Good game but not worth full price.
Everyone likes a challenge, everyone likes ninjas and I’d imagine everyone would like scantily clad ladies. So you’d imagine Ninja Gaiden 2 would be a great game because it has all of these in large amounts but with a boring story, cheap bosses and a bad camera Ninja Gaiden 2 is a game that - for full price - can stay in the shadows.
Playing as expert ninja Ryu Hayabusa is a blast at the best of times. The simple joy of fighting multiple evil ninja footmen can’t be ignored especially when you have such a diverse selection of weapons. From swords to scythes all weapons have a unique feel and it won’t be too long before the player will get a feel for a few they like and stick to them. Weapons can also be upgraded to unlock new combos for them. Attacking with these weapons comes in two varieties; quick attack and strong attacks. Mixing these up can create a devastating torrent of pain that’ll turn your enemy from eager foe to bloody stump. In the process of turning them into bloody stumps it’ll be more than likely find that one of their limbs will of been chopped off. It’s at this time Ryu can finish them with a press of the Y button and then the game will take over and the camera will get closer for Ryu to pull a bloody, visceral kill. Each weapon has a few but after a while you’ll notice them recycling again and again which is undoubtedly inevitable but for a game that focus’s so much on the action you’d expect more than you get. These finishers aren’t the only time the game takes control away from the player, by holding down Y Ryu will charge a powerful attack and once it’s powerful enough he’ll unleash it on the enemy killing them, This shows a brutal scene of Ryu ripping apart his enemies. The charging will happen faster when Ryu absorbs orbs (that fly to him) from dead enemies. The idea is you shoot from one enemy to another killing them with ease the only problem is that all your doing is holding Y and choosing a direction to charge in and the game rewards this by giving you more currency.
Ryu has other tricks up his sleeve such as ranged attacks. You start off with only shurikens but that expands to explosive shurikens as well as an underwater gatling gun and a bow however these last two have quite clumsy controls. The gatling gun expects you to continually press fire (why would I need to do this if it’s a gatling gun?) and the bow takes too long to switch from aiming mode to moving mode meaning that enemies may get a hit on you due to the change but neither of these will slow you down a bunch. Ryu also has ninja magic (called Ninpo) which will give him invincibility while he casts it. These are good if you’re surrounded or in another tight spot.
Boss battles can be some of the best or most frustrating moments in Ninja Gaiden. At the best of times you’ll fight a challenging opponent and you’ll feel like a champ for overcoming them. At the worst of times you fight them again and again and again while they grab you and take off a large proportion of you’re life bar with one throw or bash you to high heaven with a bunch of attacks. This is a simple fact of playing Ninja Gaiden and one you’ll have to accept. Still one thing you shouldn’t have to accept is fighting bosses multiple times. While it isn’t quite DMC4 bad it’s still recycled content that I’m sure they could replace with other encounters if they wanted to.
At this point you may wonder what makes Ryu a ninja instead of just a regular fighter and the answer is wall running of course! Because who wants to spend all their time just fighting demons when there are walls to be ran? Me that’s who! These platforming sections are unnecessary and boring but rarely frustrating. The game also does a good job of teaching you how to do these maneuvers one after another, although they name them in such a way that when you come to a point when you see a scroll on the ground that basically says “Do the Flying bird flip!” You won’t remember what it’s talking about whereas if it called them something simple like wall jump you’d know exactly what it’s talking about.
The story is weak but for an engine to move the demon hunt from to it does well. The characters don’t really feel well defined or interesting and are again a vehicle for the game to have a hero and boss battles. The story’s quality is really shown in the poor dialogue and voice acting. However Ninja Gaiden’s sounds effects are great and really draw you into the world.
Ninja Gaiden is a fun game if you can get over the difficulty and really get into the combat. This game isn’t worth full price and I would find it hard to want shell out even half that price if I got the chance although if you’re into action games like DMC you should give this a whirl at some point but for those who aren’t sure about the genre or this game in particular it’s definitely worth at least a rent.
