Nioh 3 - a shameless corporate copy-paste job
After playing Nioh 2 back in 2021, I could not wait for more. I was extremely disappointed when Team Ninja literally said they were letting the IP sleep, and even more so because what they released instead was the garbage that was Wo Long and Rise of the Ronin. This is a short review precisely because Nioh 3 is the biggest disappointment I have had from Koei Tecmo. After this, I have absolutely no desire for a Nioh 4.
Assuming you know a bit about the franchise or played the first two games, let me make this incredibly clear. This game is a straight-up emergency rush job after Ronin flopped hard. It is literally just Nioh 2 reusing Wo Long and a massive chunk of Ronin assets. It was clearly made by a corporate committee to ensure they had a big revenue hit for the financial sheet, not because of some sudden creative awakening from the same group that said they wanted the IP to rest.
Bloated gameplay and button mapping:
The gameplay is a bloated sidegrade compared to the second game. Unlike the jump from 1 to 2 where the mechanics actually improved, 3 just makes the new Ninja mode a separated button, changes a few weapon movesets for it, and adds completely unnecessary bloat. Remember that all the equipment parts are separated now, adding so much menu management that it becomes exhausting. They essentially added more things that do not inherently change how you can play the game. I cannot stress how bloated this feels. It has gotten to the point where so many buttons and combinations are used that you end up doing combos or moves you never intended to do at all. This button bloat is one of the most annoying things I noticed early on.
The half-arsed open world and mission design:
The open world did not seem too bad at first, but it honestly does not fit the Nioh design philosophy and it was not done well either. They said they took what they learnt from Ronin, but what exactly did they learn? The maps are mostly empty with trash loot, one-time enemy bases, field bosses, and extremely predictable progression. There is a lot of pointless travelling and running around to unlock stuff that was straightforward in prior games.
Because of this half-arsed open world, the enemy placement and mission designs are essentially watered-down versions of what we had in 1 and 2. They just feel directionless most of the time. One of the worst downgrades is the fact that there are hardly any actual old-style missions. The few we do have just involve running backwards through a location we already played. And those difficult boss duel missions where you could practice your skills on demand? There are only about five unlockable ones now. They decided the rest are one-time clears that force you to pointlessly travel across the map to fight the 'masters'. The sheer irony is that when you initiate these battles, the game loads you into a separate closed instance anyway. WTF is the point of having them in the open world then?! I would much have preferred the tightly designed and purposeful mission lists. This issue directly diminishes the co-op experience too. In previous games, it was easy. You dropped into a mission with clear goals and cleared it with a random player for instant action and fun. In this open world? Unless you are playing with friends, it is decisively a waste of time just running around.
An insane level of recycled assets:
This brings me to the sheer insanity of the recycling here. The majority of the enemies you fight are just pulled straight from Nioh 2. I did not even know this until my Steam friend pointed it out, but one of the early main bosses is literally a Lu Bu clone from Wo Long with the exact same moveset and all! All three of the open-world maps are copy-paste jobs too. It is most blatant with the cavern section in the first map where you fight Enma, which feels exactly the same as before. The entirety of the second map set in the Heian period is just the Nioh 2 DLC.
The absolute worst offender is the third map. You are transported to the Bakumatsu era for a nonsensical reason, and it literally exists solely so they can reuse the Ronin assets and characters. Most of the scenery does not even look good. The copy-pasted design quickly becomes an eye nuisance and there is no sense of wonder because the entire engine itself looks extremely dated. The only thing that has upgraded since Nioh 2 is the higher detailed textures.
Incoherent writing and boring characters:
The story, writing, and characters are the most incoherent of the entire franchise. I genuinely feel like the narrative was designed purely to fit the assets they recycled. Unlike the time travelling in the second game that was actually interesting and fit the mystical nature of the lore, the time travelling here is disconnected precisely because they had to reuse the Heian and Bakumatsu assets. This obviously means the story itself is simply pointless filler to get you from A to B.
Think about this for a second. A person from the Sengoku Jidai goes to the Bakumatsu era. Unless you know about the most politically complex period in Japan's history or played their Ronin game, NO ONE INCLUDING YOUR CHARACTER should give a damn or know anything about the historical names and people they throw around. They basically just become another enemy for you to beat. The entire period is literally them throwing in Ronin characters and story beats that you should not care about just to justify the asset flip.
Part of the story is focused on the sibling aspect. In Nioh 2, you get to know Hideyoshi from the start, begin a genuine bro-ship, and eventually see his tragic corruption over 40 years. Here, you barely get to know your actual brother despite him being a major focus. You get a few snippets of his personality if you fight the three secret bosses later in the game, but that is it. That is literally his entire character, yet you are supposed to care enough to make a choice to kill or spare him at the end.
Speaking of boring characters, the main focus of the first map is Ieyasu vs Shingen. Yes, he is your grandfather and all, but you literally could not have picked a more boring character to focus on for this period than Ieyasu. Even with Shingen, you do not get to see his strategic genius. He is just a generic main boss fill-in for the map. Keep in mind, this is the exact same time when NOBUNAGA is alive and active as an adult. And guess what? We do not get any of that. The ONE TIME the period made sense in Nioh to have an adult Nobunaga focus, the only thing we get is a half-arsed mission where he is briefly mentioned.
AI translation and completely pointless censorship:
This brings me to the localisation and translation quality. They definitely used GenAI or cheap translation tools here, which is basically confirmed by the fact that they list absolutely no localisation team in the credits. You immediately notice the jarring, sterile, and poor contextual word salad of item descriptions and dialogue, especially when you compare the old items to the new ones.
I became fully convinced during a main story cutscene when the text translated Ii Naotora (a clearly female character) as "Lord". Because the AI has zero context, it translated the suffix "dono" to a generic lord instead of lady or just Naotora. The absolute worst one is during the aforementioned Nobunaga related mission, where the translated text calls Nobunaga a "hero". Okay, before you laugh, if you know your Sengoku Jidai, Koei history, or even Nioh's own lore, you would know that no one has ever referred to Nobunaga as a โheroโ. He is the literal titled Demon King of the Sixth Heaven! The contextless tool likely translated "eiyuu" to its most common definition rather than understanding it referred to him as a great historical figure.
The translation issues get even worse when you look at the zone names. The Japanese audio clearly says "Jigoku", which literally translates to Buddhist Hell. Somehow, the English text bizarrely localises this to "Crucible". I genuinely do not understand the stupidity here. How do you look at the deeply ingrained religious and cultural concept of Japanese mythology and spit out a sterile, generic sci-fi word? It strips away the entire context for absolutely no reason.
But despite all that butchered text, they made absolutely sure to translate the sterilised "Body Type 1 / 2" correctly in a historical Japanese setting. Talk about getting your priorities completely backwards.
This brings me to the completely pointless censorship, which is utterly ridiculous. This is Team Ninja we are talking about, the studio that built its legacy on bold, unapologetic, and stylised designs. Yet they went out of their way to retroactively censor established characters. Fuku has been in the past two games looking completely fine, but suddenly they lazily slapped black pantyhose on her to hide her thighs and filled in the cutouts of her classic Shinto vestments. I am not saying Nioh was great purely because of thigh windows, but this lazy censorship perfectly represents the overall sterilisation of the studio. You are playing a game with a Mature rating where you routinely dismember demons and humans in showers of gore, but apparently, a woman's thighs are a step too far for modern sensibilities? It just reinforces that this game was sanitised by corporate mandates, completely stripping away the identity that made Nioh great in the first place.
Unjustifiable performance and input delays:
On the technical side, I personally managed to avoid the absolute worst of the framerate drops, but I still had to deal with a high CPU usage and noticeable input delays. In a fast-paced action game where precise timing and dodging are everything, input delay is an absolute death sentence. I know a portion of the player base is suffering from severe low performance and slow-motion stuttering, which is completely unacceptable. This game literally only has slightly better textures than its predecessor from five years ago! There is zero excuse for a game that looks this dated to melt modern rigs.
โ The Verdict
By the time I reached the third map, the game felt so incredibly stale. I genuinely reached a fatiguing point where I caught myself thinking, "Was Nioh always this boring?" That is the first time I have ever had that thought about this franchise. After I 100% finished the game, I had zero incentive to even touch the higher difficulty run. There is no cool endgame or unique stuff to play for in Shogun difficulty. Frankly, that difficulty should have been selectable from the very start. You are expected to do the usual Divine equipment farming, except there is just no content to justify the grind anymore.
Koei Tecmo recently celebrated hitting one million sales and called it their fastest-selling game due to the simultaneous global release. But if you look past the corporate PR, the reality is incredibly bleak. On Steam alone, the player retention rate has dipped hard. The game is bleeding players daily and the overall rating is stuck at a miserable 79%.
Just look at the predecessor. When Nioh 2 released on Steam, it had amazing stickiness. Yes, it was the complete version, but the core gameplay loop and tight mission design kept players engaged for hundreds of hours. With Nioh 3, that stickiness is completely gone. The massive player drop we are seeing just two weeks after launch is extremely concerning.
Just to put the dying player base into perspective: during the pre-launch demo, I managed to hunt down a Bloodedge Demon that had slaughtered over 160,000 players. With the active Steam numbers falling off a cliff, this is likely the highest kill count the Demon will ever have.
https://i.postimg.cc/s2XFFr9z/Screenshot-2026-02-20-184838.png
It is another telling sign that this was a frantic rush job. To make matters worse, their first DLC will not release until September. Previously, Team Ninja pumped out expansions within three or four months of launch. The fact we have to wait seven months this time proves they pushed this out the door with absolutely nothing ready in the pipeline.
Nioh 3 is a soulless, recycled cash grab that completely disrespects the legacy of its predecessors. I am done with it, and honestly, I hope they really do put the IP to sleep this time.