Of the 4,000+ reviews written so far, almost 3,000 are positive, but 1,300+ reviews have been negative, with most reporting poor performance. Others warn that keyboard and mouse players are receiving controller prompts in-game.
“Basically, Nioh2 is a good game, but at the moment I just can’t recommend it,” wrote one. “I played it for a long time on PS4 and it went really well. The PC version is just cheeky. Absolutely carelessly implemented … Especially a game like Nioh shouldn’t have any FPS drops. I have an i9 9900k, a 1080ti, 16 GB Ram and the whole thing on an SSD and still I have drops @1080p.”
“The issue is that this is a ‘proper’ action game, with loads of combos, special forms, secret abilities, rhythmic button-presses, etc,” said another, stating they’re “not trying to review the game right now” but felt compelled to report the issues “because [they] want to warn anyone who’s coming into this without a controller” (thanks, PCGN).
“So not knowing where a button is is a pretty major problem. Worse, a lot of the button-combinations that appear on controllers are single-button presses for mouse and keyboard. To work out what the game is asking you to do, you’ll have to consult your list of keybinds until you memorise it–which is fine, except that some of the controls you need aren’t actually listed in the keybinds. Combine this with the fact that the game’s tutorial is kind of ass at actually explaining what you need to do, and playing on M&KB becomes a massive slog, at least early on.”
Even some of the “positive” reviews report problems, too.
“Far superior to the first game – more enemy variety, better level design, a decent story, excellent new fight mechanics – BUT performance seriously needs patching,” added someone else. “Yokai Realms and certain attacks should not send your fps into the floor – it’s basically mandatory to play with effects turned to low. I will recommend based on the gameplay – but tempted to revise if they don’t address the issues.”
“No technical or control issues so far. Having keyboard controls in prompts and tutorials would be nice, but Nioh 1 had the same problem, so it shouldn’t be anything new for those of us who played the original on PC,” opined another positive reviewer. “Performance is neither good nor bad. Some of the options (i.e. particle effects) need some optimisation, but having to change one option to low is not a game-breaking bug. Also, there is an option to disable focus on lock if you wish to move your mouse freely.”
Reviewed a year ago when the game debuted on the PS4, Edwin said: “Nioh 2 is a work of immense skill and scale, but Team Ninja’s next project needs to be more about changing things than adding them. After all, no amount of equipment buffs can protect you against the element of surprise.”
