You can basically ignore stances (Rise of the Ronin was TN experimenting with making that not an option). Just pick the stance you like (usually medium) and MAYBE swap to heavy against oni if you feel like you need to. Conceptually it is basically one handing or two handing (or… half handing?) a weapon in a Souls game. You aren’t swapping mid fight and are more deciding as you approach an encounter. That said… Nioh 3 by all indications is gonna make that integral.

Burst counters are all about figuring out what moveset you want. I personally love yellow (?) yokai because I rush forward. Which is baller as fuck but ALSO means that even if I parry too soon I have good odds of intercepting the attack and getting the punish. Whereas other people prefer blue for blocking or red for attacking.

But yeah. The Niohs are HORRIBLE for tutorialization even beyond the boss design. TN have gotten a lot better with integrating tutorials into gameplay (especially in Stranger of Paradise and Rise of the Ronin) but they ALSO still insist on having a mandatory void mission that then just dumps all that info and more into you and mostly undoes the “Hey, that guy hasn’t seen you. Sneak up on him” training.

It took me up until the penultimate core boss in Nioh 1 to realize that I was an idiot for not using the special attacks. What went from hit and run with a katana became just holding r1+square to melt enemy HP with dual swords or doing massive ki damage with a katana or flying across the room with the kunai wit chain and so forth.

But once you figure out what parts of the game you can ignore and what matters? Oh there is nothing like that.