Nioh 2 is making dozens of changes using feedback from beta players

Developer Team Ninja is bringing extensive balance and accessibility changes to Nioh 2 using feedback gathered during the game's open beta, creative director Tom Lee explained in a PlayStation Blog post.

Ahead of its upcoming release on March 13, Nioh 2 hosted an open beta in November 2019 - a rarity for a primarily single-player game. Now that the dust on the beta has settled, Lee shared an itemized list of changes that the studio is making based on player feedback. These are only some of the changes, mind you, but the gist is that the team wants the game to be more accessible, less confusing, and more rewarding. 

"In order to address some of the portions that felt unreasonably difficult, we will be adjusting the balance for all Yokai actions and strengthening several of the special moves and making them more manageable to use," Lee said. "There will be modifications made to control the level of punishments in the Dark Realm such as adding merits where the maximum Ki damage is increased against enemy Yokai as well as the overall management of the player’s Ki will be refined."

You can read the full list of changes in the blog post linked above, and we've pulled out some of the biggest and most interesting ones below. 

• The addition of a custom controls option which allows for "more flexible key configurations"
• Add active skills to all weapons, especially the new hand axe and switchglaive
• Adjust life and attack strength of enemies, and reduce Ki damage dealt to players 
• Adjust areas where multiple enemies are placed, and where enemies are placed in narrow spots as well as areas where it's possible to fall 
• Adjust the location of shrines so that "shrines that were in hard to find places will be easier to find"
• Expand the Interim Tutorial to include basic actions and Yokai Shift controls
• Increase the number of core stats which improve Ki Recovery and Ki Pulse
• Add a system for saving and loading Active Skill settings 

Team Ninja on why Nioh 2 won't have an easy mode.