Introduction

Nioh, one of the most popular masocore franchises around, just got its third entry. Similar to the previous two games, Nioh 3 is all about utilizing every part of your arsenal to survive brutal encounters and tricky boss battles. Some people call it a Souls-like, but while the Nioh series share similarities with other Souls-like games, it's very much its own thing, and it's been pretty successful at it for almost a decade.

Nioh 3 introduces a number of major changes to the series. For the first time ever, you've got vast, semi-open world maps instead of linear levels, making the game a tad easier than its predecessors since now you can go out into the world and grind for a bit if you bounce off a particularly difficult boss. Switching between ninja and samurai styles can now be done with the press of a button. The game has also locked specific weapons to one of the two styles and brought about a number of other smaller changes.



Nioh 3 is developed by Team Ninja, but unlike the previous two entries, which used a modified Team Ninja's NG3/NG3RE Engine, the latest entry is built on Koei Tecmo's Katana Engine. The engine supports a number of modern features, including automatic LOD generation, fluid simulation, and physically based materials. On the flip side, Nioh 3 doesn't include ray tracing, but it does feature all three major upscalers and supports FSR and DLSS frame generation, including DLSS multi-frame generation.

Unfortunately, Katana Engine is infamous for its poor optimization, high CPU usage, poor frame pacing, and other problems, so let's see how Nioh 3—the latest game utilizing it—fares on the Steam Deck, ASUS ROG Xbox Ally X, ASUS ROG Ally X, and an ASUS ROG Ally running SteamOS.