#lc87

LC's game crashed in the middle of our fight and it gave us a pretty good screenie

VERY LATE ANSWER but i shall answer thee with the best of my memory.

I have no precise memory of when the dream happened. All I remember was that Doremy Sweet was Here at the time, and that I was cogitating a lot about her. I forgot if that dream happened when LoLK's demo just released (and Doremy with it!) or if it was after LoLK's full release. All i can say is that it was WAY BEFORE Doremy appeared in AoCF. This detail is important.

I remember that i woke up in the dream with the impression of like abruptly falling, except i wasn't. The background: the dream world.

Imagine being in this... void. This empty space. Floating around. Confused as all hells. Knowing that you're in a dream and being ignorant of that, at the same time.

And then Doremy arrived, floating around me, observing me and being smug at me. It's like she was conscious that I was in a "half-awake" state, as it is the norm in dreams. And then she started monologuing. She monologued for what felt like both 1 hour and 5 minutes at the same time. I couldn't move or reply to her, so all I could do was listen.

Most of the details i wrote are unfortunately gone (unless i can by some miracle pull them off of an old discord log) but i precisely remember she was telling me about the Baku species' way of life, the nature of her "job", and MOST IMPORTANTLY: the way dreams work. That dreams were a figment of my brain's capacity to conceptualize and imagine scenes from elements I already know or have yet to know. The way she was talking felt like she was trying to reassure me AND a villain doing his "here is my master plan!" speech. I felt increasingly uncomfortable at her presence and I felt she was super ambiguous in her ways.

I want to mention: she constantly had a ":3" face. Which was very notable to me because holy shit, in AoCF she kept having THAT EXACT :3 FACE

And then she was like "oopsie human, my time is up in here. I'll have to drop you off in a random dream. You probably will forget everything when you wake up but hey! Have fun! That's what matters. Hope we meet again!"

And then she violently slam dunked me with her book and i sunk into the space like it was, idk, you know when they pull off the plug in a bathtub in a cartoon? That happened. I sunk into the space, and abruptly fell into another dream.

I will not detail that part, though. Because, well, it was the most personal nightmare I ever had. It was visceral to a point that remains with me up to this day. It was truly terrifying.

AND I woke up.

And to this day. I still think that it was the actual legit Doremy Sweet who came to my dream and decided to mess with me and give me a monologue and the most horrible "TARGETED FOR YOU!" nightmare ever.

Character creator (a really good one at that)

Better enemy diversity: Much more variety of youkai this time around

Better difficulty curve: The early game is still the roughest but enemies no longer do 80% of your HP per hit, endgame enemies no longer debuff you with everything in the world when you get hit by them either

Better difficulty design: Less reliance on stacking as many damage increases as possible in a “Melt or be Melted” design philosophy, for both effects on weapons and buff stacking. Much of the first game relied on using your Ultimate “Living Weapon” mode which made encounters go from absurd to laughably trivial (even though I like Living Weapon as a concept more than Youkai Shift, its existence was a bandaid for the game’s difficulty balance). Nioh 1′s endgame relied on having you fight multiple bosses which were NOT designed to be fought together at the same time, this is basically nonexistent in Nioh 2 except for thematically joined bosses (which is really just the Hyakki Yagyo’s ‘Zuki brothers)

New combat mechanics, Burst Counter mechanics: More skills for each weapon, more weapons, with the Splitstaff and Fists being some of the most technical weapons in the series, and Youkai Abilities using a new resource meter called Anima.

Youkai abilities are similar to Souls that Soma can use in Castlevania: Chronicles of Sorrow games, using an enemy’s attack for your own purposes. Most transform you into that Youkai for that attack, some don’t. Some have some special hidden properties alongside their attack. You can cancel almost any action into a Youkai Ability, while regenerating Ki, even if you have your guard broken. Use Anima to recover Ki while attacking so you can attack again after.

Burst attacks are a new mechanic added to every enemy in the game, with a telegraphed red flash and unique sound, you can counter the enemy in 1 of 3 ways which will open them for a few seconds for your own attacks, recover Anima (while in Dark Realm), recover HP/Ki, and do a ton of Ki damage while slowing their Ki recovery. You can also cancel almost any action into a Burst Counter, meaning you don’t have to worry about stopping your offense to wait for it, allowing you to act nearly nonstop.

More unique boss concepts, better execution of boss phases, and the revitalized importance of Ki Damage

Ki Damage was largely unimportant in the original game, as inflicting an enemy with Confusion (caused by inflicting any 2 different elemental debuffs) completely emptied the enemy ki gauge allowing you to continually grapple them if they’re human, and allowing you to stagger Youkai for a decent period of time. There was little need to increase a stat for gradually lowering it when you could do it in one fell swoop, while also trivializing an encounter

Confusion in Nioh 2 slows human enemies ability to recover Ki and makes Youkai enemies take increased Ki damage, both take increased HP damage, like in Nioh 1

Youkai Boss Phases in Nioh 1 are more like Souls game bosses, its a one way change, this is fine (although few of the youkai bosses are hardly memorable due to generally having similar attacks). But for Human Bosses, they use Living Weapon like you, and gain similar perks such as resistance to stagger. Their attacks are very fast and destroy your Ki nearly instantly when you block them. This would be fine except bosses tend to immediately reactivate Living Weapon as soon as you knock them out of it. Bosses that use Living Weapon are much rarer in Nioh 2 and don’t reactivate them nearly as instantly (additionally, you have more tools to knock them out of LW such as Youkai Abilities)

Ki for Youkai works differently in Nioh 2 now. To keep them from regenerating Ki, keep them out of Youkai Realm circles that they create by purifying them, and use Youkai Abilities to deal great amounts of Ki damage, once you empty their Ki, their aggression will greatly lower, and they will stagger from every attack for roughly 5-10 seconds, use attacks and other Youkai abilities to greatly reduce their Max Ki while getting in a ton of HP damage. If you deplete their Max Ki, you can grapple Youkai. This creates a much more solid dynamic that incentivizes player aggression compared to Dark Souls and creates a much different gameplay loop than Souls Series or Nioh 1

Many bosses have a Dark Realm phase, your Ki regen is lowered in favor of having greater Anima charge. Many bosses also physically have an altered form in Dark Realm which changes their moveset, sometimes completely. Bosses go into Dark Realm when you either deplete their Max Ki, their Ki (if you fail to deplete their Max Ki in time), or get their HP to a certain threshold, or if a certain amount of time passes. They go in and out of Dark Realm as you progress through the fight changing the way they and you respond to each other. This creates a clear dynamic of boss battle phases, but in a two-way path rather than the one way path of Souls Boss Phases

In general, Nioh 2 has many more mechanics which reward the player for playing aggressively than Nioh 1, which better creates its own identity as a Soulslike game

Quality of Life changes: Better translation, a means for which to restock your healing without having to farm enemies like Bloodborne using the Kodama Bazaar, being able to hide your ranged weapons/secondary weapons as you choose if you don’t like walking around with a bunch of weapons on your back. More options for searching for hosts to Co-op with (on that note you can also disable your character glow in Co-op). People can place NPC graves for other hosts to summon (from experience, they’re not very useful, but its the thought that counts)