Nioh 3 director Masaki Fujita says developer Team Ninja never considered adding difficulty settings to its hardcore Soulslike games.
Team Ninja is a developer that is associated with difficulty. Before Dark Souls was around, the studio's Ninja Gaiden was the game people would use as a shorthand for "this is super hard," so when the studio got around to making its own Souls-inspired games, they were naturally even harder. The Nioh series is one that I personally find much harder than any of FromSoftware's proprietary Souls games, but despite that, Team Ninja seems to have a very similar approach to difficulty as FromSoft itself.
Speaking to Eurogamer, where Fujita was asked whether the level of challenge in Nioh games was non-negotiable, the director notes, "We've never considered adding difficulty settings to the Nioh series." And while that definitive answer may be a disappointment to some, for Fujita, it comes down to the greater sense of achievement from overcoming an obstacle – something FromSoftware president Hidetaka Miyazaki also believes is core to the "Soulslike" experience.
Fujita explains, "The value of clearing the game is something that is unifying." However, much like Elden Ring, Nioh 3 offers a more open approach to its action, allowing for more chances to go somewhere else and buff yourself up before tackling an especially taxing challenge.
Fujita says, "since Nioh 3 has even more variations on strategies to clear the game compared to previous games in the series, our approach is not to change the difficulty setting when you can't clear it." Actually, "The enjoyment and sense of accomplishment of being able to figure out on your own how to overcome a situation is what we see as one of the best parts of this series."
