Nioh Co-Op Changes in Full Release - Developers Explain

Co-op in Nioh works like this: you can only summon players who have already beaten the level you’re playing. This is vastly different from how it was in the playable pre-release demo. Needless to say, a lot of players aren’t too happy about the change.

In the Nioh pre-release demo, you could share a password with a friend and play through together. Many players took very positively to this option, and they were very stoked to play this hack-and-slasher with a friend.

However, the final version of the game doesn’t quite work that way. Or, at all. If you want to summon a friend, you can only do so if they have already beaten the level you’re on. This pretty much completely breaks any possibility of two buddies experiencing the game together. Players took to complaining about this in droves, prompting a response from Team Ninja.

In a statement to Kotaku, creative director Tom Lee said that the changes were necessary, because they didn’t want the game to be “too easy for players to beat”.

We want players to experience Nioh in how it was intended to be. We allowed players to co-op anytime in the last trial demo only because of the limited stages and time to try out the demo.

However, this statement brought on even more complaints. Many are wondering why Team Ninja didn’t just keep the game single-player, if that’s how they wanted it. It seems like the only reason behind it was to copy the Soulsbourne recipe.

On top of that, it’s questionable if this actually makes the game more or less difficult. Summoning somebody who has already completed a level basically means you’ll have the advantage. The other player will know what to do, and you can just kinda leech off of them. A lot of players agree that making enemies stronger in co-op would’ve been the way to go instead.

What do you think about Nioh’s co-op? Do you think it could’ve been better? Tell us in the comments! For more info on the subject, you can check out our How to Play Coop in Nioh guide.