Confession time: I hated Dark Souls the first time I played it. This was partly because I was young and stupid and resistant to change, but also, when I first tried it, I ran straight into the Catacombs area and promptly got my rib cage rotated like a rotisserie chicken. You aren't supposed to do that, you may have heard, nor are rib cages; you're supposed to go through the more sensibly scaled Undead Burg. How you navigate Dark Souls directly affects how difficult it feels. That's part of the magic.
The intersection of unflinching difficulty and freewheeling exploration creates fascinating peaks and troughs in challenge that convey a more believable world, and Nioh 3 is the latest game to navigate this balancing act – this time, weathering some cries of "too easy," as I heard from Nioh 3 general producer and Team Ninja studio head Fumihiko Yasuda, and Nioh 3 producer Kohei Shibata.
