Yeah, that is the big downside of Nioh over the Souls games, going too heavy with the loot and the lack of world design or environmental storytelling. Individual encounters, ambushes, and shortcuts are designed well but the levels themselves make little sense. There is also a ridiculous number of one-off historical figures that appear for a single mission like they're important but you'll never see them again, and most cutscenes are so short that you have to read bios to understand anything that's going on. It's really all about the combat and customization, which is fine.
I'm fairly late in the game now, level 101, and just crafted several parts of a set, then tempered each piece several times until I got several strong modifiers, so the loot doesn't even entice me that much right now. You're generally better off crafting than finding. Like in Nioh 1, sometimes you'll find a grave of a player that had a complete set (or several in one area) so you can farm parts that way. I remember fighting like 20 in a row in Nioh 1 that all were wearing the Red Demon set, which wasn't even that good of a set so the revenants were easy kills.
