During an interview that another publication had with Nioh director, Yosuke Hayashi, fans looking for PvP in the upcoming hack-and-slash game will find just that after launch. However the feature set to join the actual game is said by Hayashi to be free, which is pretty cool seeing how it has no DLC attached to it trying to scam people. Nioh is set to release for PS4 on February 9th.

Looking over to publication site Gamereactor Espana, folks will find that the brutal cousin of Dark Souls, Nioh, will release as intended but will later gain a pretty big feature that will bring players from around the world together through a PvP mode. This will tack on another mode if you don’t wish to battle to the death against deadly and competent foes across feudal Japan in Nioh’s story mode.

You can read the announcement that Yosuke Hayashi made during the interview:

“We plan to offer a player-versus-player mode for free in the near future following launch”.

The part that got me most excited over this announcement is that the PvP update is coming to the game for free. I’m not sure if the update will debut as an optional download after launch, or if it will be a mandatory download? However it goes hopefully the mode will bring a strategic set of weapons and skill to the table and won’t feel rushed on release.

In addition to the online play this brings up an important question, can you guess? Something that Maximilian Dood brings up a lot in his videos that helps in a fighting game: good netcode.

Yes, Nioh can have PvP but if the netcode sucks, no matter how skilled of a player you are, you’ll always lose out to non-skilled players due to poor coding. This will result in people giving false information about weapons and what is good based on poor netcode and not based on skill and precision.

I think it’s important when Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja release Nioh and later add the PvP mode shortly after launch that the netcode is on par with the technique that the game calls for, or else the feature/mode could go sour after playing a few rounds.

Lastly, the interview also shines light on DLC and the season pass, which you can read below.

“There is also a season pass available for pre-order on the PlayStation Store that will add three large downloadable contents in short term after the game is released.”

Nioh is set to debut for PS4 on February 7th in North America, February 8th in Europe, and February 9th in Japan. If you wish to read the full interview that the publication posted you can head on over to Gamereactor Espana.