While the Nioh series is no stranger to epic boss battles, Nioh 3 director Masaki Fujita has revealed that fellow Soulslike game Lies of P served as a major inspiration for the new title’s boss and combat design. In an interview with PCGamer, Fujita spoke about how various games had influenced Team Ninja’s work on Nioh 3. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, for example, taught the studio that fun loot has to be tied with depth in the combat system, and Rise of the Ronin taught it open-world design.
Outside of Team Ninja’s own games, however, Lies of P was the major inspiration thanks to how well bosses in the game utilize well-timed guarding and evading. The attack animations of the bosses and how they often incorporate key parts of their designs also served as “great stimulation in giving me inspiration,” he said.
“In addition to [Lies of P‘s] solid action that requires careful use of guarding and evading, I really had a lot of fun in the battles against the bosses, who had a wide variety of designs,” Fujita explained. “In particular, the bosses’ attack actions made full use of their distinctive designs, so it was great stimulation in giving me inspiration when thinking about the yokai actions in Nioh.”
Nioh 3 was just released on PC and PS5, and has seen quite a positive reception. In our review, we gave it a score of 9 out of 10 thanks to its incredible combat and fun progression mechanics, among other factors. We also made a note of how well it was able to pull from Team Ninja’s previous games.
For players that might not want to buy Nioh 3 immediately, there is also a demo available on PC and PS5. As of earlier this week, even the demo has proven to be a hit, with Team Ninja celebrating a million downloads. It certainly helps that players can carry over their save data from the demo to the full release as well.
The story of Nioh 3 revolves around protagonist Tokugawa Takechiyo, who was set to become the third shogun of the Tokugawa Shogunate to help bring in a new era of peace following the century-long Sengoku period marked with war and turmoil. However, Takechiyo’s brother Kunimatsu wanted to be the shogun himself, and, driven by envy, decides to gather up all the Yōkai he can find to march on the capital and take the title for himself.
To deal with this, Takechiyo now has to travel across the realms, both through time and space, alongside his guardian spirit Kusanagi to put an end to Kunimatsu’s reign.
While Nioh 3 is currently only available on PC and PS5, Xbox Series X/S players won’t have to wait for too long to get their hands on the Soulslike action RPG. A trailer from earlier this month had confirmed that it will only be a PlayStation console-exclusive for six months. While this doesn’t mean that we’ll see an Xbox release happening the moment this exclusivity period ends in June, the studio has likely already been working on a port.
