exercise.
Shrines anchor all of it. Scattered through levels, they act as checkpoints where players save progress, replenish health, and raise William’s experience level through accrued EXP. The cost is real: resting at a shrine respawns all normal enemies within an area. Skill points earned in combat get assigned at shrines too.
That trade — safety for a cleared room — is the smartest thing in the design. It makes every rest a decision.
Missions, Loot, and the Blacksmith
Nioh is not an open world. Missions are self-contained, selected from a menu, and set in enclosed environments. They hold alternate routes William can navigate, which rewards a second look at a space you thought you had finished.
Collectibles sit in crates scattered through the environment and in other places, including on fallen soldiers. They include Amrita, the game’s experience points; gold, the in-game currency; weapons and armor; and consumables such as bombs. Defeated enemies drop loot as well, including money and weapons.
The blacksmith turns the overflow into a system. Weapons and armor found in the environment can be sold to the blacksmith or broken down into base material. It is not glamorous, and it is not meant to be. It keeps the loot loop from drowning in itself.
Yokai, Bosses, and the Honno-ji Incident
The yokai are the best argument for the setting. Major threats include Hinoenma, Jorogumo, and a Yuki-onna born from the spirit of the wife of Oda Nobunaga following the Honno-ji incident. That last one is the kind of detail that tells you what Nioh is: a game where history’s worst nights leave something behind.
William is trained in combat by Yagyu Munetoshi, Hozoin In’ei, and Marume Nagayoshi. The main antagonist is Edward Kelley, a Westerner driving the conflict with dark alchemical abilities under the order of John Dee, chief advisor to Queen Elizabeth I.
The cast is enormous and drawn from the period. Ieyasu’s allies Ii Naomasa and Honda Tadakatsu. The daimyo Kuroda Yoshitaka and his son Kuroda Nagamasa. Ieyasu’s main rival Ishida Mitsunari, with his allies Shima Sakon and Otani Yoshitsugu. Tachibana Ginchiyo, head of the Tachibana clan, and her husband Muneshige. The hostile mercenary Suzuki Magoichi. Yasuke, a former favored vassal of Nobunaga. The Date clan, including Date Masamune.
It is a lot of names, and Nioh treats them as texture rather than homework. You fight alongside them, against them, and through them.
A 2004 Project That Took Until 2014
The road here was long, and it shows in the best way. Nioh began development in 2004 for PlayStation 3 as part of a multimedia project based on an unfinished Akira Kurosawa script. Pre-production was turbulent and prolonged, going through multiple revisions until the final version began development in 2014 for PlayStation 4. Information was sporadic until 2015, when the game was reintroduced to the public.
A decade of revisions could have produced a patchwork. Instead it produced a game with a clear center of gravity: the Ki bar, the stance, the shrine, the next room.
The release history since then is straightforward. Nioh 2, a prequel, arrived on PlayStation 4 on March 12, 2020. A port to Windows including all downloadable content followed the same year, and a remastered version came to PlayStation 5 on February 5, 2021.
Where Nioh Stumbles
Nioh is not flawless, and the flaws are structural rather than cosmetic.
The mission menu and enclosed levels keep the game focused, but they also flatten the sense of a country at war. You are told Japan is being unified. You mostly see corridors, courtyards, and the inside of a shrine.
The loot economy is the bigger problem. With weapons and armor dropping from enemies and sitting in crates, and a blacksmith who will buy or break down whatever you haul in, the inventory fills faster than it earns attention. The best gear rarely feels found. It feels sorted.
Then there is the difficulty. Nioh will test even the most hardened samurai’s skills, patience, and strategy, and that is the pitch rather than a warning. The Ki system means a bad dodge can end a fight before you understand why. That is thrilling the first fifty times and exhausting the fifty-first.
The Verdict on Nioh
Here is what matters. Nioh takes a fictionalized 1600 Japan, an Irish swordsman, a sorcerer, and a country full of yokai, and refuses to let any one of them carry the game alone. The Ki pulse is the hinge — a mechanic that turns defense into offense and makes every exchange a negotiation. The shrine system is the second hinge, because it charges you for safety with the enemies you already killed.
The historical cast is noise by comparison. Ieyasu, Hanzo, Mitsunari, Masamune — they give the campaign scale, but they rarely give it weight. The names you remember after the credits are the ones that killed you.
Ranked, the pieces that decide whether Nioh holds up:
- Ki management and the Ki pulse — the mechanic everything else answers to.
- Shrine checkpoints and enemy respawns — the tension that never fully releases.
- Sword stances and enemy matchups — the reason fights stay readable.
- Yokai design, including Hinoenma, Jorogumo, and the Yuki-onna — the setting’s best idea.
- The mission-and-menu structure — focused, but it shrinks the war.
- Loot volume and the blacksmith economy — the drag on an otherwise tight game.
Nioh earns its reputation. It is a hard, deliberate, unusually disciplined action game that knows exactly which resource it wants you to fear, and it spends the entire campaign making you fear it. The decade of revisions did not soften the thing. It sharpened it.
The game’s own summary makes a promise: that it will challenge players in a way that makes every mission and accomplishment feel earned and worthwhile. That is a rare claim to actually keep.
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