Review

Nioh 3

A third-person action RPG with demanding, souls-like combat. You switch between samurai and ninja styles to fight yokai while exploring an open world. It supports online co-op for up to three players, and the dark fantasy setting is central. Is it your kind of game?

Souls-likeAction RPGSamurai and ninjaPCPlayStation

Games like Nioh 3

8/10

Game Avant verdict

A dense, demanding action RPG whose switchable Samurai and Ninja styles give its combat a second gear, held back by the price of a bigger, looser structure and a build system that asks for homework.

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By GameAvant · Published Oct 8, 2026 · Updated Oct 9, 2026 · 16 min read

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IGDB

83%

19 ratings

Steam:

78%

11,845 reviews

Fits you if

you want tough, technical melee combat and enjoy mastering builds and fighting styles.

Skip it if

you want a relaxed game or dislike dying and retrying.

Availability

Where to play

Steam

$39.89

Buy

Facts

Platforms: PC · PlayStation
Release date: February 6, 2026
Length: About 39 hours
Difficulty: 5/5 (estimated)
Genres: Role-playing (RPG) · Hack and slash/Beat 'em up · Adventure
Themes: Action
Perspective: Third person
Modes: Online up to 3
Languages: 3 languages
Text in your language: Yes
Steam Deck: Unsupported
Microtransactions: None
Crossplay: none

More about Nioh 3

Nioh 3 marks the point where Team Ninja stopped carefully polishing the exact same formula across three previous entries and started genuinely stretching it in new directions, for better and for occasionally worse. The series keeps everything it has always been known for intact: a punishing, stamina-driven sword-combat system, an enormous and deliberately overwhelming loot economy, yokai drawn from Japanese folklore as the primary enemy type, and real historical events and figures used as raw narrative material rather than simple window dressing. What changes is the shape of the game built around those established pillars. There are now two complete, independently viable combat styles, Samurai and Ninja, each with its own distinct toolkit and rhythm, and the individual levels have opened up considerably into larger connected fields with meaningful things to discover between the main story missions rather than funneling players through tightly scripted corridors from one checkpoint to the next. Koei Tecmo's Team Ninja released Nioh 3 in early February 2026 for PlayStation 5 and Windows, following a playable public demo that appeared on 29 January 2026 to let players test the new systems ahead of launch. Notably, this is the first mainline entry in the series developed without Sony Interactive Entertainment involved in the project, and it runs on Koei Tecmo's own proprietary Katana Engine rather than technology shared with Sony's internal studios. The story itself spans five distinct eras of Japanese history through a time-hopping structure, giving Team Ninja license to vary enemy types, environmental aesthetics, and mission framing considerably more than the previous two games' comparatively narrow historical settings allowed. The dual combat style system is the single biggest mechanical addition, and it genuinely changes how encounters play out rather than simply offering cosmetic variety. Samurai style keeps the series' traditional emphasis on stance-switching stamina management and heavy, committed sword strikes, while Ninja style introduces faster, more mobile tools built around positioning and quick repositioning rather than sustained stamina trades. Switching between the two mid-mission, once both are sufficiently levelled, gives combat a genuine second gear that the previous games never had, letting players answer a specific enemy or boss pattern with whichever style actually counters it rather than forcing every encounter through one fixed toolkit. That expanded freedom comes with real structural costs, though. The looser, more open level design asks considerably more of players navigating between objectives without the series' traditional tightly scripted guidance, and the build system underlying both combat styles, along with the enormous loot economy feeding into it, genuinely demands outside research or extensive trial and error to use efficiently rather than being approachable through intuition alone. Those costs are real rather than minor friction, and they are specifically why this review lands at an 8 rather than higher despite how much the dual-style combat system accomplishes. Taken as a whole, this is the broadest, most structurally ambitious game the series has produced, and it is also, by a meaningful margin, the one that asks the most patience and outside investment from a player encountering Nioh for the first time.