Nioh 3 hands-on report

The striking thing about Nioh 3, even compared to the first two games, is how many options you have in any given fight. A huge number of weapons, stances, and abilities to create a vast array of fast-paced attacks, and help you survive against devastating, powerful opponents.

Publisher Koei Tecmo recently gave me a chance to go hands-on and explore a new area of Nioh 3, complete with a pair of tough bosses to battle. Here’s everything I found, saw, and fought along the way.

Venturing through a corrupted city and a new time period

Nioh 3 puts you in the role of a Tokugawa Takechiyo, who’s on the precipice of becoming the next shogun of the Sengoku era, before their brother, Tokugawa Kunimatsu, kicks off a civil war to try to take over with an army of soldiers and strange yokai spirits. But Nioh 3 won’t just take you through different physical locations — you’ll travel to different time periods as you explore its expansive “open field” levels, as well. My preview took place in an occupied, corrupted Kyoto in the Bakumatsu period.

Like a lot of things in Nioh 3, the open field approach to its levels feels like a natural expansion of the series’ past ideas. You’ll still often fight and explore your way down paths that loop back on themselves with shortcuts, but levels are much larger, with side paths, hidden areas, and additional objectives — some of which are only accessible with the new jump ability. All that exploration provides players with options; if you run up against a battle that’s too tough, you can try somewhere else, often discovering opportunities to power up your character and earn additional rewards. 

Fluid fighting with two styles

With each new Nioh game, developer Team Ninja builds on a foundation of fast-paced action-RPG combat, but Nioh 3 turns a stable structure of cool combat abilities into a glittering tower of options.

As we saw in our Tokyo Games Show hands-on report, at the heart of Nioh 3’s combat is the returning Samurai style and the new Ninja style. The Samurai style is more stalwart and defensive, while the Ninja style is fast and highly agile. You can switch between styles in an instant by hitting R2, making use of each one’s strengths depending on the situation. Using the swap mid-battle, you can quickly and fluidly chain together attacks and abilities from both styles. Executed at the right moment, you’ll feel like a skillful wrecking ball as you pummel an opponent.

The two stances further expand on Nioh’s Guardian Spirit abilities, Soul Cores, and heap of weapons — the number of combat options you have in any given fight is almost overwhelming. Once you get the hang of it all, though, the freedom makes you feel like a ridiculously fast, deadly warrior, chaining all sorts of attacks together in a torrent of blades and blasts of magic.

Deflect blows to gain an advantage

My favorite new addition to Nioh 3’s combat is Deflect, a parry mechanic that charges your Ki and Arts meters when you perfectly time a block by hitting the guard button, L1, as an attack lands. The parry allows you to use quick reflexes to maintain your aggression even against huge bosses and tough foes. With all the other options you have available in combat, it’s a natural addition that rewards you for skillful play.

Helpful haptics

Team Ninja adds to the feel of combat with the DualSense controller’s haptic feedback, emphasizing a lot of its elements. You’ll feel strikes and attack as you deflect or land them, while the adaptive triggers channel elements like drawing back a bow string. However, the developers said they were careful not to overdo it and make haptics distracting, since the game focuses on quick reactions and speedy inputs.

Taking down Takasugi Shinsaku

The tutorial section of the preview culminated in a boss fight against samurai Takasugi Shinsaku. A quick, agile fighter, he frequently switched between powerful, fast sword blows and quickly firing bullets from a revolver. Those shots were matched by projectile attacks from his Guardian Spirit, who fought alongside him throughout the battle. 

Agility was the name of the game against Takasugi, whose speed and relentless grab attacks could make it tough to Deflect his strikes. But once I finally overwhelmed him, we became allies, working together to clear the corruption from Kyoto.

Battling through the Crucible

The second half of the level I played emphasized the “open” part of the open field. More paths led me to tough battles against powerful Formidable Foes, enemy bases I could capture if I cleared out all the enemies inside, and hidden areas with additional loot.

My objective was to reach a large central area called a Crucible. These are challenging areas filled with tough yokai, but with a twist: when you take damage while fighting them, you’ll be afflicted with Life Corrosion, which reduces your total health. Defeating enemies can reduce the corrosion, but as I fought through the area to the final boss of the location, I had to fight carefully and manage my health to make sure I wasn’t overwhelmed.

Battling Noribotoke, an enormous yokai boss

The Crucible’s climax was a fight against Noribotoke, a towering statue brought to life by twisting black tendrils. Like in past entries in the series, as I dealt damage to the boss, it would periodically transform and take on new attack patterns and abilities. In Noribotoke’s case, that means splitting the stone statue pieces so that the tendrils can stretch out, expanding the boss’s range and making it much faster and more dangerous. 

This battle really highlighted how all the weapons in your arsenal can come together. I spent a lot of time in Samurai form, deflecting attacks and getting in hits to lower Noribotoke’s Ki. Whenever I could deplete it or land a Burst Break counter, I laid into the boss with the Ninja style to deal as much damage as possible before getting clear to avoid the boss’s sweeping attacks. That approach, combined with powerful Guardian Spirit abilities and Soul Core summons I found along the way, eventually brought Noribotoke down and dispelled the Crucible once and for all.

Nioh 3 presents you with a whole lot of combat options to keep track of, and at first, it can be a lot to manage. But by the end of my three-hour preview, all those abilities had come together to make combat in Nioh 3 feel fast, fluid, and powerful, even as I took on some very challenging enemies. Having all those abilities gives you the opportunity to create a fighting style that works for you from a host of options, and constantly rewards you for building up your skills and exploring its larger open world to find ways to enhance them even more.

You can see how Nioh 3’s fighting styles, combat abilities, and open field levels come together for yourself when the game launches on February 6, 2026 for PS5.