So TecmoKoei released a new trailer on their Facebook page today. In it you get to see Momiji in action as well as the new stage in action. First thing I notice is damn it is WEIRD not seeing Momiji carrying her Naginata. Anyways her fighting style seems sort of interesting and they did find a way to include her double jump ability from the Gaiden games in her moveset as well.

As they say though THATS NOT ALL! At the end of the trailer Leon is basically confirmed to be returning. Personally, I don't understand why people kicked up so much dirt about him being out of DOA 5 because he was always just a slightly different version of Bayman. Hell, until DOA 4 he WAS a direct clone of Bayman. Anywho, also seen are new costumes (lei fang) so hopefully this includes all of the former DLC modes and costumes. Really makes me happy that I skipped out on buying all of the DLC costume packs for DOA 5. Still no word on a release date as of yet though. Anyone else remotely excited for this? I think I'm going to pick up this version on PS3.

Maybe it will get me back into DOA, doubt it. Momiji just looks like another Ninjutsu person. Not my style of play and I have 0 interest in Leon. That stage looks ripped straight from the part in chapter 1 of Ninja Gaiden 2 where you get the lunar staff.

@immortalsaiyan: You would be correct but to be more specificly Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 since that is where the Giant Buddha statue boss made its appearance.

One of these days I should play both sigma games, just to see all the changes. I played about a 3rd of Sigma 1 and did not care for it as much as black.

SOLD.

@immortalsaiyan: I think Sigma 1 is okay although they added a bunch of sort of unnecessary filler like adding a section going through the burning house then fighting Doku in the 2nd stage. Although I would say I think Sigma 2 is actually the better version of Ninja Gaiden 2 since the Xbox 360 game had quite a few issues. They took out a lot of the annoying things in NGS2 like the whole underground tunnel part with the worm. Overall I think its a better playing and running game even if they did for whatever reason take the gore out which is stupid.

I do not care about the DLC costumes so for me to get rid of my regular ass-DOA5 there needs to be something more meaningfull than just 2 characters and a stage, Momiji looks cool but I don't care about Leon as the OP said he's just a copy of Bayman and even if they made him different still is a meh. I enjoyed the game but I don't see the need for this new version.

@angeln7: There are new modes as well. Yet to be confirmed WHAT those new modes are but they are apparently confirmed as a feature.

NG2 has it`s share of questionable parts and poor boss design. Please tell me the parts in Venice and the swamp with the jellyfish are gone.

@immortalsaiyan: Those parts aren't gone but I do believe If I remember right that they did take the jelly fish out of the game entirely. So they aren't nearly as tedious and awful as the original game.

So not just the 'touch' modes from the Vita version? I could see some interesting online modes but I don't know this is not Super Street Fighter IV or UMvC3 but I'll wait and see what they announce.

@angeln7: No clue. They did say all the shit from the Vita version was going to be in but the wording at least on their face book page seemed to hint at further reveals. We'll see I guess.

That is a relief. They slowed the pace to a crawl. Are the bosses still bad? Namely the water dragon and and electric train snake?

@immortalsaiyan: Water Dragon fight has totally changed mostly because you have infinite projectiles now you don't have to go on the water anymore and just shoot arrows at it. The weird metal fish snake thing is still largely unchanged although again you do have infinite arrows so that changes the complexion of many of the fights slightly anyways.

Can we all collectively agree that jiggle physics are juvenile and unnecessary? Are we at that point yet?

@immortalsaiyan: NGS2 is a pretty fun game but it is definitely still a slog since it is pretty much nothing but an enormous amount of combat with few platforming puzzles or anything else of particular interest in general. Once you're good at bosses you'll beat them in about 10 seconds, but you'll have to fight through hundreds and hundreds of enemies between some of them. Due to the "Ultimate Ninja" co-op missions (can only be won via exploiting an invincible animation bug) it's one of the hardest platinum trophies to get alongside Wipeout HD, Vanquish, and Star Ocean 4.

@ravenlight:

What the hell is the point of DoA in the absence of jiggle physics?

No Izuna drop? Boooooo

Despite it's clear issues with design and pacing I still really like Ninja Gaiden 2. It's a shadow of Ninja Gaiden Black but the core combat design is still bar none. The act of fighting is such a blast, It becomes an issue whenever the games tries to deviate from what it does right.

@immortalsaiyan: Well, Bayonetta is better if less challenging (except the bosses which as mentioned are ridiculously easy if you're good at the game), but yes it is fun to play through in large part due to the combat. I do recall the original Ninja Gaiden having some platforming/exploration sections that broke up the monotony, NGS2 has at one part literally one bigass hallway with 300 enemies and the best way to kill them is to spam the same Ultimate techniques (Scythe or Two Handed Sword) over and over and over until you're down to just a few enemies (using the pickups to instant ultimate after the first, intro into ultimate while landing a jump and that speeds up the animation further); diverging from this strategy on harder difficulties will almost certainly get you killed. In fact the only particularly hard part of the game is the first few levels since you don't have any particularly good weapons yet and the optional chapters since you have to play with a gimp jiggle physics Ryu of one kind or another pretty much; except Rachel who kicks ass and plays slightly different.

Ninja Gaiden Black > Everything Bayonetta is good but its still not NGB.

Heck yeah, and I really, really like Bayonetta. That paragraph there is how I beat Master Ninja mode. Chaining the Lunar Staff's 360 UT is the best strategy. May not be exciting, which is why I prefer Mentor mode but you gotta do what you gotta do. In a way I enjoy exploiting game design like that. The odds are stacked so high against you on that mode, I had no issue cheesing the game right back.

@immortalsaiyan: I don't really think of it as cheesing anything. I-frame moves have always been a big part of combat. Thing is it still takes skill to fight even with that. Do the wrong move at the wrong time and the animation recovery time is going to bite you in the ass. I'm with you though, nothing more amazing then being in a room full of Incendiary shuriken spamming asshole ninjas and coming out on the other side unscathed. Like everything else in Ninja Gaiden its all about timing.

I'm with you on that. I don't feel bad about it, it's part of the game and is thus totally fair game to use. I enjoyed it in fact, otherwise I never would of done it. I used cheesing not as an insult towards that style of play. Playing on Master ninja, as you said is all about using iframes at the right moments. Especially considering how many incendiary shurikens are always flying at you, and a couple of those stuck you ya can spell death.

Could be good I guess? Somewhat hyped for this game but will probably get it on sale like the last DoA title.

I haven't played a DOA game in so long, I think my last heavy go at it was on the PlayStation. I'm kind of into Fighting games at the moment and 5 looks so solid I am going to have to give this a shot.

@immortalsaiyan: Again that's the big issue, it basically derides an otherwise excellent combat system into a limited moveset; Bayonetta (or DMC for that matter) does not have this problem; something like God of War does (and GoW 2 is a much better game than any modern Ninja Gaiden even if the combat is slightly worse; the blandness of environments and mediocrity of boss battles seals that one). This is a big reason why I feel the Vanquish platinum is still much more difficult (and objectively is on an individual player level), the agency of the player and his ability to react and adapt using dozens of different approaches is where the challenge is, once it becomes doing the same thing over and over you lose everything and the game becomes extremely monotonous (again, problem with GoW games as well).

In Bayonetta fighting Grace and Glory on harder difficulties is always a challenge, the element of timing is extremely precise but never feels strictly unfair, the process of learning and adapting to each of the bosses is a long and deliberate one; and while there is a mechanic that makes it more accessible/fun it is still quite possible to do the entire game without activating it in a skillful fashion. Unlike DMC none of this feels particularly haphazard or badly tuned either, it plays precisely as you want it to. In NGS2 it is just have good timing on your approach hits and adjust off the swing, you can kill bosses in 3-4 combos with the double swords so you only have to do it a few times; whatever the forward analog stick dodge is called is your primary; and it works on damn near every boss fight. Did you really feel accomplished having used ultimate techniques several thousand times over the past 30ish hours, or just a slave to monotony?

Hopefully the PS3 version won't run like ass this time.

@fredchuckdave: God of War better than Ninja Gaiden? What a good joke. I laughed. Really.

We should just skip the jiggle physics until we can simulate the jiggle for all flesh. I wanna see jowls shake and shock waves going through muscles when dudes get punched. If they've got all that stuff going, then I think they'll have earned the right to use the tech for breasts. After all, it would be a little odd if the only part of the person not affected by inertia was their chest.

I assume he meant Ninja Gaiden 2 and 3 by the modern Ninja Gaiden comment. Gow of war 2 is certainly better than NG3 and is a better overall designed game than 2. That said I think the combat in NG2 is significantly better than any GoW game. Even how I played the game on master ninja mode is more engaging and rewarding than any GoW combat. FredChuckdave, I did feel accomplished in playing the game that way. It is not like I nonstop just did UT's. You have to pick your spots and there are other useful moves such as XXY with the lunar staff, guillotine throw and anything that leads into a quick Izuna Drop, For example the diving attack with the claws. It reminded me of playing fighting games where people figure out the best characters and strategy and stick to those. I was playing optimally, which I found satisfying.

GoW 2 actually has just as much depth as the original NG: http://www.gamefaqs.com/ps2/932295-god-of-war-ii/faqs/47831; Zeus is a much better fight than anything in any Ninja Gaiden game period (and really only outclassed by the Vergil fights in DMC3 overall), the first level is the best first level in any action game ever. Yes people play GoW spamming plume of prometheus the entire time, but not only is that the choice of the player it's also not even the best way to play the game. In the case of NG you've got literally one way of playing harder difficulties and it is the best way of playing unilaterally. Maybe if Sony made a billion GoW 2 remakes that kept adding new weapons people would remember it more fondly instead of insulting them for lack of creativity (because making the same game 5 times is the grandest of achievements as proven by CoD).

Bayonetta blows both of these games out of the water from a combat perspective (cinematic pacing and balanced difficulty curve still in GoW 2's favor); NG was a good game in 2004, God of War 2 was a good game in 2007, and Bayonetta is a good game today. While Arkham City/Asylum have even better combat systems they sort of play differently and are a different (vastly superior) genre with a semi-serious storyline and something like Dark Souls is another near perfect combat system that moves a bit slower but you're also in much more danger at all times. Make no mistake Character-Action games are a fun, extremely repetitive genre but they haven't really improved that much from game to game and the only one I'd recommend on a wide scale is Bayonetta. Some of the much maligned Dynasty/Samurai/etc Warriors games have more depth on the hardest difficulties than NGS2 does.

More DOA. So I'm in.

@fredchuckdave: Keep on trollin'