most battles seem to come down to who connects an attack first and can keep the other guy stunlocked for the duration of the combo. the bigger enemies and yokai seem to have an advantage since they are mostly or entirely immune to stunlock. i've died a number of times to yokai and the large humans while i was at full or mostly full health because i took one hit and was stunlocked for the followup attack(s), which is kind of like being one-shotted. that may be an armor thing. i haven't experimented with a heavy armor build. trying to play a stick and move style with the spear is not very effective since the range is kind of bad and there are only a few thrust attacks. nioh seems to want the player get in and pull off a quick combo before a ki-replenshing dash or stance change. i may respec to a build favoring the faster weapons

i'm vacillating between liking and not liking this game. the combo system is fairly deep but the enemy attack patterns are pretty shallow. i'm not sold on the loot aspect. it feels tacked on and almost like an excuse to pad the length of the experience by incentivizing players to grind away on the sub-missions. but it does play really well and it's very unique