Ninja Gaiden Series

[Spark Of Spirit]

Ninja Gaiden 1 is coming to the 3DS VC either this week or next and I'm contemplating it simply for the save state feature and portability. Save states are usually a good way for me to practice certain sequences over and over (and put checkpoints where the game SHOULD have them) and being able to play Ninja Gaiden on the go is a very tempting proposition.

Though I do wish Tecmo would release Ninja Gaiden Shadow.

[Rynnec]

Speaking of Ninja Gaiden, have you tried the 2nd one yet?

No, not yet, though after reading your post, I'll try it out ASAP (Admittedly, that comparison video posted in this thread awhile back turned me off the Sigma version of II quite a bit). Honestly, I probably should've picked up Sigma II regardless since Sigma I's hard mode is kicking my ass.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

You know, for anyone playing the old-school NES Ninja Gaiden games today, it probably might not be apparent of what was so special about them, and admittedly a lot of their charm comes from them being great games for their time (and still good games today, but clearly not having aged well in some aspects, at least). That said, having at least tried several classic NES games over the years, I can really appreciate what Ninja Gaiden brought to the table. Most notably, I tried playing the original Castlevania on the NES recently, and while I enjoyed what I played of it (minus the Medusa Heads), I found that it was frustrating for some reasons that seem like they would have been simple to fix and would have made the game so much more enjoyable as a whole. My main complaint is not being able to control your jumps in mid-air. You'd really have to play it to understand, but that makes platforming in the game feel REALLY constrained. The thing is, this was kind of a norm for a lot of games at the time, and stuff like Mario were just the exception. Castlevania is also a much slower-paced platformer and does pull quite a bit more of the cheap difficulty tricks that old-school games were notorious for, even though you could still say that the game is mostly fair in terms of getting through stages without dying. The reason I mention this, though, is because Ninja Gaiden was compared a lot to Castlevania in its day, which seems strange at first but if you look at both games NG clearly took a lot of influence from the former. The whole HUD layout was ripped straight from Castlevania, including the boss health bar being present under your character's health bare, and having special items that are activated by pressing "up" and the attack button and having limited ammo for those items. Ninja Gaiden, however, is far more fun to play IMO, and that's thanks to much better controls. Ryu can change the direction of his jump in mid-air, and the game is faster-paced making Ryu's movements feel far more responsive than Simon Belmont's. The platforming itself also feels a bit more creative for the time, IMO, with Ryu having to overcome certain obstacles by utilizing his unique ninja skills such as sticking to walls and hanging off/shimmying along poles (which was an element more prominent in NG3 on the NES). I also like that all enemies aside from bosses died in just 1 hit, making for a much smoother and more consistent experience.

Now, that isn't meant to trash Castlevania or any other classic 2D side-scrollers of the time, but I really do appreciate how many improvements and refinements that classic Ninja Gaiden games brought to the table for the genre during that era of gaming. Of course, Ninja Gaiden still had some cheap moments and was guilty of also emulating some of the bad aspects of those games that it took clear influence from, such as being knocked way back every time you got hit and having a cheap enemy-type in the form of the birds, but it was still a much faster and more responsive game for its time, while still keeping a lot of fair challenge in the mix, and I really respect that element of the NG games.

[Spark Of Spirit]

If it means anything I'll definitely get Ninja Gaiden III when it comes out on the eshop VC.

With save states, the game would be far less frustrating since I would use them at the start of every level. (In other words, no more limited continue annoyances)

I mean there are very few games I would double dip for to have portable, but I think the 2D NG games would be some of them.

[Rynnec]

Just beat the first level of Razor's Edge. For reference, I decided to play the vanilla NG3 demo beforehand just to compare the two. That game was somehow worse than I remembered. Razor's Edge is a vast improvement, but that's really not saying much.

First off, the game still seems to have the same (godawful) story and cutscenes, fortunately it's easier to skip them. And right off the bat you notice the first gameplay improvement: soldiers no longer beg for their lives like pussies, and the segment where Ryu kills that defenseless soldier has been comlpletely removed. Enemies are also more aggressive and more NG-like, nothing like the first two games mind you, as you can still get by with mashing the Y button, but you'll actually have to be somewhat concious of when you strike (read:you actually have to use the block and dodge mechanics on a regular basis). Unfortunately, essence is still absent from the game, which makes certain bosses tougher than they really need to be, the Spider-Tank boss for example was excessively difficult because of this. You still defeat the boss with the same method, but it's much more aggressive with frequent damage-dealing missle attacks that take out a chunk of your (small) health, in a regular Ninja Gaiden game you'd get essence everytime you destroy one of its legs, but here the ONLY way to heal mid-combat is via Ninpo, this also makes charge attacks (which have been brought back) a liability during bosses as well. I was still able to defeat the boss by studying its attack pattern, but even that was more of a pain than it needed to be since the camera was a bit too close to the action (more on that in a bit). The healing thing was probably to balance out that you get fully healed after each combat section, but it's gonna be a love it or hate it thing.

Speaking of the camera, yeah that's a bit more irritating here than in Sigma. You can still kinda control it, but ony at preset angle's with the shoulder button. Sometimes the camera can be a bit too close to the action for comfort, which is a problem for when a lot of shit happens at once like the afformented Spider-Tank fight, the Regent fight also suffered a bit from this, but not enough to take away the fun challenge of the boss (I died a lot against that guy). Ninpo, while vastly improved, feels rather lazy due to them just reusing ones from the previous games. I actually kind of liked the concept of a Ninpo in the form of a Fire Dragon in the original NG3, I think they should've just taken that basic concept, but treat it the same way Ninpo is normally treated, the other elements would get their own animal's too (Water could be a Shark, Wind can be a Bird, Thunder a Tiger, Ice a Wolf, etc.)  that all do their own unique thing, that would've made Ninpo a bit more unique in this game, and just as strategic yet optional as it was in previous games.

On the plus side, attacks, abilites, ninpo, etc. are now purchased and upgraded (via Karma). You can now upgrade them whenever you want, so long as you're not in the middle of combat. As expected, weapons also return (and are similarly upgradeable), I got the Talon's early on (the Falcon give them to you). Segments where you're forced to walk slowly as you chat with that one CO chick ala No More Heroes are completely removed, Steel-on-bone is much less frequent, and auto-UT's are no longer auto.

As far as first impressions go, this is at least a somewhat decent Hack'n Slash. Not quite as refined as 1/Black/Sigma, and far inferior to Metal Gear Rising. I'd say it's about on par with DmC in terms of overall fun.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Thanks for your input on the game. It sounds like what I expected. Despite Team Ninja realizing their mistakes and doing everything in their power to make this game into a proper NG sequel, it just had such a lackluster core that the best they could really do was patch the game up instead of fixing it properly. Even if they improve the enemies, challenge, and content of the game, it doesn't change the extremely bland levels that are nothing more than just arenas linked by hallways and the occasional scripted set-piece moments where all you're really doing is tediously fighting the same waves of enemies over and over again or pulling the trigger buttons to Kunai climb over and over again. I am however glad to here that needlessly slowing Ryu down during those radio segments where he's chatting with Mizuki or Ishigami are completely removed. Its stupid that Ryu would need to slow his ass down just to talk. Team Ninja was literally just ripping that element straight from most modern TPS games.

One question I do have for you that you didn't mention, though, is how is the slowdown in this game? It was already pretty atrocious in NG3, but I've heard some people say that its even worse in this game, whereas others say that its basically the same as before, and only a few people have said that its improved (but even in that case they note that its only a slight improvement). How much slowdown did you encounter while playing this game?

Honestly, though, I really hope that Team Ninja goes back and re-evaluates just why the hell Ninja Gaiden 1/Black/Sigma was such a huge success in the first place. I mean, its the highest rated game that they've EVER made for crying out loud, and if you go onto Game Rankings its aggregate review scores rank it as one of the top 50 greatest games of all time. Yet for whatever reason, Team Ninja seems to be trying everything in their power to push the series away from that direction and bog it down with baffling design choices which just make no sense.

I think I do recall Hayashi once saying that they make games with a Japanese mentality for Japanese gamers, but if that's the case then there is the clear-cut problem. Despite being a Japanese developer, Team Ninja's games have NEVER been successful in Japan, except for maybe the first couple of DOA games that were released in arcades at the time. A majority of the revenue for their games have come from North America, as there is a lot of fan support for their games from the west. Sometimes you just have to realize how your core fan-base is and market to them. This was true of series like Resident Evil and DMC, for example, which were always far more popular in the west than they were in Japan (though "Biohazard" is still fairly popular in Japan from what I can understand). Itagaki knew this and thus catered to the preferences of his core audience with his games. Hayashi seems to be obnoxiously snubbing this idea and running the NG series into the ground with his logic.

[Foggle]

Sounds like a good $20 buy, like DmC.

Also, I'm pretty sure Hayashi said that Team Ninja Dog was trying to appeal more to westerners with NG3, and that's why it was bad. (What a great excuse, amirite?)

[Rynnec]

or pulling the trigger buttons to Kunai climb over and over again.

That's something I forgot to mention actually. Kunai climbing seems to be reduced, it's still there, but just in smaller doses.

One question I do have for you that you didn't mention, though, is how is the slowdown in this game? It was already pretty atrocious in NG3, but I've heard some people say that its even worse in this game, whereas others say that its basically the same as before, and only a few people have said that its improved (but even in that case they note that its only a slight improvement). How much slowdown did you encounter while playing this game?

That's another thing I forgot to mention. There is a bit of slow down. I don't remember when they happened, but it's there, and it's very annoying.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I find it absolutely hilarious that Ninja Gaiden Black on the original XBOX had no slow-down problems whatsoever. Then we got the Sigma version of the game, and while I encountered no slowdown in the parts of it that I played, myself, I've heard some people say its there, but even the ones that do say its there say that its pretty rare so its hardly worth nothing, really. Then we got NG2 and that game was clearly rushed and had some significant slowdown, but it never happened that frequently and it really only occurred at the parts of the game where too many enemies appeared on screen at once, but most of that stuff was patched so now the game hardly has any slowdown issues. Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 had no slowdown either but it significantly reduced the enemy count so that kind of explains why. I'd actually be fine with this if the enemies were as agile as they were in NGB/S, but they are only moderately tweaked to be a bit tougher than their counterparts from the original version of the game.

After all of this, we got NG3, a game that's coming out close to the end of this generation's life-cycle, so you know that the developers have had plenty of experience working on these consoles by now and have no excuses for bugs and whatnot. Yet this NG3 had the most slowdown of any NG game to date, and it didn't have anymore enemies on screen at one time than NG2 typically had and could handle, and on top of that it didn't even have dismemberment animations and graphics to account for, but instead just had simple blood effects, and the environments were extremely plain and barren, so its not like there were a lot of effects pulled off there that could cause the game to slowdown, yet for some reason the game contained significant slowdown. Well, now we're finally at the enhanced version of NG3 with Razor's Edge, and basically STILL nothing has been done to fix the slowdown. This is pretty damn pathetic of Team Ninja by this point. Slowdown in an NG game is no minor gripe. The game's are supposed to be highly technical, and in this more challenging version of NG3, you'd expect them to make sure that the game controlled smoothly and flowed smoothly at a consistent frame-rate, yet they've taken no such measures, making a lot of the hard parts in this game feel more cheap and unfair than they are genuinely challenging. Team Ninja still doesn't get it. People didn't like the past NG games JUST because they were hard, but because they gave you the all the tools and tight and polished controls that you needed to get the job done (well, mostly with NG2, as NGB was the only really perfectly balanced game in the series). Those games were challenging in a fun way because you always felt like you were in complete control of Ryu and that he was responsive to your every command, so if you died it was your own fault a majority of the time. In NG3, I get the feeling that quite a lot of potential deaths could come about from circumstances that are completely out of your control, and having read comments by fans who have been playing through the game on harder difficulty settings, that definitely seems to be the case. This doesn't really give me a lot of faith in the current Team Ninja.

[Foggle]

I've never encountered slowdown in NGS either. Maybe you have to install it to the hard drive or something.

[Rynnec]

Mizuki:"I keep forgetting you're a Ninja."

HE'S WEARING A NINJA OUTFIT, HOW COULD YOU FORGET THAT HE'S A NINJA YOU DUMBFUCK?!

And they kept in those stupid bazooka launcher mooks in unreachable places that can only be taken out with the bow. WTF Team Ninja? And would it have killed them to drop it with those stupid waves of enemes? It's bad enough the lack of essence makes things harder than they really should be. These battles take WAY too long to finish.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

You know something else I appreciated about NG2? In addition to making battles really fast-paced, preventing them from ever dragging out for too long (including boss battles, which is one thing that I really appreciate), there were many instances in the game where if you didn't feel like fighting a particular wave of enemies as you were making your way to your next destination....you didn't really have to. A lot of fights in the previous NG games could be skipped, much like how you could skip most enemies in the NES NG games. Of course in order to prevent you from constantly skipping enemies, the game made it so that essence that you collect from dead enemies is your main form of currency, which you need to upgrade your weapons and buy some health for tougher boss battles which you can't skip. So it was still in your best interest to fight most of the time, but it was a nice touch that the first 2 games never succumbed to that syndrome of locking you in a room every time a new wave of enemies appeared, which is something that made it stand out from its competition like DMC and Bayonetta.

[Rynnec]

Got to the first Ayane mission in Razor's Edge, just in the nick of time too. I was about ready to give up hope on this game.

Perhaps unsuprisingly, her first level is much better and more fun to play than Ryu's levels. The waves of enemies aren't as obnoxiously large, the one kunai climbing segment lasts approximately less than 3 seconds, and the cutscenes and dialogue are campy and tounge-in-cheek (I actually gave a light chuckle at some of Ayane and Irene's banter). Outside the boss battle, it didn't feel anywhere near as hard as Sigma did, it's still tough fortunately, especially newcomers (Ayane's first boss will destroy them). For the boss battle you have to fight three sword-wielding Alchemists at once, and they're all similar to Regent. This kind of challenge is something I would've expected from the higher difficulties, so I had a very hard time until I found using UT and Ninpo until two of them were did so I could focus on the last when worked pretty well as a strategy. Hooray for cheap tactics!

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Well, that's at least a tiny bit reassuring that Team Ninja can still make some genuinely fun gameplay. That said, I still don't think that they "get" what part of the difficulty of previous NG games that people actually liked. They were challenging, sure, but the fun came from finding ways to overcome each new challenging situation. In Ninja Gaiden Black, there isn't a single fight in the game that only has just one single strategy or tactic behind beating it. Hell, even Ghost Fish can be dispatched efficiently in a number of ways. Ninja Gaiden II was pretty good about the enemies for the most part, but it had some cheap projectile spam in parts and the boss fights felt extremely limiting in how you could approach them, which was a serious step down from the first game. With NG3, they went even further in that direction, indicating that Team Ninja really doesn't get the while people love a good challenge, that challenge still has to be fun.

[Rynnec]

Yeah, even in that Ayane level I felt the games difficulty lacked a little something that NGB/S had, and I think you described that something well. Stuff like the projectile spam is really keeping this game down.