New Ni-Oh gameplay video blends Dark Souls, Onimusha and Ninja Gaiden

There was a time when Team Ninja was considered the premiere developer of third-person action games. Its been 12 years since Ninja Gaiden was released for Xbox 360 and PS3, and the studio hasn't delivered anything as essential since.

However, its next game, Ni-Oh, looks like its shaping up to be something special. The game has been in development since 2004, but re-appeared in 2015, revealing itself to be a mix of Dark Souls and Capcom's Onimusha, with some obvious inspirations also taken from the studio's own Ninja Gaiden titles.

New gameplay was shown behind-closed-doors at Tokyo Games Show 2015, and now a video of that has appeared online. Check it out below.

What's striking about Ni-Oh is the pace of the game, which is much slower than Team Ninja's titles generally are. Combat looks to be based more around methodical, strategic attacks, as opposed to twitch-based combos.

Interestingly, the main character has multiple stances, indicating there will be a skill-based component to defense. This is different from Dark Souls, in which simply holding a shield up gets the job done.

There are other moments in the gameplay demo that evoke Dark Souls too, one of which is the red sword plunged into the ground. The protagonist uses it to check skills and equipment. It looks very much like the bonfires in From Software's games.

Ni-Oh started as a PlayStation 3 title, but is now being developed for the PlayStation 4. Neither Team Ninja nor its parent company, Koei Tecmo, have announced a release date for it yet.