20 Awesome PS4 Exclusives You Need To Play Before PS5

Nioh is one of those games that really could have either sunk or swam. It's a game that clearly takes inspiration from the highly-popular Souls series, with brutal difficulty, tactical combat and plenty of exploration thrown in for good measure; but as other titles which have flirted with the genre have shown, copying doesn't always make a great game (looking at you, Lords of the Fallen).

Thankfully, Nioh proved me wrong; this adventure is consistently brilliant throughout, and its tale, set in Japan in the 1600s, tells its own tale of demons and samurai, carving out its own niche in the genre along the way.

Combat in Nioh is very satisfying indeed. It focuses on a system of stances and ki: the former giving you access to three stances (high, medium and low) with unique attacks which can be beneficial (or not!) in different situations, and the latter being a stamina recovery tactic that allows you to boost your stamina levels if you time a button press at the right time.

Like the Souls games, Nioh is also mega tough; you'll be repeatedly banging your head against the walls sometimes as the difficulty levels here, but there's nothing quite like felling a boss after hours coming up short against it.