A Masterclass in Selling You the Same Crap Thrice (at 2x price) :)
There are some pros, i guess, but read other reviews for that fluff. Im here for the mess.

The core mechanics are the same as ten years ago. It works… whatever. But then they added "Spirit Transformation" which turns every encounter into a mindless button-mashing session(I'm not sure if it's a downside... it's just that, when you factor in all the other details, I DON'T LIKE IT!). They killed the difficulty on the altar of "inclusivity" - the open world is literally safer than the tutorial in Nioh 1. You’ll memorize boss patterns faster than your own name))
If you played the previous games, get ready for some clinical depression. 80% of the content is a straight-up Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V job. They dragged a ton of weapons and armor from Nioh 1 and 2, and of course, they picked the most boring-looking trash. There are so few new sets you could count them on the fingers of one careless samurai XD ))))
The "Open World" Scam too/ Level design here is a total "goi prep" (pure bait). Instead of the promised freedom, we got three hubs and a couple of corridors cosplaying as an open world. Shortcuts are as useless as common sense when buying this remix at full price. The map is so bloated with busywork that you’ll inevitably end up massively overleveled. By the time you reach the final boss, he’s just a generic speedbump before the credits.
The graphics are basically Nioh 2 tier, but that doesn’t stop the game from violating your hardware. The optimization is bad. Apparently, the 2x price hike includes a "room heating tax" because your PC will be running like a stove.
The bosses are BORED. No banger tracks, no hype cinematics just models with predictable movesets. The mob variety is the same old story: Gaki and boars will haunt you until the end because Team Ninja’s imagination is on permanent vacation. It’s not a "homage" to the old games; i think..

If you don't take into account the even worse optimization in Rise of the Ronin, Nioh 3 falls short of it in every way! It’s a lazy, budget remix. Fighting the same boss five times in one playthrough? Easy. Paying a fortune for it? Be my guest.

Alright, let's get this done...

Nioh 2 is one of my favorite games of all time, but I tried to enter the newest game in the series with an open mind. Games age, mechanics can be improved, that kind of thing, so why not see what changes they can make for the better, you know? The problem isn't that Nioh 3 is terrible; it runs fine and looks great. The issue with this game is that it doesn't feel like a Nioh game. The elements are there, but by changing it to open world, the game feels more like Rise of The Ronin... only with demons in it. That's when the real problems start.

With the rare exception of battle scroll missions, which mimic the forced play areas of a singular "level" as Nioh 2 used to do, Nioh 3 is a collection of fetch quests, including the horrendous sight of enemy camps that can be cleared out and add to an "exploration" percentage for increased rewards. It takes the worst of an Ubisoft open world title and meshes it with the reaction speed required of a souls game and, to be blunt, this game's combat system simply cannot handle what is being asked of it sometimes. The camera will get stuck, enemies will clip or get caught in level geometry when trying to move around you, and the ability to jump, which Nioh 2 (and 1) did not have, only makes most of the combat worse.

There are interesting ideas here, such as the "Crucible", but for each good change, there seems to be a misstep. Those crucibles, for example, are really two types of very different design: A "Lesser" one, which is a glorified combat arena against enemy waves, or actual sealed Crucibles which are story-locked and more closely match entire levels of their own. In either one, you have a chance of finding the similarly named "Crucible Weapons", which have a special ability you can only get by maxing that items level (called "familiarity" in Nioh). The problem is the same as Nioh games always had; though loot drops often, finding what you want is random, and even boosting drop rates rarely helps unless you plan on farming for them. This is made worse by weapon classes, armor, and magic being locked to which "style" you are currently in. So, yes, let's get to the worst decision here beyond the open world and be done with it.

In the first two games, you could equip any weapon or magic. In this game, you are limited by which style you are in: Samurai or Ninja. This also forces types of equipment, meaning that some heavier armor is only for the Samurai, while lighter armor you may want to use in that same style can only be used when playing as the "Ninja" instead. As for weapons, only the Ninja can use things like the Kusarigama (blade and chain), while the Samurai is the only one who can use most heavier weapons like the Odachi (large katana). It is a needless change that only seems to be there to force you to use the other style. In all honesty, unless I accidently held the style shift button too long, I did not use the Ninja set at all. It's a mess, and the locking of magic to the Ninja class means certain builds using Samurai gear are outright impossible now. And this is without getting into the issues New Game+ has, or that some individual moves, such as the counter ability of "Haze" sometimes missing when the camera shifts, are just infuriating to deal with on their own.

This is all a very long way to say that it didn't need to be this way. Rise of the Ronin is already out, and it has the open world Team Ninja seemed to want to make handled, so pushing these changes onto Nioh as well doesn't make sense. Especially if they are going to function in a way that seems to run counter to the spirit of these games to begin with.

Nioh 3 is a great time and easily my GOTY frontrunner at this point. Going into it there were two main design changes that I was honestly worried about. The first was their shift to a more open world style map, with the usual variety of hidden collectables, points of interest, and the like. The other was breaking the character kit out and making Ninja an entirely distinct and separate playstyle from the traditional Nioh Samurai action. I didn't need to worry; they nailed both of them.

The map redesign works and plays well, with the game taking place primarily in several large open world region maps. This gives you flexibility in terms of how and where you explore each region, fight enemies, work on objectives, and do quests, but it doesn't feel like a giant open field you're aimlessly wandering around or having to rely on waypoint markers to find things to do. They obviously learned lessons from 2024's Rise of the Ronin (which was very much a boring checklist open world design); Nioh 3's regions play extremely well because they feel like interconnected Nioh levels, just a little wider. Instead of every level being selected from a world map and standalone, Nioh 3 primarily opens itself up while still giving you natural direction. The game really sold me on this approach when I was given a quest to check out reports of unusual sounds coming from a nearby cave. I followed the road down to the cave, went in, and discovered an entire cave system there to explore and progress through. Expansive cave levels aren't new to Nioh games, but it was extremely satisfying to realize that this area was connected to the broader region map and hiding under a mountain just waiting for me to go into it instead of selecting it from a list, and I could wander in and out as I saw fit. This isn't to say that Nioh 3 doesn't have its set of missions you select from a list, or that it doesn't feature linear level design, but it's organic in a way that feels like a best-of-both-worlds approach. Nioh 3 also adds the ability to jump, which adds variety to the weapon move sets and makes exploring the world feel more natural even if you run into your share of invisible walls trying to get over certain obstacles.

Nioh 3's other major change is the implementation of Ninja as a separate form you can swap to and from at the push of a button. The traditional Nioh samurai style is still here, and juiced up a bit, but that core system of melee combat with multiple weapon stances and ki pulse mechanics is only found in the samurai form. Swapping to ninja instead turns the game into something that feels like a different take on Ninja Gaiden; the ki pulse mechanic is replaced with Mist (a free dodge that leaves an afterimage that you can spec for different effects), and instead of weapon stances, the game has you slot three ninjitsu tools into your bar that charge up from melee attacks. This solves a traditional issue with ninjitsu in the series (where they were effectively limited per-shrine 'consumables') by baking them into the actual gameplay loop. Ninja leads to extremely satisfying hit and run gameplay, where you can get in, do your melee combos, then get out and use tools from range until you're ready to go back in for another round. I played most of the game in Ninja mode due to it feeling fresh and novel, but it also would serve as an excellent way to get into the series if you're a newcomer, as the resource management loop on Ninja is very straightforward and removes the learning curve of stance swapping and ki pulsing that has been very difficult for new players to learn.

Beyond that, Nioh 3 is what you expect from the franchise. There's conflicts set across periods of Japan's history that effectively assume you know who all these people are; you can just treat it as Team Ninja putting together reasons for various historical action figures to fight each other and be fine. There's a good mix of normal human enemies and yokai, who remain interesting to fight and have some great designs. There's loot - so much loot - that you'll be picking up and breaking down in various ways (it's worth keeping in mind that Nioh is not a soulslike franchise - it's an action RPG with character action combat, so of course everything you kill explodes into a giant pile of items. Use autoequip if you're overwhelmed for your first playthrough, it's fine). There's a huge variety of weapons; with the split between samurai and ninja these weapons end up divided amongst the two, so it can be a bit disappointing if you want to use splitstaff on your samurai, but there's plenty of weapons to learn and they all feel satisfying to use. The character creator remains best in class. The presentation is good. The difficulty curve feels a bit smoother than is traditional for Team Ninja; there's definitely hard bosses and enemies, but it feels pretty reasonable overall, which to series veterans might make it feel like it's too easy; it remains satisfying regardless.

Nioh 3 is a great game and well worth checking out. I'm curious how the patches and DLC coming down the road will change the game, because at this point I'm not quite sure it surpasses Nioh 2, but I'm looking forward to putting a lot more time into this game moving forward.