Playing Dream of the Strong and having a lot of fun. I do wish the game just gave you an option to skip to mission boss because I've not really found any reason to fight regular mobs since I got all the kodama previously. The other thing is I can't seem to find better equipment -- all the drops are level 160? Is this normal? It wasn't an issue for the first four regions, but now the recommended item level for missions is like 180+ and I can't seem to find stuff that is comparable. Any tips for post game? Haven't really explored builds yet, hasn't really felt necessary. Bosses seem mostly the same. Biggest difference has been the firing rate of ranged enemies. Is the general recommendation to just rush for the Otakemaru mission as soon as you do enough missions to unlock it for any difficulty?
I also just want to say I know the story is a bit whatever, but holy moly there's a crazy amount of flavor text for every item. Love the descriptions.
Ok, the universe has made it abundantly clear that I should play this after Elden Ring. I played most of the first game and absolutely loved it, but I think I'm going to skip to the second.
What the best version to play to get the most complete experience? PS5 and XSX user here.
I've heard a lot of good things about the PS5 versions, though there's some finickyness to transferring your save across. I do recommend finishing up Nioh 1, if only because it feels super difficult to go back to after 2, as I'm realizing trying to do the DLC.
I put about 20 hrs into Nioh 2 recently but bounced off before the combat could really click with me.
Maybe it was my weapon choice. Really tried to learn the fists but for the life of me couldn't get timings down. Just so punishing.
I'll get back to it some day and hopefully can learn the mechanics better and enter that flow state.
Fists seem quite technical. I used them for half the game before switching just to a regular sword and having a much easier time. The other things that really helped combat click for me were:
(1) all the shiftling passives that reduce the dark realm stamina penalty
(2) breaking boss ki to force a dark realm transition and using a big yokai ability to bring down maximum ki immediately.
(3) using yokai abilities liberally in the dark realm, and using them as free ki recovery (it's a zero ki attack and your ki recovers while using it).
(4) the various element blocking talismans helped take a bit of pressure off of bosses.
(5) the ki pulse on dodge skills from the samurai tree.
You have me really worried with the difficulty comments. I have a short fuse these days and thought Elden Ring was my limit.
On the other hand I still haven't recovered from how glorious the combat system felt in the first Nioh.
I think the game on the whole was probably easier than Elden Ring endgame solo. Definitely tough, but you have way more openings to punish, and can get bosses into stucklock states pretty easily. The skill ceiling is probably (certainly) a lot higher, but you don't have to be a big brain high IQ action game master to do it. In my case just some basic stance managment and core weapon abilities, understanding how yokai abilities allow you to keep uptime and rapidly deplete enemy yokai ki felt sufficient and really like the difference between my struggling through the first half of the game and generally having an easier time in the back half bar a few tough bosses. A switch to a less confusing weapon like the sword also helped a lot.
Love that game but I got stuck at the snake boss and after that, I was like so reluctant to go back.
This was definitely my earliest wall. It's funny because on my rematches with it it never took me more than a couple tries despite it probably taking me like 20 tries at first. Kinda like Hino Enma in Nioh 1.
