Nioh 3 Review – Team Ninja’s Elden Ring Moment

Team Ninja has a habit of refining a formula until it’s so sharp it draws blood. After years of experimenting with Wo Long and Rise of the Ronin, Nioh 3 feels like the studio finally took all those different notes and mashed them into one giant, bloody masterpiece. It isn’t just more Nioh. It’s a smarter, bigger, and much more beautiful version of what came before.

Here’s the thing: this game is long. You can sink a fair number of hours just to clear the first major region if you’re a completionist looking to scrounge up every regional bonus—the game generously rewards you with region-locked boosts to attack, defense, luck, etc. for being a thorough explorer. But unlike the previous games, which could feel like a series of disconnected hallways, Nioh 3 moves toward a more open world design, akin to Elden Ring‘s shift following the Dark Souls trilogy. It isn’t a massive sandbox like Elden Ring, though. Instead, it’s a collection of huge, interconnected zones that let you breathe. And you’re going to need that because the roaming enemies all live to stomp the air out of your lungs.

The story this time around sees you as more than a nameless mercenary wandering through history. You are a warrior trying to become Shogun, but there’s a catch. Your younger brother Tokugawa has betrayed you. He’s using the power of the Yokai to tear the country apart, and it’s up to you to stop him with the help of the guardian spirit, Kusanagi. Whether the narrative setup does anything to further your engagement will vary per person, as the real draw lies in the technical slicing and dicing. But at least clearing a village of demons now carries the added feeling of reclaiming the future of the kingdom, and your rightful appointment within Edo Castle.

As an added note, the visuals have finally caught up to the ambition. Team Ninja games used to look a bit dated. Not here. The lighting is fantastic. In the early open field environments, the light reflects stunningly off of wet rocks. And the corrupted, lava-lit Crucible is awash with hellish red hues. The graphical uplift truly brings these breathtaking and terrifying locales to life onscreen. The character models also have way more detail, and the skin textures look real instead of plastic, an important leap to truly appreciate the wildly deep character creator backing the protagonist’s appearance. And, fortunately, it all runs at a relatively smooth on PC, perhaps thanks to the implementation of DLSS and Frame Gen. These ensure that the occasional dip remains a rarity. That’s vital because frame rate drops can equal death during boss fights.

Familiar but Fancier

The core of the game is now split between Samurai and Ninja combat styles, each with their own respective gear. Samurai still leans on the three-stance system: High, Mid, and Low. If you played the first two entries, you’ll feel right at home Ki pulsing between strikes. These standard strikes are further augmented with Martial Arts that can be built up via the Arts Guage and utilized to change the tides in combat. Whether you’re wielding a massive odachi, an edgy switchglaive, or a simple katana, the Samurai is where the technical meat of Nioh still lies. But now there’s a counterpart to these longstanding tactics.

The Ninja style greatly upends the usual flow of encounters, opting for swifter movements and rapid assaults. Weapon mainstays like the katana and dual swords take on new life as Ninja variants change the moveset to be a flurry of flashing steel. Instead of packing Martial Arts, the Ninja comes loaded with Ninjutsu, ranging from magical maneuvers to deadly kunai. The Ninja is also infinitely more mobile than the Samurai. The style can perform air dodges, leave misty decoys at the end of special dashes and even leap off of enemies for repositioning. The added style breathes new life into the weapon types, elevating tonfas and splitstaves into bursts and swirls of deadly blows. The ninja is a spectacle that is an addictive counterpart to the tankier, rooted Samurai.

Whether using Samurai or Ninja weapons, there’s a host of skills to be unlocked. In fact, both combat styles and every weapon has its own dedicated skill tree. It’s overwhelming in those early hours to stare down the sheer number of unlocks on offer. But it’s just another area that shows the depth of Nioh 3. Samurai can start unlocking its other stances for its weapons, while the Ninja can add parries to its less defensive armaments. There’s a way to balance and expand your desired tools; you just have to spend time allocating points in the right trees.

Here’s another standout of Nioh 3: stealth is actually viable now. Because the levels are more open, you can actually sneak around. You can climb onto rooftops, use a bow to pick off sentries, and jump down to assassinate a lowly enemy with a critical strike. This tactic allows the player to thin out a crowd before you diving headfirst into the middle of the opposition. The small change makes the game feel less like a meat grinder and more like a tactical challenge, as each encounter offers ways to push the odds into your favor before all-out war begins.

Class is in Session

Let’s be honest. Nioh 3 is still a spreadsheet masquerading as an action game. Within the first hour, you’re hit with about ten different systems. You have skill trees for every weapon, Ninjutsu, Onmyo magic, and Soul Cores. Onmyo boxes are split into Yin and Yang parts, allowing Soul Cores to be slotted in one or the other. Depending on where the Soul Core is slotted, it other provides consumables or Onmyo magic. Then you have to manage your weight. If you go over 70% weight capacity, your stamina (Ki) management becomes more troublesome. Did you get all that?

For a new player, it can be completely overwhelming. The skill trees are massive. Once you unlock a move, you have to go into another menu to slot it into a specific stance. It’s a lot of busywork. And the loot… there is so much loot. You will finish a mission with countless pieces of color-coded gear. Most of them are garbage. In those early hours, there’s little reason to stress about the 1.2% difference in a particular resistance between gear pieces. But it still causes one’s head to spin given that Team Ninja showers the player in more loot drops than Diablo.

Even with the immediate onslaught of mechanics and items, the whole game eventually clicks. You’ll start stance dancing naturally. You hit a High stance heavy attack, Ki Pulse to regain energy, then swap to Low stance to dodge away. When that happens, you feel like a god. But getting to that point takes a lot of patience. The bosses are the highlight. Not only is their design top tier, bringing awe and terror in equal measure, but they serve to test all that you have learned as your Samurai-Ninja hybrid has tacked on a few more levels and equipped rarer loot. This is especially true of the Crucible, a cursed environment where Yokai are empowered and our protagonist’s resiliency and fortitude are probed by a slew of demonic foes.

Should the difficulty curve prove too steep, there are options. The game does offer help through co-op and summon systems, which are available basically from the start. If you’re stuck on a boss, you can bring along a friend as a visitor to your world or summon an AI-controlled companion via a Benevolent Grave. It lessens the sting of the harder fights and lets you keep pushing forward in the story.

If it’s not already clear, Nioh 3 is very demanding, which is sure to turn some people off before they’ve had a chance to see what the game is all about. If you don’t have 10-15 hours to commit to just learning the game and refining your playstyle, you may very well have a bad time. There’s a truly staggering amount of content, menus and mechanics to wrap your head around in those introductory hours, and it’s hard to blame anyone for feeling like they hit a wall when is dropped almost all at once. However, sticking with Nioh 3 offers a rewarding experience on the other side of the uphill battle, one that reveals an immensely deep game with an insanely high skill ceiling.

Nioh 3 Review Verdict

[Editor’s Note: Nioh 3  was reviewed on PC, and a copy was provided to us for review purposes.]