Ninja Gaiden II

Ninja Gaiden II. When I first saw the game, it looked promising and fun. The first Ninja Gaiden was a lot of fun to play and, what is perhaps, one of the most difficult games I've ever played.  Despite being really difficult, it was one of the most gorgeous looking, and best playing games I've ever seen on the Xbox. With that said, there's a lot  of anticipation and excitement for the sequel. For the most part, NInja Gaiden II is a good game, but it's has some issues that prevent it from being the awesome game that it could have been.

There's a story for Ninja Gaiden II, but like the first game, it doesn't really make any sense. If my mind serves me correctly, it involves this statue that's located in the Hayabusa village (that village never seems to get a break), is stolen by a group of fiends, led by Genshin and Elizabeta, to awaken a ancient evil (Sounds pretty stupid huh?). It's just an excuse to send Ryu Hayabusta, the hero from the first game, to different places around the world. While this may not be an issue for some gamers, it's stupid that the story isn't structured well and doesn't really give incentive to players that play  games for the story to find out what happened next. But, you do see a chick with big boobs in the game and a naked woman (just eye candy for some adolescent boys).

Then again, the reason to play this game is the action. Just like Ninja Gaiden, the action is fast, fluid, and smooth. It has been raised up a notch from the first game. The biggest addition, visually,  is dismemberment. Just slicing up body parts of your enemies is awesome to watch and watching blood splatter everywhere. One thing to consider, just because you sliced off their arms or legs, doesn't mean they're dead. The enemies will put up a fight and try to take you down.

The other change is the health system, which works differently than the last game. Health has two colours, red and blue. Blue represents you current health and red is permanent damage. If you can get out of the action, or finish a battle, your health will restore up to the red. Your health will restore completely when you save your game, which are more frequent now. The game also saves before a boss fight, so you don't have to worry about playing a section again before getting to the boss.

With that said, don't take that as being easy. This game is still difficult. There are two difficulty settings when you start off: Path of the Acolyte, and Path of the Warrior. The acolyte difficulty feels easier than it should be. Enemies are fairly easy to take down and boss battles can be beaten by using the same techniques over and over again. The warrior difficulty feels like the hard mode from the first Ninja Gaiden. The game is much more ruthless and, at a few points, really challenging. After you finish the game you'll unlock two more difficulties. However, the difficulty does feel unbalanced in a few areas, specifically in the middle section. That point the game becomes cheap, which the first game didn't do as much.

Another change is bosses. There are a lot of them now, and they vary from great to terrible. Some boss battles are fun to fight, such as in a arena. There are a few that are hard, and one that is cheap. That boss (SPOILER), after you take him down, he will explode and take you with him. There's one boss that you battle four times, which is repetitive and seems that the developers couldn't think of any other interesting end level boss fights. While more boss fights are great, and I'm all for it for the challenge, make the battles balanced.

In terms of presentation, the game looks good, but isn't much of an advancement from the first Ninja Gaiden. The character models still look impressive and dismember well. The animations are still sharp, but seem to skip once in a while. The blood, while good and excessive, is flat and static. This is most evident when you see a blood splatter on the edge of a wall or floor. It just sits there floating, that's not very impressive. The environments are varied from beautiful, to just downright ugly. The camera in the game has been changed in this game, and it isn't very good. The camera has a tendency to get stuck in places and focuses at the wrong places. This is most evident in tight corridors. Another unusual issue the frame rate, which tends to drop when there are a lot of enemies or effects going on. This wasn't an issue in the first game, so it sticks out here.

The audio is good, but nothing to write home about. The voice work is decent and comes with the choice of English and Japanese track. The music is decent and does a good job of getting you in the action. Sound effects if forceful and effective. The connection of blade to flesh just sounds so good, it scary.

Final Opinion: Now, with all that said, Ninja Gaiden II is a good game. But compared to it's competitor, Devil May Cry 4, this game is just harder. If you were a fan of the first game, you will have fun with this one. If you're new to the series, proceed with some caution.