Hi guys! Today I will talk about Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and Nioh. I will do a comparison between them and I will let you be the judge of which game is better. First I will talk about the storyline of those 2 games, then I will talk about the difference or similarities in their gameplay, and lastly, I will compare the visuals and tell you my final thoughts. Now let’s begin.
Table of Contents
Storyline
I believe none will disagree when I say that the story of Sekiro was on a whole other level compared to Nioh’s story.
Nioh for me isn’t a game that someone should pick for the story. It has its moments but generally, the story is lacking and you barely feel anything when you watch the cutscenes.
Sekiro on the other hand has an amazing story and the game has 4 different endings depending on your actions. One of those endings is the true ending which is canon but its nice to see how things could have turned out differently.
Gameplay
Nioh and Sekiro have a lot of differences when it comes to the way the game wants you to approach combat.
In Sekiro you have to always be on the offensive because the enemies have posture bars and the more you attack them and deflect their attacks the more they fill and when they fill you can land a critical blow that will make them lose one HP bar. If you don’t attack them their posture will become to recover and you will have to start all over again.
Enemies in Nioh also have something similar and the more you attack the more the enemies’ Ki depletes and when the enemies’ Ki completely depletes you can land a critical blow(though in Nioh this doesn’t make them lose their HP bar since in Nioh enemies have only 1 hp bar while in Sekiro they can have more than one HP bar).
Another big difference is the number of weapons that are available to you in each game. Nioh has a lot of weapons for you to choose and each weapon type has its own different moveset and skills you can unlock.
Sekiro on the other hand only allows you to use a katana. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing since this is the reason that fights are so exciting in Sekiro (at least for me). I have mentioned this in other articles too.
Having only one weapon available for the player to use makes the balancing of the game so much easier and the developers have more time to focus on making the boss fights more interesting and they have more time to fine-tune other game mechanics.
Also Nioh is more of an RPG than Sekiro since it has attributes that you have to put points on. In sekiro you can improve attack damage and unlock skills for your weapon but there aren’t any attributes.
As for the variety of enemies, both games have a lot of different kinds of enemies so you won’t be disappointed.
But having a lot of different kinds of enemies doesn’t make the game more difficult. I believe Sekiro is a little more challenging than Nioh. At first I thought Nioh was harder but that’s because I didn’t understand how the game should be played. Once I learned the mechanics and what is what the game became a lot more manageable.
The last thing I want about is the amount of content both games have. This is where Nioh beats Sekiro without even trying. Nioh has a lot more content than Sekiro. Sekiro doesn’t even have DLC and as of the time of writing this article I haven’t seen any official announcement about DLC for Sekiro.
So if you want more content then Nioh is the best choice for you, not that Sekiro doesn’t have enough content to keep you entertained.
Visuals
Sekiro came out 2 years after Nioh so it’s normal for it to have better visuals, but it’s release date isn’t the only reason that Sekiro surpasses Nioh when it comes to visuals.
Sekiro has some beautiful locations that far surpass Nioh’s best looking scenery.
There is one thing though that Nioh has and Sekiro hasn’t and that is the ability to change your equipment’s appearance. In Sekiro you are stuck with the same look the entire game. Of course, if you play on PC there are a lot of mods that change your character’s appearance and I have to say they are very good.
The problem is that these mods can only be used on PC so Sekiro loses in terms of character customization.
Final Thoughts
Both games are good, there is no doubt about that. I will summarize the things you should remember from this article.
First when it comes to story Sekiro wins without a doubt. In the gameplay department, there are many differences but it all comes down to whether you want to have many weapons to choose from and attributes to points on or you want to only be able to use one weapon but with more fine-tuned and interesting enemies.
As for the visuals, its a tie for me. Sekiro has better visuals, but Nioh has more character customization options.
This is it, guys. I hope you found the article informative and that I helped you decide which is the best game for you.
Write in the comments below if you agree or disagree with what I said and if you think I forgot something. See ya in the next article.
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Here are the links for the images I used:
https://www.igdb.com/games/sekiro-shadows-die-twice/presskit