It's easy to make a hard game, and hard to make one that's just challenging enough. For some players, Nioh 3 landed a little shy of the difficulty standard set by previous games in the series and other action titles from developer Team Ninja of Koei Tecmo. Producer Kohei Shibata and Team Ninja studio head Fumihiko Yasuda tells us why some players might feel that the game is easier – hint: Dark Souls faced a similar problem – but also stresses that a satisfying challenge is still a guiding star throughout development and testing.
"It is hard to make it challenging," Yasuda says via interpreter. "I mean, it would be easy to defeat the player many times, but I think we want to make sure that it is challenging and fun. There's a lot of trial and error with it. Even for the player themselves, they may find it difficult to defeat a boss, but as they play, battle the boss each time, they can understand patterns or see ways, entry points, to defeat the boss. Eventually they do find a way to defeat the boss, and players will have that sense of achievement and will want to take on the challenge of trying to defeat [another] boss. I think that's really important, that there is an equal aspect to the action that is available in the game. And we are conscious to not make it too skewed in one direction or the other."
