Nioh's PC launch trailer is dense with demons & praise
I Think I'm Turning Japanese
While the release of Team Ninja's samurai Souls-like Nioh is still a couple days off yet (due this Tuesday, November 7th), the PC launch trailer hopes to impress upon you that the game was very well received by the press on consoles, as dense with effusive praise as it is with angry demons.
It might read a little like that overly enthusiastic Batman: Arkham City GOTY box, but having played a fair chunk of it on PS4, I can't can't say they're wrong.
Renting the original version of Nioh for PS4, I was more than pleasantly surprised with the half or so of the main story I played. While I was initially attracted by the Dark Souls'ish look of the game, it unfolded into something quite different. Once fully up to speed, Nioh plays like an aggressively paced hybrid of Souls, Ninja Gaiden and Capcom's Onimusha series with a Borderlands-esque predilection for loot-hoarding and constantly growing stats. This is an action game first and foremost, with a brawler's sense of energy and forward motion, and a practised player can barrel through demons by the dozens.
The Complete Edition of the game (and the only version on PC) comes bundled with the relatively substantial expansion, which I've been told wraps up the story (as well as the Sengoku Jidai period as a whole, for the history buffs) conclusively, as well as bulking out the amount of loot, bosses and playmodes you'll have to chew through on any given playthrough. You're looking at a good thirty hours of hacky-slashiness at bare minimum, and easily double that if you plan on doing all the side-quests, which often significantly remix enemy placements and objectives.
Beyond that, the PC version - being a Steam exclusive - comes with a silly samurai helmet with a steam-valve on it. If you find yourself attached to this, you'll be happy to hear that the crafting system of the game allows you to easily transfer one item's skin to another, so you can look like a weird steampunk samurai dork without sacrificing those all-important stats.
The system requirements as listed on Steam seem quite reasonable as well, with the recommended GPU for the game once again being the GTX 1060, which seems to have secured itself a place as the go-to card for 1080p/60fps console ports without breaking the bank. Although I do worry about that 80gb HDD requirement, if only for the time it'll take to download. Here's hoping they allow pre-loading.
Onimusha: Complete Edition is due out on November 7th, priced at £40. You can keep an eye on its release via its Steam page here.