Nioh Alpha Demo Combat Analysis
May. 12, 2016Nioh Alpha Demo Combat Analysis
Hey people, I have seen many a person complain about Nioh already, and part of me understands why, it’s a really damn hard game as of the recent alpha which ended last week. That said, I know for a fact that many people simple do not understand how the game works and the very important nuances of the stamina or Ki and stances systems which will be absolutely vital for survival and enjoyment of the game when it releases later this year.
This video is assuming you’ve at least looked at the basic controls and know where the attack, block and dodge buttons are. I’m not going to talk about anything but the game systems in this, so let’s just get right into it. If you’re looking for a detailed breakdown of everything we know so far check out theNioh: What We Knowarticle published on this blog last week.
First, notice the two bars in the upper left, Much like a Souls game, the top is your life, and the bottom is your stamina, or as this game calls it, “Ki”. Whenever you take any major action such as attacking, blocking, dodging, or running, or even getting hit, portions of it are consumed. If you expend all of it, you are left COMPLETELY defenseless and unable to move at all for a few seconds. When you are standing still doing nothing it recovers, and if you are standing still while blocking it recovers slowly.
When you attack, it depletes portions of Ki that will restore over time, but you’ll notice that using an attack actually leaves a portion of your ki bar red. Additionally, if you stop attacking a light blue portion of the ki bar will begin to refill the red portion over time. This is VERY IMPORTANT. You see, when you attack in this game, although large amounts of ki are consumed, if you get back into ready stance when that light blue portion is present, you’ll instantly regain all of that ki in the light blue section. If you wait for the light blue bar to cover the entirety of the red, you’ll gain back all of that stamina instantly and get another bonus effect we’ll talk about later.
To actually regain this ki, press the stance button, R1, whenever any of this blue bar is present. There is an additional visual cue that surrounds your character as a light blue particle effect ring, so you can use this to know when to press R1 when you are in the heat of battle.
This is very important because ki regenerates very slowly, only after you have completely recovered from an attack, and is even depleted when you TAKE enemy attacks, so you must keep your ki up and stance ready.
The FIRST thing you should do when playing this game is get used to this system. Even the first enemy will be able to kill you easily if you don’t pay attention to your ki management and stance.
Look at it like this, every time you attack you are breaking your stance, so when you finish your attack, you must get back into stance, i.e. press R1, to muster up your energy to either continue your offense or to defend against theirs. If you forget to get back into your stance, you will invariably get punished for it and probably quickly die.
So, now that you know how to keep yourself energized, so-to-speak, how do you actually fight?
This game has a unique feature called the stance system whereby pressing R1 plus either Triangle Square, or X, you can switch to a High, Middle, or Low stance, respectively. Each stance has a different movelist for every weapon, different attack speeds, evasive maneuvers, and defensive abilities.
High stance is your attack stance. Attacks are slow with bad horizontal range and high ki consumption but generally have good forward range and very high damage. Additionally, unlike the other two stances, your attacks will not be deflected by an opponent’s normal block. These stances tend to have no or little defensive abilities aside from block or dodge. A quick note about dodging, all stances have dodges with invincibility on them, but it seems that the actual invincibility period is the same for each one, while the animations take different amounts of time. This means that the High stance, with it’s longer dodge animation has a larger ratio of vulnerable frames compared to the other dodges, but on the other side of things, it also covers the most distance so it can be useful to dodge away from an enemy to create space if necessary.
Middle stance is average in speed, damage, and ki usage, but have good horizontal range and the best defensive abilities. With the swords for example, you have two different types of parries, and a just frame block all of which give you a great advantage in one way or another. Dodging in middle stance covers a medium amount of distance and is generally pretty safe as it has a fairly short animation.
Low stance has bad range and very low damage but is very fast, has high comboability and low ki usage. Low stances with some weapons will also have some more defensive options, but most importantly, low stance is the only stance in which canceling an attack into a dodge can actually regain ki. It doesn’t effect the ki meter in any different way, so you’d still have to wait a moment for the light blue portion to fill up more if you want to restore all of the red portion, but the fact that you can regain even some of it just by dodging is very useful and should absolutely be kept in mind. Additionally the dodge in general is a very fast quickstep with minimal recovery and ki usage and is great for repositioning around an opponent.
Blocking is basically the same with every stance except some take less ki than others when you block an attack, and again as I mentioned, some stances have more defensive variety than others.
So effective combat means always getting into stance after attacking, letting your ki recover after defending, picking your time to attack wisely, using stances to counteract your opponents actions and stances, and just generally playing with purpose and intention in every move.
Wasteful movements get you killed, so be controlled and methodical.
That’s basically everything I wanted to say but let me give you a few more small tips. If you notice your character’s dodges or attacks are taking a TON of stamina suddenly, check your status screen. If you are over 70% on your equip burden, you will take a big hit to your movement speed in all aspects, and if you approach 100% you will even start to lose all your stamina in one swing. To remedy this, just equip lighter armor or less armor. You can see the weight of all equipment on the equipment screen as you equip it, as well as the effect it will have on your weight ratio. Under 30% is very light, and takes the least amount of stamina to do anything, plus stamina recovers faster, but you also have much lower defenses most likely. Between 30% and 70% is normal across the board, and over 70% is very heavy and probably not recommended at all unless you put all your stats into making a tank-y sort of build maybe.
When you fight the demon enemies, you’ll sometimes notice they put out a small black and white field. If they are in this field they are strengthened, their ki regenerates quickly, and your ki regeneration is greatly reduced. You should avoid these! However, if you do an attack and recover your stance while the light blue portion has completely covered the red portion, not only do you get all that ki back, but you also execute what is called a “ki pulse” and doing this inside one of those fields will instantly erase it. This can be very important as all enemies have ki as well, and in the case of demons, depleting their ki makes them more vulnerable to hit stun and take more damage.
There’s lots of other little bits and pieces of useful info but this should get you prepared to survive once the game releases so you can make those nuanced discoveries on your own. Good luck.
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