Based on my testing last night, it seems that my current build makes hammers great for defensive targets and the sword great for offensive targets. It’s hard to guard break with a sword, so I have to be more opportunist versus mobs, revenants and NPC bosses, but versus standard bosses or offensive enemies, the sword just destroys them.
I have a similar setup with dual swords and spears - the spear is good for reach and guard breaking, the dual swords pair really well with using elemental enchantments as the large number of hits can land the status on enemies pretty quickly. Combine with a guardian talisman and the right guardian (Suzaka’s guardian attack is really good for this) and you can Discord enemies fairly reliably.
It is definitely worth switching weapons up every so often though - I used an axe for a while and got a lot of skill points for raising the proficiency, though it does cap out after a while. (There’s a bar under the proficiency in your status - it looks like once that is full then you’ve got all the points you can get.)
I haven’t played in a bit–been all Horizon and Zelda lately–but I was rocking katana + dual katana for a while there, even though they don’t complement each other all that well. I just found dual katanas to be pretty fun, while katanas absolutely ruin yokai once you have Sword of Execution because of how easy it is to hit them in the back. (They ruin humans, too, if you’re good with parries, because Sword of Execution makes your Iai + down-stab combo do double damage.)
I think my ideal would probably be katana + spear for versatility, but I eventually stopped really feeling the need for what spears could offer. The reach is fantastic but eventually my strategy for humans was just “parry everything all the time” so I never really needed reach, and I want to be as close to any yokai butts as I can be for maximum murder. It’s a shame because I enjoy spears a lot. I just eventually became a katana fiend.
I finished the game yesterday (or the day before? It was after midnight anyway)
From start to finish it’s a really good game. Final boss seemed overwhelming at first but was relatively simple once I figured out the gimmick. [spoiler]The real final boss after the credits wasn’t too bad either, but is probabably the harder of the two on repeat playthroughs.
I’'ll be forever pissed at the game for making me look like a chump in the cutscene after I wrecked Nobunaga by parrying, Iai, finishing blow, change to spear high stance, spear fall (first hit even got blocked, the other two still knocked him down), finishing blow. Took out more than half his health. Utterly brutal combo, hard to pull off, though.[/spoiler]
Overall, I found the game fairly easy. Most bosses went down my first attempt with some exceptions. The first boss took me four or so tries I think, the second two or three. (I know there’s stats in the game telling me how much I died to each boss, but that counts deaths from sub-missions too, which definitely happened.). By about the third area I got a better hang of things and it went more smoothly. (Hadn’t played any of the alpha or beta versions)
I started NG+ and it seems tougher. Where I could previously take the risk to tank a hit easy it’s now better to play it safer. Because that one hit went from taking out a sixth of my health to half of it.
That lack of difficulty I perceive is more of an observation than a complaint and I realize there are a lot of people who have plenty of trouble with the game. I find it a very enjoyable experience myself.
[spoiler]He’s an absolute nightmare on NG+. He’s significantly more aggressive and summons a bunch of laser eyes immediately. Unlike the first time you fight him, he doesn’t just sit there and let the eyes do the work in the first phase, either–he’s up and aggressive while you’re dodging the eye beams the entire time. He was easily the hardest NG+ fight for me.
The trick? He’s going to keep summoning eyes forever and those give amrita. Come in with a full amrita gauge, activate Living Weapon, and keep it going the entire time.[/spoiler]
Heh, I shall look forward to that challenge then. I was a bit disappointed with a lot of the boss fights, some felt like they should be memorable. I hope NG+ can fix this. I only played the intro and the first actual mission on NG+ so far.
If only I could find a revenant that doesn’t use Divine Red Demon but something else. It’s a bit disturbing how many people wear that set. I mean, it has nice bonuses but I got bored of it just looking at other people wearing it. Guess I need to find a way to craft Divine Yatagarasu gear. I also like the Genius and Legendary Strategist sets.
I know I could just refashion one of my red demon sets, but I’m not using it simply out of principle.
I’d suggest farming Saito Magoichi in the NG-difficulty version of Watcher in Darkness for his smithing text. You can smith divine gear with the mountain of Divine Shards you’ll get from dismantling the piles of Red Demon stuff the revenants are using. I smithed myself a full set of divine Justice Ministry armor immediately upon starting NG+ and never ended up taking it off.
Gotcha. I figured I’d do that eventually.
I already have so many Divine Shards I have no idea what to do with them all. I suppose I’ll craft all kindsa stuff eventually when I’m in a lucky mood.
I’m free of the clutches of Nier and am finally back to this game and working my way through region 6. Can I say how much I appreciate the humor of this game? Not only does it let you dress up like a complete doofus, but some of the ways revenants die are hilarious.
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There was a Revenant in the first village side quest who would just consistently start the fight by sidestepping into fire and burning to death.
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Yeah, his cause of death is noted as death by fire (or whatever the in-game wording is) which makes his immediate burning upon revival even more hilarious.
Don’t play the DLC. It’s got a potentially major save breaking bug in it.
Playing it normally, everything fine and bam, it crashed. Now I can’t load my save, which is… extremely frustrating. Hopefully they’ll fix it.
Update: I managed to load my save - restarted the PS4 and then loaded the save directly from the menu instead of continue. But it’s quite a ways back.
Well that’s unfortunate.
Glad I’m waiting on it, at least. I’m still in the grasp of a Persona/SMT kick so I’ll hope that gets fixed by the time I get around to wanting to odachi some yokai in the face.
They’ve patched it once or twice now - so I’d assume it’s been ‘sorted’.
Been busy with other stuff so not gone back to check - but the bit I did play was great.
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I started the DLC yesterday. Beat the first main mission and the sub missions that were unlocked after beating it.
The boss of the first DLC mission is probably the first boss of the game that actually gave me some trouble. But after a few tries it just kinda made click for me and I beat him barely taking hits. For that reason I’m inclined to say it’s a good boss, but nothing that really wowed me. I’m just really not too fond of having about three or four boss tracks. I wish every boss save for the filler had unique tracks to give each one a bit more personality.
I tried PvP the other day and it looks like the matchmaking is massive garbage because it doesn’t take into account levels? I got two-shot with shurikens. I don’t care how bad I am at PvP, that’s just ridiculous.
I didn’t realize PvP was in. I was wondering how they were going to do matchmaking because honestly no method makes sense given all the non-leveled ways you can power yourself up in Nioh. I always figured the best way to do it would just be to have PvP with set characters so things might actually be vaguely balanced, but, welp.
As far as I heard one of the biggest problems of the PvP is that it’s netcode can’t keep up with the speed of the combat so there’s both lag and some desync.
Then there’s balancing issues.
On a similar note: Why’d they nerf Haze? I just wanted to have fun murdering things in PvE 
But as far as PvP goes it’s probably better to view it as a distraction rather than something to sink a lot of time into. I haven’t tried it, though.
How badly did they nerf Haze? That was like the whole reason I enjoyed using katanas so much 
Katanas are still fun, but unfortunately the Haze nerf is pretty significant. It doesn’t do 100% Ki Damage anymore, It still does Ki Damage but it’s little enough that you only very rarely empty an opponent’s bar. This means that after a successful follow-up stab they won’t drop to the ground, so you can’t follow with more stuff (like an Iai attack and a killing blow)
On the bright side, there’s now a reason to use the other katana parry because it does more damage than Haze.