Nioh Developers Respond To Co-op Changes

The way co-op works in Team Ninja's recent samurai-demon-slashing-and-dodging game Nioh has changed since its pre-release demo, which has left some players feeling miffed.

The pre-release demo allowed players to summon friends into battle by sharing a password, and play through the game as a pair, experiencing each new level together. In the final retail version of the game, however, it's only possible to summon another player into your game if they've already beaten the level they're being summoned into. This has left some players out in the cold, who had planned to buddy up and work through the entire game cooperatively.

Team Ninja creative director Tom Lee said in an emailed statement to Kotaku that the change was implemented because otherwise it would be "too easy for players to beat the game."

"We want players to experience Nioh in how it was intended to be," Lee wrote. "We allowed players to co-op anytime in the last trial demo only because of the limited stages and time to try out the demo." Much like the Dark Souls series that inspired it, it seems Nioh is designed to be a single-player game that affords players the ability to summon in other players to help them through difficult sections, not to play it all the way through in co-op.

So, what do you think? Should players have the choice of playing the game the way they want, or is it right for the developers to stick to their design choices?

Check out our 13 tips to help you understand the trickier aspects of Nioh, our roundup of what critics everywhere are saying about the game, and some analysis of visual fidelity and frame rates between PS4 and PS4 Pro.