by Anthony O’Connor
Worth: $18.00
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Intro:
Fast-paced combat, rewarding exploration and genuinely tense moments abound …
The original Nioh dropped in 2017, a contender for the non-From Soft Souls-like crown that took the real historical story of William Adams (the bloke that Shōgun is loosely based on) and added a bunch of Japanese demons and monsters. It was a pretty damn good game, and quite successful, which led to the inevitable Nioh 2 in 2020. Nioh 2 was actually a prequel to the first game, but added enough bells, whistles and combat mechanics to also be thought of very well, no small achievement when Souls fatigue was starting to set in. Now in 2026, at a time when you might think absolutely no one is asking for it, Nioh 3 has entered the chat. The first proper sequel since 2017, this third entry becomes that most dreaded of things: an open world game right when we’re all a bit sick of them. The good people at Team Ninja can’t possibly have struck gold again, right?
Wrong. Nioh 3 is shockingly good, so let’s have a natter about it.
Nioh 3 tells the story of the (aesthetically player-generated) character Tokugawa Takechiyo, who is just about to be made Shōgun in 1622, Japan. However, Takechiyo’s dodgy as hell brother, Tokugawa Kunimatsu, puts the kibosh on that something fierce, unleashing Yokai (aka demons) upon Edo Castle and attempting to kill them/you!
Thanks to magical intervention, you survive and now must embark on a quest to stop your wanker of a brother and also travel to a bunch of different time periods to stop various other incursions of evil into the world of men.
Look, real talk: the plot is a hot mess, full of twists and turns that are as bewildering as they are contrived, but then Nioh games (like the Souls games that they’re so inspired by) have never been about the story. With these titles, it’s all about the combat, the exploration and the edge-of-your-seat battles against enormous, narky enemies. On that level, Nioh 3 succeeds magnificently.
The two biggest criticisms that have previously faced Nioh games are the poorly designed levels (often feeling claustrophobic and repetitive) and the lack of enemy variety. Both have been addressed to some degree, with an expansive open world now filling in for the smaller environments from previous games and a bunch more baddies – human and otherwise – to fall to your blade, hammer, arrows or bullets. Now, that’s not to say Nioh 3 ever reaches Elden Ring levels of fascinating exploration, it doesn’t. But there’s much more flow to the gameplay loop now and it’s easy to get joyfully lost on tangents and taking care of side quests.
The other big addition is the Ninja playstyle, which you can transform into on the fly, adding much faster, more fluid combat options. Switching between a heavier samurai build and a fleet-of-foot ninja getup is genuinely engaging and adds a lot of variety to combat that is already swimming with options.
On the downside, the game does fall into old traps. It still hurls endless buckets of loot at you, which means you spend far too long breaking down or selling irrelevant gear and although the enemy variety is improved, it could have used a little more nuance. But these are minor quibbles when the overall package is so solid. And the number of summoning options, where co-op partners both AI and real can be brought in with relative ease, should assist those who have previously been put off by the game’s high skill ceiling.
Nioh 3 is a triumph. Fast-paced combat, rewarding exploration and genuinely tense moments abound in a generous package that has learned from previous iterations and improved on them all. Those who downright loathe Souls-likes will probably remain unconvinced, but for everyone else Nioh 3 perfects an already quality product and you will almost certainly “want to be ninja”.