Yes, I have used this title before, but I changed His to Her and added a 2, so it’s completely different, right????? Besides, if I’m plagiarizing, I’m plagiarizing myself, so whatever. And the reason it’s her instead of him is because there’s character creation/customization in the sequel! That was the first hour and a half in the game, which was actually short for me. I was delighted to be able to make my character older and as thick as possible, which wasn’t that thick, but I did make her cut. I put her hair up in a ponytail that is as long as possible. The hair is straight and thin like mine, and I put white/blue streaks in it. I actually didn’t spend that much time on her face because all I really care about is that they look Asian–which is not a problem here. Oh, and making her not look like she’s ten years old. I put scars on her face and tatted her up–and I was so fucking happy with her. My trademark dark red lipstick as well (what I used to wear in real life. Diva by MAC). William who? Samurai Geralt was boring as fuck and while you can play as him, why the fuck would you want to do that when you can be like the picture above?????
One incredible–oh, I should say I’ve been playing the game Nioh 2 by Team Ninja. Before I dive into it, I have to mention that September 1st was the roll over to autumn in Cozy Grove by Spry Fox and I love the warm autumn color palate. I noticed it immediately as I spawned onto my island with all the browns and reds. More importantly, I got a badge for playing in three seasons and even more importantly, new stuff! New flowers, trees, bushes, insects, and fishies. I spent a good few hours just wandering around and finishing off certain badges for the first time in weeks. I had my character dressed in fleece and a cozy cap, and it was just really lovely.
The second game I’m playing is Spiritfarer by Thunder Lotus Games. It was one of my GOTY last year (along with Hades by Supergiant Games, of course) and they added their second update. It’s the Beverly update with Beverly being your old neighbor and an owl. The last update was the Lily update with Lily being your sister. That was interesting because it added backstory that was alluded to in the game, but never explicitly stated. It was small and not much to do other than go from place to place and do the bad platforming to talk to her. The worst part about this game is the gameplay itself. This update is meatier and actually has things to do, but…I feel curmudgeonly for saying this, but the thrill isn’t quite there. I think it would have been better integrated into the game instead of zipping through it at the end. I have all the materials needed to do what she wants, but I did have to craft some of it. It’s been so long since I’ve done that. I have to say that it’s still a nice update and I’m impressed with the quality as always, but it’s hard to recapture the magic from this far out. I will say that I was stoked that they added save slots, which the community had been begging for ever since the game came out. So I could play it again if I want. I’m happy that they’re still adding new content, though. It’s really great of them.
The third game I’m playing outside of Nioh 2 is Dorfromantik by Toukana Interactive. It’s deceptively addictive and I’ve dabbled in creative mode. I prefer classic, though, because I like having boundaries, otherwise I’ll be playing forever. I will say that since I started playing Nioh 2, I only play one or two runs of Dorfromantik rather than the hours I played in the past.
Now. On to Nioh 2. I have to say that I did not like the original Nioh. I wanted to and I tried really hard to like it. I played more than half the game (I think, or roughly half, maybe) and I grimly continued on because I felt my rep as the Souls gal was on the line. Everyone was raving about how great the game was and some even liked it better than Souls. So many people saying if you liked Souls, you’d like Nioh. I raised a kerfuffle in an RKG chat because I said that I liked The Surge better than Nioh; you would have said that I ate puppies for breakfast. Which, just to be clear, I do not. I had chosen my words very carefully, but everyone misinterpreted what I had said. They told me in excruciating details why Nioh was the better game and The Surge was shite. When I agreed that Nioh was the better game, that riled them up even further. I said that I enjoyed The Surge more (in part because I had such low expectations for it), not that it was the better game.
Anyway, what did I not like about Nioh? First is something that is not the fault of the game–I kept expecting it to be Souls. Well, it’s partly the game’s fault because it was clear they were cribbing some of their shit from Souls. Losing your stuff on death, the labyrinth-like levels. The shortcuts that lead you back to the bonfires, er, shrines. The difficulty levels and bosses. But, they had systems that were very different than Souls. They had roll on A, not B, which just wasn’t right. You could switch it, but then it fucked up interaction on the menus. I left it as it was with much grumbling. In this game, Roll is again on A and while you can change it, you cannot change interaction–which is on B.
I hated that you could not quit out of a mission to go grind in another mission. I was stuck on a boss and wanted to go to an earlier mission to stock up on Elixirs. I was right at the boss, though, and if I did that, I would have to battle through the whole level again. I had magic abilities that allowed me six–I believe–heals without having to use Elixirs. That made it easier to grind before the boss, but she was still wrecking me. I was maining an axe, but in desperation, I switched to my odachi. With my axe and magicks, I was fighting the boss for several minutes and not coming close to killing her. With the odachi, I killed her in less than thirty seconds without breaking a sweat. I quit right then and there because it really shouldn’t be so weapon-dependent.
What I did like about the first game was that you leveled up your weapons as you used them. And you could transfer skills you wanted from one weapon to another of the same class later in the game. I wasn’t quite sure how it worked, but I did appreciate the experience boosting the weapons. I hated that there were very shitty tutorials in the first game, and, yes, I know that’s ripe coming from me a Souls player.
With the second game, I was feeling the same as I felt about the first game for the first level. It was the same dreary village with the unfair enemy placement that I had come to know and hate in the first game. I felt as if I was fighting myself more than the game and was not enjoying it at all. I was maining the axe and the splitstaff, the latter because it’s attuned to magic. And, I was told that the game made magic must more amenable. Which, great! Except you don’t have access to it in the first level.
Ian had started a playthrough this week and it was actually because of him that I bought the game and jumped in. He was loving it and his enthusiasm was contagious. One cool thing about Nioh 2 was the yokai form. You’re half-demon and half-human in this game and there are three yokai forms. Feral, brute, and phantom. I chose phantom because it’s magic-based and I was intent on building a magic-based build. I’ll get to that later.
I went through the first level, feeling very on my back heel. The regular scrubs weren’t terrible, but they absorbed so much damage. Yes, Souls is difficult, but the base enemies were weak in and of themselves. Plus, there was a yokai near the beginning who just wrecked me. Even when I tried him with an AI summoner, I couldn’t do it. I fought revenants (AI who took on dead players’ forms) so I could get ochoko cups which were needed to summon friendly revenants. Even level one revenants killed me, which was pretty much my experience in the first game. They’re just so damn aggro and didn’t seem to run out of stamina as quickly as I did. I ended up running around the yokai,, popping the second shrine, and continuing on. I did ok until I fell off one of the bridges on the rooftops and died. I was so disheartened by that–I HATE falling deaths, especially off twisty and turny bits–and I was completely deflated.
When I met the second yokai, I was done with the game. Oh, and that yokai form I mentioned earlier? I was not able to trigger it once because I kept dying and losing my guardian spirit. I really felt like I had nothing to show for the first few hours because I could not level up anything. Ian said at least I was getting good gear, but I was using pre-order bonus stuff (included with the complete edition for the PC), so even that didn’t excite me. I thought I was doing something wrong because while it was supposed to be hard, I didn’t think it was supposed to be THIS hard. I summoned to face the second yokai and got within one hit of killing him until I got greedy and he creamed me. I hollered, “Are you fucking killing me?” before setting down the controller. I went on a bit, but I just got more and more frustrated until I gave up for the night.
I talked to Ian about it and he said he had spent many hours in the first level familiarizing himself with the gameplay and not caring about dying. I realized that I did the best when I was angry and aggressive rather than dancing around and second-guessing myself. The next session, I decided to camp out at the second shrine and beat my head against the second yokai and not worry about dying.
This is running long, so I’ll end it here and pick it up again in a future post.