*Nioh 3* 1.04.02 Is Live — Has the Ninja Build Finally Become Smooth to Play?

After 120 hours, having gone through all the side content and every hidden thing I could get my hands on, I always read patches for high-pressure action games like Nioh 3 very closely. On March 19, Team Ninja pushed the Ver 1.04.02 update to PlayStation 5 and Steam. It’s not a big patch, but the fixes are practical and clearly aimed at several issues players have been complaining about the most lately.

First, the fixes shared across both platforms: this update resolves an issue related to the Ninja-style combat skill “Stomp.” Specifically, after learning this skill, if you quickly press the jump button twice while sheathing your weapon or while drawing the Kusarigama, the jump action could be interrupted for no apparent reason. It looks like a minor bug, but in actual combat it’s extremely annoying—especially against high-pressure enemies. Once your rhythm gets broken, it feels like the system just ate a segment of a fully charged special gauge in a JRPG. It really hurts the feel of the controls.

On the combat system side, another key fix is that damage triggered during skill development was lower than expected. The official notes directly say, “Fixed an issue where damage during skill development activation was lower than expected,” which is good news for players who care about build completeness. At least judging from the patch notes, Team Ninja is correcting abnormal behavior rather than explicitly doing a full numerical rebalance. So if you’ve recently been testing damage for different builds, now would be a good time to verify your current gear setup again.

The Steam version also gets an extra fix this time, and I think it’s a meaningful one. Previously, under “Key Configuration (Keyboard & Mouse),” if “Combo Skill 1” or “Combo Skill 2” was assigned to a single key, the character would be unable to use the corresponding skill properly while airborne. Keyboard-and-mouse players already rely more heavily on customization in action games, so an issue like this directly affects control habits. Now that it’s been fixed, it at least shows the dev team is paying attention to PC feedback rather than focusing only on controller experience.

When it comes to farming, updates like this may not add new content, but they matter a lot for players who spend the long term grinding gear, farming affixes, and testing setups. After all, the fun of Nioh 3 has never been just about clearing the game, but about gradually polishing your combat skills, builds, and input chains until everything feels smooth—almost like filling out a compendium. With both the Ninja playstyle and keyboard-and-mouse experience getting attention, the community will most likely see a small wave of renewed build testing.

As for side missions, this update doesn’t mention any new content, nor does it explicitly refer to broader balance adjustments. So my advice is simple: if you’re already playing—especially if you mainly use Ninja builds, Kusarigama builds, or keyboard-and-mouse controls on Steam—you should update as soon as possible. And if you’ve been on the fence about jumping in, this patch at least shows that the developers are still actively addressing real gameplay issues, which is a fairly positive sign. The unfortunate part is that the official notes still don’t clarify whether the damage fix is purely a correction of abnormal behavior or whether it will indirectly affect judgments about build strength. We’ll have to wait for the player community to keep testing that in practice.

For someone like me who likes to pick apart details, 1.04.02 isn’t the kind of headline-grabbing major update that shakes everything up, but every fix in it genuinely affects how the game feels to play. In action games, the scariest thing isn’t difficulty—it’s when an input that should have come out just doesn’t. Now that Nioh 3 is continuing to smooth out these rough edges, the combat rhythm is at least getting closer again to the sharpness it was always supposed to have.