A mixture of legitimately hard and infuriatingly cheap.
Many gamers complain that games today are too easy. They feel that a game should last longer and be more of a challenge, especially for $60. Team Ninja must have heard this, since Ninja Gaiden II, their latest game, is the hardest action game made since Devil May Cry 3: Dante’s Awakening. However, the game’s frustratingly hard difficulty has roots in both legitimately demanding situations and cheap technicalities that the development team did not fix.
Ninja Gaiden II starts with Sonia, a promiscuously dressed CIA agent, visiting Muramasa in his shop in a near future version of Tokyo. The Black Spider Clan quickly captures Sonia, and Ryu Hayabusa must rescue her. However, he soon finds himself in a race against time to stop the restoration of the Archfiend at the hands of the four Greater Fiends. While this may sound like a clichéd “save the princess, defeat the baddy” story, this is not the case; Ryu rescues Sonia before the halfway mark of the game. Instead, Ninja Gaiden II resembles a typical Hollywood ninja/action movie, especially in the beginning. Within the first few levels, you will see a “duel of honor” between two ninjas (one of them being Ryu’s dad) and the protagonist slashing demons in the streets of New York City. However, there are enough flaws with the story to label it “adequate at best” easily. For example, the settings in Ninja Gaiden II are very disconnected; Ryu Hayabusa can leap from Rome to Mount Fuji without any explanation for how he got between the two locations. And while the small number of cutscenes is appreciated, it comes at a much worse cost: there is a lot of reading to be done in this game. Each chapter begins with a small introductory paragraph, and there are four or five scrolls throughout each level with collectively enough text to fill an entire game manual.
Furthermore, Ninja Gaiden II contains very few references to the previous Ninja Gaiden games. Yea, it is supposed to be a prequel to the original NES games, but it still feels very disconnected from the Nintendo games. Ryu’s dad is now called Joe and looks more samurai than ninja; Irene, Jaquio, and the BIO-NOIDS are nowhere to be found; and the closest thing to an old school reference may be the fact that the final level, without spoiling anything, bears an uncanny resemblance to the inside of the Great Northern Crater from Final Fantasy VII. In the end, though, none of this detracts from the game too much, since action games are not known for their stories. In games like Ninja Gaiden II, the story is meant to give the player a reason to continue slicing enemies in half, and that is exactly what Ninja Gaiden II does; nothing more, nothing less.
Instead, gamers enjoy games like this for their gameplay and their combat systems. Fortunately, Ninja Gaiden II pulls this off fantastically. Controlling Ryu as he slashes through hoards of demons is easy, requires skill, and most importantly, feels fun and satisfying. You have a variety of weapons to choose from, including a bow and arrow, tonfas, ninja claws, a windmill shuriken, and chain sickles. However, the only area where choice will matter is in projectile weapons. There are exploding shurikens for quick kills, a bow and arrow for more precise shots, a windmill shuriken for Mortal Kombat-esque decapitations, and regular shurikens for when you have lost all your ammo for the other ones. You will often find yourself switching between these weapons for the right scenarios, which is more than can be said of melee weapons. Most of them have the same effects and moves, and the only reason to choose a different weapon is out of preference.
Once you actually start fighting, two things will come to mind: “This is fun”, and “This is hard”. Gamers have always known the Ninja Gaiden series for being incredibly difficult and the latest installment is no different. Even the easiest difficulty can be a challenging ordeal. Sure, battling a single non-boss enemy is easy, but these moments are rare, and in crowded skirmishes, you MUST know what is going on around you at all times in order to survive. The difficulty is not like Ghosts ‘N Goblins, where a plethora of bad design choices made it near impossible to get through a level without getting a Game Over; instead, killing an enemy actually feels rewarding and leaves you with a sense of accomplishment. That is not to say the game is not cheap, however. The camera will often lead to some very cheap deaths from off screen enemies, and some bosses can drain half your life within the first second of battle. You can control the camera, but this does not mean it will go to a good angle when you need it to. Level design can also be a bit annoying at times, since the entrance to the next area can sometimes be unclear. However, the countless groups of enemies often act as a guide for the level, making the game hard rather than cheap.
Like the difficulty, Ninja Gaiden II’s graphics are a mixed package. On a technical level, it looks a lot like a shiny Xbox game; nothing seems to jump out as next-gen. However, this is more a problem with the industry in general, especially with games that are sequels to last-gen games. Still, the game does have several problems of its own, like animation problems and, most noticeably, blood problems. The game treats blood as a texture, and the lack of edge detection makes this very clear. If blood only partially covers a wall, it will not wrap around the edges or only cover the wall up to its edges. Instead, it will hang out in space like a very stiff poster. Sometimes, while looking at the right angle, you can see the blood hanging in mid-air, not attached to the wall in any way. Conker’s Bad Fur Day achieved multi-layered textures on MUCH lower-end technology, so why was Team Ninja unable to do this with Ninja Gaiden II? Aside from the blood problems, Ninja Gaiden II is a great looking game (according to the industry’s standards).
Of all the games to come out in 2008, Ninja Gaiden II is not only one of the hardest, but also one of the most solid. Whether or not a hard game is a good thing is subjective. Casual gamers who have not played anything beyond Brain Age or Bejeweled will not like it enough to play past the second chapter, but gamers looking for a game that feels rewarding will definitely find it in Ninja Gaiden II.
