Nioh 3 Is the Best Soulslike Nobody Is Talking About Enough

Six years is a long time to wait for a sequel. Long enough for the soulslike genre to get completely saturated, for Elden Ring to redefine what an open-world action RPG can be, and for the original Nioh to quietly cement itself in the conversations of people who take the genre seriously. Nioh 3 arrived on February 6th with almost no controversy, very little discourse drama, and strong review scores that somehow haven't translated into the cultural moment this game probably deserves.

That's a bit of a shame, because Nioh 3 is a brilliant evolution of the series' formula, heightening the strengths of its predecessors while streamlining things that didn't work as well, with its emphasis on switching between Samurai and Ninja styles and a successful shift to a semi-open-world format making it the franchise's most polished experience to date.

Let's dig into what's actually going on.

⚔️ The Big Swing: Going Open World

Nioh 3 is a risk-taker. It tosses out the old formula of straightforward missions and replaces them with an open-world twist that works shockingly well. If you played the first two games, you know how locked-in that mission structure was. A level, a shrine, a boss, repeat. Clean but ultimately rigid. Nioh 3 blows that up.

The game is best described as a collection of linear zones stitched together through shortcuts, side objectives, and optional encounters, striking an interesting balance that preserves the tight level design the series is known for while allowing more freedom in how players approach each region.

The open areas still retain shortcuts, secrets, and branching paths, keeping the Metroidvania-esque feel of the other two games, but now expertly integrated into a seamless open world. This is the key thing that separates Nioh 3's approach from a lot of open-world design that just pastes a map full of icons over an empty landscape. The density here is real.

A single landmass can take 15 to 20 hours to fully explore, and the map starts as a blank slate that gradually fills in as you engage with the space. It's a subtle but effective hook. You're not following quest markers. You're uncovering the world by playing it.

🥷 Samurai vs Ninja: The Combat Is the Star

This is where Nioh 3 earns its reputation. The dual-stance system featuring Samurai and Ninja creates a dynamic back-and-forth that forces players to think, adapt, and master timing rather than rely on button-mashing.

The Samurai style is traditional Nioh: high, mid, and low stances, ki management, and methodical pressure. The Ninja style is something else entirely. Slashing apart foes using the Ninja's bespoke weaponry like dual swords, splitstaves, or tonfa, while swiftly dodging around and behind them to take advantage of the Ninja's stronger backstab opportunities, feels like controlling a wholly different character.

Style-shifting combat is brilliant, and the gentler difficulty curve is great for newcomers. That last point is worth flagging because Nioh has historically been one of the more punishing soulslike series. Nioh 3 doesn't abandon difficulty, but it's less immediately hostile to people who aren't already deep in the lore of ki pulses and stance-switching.

✅ What Works Really Well

A few things stand out beyond the combat headline:

  • Clearing enemy bases, completing side missions, and finding treasure chests earn Samurai and Ninja points that unlock new abilities, while the green hidden Kodama collectibles return and let you enhance regenerative capabilities like increasing enemy elixir drops. The progression loop is genuinely satisfying.
  • The open worlds regularly satisfy power-hungry and completionist desires. Crucibles, challenging corrupted zones, reward powerful yet risky weapons and offer great breaks from the overworld while acting as a satisfying final test before moving on.
  • The story features some of the most impressive cutscenes the franchise has delivered, with enough betrayal and bloodshed to sustain a roughly 40-hour main run.
  • The deep combat gives you a myriad of ways to approach each confrontation, and it's an impressively large action-RPG.

⚠️ Where It Stumbles

No honest review of Nioh 3 gets away without acknowledging the friction points, and the community on Metacritic has been vocal about them.

The loot is still overwhelming. Three games in and the inventory situation remains a recurring complaint. Inventory clutter still persists, even three games in. If you've never played a Nioh game, prepare to spend meaningful time in menus sorting through more weapon drops than you'll ever realistically use. The bosses are divisive. Its bosses aren't particularly memorable, which is an odd weakness for a game whose combat is otherwise this sharp. Several player reviews on Metacritic specifically call out inconsistent hitboxes and a final boss that drags rather than lands. For a series that built its reputation on precise, readable encounter design, this stings. The late game tightens up. The freewheeling early game gives way to a more traditional endgame, and while fans of prior games will appreciate the more focused dungeon exploration, it does mean losing the freedom that helps Nioh 3 stand out from its peers. Not everyone loves the open-world pivot. This checklist-style open world will not appeal to everyone, and the activities themselves grow repetitive over time. After completing the game twice, it becomes apparent that each region feels like a collection of side quests rather than a sprawling landscape. Some veteran Nioh fans have said they'd prefer the focused mission structure of the first two games. That's a legitimate position.

🤔 Should You Play It?

If you've never touched a Nioh game, this is actually a reasonable entry point. The more approachable difficulty curve and open-world structure remove some of the series' traditional barriers, and the narrative is self-contained enough that you're not walking into six years of lore without a map.

If you're a Nioh veteran, you already know whether you're buying this. The answer is yes, with the caveat that you should go in with adjusted boss expectations and a tolerance for inventory management that hasn't meaningfully improved since 2020.

If you're a soulslike fan who dismissed Nioh as a Dark Souls knockoff back in 2017, that dismissal is increasingly hard to justify. Nioh 3 is one of the best soulslikes yet, a perfect sequel with even deeper combat and an enormous open world. T eam Ninja has been doing its own thing in this genre for nearly a decade now, and Nioh 3 is the clearest argument yet that they deserve a spot at the table alongside FromSoftware, not in the footnotes beneath it.

The month of February also launched Resident Evil Requiem and delivered the God of War: Sons of Sparta expansion. Nioh 3 somehow got slightly lost in that shuffle despite being the stronger all-around package for a certain type of player. That seems like it'll correct itself over time as word of mouth builds.

The question worth sitting with: does a soulslike need memorable bosses to be a great game, or is the combat system between those fights enough to carry it?