Is Nioh 3 Harder or Easier than Nioh 1 & 2?

Are you wondering whether Nioh 3 is harder or easier than Nioh 1 and Nioh 2?

The answer: Nioh 3 is easier than Nioh 1 & Nioh 2.

It is vastly easier than Nioh 1 was on its launch patch (which has been made easier since then), and slightly easier than Nioh 2. The new “Ninja Style” makes it more approachable for Newcomers thanks to several new game features and design choices.

There are a few reasons for this which we’ll break down in more detail below and compare Nioh 3 difficulty against Nioh 1 and Nioh 2 difficulty.

Why Nioh 3 is easier:

• The new Ninja Style lets you throw ranged attacks from a safe distance (Shuriken, Explosives etc). These can be used infinitely and recharge when dodging attacks or landing melee attacks. This lets you play from a safe distance for much of the fights. It can defeat regular enemies outright without engaging in any melee combat. Against bosses you can land a bunch of melee attacks to recharge Ninjutsu, then use the Ninjutsu and Summoning Magic from a safe distance. This makes most fights trivial and doesn’t require the level of skill that the melee-only combat in Nioh 1 and 2 demanded. Furthermore, the Ninjutsu is very good at building up status effects on enemies, such as fire that deals damage over time.
• In Ninja Style, you have lower stamina expenditure, meaning your attacks and dodges consume less stamina. Managing your Stamina (Ki) was one of the main bottlenecks in Nioh 1 and 2 as you had to time your Ki pulses during combat. Now you can string together combos without needing to do Ki pulses, further simplifying gameplay and making it more approachable for new players.
• In Ninja Style, your Stamina (Ki) recharges WHILE using Ninjutsu. This is borderline gamebreaking. You can do one melee combo, throw 1-2 Shuriken to let your stamina recharge a bit, do another combo, rinse and repeat. This keeps most enemies stunlocked the entire time and you can cycle through combos infinitely, especially when wearing light armor below 30% equipment weight (stamina recharges faster at lower weight).
• In Ninja Style, you deal more damage from behind. This deals lots of critical damage. You can hit enemies with Ninjutsu to interrupt their movement and quickly dodge behind them, or simply do jump attacks to get behind their back. Additionally, some combos have invincibility frames during which you can’t get hit, especially the Dual Ninja Swords – the last attack does a spinning jump attack during which enemies can’t hit you. Spam this, then spam your Ninjutsu from safe distance, rinse and repeat. This is one of the easiest strategies.
• Summoning Seals can instakill regular enemies and deal massive damage to bosses while depleting their stamina quickly. Especially Ibaraki Doji is very powerful (from a main boss in Heian era). Scampuss Summoning Seal is great early on for depleting the stamina of bosses. You get summoning seals from the red Soul Cores that enemies drop. You can then summon that particular enemy during fights to help you. Later in the game you get a skill that doubles the number of Summoning Seals so you can just spam these + Ninjutsu to take away half the healthbar of every boss instantly. This skill unlocks after beating Onmyo Veteran mission, available after reaching Bakumatsu era.
• You can summon AI partners from blue graves, they fight alongside you in boss battles to make it easier (on par with Nioh 2, wasn’t available in Nioh 1).
• Bosses’ Ki (Stamina) is easier to drain now / drains faster. With most Yokai (Monster) bosses their Ki barely recharges. Draining their Ki leaves them completely unable to attack while you land hits on them. Meaning you can do a lot more damage without any risk. (Nioh 2 worked similar to this, Nioh 1 didn’t have this)
• Bosses do less damage and have less health. Meaning you can take more hits and fights don’t last as long.
• You can instantly switch between Samurai and Ninja style any time ( ). Each can have its own equipment. This allows for some interesting loadouts. You could put the heaviest armor possible on Samurai, but play with light armor in Ninja style for fast dodges. Then if you want to block you simply transform to Samurai style with your heavy armor, block a few attacks and transform back to Ninja. This allows for greater tactical freedom in the middle of boss fights, being able to carry two different loadouts into battle and alternating between them infinitely.
• Bosses only have 1 healthbar (with a few exceptions). Unlike Nioh 1, almost none of the bosses have multiple phases with full transformations. They just go in and out of Yokai Realms which briefly makes them more aggressive but this cools off after 30-60 seconds and they turn back normal. During their Yokai Realm phase you can focus on dodging and throwing Ninjutsu from a safe distance to stay out of danger.
• Burst Breaks let you stun enemies quickly (pressing when enemy glows red, and later Guardian Skill Burst Breaks with + ). A similar function called “Burst Counters” was in Nioh 2, but not in Nioh 1. While the timing takes some practice, it can be exploited against many bosses. Learning this is completely optional however.
• The game focuses on open world exploration where you mostly fight weak enemies. You gain permanent stat increases to your Attack and Defense when you find Collectibles in each region. If you complete all regions 100%, you will be overleveled without needing to grind anything, then you’ll have an easier time against bosses. In Nioh 1 I had to farm Amrita (XP) for hours to stay sufficiently leveled. This time leveling is much faster and no farming is necessary. All open world bosses are optional for progression and you can return to them later when you are stronger.
• A lot of enemies and bosses are copy & paste, so if you played Nioh 1 & 2 you will already be familiar with a lot of them.
• More weapons, which means more ways to break the AI and exploit different character builds.
• More overpowered and game-breaking skills that can exploit the AI. A wide variety of Martial Arts, Transformed Arts etc. For example, the Arts Proficiency gauge (blue circle in bottom right corner in Samurai Style) imbues your heavy attacks with more power, and you can hold to perform powerful Combat Arts.
• All main game + DLC weapons from previous Nioh games have been ported over to Nioh 3 and they have the same attacks. So if you played previous games everything will feel familiar. That said, if you are new to Nioh the amount of choice can feel overwhelming. Easiest for new players is Dual Ninja Swords in Ninja Style for the high agility and low stamina expenditure.
• Fewer traps in the game environments (in first Nioh you had lots of enemies standing behind corners or bats flying at you from cave openings and pushing you down cliffs). This is on par with Nioh 2 which already reduced the number of environmental traps.
• No insanely overpowered double bosses like Nioh 1 had. There is one double boss but one of them just stands around and does practically nothing. In Nioh 1 you had to deal with 2 bosses simultaneously during several missions which was vastly more difficult than anything in Nioh 3.
• Shrines are closer to the bosses than in Nioh 1. While this in itself does not make the bosses easier, it allows you to retry them more quickly and waste less time walking. A little less punishing now if you die and need to retry. (on par with Nioh 2 which already moved shrines closer to bosses)
• Nioh 3’s story is shorter and there are fewer bosses. Most of the time goes into open world exploration and finding the 1000+ collectibles rather than missions. So most time is spent on easier side content.
• Kodama and other Collectibles all get marked automatically on the map at Exploration Level 4. In previous games there was no map screen and you had to find them yourself. This makes it very quick to find everything.
• In the open world you can head immediately to the highest level regions available, kill some easy mobs or loot corpses to get high level gear. If a region is level 36 but you are level 14, you can go immediately to the high level region to get good gear. Then all the lower level regions become trivial. How difficult enemies feel is influenced more by the stats of your gear than your character level.

Personally, I did most bosses in Nioh 3 first try without any trouble. Only a few bosses took several tries and I did everything 100% solo without summoning AI partners from blue graves. In Nioh 1 some bosses took me dozens of tries and hours to beat. Nothing like that is even remotely the case with Nioh 3. Overall the difficulty is closer to Nioh 2 than it is to Nioh 1. But slightly easier than Nioh 2 due to the new Ninja Style and being able to throw Ninjutsu repeatedly from a distance to set enemies on fire etc.

How does Nioh 3 difficulty compare to Nioh 1 and Nioh 2?:

• For new players who played neither game before, I would rate Nioh 1 difficulty 7/10, Nioh 2 difficulty 5.5/10, and Nioh 3 difficulty 5/10 as an average for the entirety of the game. New players to this genre who never played any other “Souls-like” will probably find it to be a challenging 7-8/10 for the first few bosses and the difficulty goes down as you get more familiar with the combat (it gets progressively easier the further you get).
• For players who completed both Nioh 1 & Nioh 2 and have experience with other Soulslikes, I would rate the difficulty 4/10.

That’s not to say there isn’t any challenge. The first few bosses are still a learning curve, and there are a few bosses throughout the game that are a spike in difficulty. The bosses still require good reflexes, but if you played Nioh 1 and 2 you’ll find the bosses easier in comparison, for the above-mentioned reasons. If you’ve never played Nioh, then Nioh 3 is a good entry point. You don’t need to have played Nioh 1 and 2 to enjoy Nioh 3. The prior two games had a linear mission layout, whereas Nioh 3 has an open world design.

The above is based on having platinumed the game solo (no co-op), which took me only a little over 40 hours while also writing guides along the way. In comparison, Nioh 1 & 2 took 100-200 hours each to platinum.

What is your difficulty rating of Nioh 3 after having beaten it? Did you find it easier too? Which bosses did you find the hardest? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

More Nioh 3 Guides:

• Nioh 3 Wiki & Strategy Guide
• Nioh 3 Boss Guide (All Bosses)
• Nioh 3 Collectible Guide
• Nioh 3 Full World Map (100% Completion)