Nioh 2 wants to work on its weaknesses with updates.
Since February 5th you can explore the mythological Japan of the Sengoku period from the 15th century in Nioh 2. But while the fights and the looting are a lot of fun, the poor technology bothers. The developer promises a remedy for the future.
Patches are supposed to fix the problems
Several updates are planned to deal with the technical errors. The first one has already been published, but initially only fixed two problems. In addition to a sound error, a cause of the crash is also part of the story:
- Fixed a bug that sometimes prevented sound from playing.
- Fixed a bug that caused a crash during the cutscene in front of the first boss.
Better mouse and keyboard support: The operation with keyboard and mouse is to be improved by appropriate input prompts. Currently, the game only presents you the controller displays, even if you don’t have any connected.
Performance improvement: The biggest point of criticism, because of which we also devalued the game in our test, is the frequent drop in frame rate. Often you only fight in slow motion against the demonic yokai. The integration of DLSS 2.0 should help here.
However, you can only use DLSS with RTX graphics cards from Nvidia. It uses artificial intelligence to render in a lower resolution and then upscale. The results of this technique have impressed us in the past.
Better frame rate thanks to workaround
However, DLSS for better performance works more like a workaround. Not only are many gamers unable to use this technology, the cause of the fluctuating frame rate is neither bad hardware nor too high graphics settings.
As you have already found out in our forum, the cause of the problem is not too bad hardware or too high graphics settings, but rather a poorly integrated frame limiter.
This is how Nioh 2 runs more smoothly: Above all, it helps to set the effects in the game options to low. In addition, you should set the frame rate limit in the game to 120 yourself and then limit it to the really desired value via your graphics card driver. It works like this:
Nvidia
- Right click on your desktop
- Select “Nvidia Control Panel”
- On the left side you click on »Manage 3D Settings«
- Now you select »Program Settings« in the right part of the window
- Click on “Add” and search for “Nioh2 Application”
- Now you are looking for the setting »Max. Image frequency «
- Set them to your desired value (depending on the system, 30 or 60 FPS are possible)
AMD
- Open your Radeon settings
- Select the profile for Nioh 2 in the “Gaming” tab
- Activate »Chill (FPS)« here
- Set »Chill Max« to your desired frame rate (depending on the system, 30 or 60 FPS are possible)
How good is Nioh 2?
In the test, Nioh 2 is a really successful Souls game for us. Although it can’t come close to a Sekiro with its presentation, it offers a lot of variety with its loot spiral and numerous different weapons.
For the developer of Team Ninja himself, Nioh 2 is the end of the series. A Nioh 3 is not planned. Instead, the studio plans to announce something new about Ninja Gaiden next. Should one ever return to the world of Nioh, then it could offer an open world in the style of Dark Souls.