By 
The Nioh series has long been my Souls-like of choice thanks to the historical setting, dynamic action, and complex loot system. But as much as I love the latest installment, it’s clear that some parts of the loot system in Nioh 3 get in its own way.
Let’s start with what Team Ninja does right. There’s fantastic variety with loot appearance, effects, and build potential. Whether you like to use magic and ninjutsu, switch frequently between Samurai and Ninja styles, or buff the heck out of your heaviest attacks, there are effects to help you craft your perfect build. And to help you with that is the blacksmith, who is able to upgrade equipment rarity and level, transfer effects between pieces, and even change what stats an item benefits most from. It makes an engaging system out of the grind, instead of leaving you to the tender mercies of the random number generator.
The issue? Well, there are a couple. For one, all that equipment variety can be overwhelming. Even as a veteran of three games, their DLC, and plenty of other loot-treadmill games, my eyes tend to glaze over when I see that wall of stats. In Nioh 3 specifically, it’s made worse by how quickly you start getting to the high rarity gear, with Exotic items with more effects and affixes dropping within a few hours of starting the game. By the third game it’s understandable to expect that you’re probably familiar with Nioh and ready to get into the meat of things quicker, but it rather ruins the pacing of your progression and will leave anyone who is new to the system in the dust. (Or relying on the auto-equip feature, and where’s the fun in that?)
All of which is made worse by the simple fact that a lot of build-crafting is irrelevant early on in the adventure. Yes, you get access to all these systems and shiny options swiftly, but despite the vaunted difficulty of these games it isn’t really necessary to engage with them until you get well into New Game+. Before then, leveling your base stats and simply getting more practice with the combat will push you further than any one equipment piece, and upgrades drop so frequently (and blacksmithing costs are so exorbitant) that it’s simply not worth investing much time or energy into your equipment. Nioh 3 is the kind of game where you can see the main story as almost an extended tutorial to prepare you for endgame, but as it stands you are actively disincentivized from using a major system until you absolutely need it.
So how could the loot system in Nioh 3 be fixed or at least improved? Well I’m no designer but I’d argue for slowing down the loot progression and make upgrades less frequent and more meaningful, along with making blacksmithing cheaper. Let players build up a set of equipment as they play so they get familiar with these systems, starting from common items with one or two affixes and building up to the crazy armor sets over time. Enemies and chests exploding into loot showers is a fun little endorphin rush, but if the loot isn’t meaningful it just becomes a chore to sort through afterwards.
Nioh 3 is available now for PS5 and PC via Steam.
