After announcing Nioh back at the PlayStation Experience, Koei Tecmo have revealed that an alpha demo of this dark samurai action-RPG will be coming to PS4 from April 26th to May 5th. Developed under the guidance of Kou Shibusawa, Hisashi Koinuma and Team Ninja, Nioh has you tasked as William, a white haired samurai who has to fight through hordes of demons and mythological monsters alongside enemy ronin during the Sengoku Jidai period of Japanese history.

This alpha demo will give players a chance to play a single stage, with players carving their way through waves of grotesque mythological creatures, using both brutal samurai combat and arcane arts to combat the dark forces. Hopefully, Nioh will strike the balance between the fluid combat of the 3D Ninja Gaidens with the weight and power of the Souls series. Seeing as Nioh has the short hand name of ‘Samurai Souls’ round the VGU offices, we are hoping that this brooding action-RPG will strike the correct balance between flow and strength.

If you successfully complete the stage within the demo, you will gain access to the Mark of the Conqueror DLC when the full version of Nioh comes out sometime at the end of this year. No idea what this DLC will entail but I imagine it will be a samurai kabuto armour set with some cool looking katanas for the early game. I cannot wait to play the Nioh demo and we’ll no doubt hearing more about this samurai action game during E3, including a release date. With the creepy setting, it’d be fair to say it will be around October and make sure to check out the trailer below.