How to emote in Nioh 3

Nioh 3's controls are confusing to say the least, obscuring many of the cool things you can actually do. You're told how to emote during the tutorial, but that's likely a lot of hours and new button combos behind you.

Emotes, or gestures as they're called in Nioh 3, aren't just for communicating with other players or taking sweet photos. There are actually two types of yokai—Nurikabe and Mujina—that you can ward off using emotes. So here's what you need to do.

How to emote in Nioh 3

You can emote in Nioh 3 by pressing the right bumper and the start button on controller, or 'G' on keyboard. This will open the gesture window where you can pick from a bunch of different gestures (there are multiple pages, so no doubt an emote for every mood). Select your emote, and your character will bust a move.

If you're wondering why the emotes are colour-coded, that'll come in handy for dealing with Nurikabe yokai.

How to use emotes on Nurikabe and Mujina in Nioh 3

There are two types of yokai that you can deal with peacefully by using emotes, and those are the Nurikabe and Mujina.

Nurikabe are yokai pretending to be walls, often guarding treasure chests or hot springs, like the one in Ryotan Temple in the north of Iinoya. Get close enough, and you'll see their eyes open. You can whack them, provoking them into a fight. However, emotes are colour-coded—red, yellow, and blue—and any emote of the correct colour will cause the Nurikibe to disappear. This effectively means you have two guesses before you end up provoking the Nurikabe with the incorrect colour emote.

Mujina are yokai pretending to be chests, dropping all kinds of valuable loot when you either kill them or peacefully deal with them. Open a Mujina chest, and the yokai will pop out, copying your appearance and performing an emote. You need to perform the same emote back at it before it attacks.