Positives:
• Soul cores. Might feel restrictive at first but the cap increases as you progress through the game - you can have three major Soul Cores at once eventually, experimenting with different combinations can be lots of fun.
• Burst counters, probably my favorite addition in Nioh 2. Basically Perilous Attacks from Sekiro but here you can actually parry them.
• Character creator that can actually go pretty in-depth and can be utilized whenever you want.
• The combat, it's more Nioh 1 but more fluid. Souls combat is still superior but Nioh games provide the kind of fast paced combat that you can only find in Bloodborne or Sekiro.
• The transmog system. It's great to find gear that's better than your old gear and being able to make it look however you want. If only Fromsoft gave a crap about player feedback.

Mixed:
• The different fighting stances are just there for flashy combos or for extremely advanced/ specialized gameplay, if you're like most players you'll find one stance that works best for your weapon of choice and stick to it.
• The narrative, dialogues are once again awful.
• Some standouts (for better or for worse) aside, the majority of the bosses are forgettable.
• It's the same for the enemies as it is for the bosses. Some cool designs and some genuinely atrocious enemies that might just make you pull your hair out.
• The power scaling/ balancing feel all over the place sometimes, different NPCs and bosses will literally one shot you with a single attack every now and then, at full health, when their regular attacks merely tickled your taint or something. So random.
• The balancing of weapons is inconsistent. Some weapons are simply more viable than others. Dual sword builds can literally melt bosses in a matter of seconds in the highest difficulties. Then you have stuff like hatchets which are so bad.

Negatives:
• Level/ world design, it is once again mission based and lame. The level designers tried with shortcuts and stuff but they are ultimately pointless. The point of a shortcut is to make any future visits more convenient and rewarding - wherever there is a shortcut that will take you back to a shrine, closeby will be a brand new shrine anyway. Maybe shortcuts are for when you replay missions, then? Well, as soon as you are done with missions, all the shortcuts you unlocked in said missions will be reset. I would understand if they got reset for the different difficulties/ NG+ cycles, but even for replays in the same difficulty? Incredibly lame.
• The loot with 100s of different stats and modifiers; RNG Forging & Tempering, Familiarity, Proficiency, Stats, Set Bonuses, +++, Remodeling, Soul Matching, Stone Penances, Soul Core fusions and more...
• Teahouse bonuses, Smithy Patronages, Clan bonuses, Title bonuses and more just add to the massive pile of confusion that is stat building in this game. Such overwhelming bloat.
• The weapon leveling system is tied to the damage you do. Depending on if you mess up your build or if you go for a weapon that is not supposed to hit hard, leveling up will be inconsistent.
• The OST is not only forgettable but this time around, it is seemingly annoying and/ or buggy. Some stages have these OSTs that when they go off, they get incredibly loud and they don't stop until you finish the mission. No such thing as out of combat music/ ambiance.
• The game seems to lose inputs every now and then, particularly with healing and dodging.
• Enemy telegraphing can range from extremely sus to non-existent sometimes.

All in all, I enjoyed Nioh 2 more than the first game, mainly due to the refined combat and the positive additions I mentioned above. With that said, it is more Nioh 1... If you loved N1, get the Complete Edition of N2 at full price, it will be worth it for you. If you are like me and found Nioh 1 to be "just ok" and play these games in the absence of From Software releases, get it on sale. If you are the kind of person that plays Souls and Soulslike games in spite of their combat; because of the amazing worlds, atmosphere, art, lore and OSTs, you should steer clear of Nioh - the gameplay is even more frustrating than your average Souls game and Nioh games don't have any of the other strengths I mentioned to make up for it.

The only reason this game didn't get the GOTY is that it's the best game of all time, not a single year.

The first souls-like I've enjoyed, and the first I've finished. Great for noobs to the genre; "only" died 326 times in 60 hours :D