Ninja Gaiden Series

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Ninja Gaiden 3: Razors Edge Cuts "Steel On Bone" QTEs, Goes Back To Series Roots

the enemies are more aggressive and they won't plead for their lives anymore. Director Fumihiko Yasuda confirmed that they removed cowering enemies from Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge. Enemies feel "smarter" since you can't repeat the same attack pattern and they will gang up on a player instead of waiting for you to kill them. The "steel & bone" quick time kills are gone. Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge has dismemberment instead.

While I breezed through the first wave of enemies, the third group finished Ayane off. One enemy who lost his leg crawled towards Ayane and self destructed taking off about 1/3 of Ayane's life.

Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge will have free downloadable content after the game launches. Hayashi didn't reveal the content, but gave hints saying there was "quite a bit" and "series fans are going to love it."

http://www.siliconera.com/2012/09/19/ninja-gaiden-3-razors-edge-cuts-steel-on-bone-qtes-goes-back-to-series-roots/

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

OK, So at least Team Ninja is listening. Fans are still suitably pissed at them for making all of these improvements exclusive to the WiiU version of the game. I myself don't mind it because its just business, but I just hope that this is a sign that Team Ninja actually has a hope of making a good NG game with the next installment.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

As for NGZ, I just hope its not one of those cases where a veteran and top-line game creator (in this case Keiji Inafune) simply attaches his name to the title for marketing value by getting people hyped up for it, but actually has little to no involvement with the game itself. That would honestly piss me off more than anything else. If this is really a game that he's involved with making, then I hope that he really is actually involved with developing it every step of the way.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I was kind of bored so I decided to do a little bit of math. I went onto Meta Critic and looked at the cumulative average score for Team Ninja's library of games. As of right now with the current scores for the recently released DOA5 being included, the average score for Team Ninja games is 76%, though this may be subject to slight change as reviews are still coming out for DOA5 and its own average score can change a bit.

The point of doing this, though, was that I wanted to find the average for Team Ninja's review scores back when it was lead by Itagaki (by including games that were only released under Itagaki direction), and compare it to their review scores now as it is lead by Hayashi.

Calculating the average just from the games that had Itagaki's involvement (which does NOT include the Sigma games, in this case), I calculated an average of 82.27%, which would mean that the average score for Team Ninja games has dropped by approximately 8% since Itagaki's departure. If I were to actually include the Sigma games which were at least made while Itagaki was still head of the team, the average would have only been about half a percent higher, so they don't really make that big of a difference in this particular case. I also decided to just give them as a little boost to Hayashi since they are the highest rated games that he's directed (which is hilarious since they were both just revamps of the games that Itagaki had already directed on the XBOX and XBOX360, respectively).

Now, the interesting thing is only taking the average Team Ninja score for their games that were made without Itagaki's direction (in this case I am including the Sigma games). So, basically this is the average score for games under the Team Ninja lacking many of the key members that Itagaki took with him to VGS, and under the leadership of Yosuke Hayashi. I decided to do Hayashi another favor and only count NG3 once since it was just a multiplatform game (and not like a Sigma upgrade, so you can't argue that its 2 different versions of the game), and I only counted DOA5 once as well (and I took the higher score from the PS3 version of the game). The average in this case is 71.63%, More than 10% lower than the average score for the Itagaki-lead Team Ninja's library of games.

I only did this out of boredom and a bit of curiosity, and I'm not a fan of relying on reviews from critics or using MC, but in this case you can't deny that there is a strong consensus of how far Team Ninja has fallen in quality without Itagaki's guidance.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

So....Team Ninja is REALLY going all-out on this game. Its clear that a lot of this stuff was already designed well before the initial release of the game on the XBOX360 and PS3, with Hayashi and co. obviously withholding it as Nintendo exclusive content, but after the deservedly terrible reception for the very lackluster NG3, they are going balls out trying to make this game worth something. I'm still extremely skeptical, but this article right here is ever so slightly starting to sway my interest back toward this new release, which is saying a lot after what a huge disappointment NG3 was to me. Here are the key points:

Let's move on to the content that the latest build of Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge presents, which I've compiled into a handy dandy list.

Perhaps the most significant change of all is the fact that Ryu is actually responsive in Razor's Edge. Ryu's recovery has been shortened greatly, so players can easily cancel into a dodge or block as the situation demands.

Enemies have been improved. They are more aggressive, and some have access to new moves. The basic terrorist grunts and alchemists are the most obvious examples.

Combat has been redesigned to have a more technical feel. Enemies have more stagger animations (including wall damage/stuns). Both playable characters now have a universal grab (the Guillotine throw).

Charge attacks are extremely fast. Ninja Gaiden 3 introduced a charge mechanic, whereby holding down the heavy attack resulted in a powerful combo extension. The length of time needed to charge this attack has been reduced dramatically.

There are six weapons available to Ryu in Razor's Edge right from the get-go. Ryu now has access to the claws, scythe, dual katanas, staff, and an as-of-yet unrevealed weapon, on top of the standard katana.

Karma has been redesigned to function as both the point/ranking system, as well as currency.

Collectible items have been reintroduced. The Golden Scarabs from the original Ninja Gaiden, and Crystal Skulls from Ninja Gaiden 2 are strewn about each stage, and can be collected for an instant Karma bonus.

Players can use this Karma currency to purchase upgrades for weapons and magic (Ninpo) as well as unique combat abilities and even in-game costumes.

The new "Cicada Surge" teleportation ability has been polished greatly since its reveal back during E3. It is an incredibly handy way to get out of overwhelming situations.

A new ability, called "Four Rings" has been introduced. It is a 360 shuriken attack that stuns enemies surrounding Ryu, and can be tacked on to combos on-the-fly, much like ordinary shuriken attacks.

Ultimate Techniques can be used even when Ryu/Ayane's weapons aren't glowing red, simply by holding down and charging a heavy attack (much like in Ninja Gaiden 2). Ultimate Techniques have two charge levels once again.

Ninpo is still earned through combat. However, you can keep your Ninpo charge between encounters now, allowing you to cast magic or save it as you see fit.

Bosses have life gauges now. You can see their health on the bottom of the screen.

Also, its worth pointing out that the writer of this article REALLY knows his shot about Ninja Gaiden. He wrote another article a few months back about why the original release of NG3 was a bad game and went into explicit detail on the game's core mechanics with a lot of technical jargon that only hardcore NG or hack n' slash fans would really get. So for someone like him to say that this game is a lot more technical and skill-based than the NG3 that we got means that Team Ninja must know what they're doing now to some degree. I hope that this is a positive sign for the future of this series, though I still don't think that they can really save this game THAT much given what crap it was to begin with. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, though.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Keep your eyes peeled for November 13th, since IGN will e revealing their first review of a Wii-U game- and that will be Razor's Edge.

Then we'll know for sure just what Team Ninja has learned.

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

Interesting, I heard elsewhere that Tecmo had pushed back the release date of NG3 to January of next year, but maybe they went back on that in order to get the game out for launch, after all.

Either way, it'll be interesting to see IGN's review on this full version of NG3 (I refuse to call this an enhanced version when this is minimally what the original product was clearly intended to be), considering their "previous review" on the initial NG3 release for the PS3/XBOX360.

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Then we'll know for sure just what Team Ninja has learned.

From IGN? lolno

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I still can't get over the fact that IGN classifies Halo 4 as a revolutionary game for the basic reason that it has nice looking graphics and pretty CG cutscenes. Seriously, look at their review. They say that its innovative and somehow changes the scope of the FPS genre yet they give no reasons as to how it does that. Most of their review just gawks at how much they like the look and sound of the game and how the gameplay is basically like every other Halo game except more refined....which I guess somehow counts as innovation to them.

[Spark Of Spirit]

Then we'll know for sure just what Team Ninja has learned.

From IGN? lolno

I'm not expecting a good rating or even a good review, just a more detailed account of what was changed/improved/removed.

Because IGN reviews are some of the worst.

[Foggle]

Why they haven't become an industry joke like Destructoid and Kotaku by now is beyond me.

I'm not expecting a good rating or even a good review, just a more detailed account of what was changed/improved/removed.

Ah, that makes more sense. I thought you'd lost it there for a second!

Seriously, after their God Hand and Double Dragon Neon reviews...

[Spark Of Spirit]

Not to mention stuff like this.

Yet Halo 4 is revolutionary for having pretty graphics.

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The most significant changes in Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge are under the hood. Team Ninja cut out the Steel on Bone quick time events and revamped enemy artificial intelligence. They fight to the death in Razor's Edge instead of pleading for their lives. Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge also gives Ryu DLC weapons like the Falcon Talons when the game starts and adds Ayane as a playable character in certain missions. Fans have been critical of Ninja Gaiden 3′s QTE, so I asked Hayashi-san if they would re-release the game with hardcore features like enhanced AI and dismemberment or offer fans who bought the PS3 and Xbox 360 version a downloadable update.

"Right now we are just really focused on getting Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge out, but we do want as many people as possible to experience that challenge and that fun. So having that on other platforms we're working on that idea. We are looking at that, but right now, we are focused on Razor's Edge," Hayashi answered.

[Rynnec]

Nice to see Hayashi trying to atone for his sins. 

[Dr. Ensatsu-ken]

I've decided that I'm just gonna wait to here what veteran fan of the series who happen to get a WiiU think of the game when they play it. Based on their opinions, its really the only way that I'll know for sure if Team Ninja is truly back on the right track with the NG series. I mean, the fact that they were dumb enough to completely betray their fan-base the moment Itagaki and other head members left just really damaged their current image to a point that will be hard for them to repair among many NG fans, including myself.