This is what I mean by a serious product. Beta tests matter so that users can critique your work
Nioh Beta Brief Review
Team Ninja’s upcoming game Nioh just finished an open beta period on the PS4. The game is set in feudal Japan, where you play as William, a European who has traveled to the East to hunt down a certain man. There are cinematic cutscenes that tell the story, as well as voice lines from fallen soldiers who’s gear William can pick up as he moves through the landscape, fighting hostile soldiers and demonic yokai. The game is also loosely based in history. The character William is most likely based on William Adams, a European sailor who was shipwrecked on Japan and ultimately made a samurai. Other historical figures make appearances, such as Hattori Hanzo, and important deities and spirits from Japanese folklore and mythology. Each area has some fairly detailed text about its background, or some piece of culture behind it. Whether or not these facts are true or false, seeing more games use a fantastical setting to inspire real interest in a different culture is exciting.
Mechanically, Nioh is a direct descendant of Dark Souls, with shrines replacing bonfires, amrita for souls, and a brutally difficult stamina based combat system. Unlike some other Souls-like games, however, Nioh builds and adds to this framework, developing the systems it borrows into something new. Each melee weapon has three stances, high, middle, and low, that all have unique animations. The stances are geared for offense, neutral, and defense respectively, and the game does a good job of encouraging the use of all three to be most effective. Stamina has also had an overhaul. When the stamina bar is depleted, there is a brief window of opportunity before it fully restores to time a button press to instantly regain a large part of the stamina used. Mastery of this system, which the game calls a Ki Pulse, adds a new dimension to combat that keeps things fast paced and tense, especially because running out of stamina leaves you vulnerable to enemy attacks for an extended period.
The third major change to gameplay from the Dark Souls ‘formula’ is the existence of skill trees that add magic and ninjutsu to the game, but also melee attack combos that deal extra damage in fixed bursts or affect how your character moves and deals damage. This skill tree also ties into the guardian spirit system. The player can choose a guardian spirit, who offers certain passive bonuses depending on the player’s level and skills. The spirit also has a meter that builds over time, and when it is full the player can enter a mode called Living Weapon. While in this mode, the player does not take damage and deals much more damage for a short time. If (when) the player dies, the guardian spirit stays with their grave marker, which also holds all of their amrita held when they died. If the player can make it back to this marker, the spirit and amrita will return. If they cannot, the spirit will return, but the amrita will be lost. The guardian spirit can also be recalled from shrines at any time, but all amrita will be instantly lost.
I had not had the chance to play Nioh before this beta, and while I did not get to play as much of it as I would have liked, I am extremely excited to see how the final product will turn out. It is set to be extremely challenging, but also highly rewarding, with a story less obtuse than that of any of the Dark Souls games
Closest might be level design cause that is tied to gameplay.
I'm use to doing it all in raw code.
...no it has to be reflected. The visual scripting was always simply a way to call preexisting code in unreal script anyway.