Nioh

Nioh is an action role-playing game set in Japan during the year 1600, with players taking the role of an Irish samurai named William. The player guides William on missions through enclosed environments fighting both human enemies and supernatural beings called yokai: missions are self-contained, hold alternate routes William can navigate, and selected from a menu rather than reached by navigating an open world. While navigating environments, William can find various collectables both in crates scattered through the environment and in other places within the environments such as fallen soldiers. These collectibles include Amrita, the game's experience points (EXP); gold, the in-game currency; weapons and armor, and consumable items such as bombs.

Weapons and armor found in the environment can be taken to a blacksmith, who are able to buy it from William or can break it down into base material. Shrines scattered through levels act as checkpoints, allowing players to save progress, replenish health and raise William's experience level through accrued EXP: doing this respawns all normal enemies within an area. Skill points acquired in combat are assigned at shrines.

Nioh is set in 1600 within a fictionalized dark fantasy version of the late Sengoku period, a time when the clans of Japan were at war prior to the unification under the Tokugawa shogunate and the beginning of the Edo period. Amidst the fighting and high death toll, yōkai have appeared and begun wreaking havoc across the land: major yōkai threats that appear in the game include Hinoenma, Jorōgumo, and a Yuki-onna born from the spirit of the wife of Oda Nobunaga following the Honnō-ji incident.

The game's main protagonist is William Adams (Ben Peel), a blond-haired Irishman who arrives in Japan in pursuit of an enemy. He crosses paths with Tokugawa Ieyasu (Masachika Ichimura) and his ninja servant Hattori Hanzō (Toshiyuki Morikawa), forming an alliance against both William's enemy and the yōkai infesting Japan. William is trained in combat by Yagyū Munetoshi, Hōzōin In'ei and Marume Nagayoshi. The main antagonist is Edward Kelley (Hiroyuki Kinoshita/Nicholas Boulton), a Westerner driving the conflict using his dark alchemical abilities under the order of John Dee (Timothy Watson), chief advisor to Queen Elizabeth I.

Nioh was developed by Team Ninja, a division of Koei Tecmo who had previously developed the Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive series. Team Ninja collaborated with fellow division Kou Shibusawa on the game, with the division's director and Koei founder Yoichi Erikawa writing the game's story and serving as co-producer. It is co-directed by Fumihiko Yasuda and Yosuke Hayashi, and co-produced by Hisashi Koinuma. The opening movie was directed by Shinji Higuchi, whose work included Shin Godzilla.

The cinematic director for the game in general was Makoto Kamiya, who had previously supervised special effects for Death Note: Light Up the New World and the film version of I Am a Hero. The music was composed by Yugo Kanno, whose previous work included the Bayside Shakedown television film series and Japan Studio's Rain. The concept for the game was created by Shibusawa, who throughout development held a passionate vision for the project, which was in turn affecting its development.

Nioh received "generally favorable" reviews from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic. Most critics praised the combat, difficulty, setting, use of Japanese folklore, and aesthetics as high points, as well as giving players the option to choose different graphical modes for the PS4 version; while the game's story and inventory management were met with some criticism. Eurogamer ranked the game 35th on their list of the "Top 50 Games of 2017", while Polygon ranked it 42nd on their list of the 50 best games of 2017. The game was nominated for "Best PS4 Game" in Destructoid's Game of the Year Awards 2017, and for "Best PlayStation 4 Game" and "Best RPG" in IGN's Best of 2017 Awards. Nioh was later one of three games invited to the Global Game Business Summit at Tokyo Game Show 2018 as an example of a game that succeeded globally.

In a review of Nioh in Black Gate, Matt Drought said "I found Nioh to be a deeply engaging game that kept me coming back for the fun combat mechanics and to see the incredible enemies that inhabited this world."