Nioh 2

Nioh 2 is a 2020 action RPG developed by Team Ninja and published by Koei Tecmo, released March 13, 2020 for PlayStation 4, with a PS5 Remastered version and PC Complete Edition following on February 5, 2021. It holds a Metacritic score of 85, and among the Soulslike faithful it occupies a specific pedestal: the recurring community argument — visible in the exact reddit threads that rank for this game — is that Nioh 2 isn’t just a great Soulslike but the mechanically deepest one anyone has made, FromSoftware included.

A prequel to Nioh set decades earlier, its central twist is perspective: this time you don’t fight the yokai as an outsider. You are one.

Technical Specifications

Hide, the Half-Yokai

Breaking from William’s fixed identity, Nioh 2 hands players a full character creator to build Hide — a silent half-human, half-yokai mercenary in late Sengoku Japan, partnered with the spirit-stone merchant Tokichiro in a story that threads through the real historical rise of Toyotomi Hideyoshi. The era’s warlords, betrayals, and battles are all present, but the emotional spine is the uneasy coexistence of Hide’s two natures — which is also exactly what the combat system is built around.

Yokai Shift and the Burst Counter

Everything from the first game returns — Ki Pulse, three stances, the loot avalanche — with a demonic layer on top. Yokai Shift transforms Hide into one of three demon forms with its own moveset; defeated yokai drop Soul Cores that graft their signature attacks onto your build, turning the bestiary into a skill catalog; and the Burst Counter — a transforming counterattack that interrupts enemies’ unblockable red-glow attacks — adds the reactive, parry-adjacent beat the first game lacked. The result is a system whose ceiling is genuinely absurd: the depth argument fans make for this game over every other Soulslike rests on the sheer number of interlocking systems a build can exploit.

Reception

Critics landed at 85 — an “engrossing, if dutiful, follow-up,” in Eurogamer’s much-quoted framing — praising the yokai systems and combat depth while repeating the first game’s criticisms: environment reuse, loot overload, and an intimidating wall of mechanics for newcomers. Player sentiment ran warmer than the critical average and has only climbed since, with the game’s reputation maturing into “the enthusiast’s pick” of the genre. Three DLC campaigns reaching back to the series’ mythological origins closed it out, all folded into the 2021 Complete Edition alongside the PS5 remaster’s 4K/120fps options.

After Nioh 3

The 2026 release of Nioh 3 — which pulled the series into an open-field structure and scored the franchise’s warmest reviews — reframed rather than displaced this game: the sequel’s own reviewers routinely benchmarked its combat against Nioh 2‘s, and the veteran community remains split between the newcomer’s freedom and this entry’s density. For players working through the series, the practical consensus holds: Nioh 2 is where the formula’s depth peaks, and nothing in it is diminished by what came after.

Where to Play It Today

Nioh 2 – The Complete Edition is on Steam and Humble (regularly and steeply discounted), and PlayStation sells the PS4 original, the PS5 Remastered version, and The Nioh Collection bundling both remastered games. Every current version includes all three DLC expansions; three-player co-op remains active.