Mr_Mustache said:

@boodyup

Hey boodyup, welcome, and thanks for the mini-review!

Thank you! Long-time lurker of this site and a big fan of this site. Ryu's bloodlust convinced me I needed to start getting more involved (grab life by the severed neck). Looking forward to seeing everyone's positives and negatives of this game.

My favourites are the claws. I like using YY ->YYYYX!YYYX to attack and dodge at the same time, or YXXXXX to break shields and disable enemy defence, usually severing a limb and setting them up for a finisher. (whiffing the first hit on purpose)

Once you get the staff though, its major advantage is that you don't need to worry about getting surrounded, Ryu swings the thing around so quickly even shielded enemies will break into pieces without much effort. The disadvantage is that because of this, you get a lot fewer opportunities for Obliterations and Steel-On-Bone, and I think you charge Ninpo slower because of that, too (don't quote me on this though).

Do you know if waiting to finish off a dismembered foe, to use a steel-on-bone will heal more than using steel-on-bone when they're intact? If I need to heal mid-battle, I'll sometimes cut off an enemy's arm or leg, wait for them to flare, then quickly dodge and counter. Maybe this was purposefully set up by the developers, but it feels almost too easy a way to get healing on demand.

@Mr_Mustache

Yeah, Ayane is a breath of fresh air.

I saw that you were able to cruise through the game and get to day 4 and I was like "Why do I suck?" then I read that you were on Hero and it made me feel better (sorry). I've made it my mission to finish this game on Normal difficulty (my pride is clearly f'ing with me on this) but I've been stuck on Day 7 Final Boss for the better part of a month now and I'm intimidated to even boot up the game because I know I'll be hanging my head in shame at the end.

In all, I've really proud of the fact that Nintendo was able to get this game on the U. It's flawed, geez is it flawed, but I suspect a lot more people would enjoy it if they gave it a chance. I'm realizing I'm a big fan of Japanese Action.

@Mr_Mustache

Lol - i know what you mean! If you haven't gotten to the 2nd time you play as Ayane there are a couple more wall runs and one in particular has a skull plainly visible. I had to give up trying to go after the skull because I was going ape shit. I might be blurring different sections of that level up but I just gave in to mediocrity and moved on.

I'm curious how many people here, playing this game, played Ninja Gaiden Black on the original Xbox. I'd be interested the hear thoughts on how it compares/contrasts.

Ninja Gaiden Black is pretty much my favourite game of all time. It does so much right and is so rewarding to those who put the time in to learning how to play the game really well. It does NOT allow you to get by with button-mashing. It's hugely demanding, but it's never cheap. When you die, you feel like it was not the game's fault, but your own.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma was prettier and the combat was intact, but many of the puzzles were dumbed down or removed altogether, which lessened the game's appeal for me.

Ninja Gaiden 2 was... a let-down. Rather than the difficulty coming from challenging opponents, they started resorting to cheap measures like gun-fire and rockets from off-screen enemies, forcing you to stick to a very limited move-set to take advantage of invincibility frames. It becames a game that - on the higher difficulties - could only be successfully played one way - and it was not a fun way. Level design was not nearly as interesting and all the non-combat elements of the previous game that broke up the pacing nicely seemed to have been removed. And suddenly the focus of the game was all about gore, blood and more gore, which was not a positive change in my books.

Ninja Gaiden 3 got such poor reviews for becoming something so unlike Ninja Gaiden that I never bothered. This version of it gets a lot of kudos for coming back to being closer to the first two games, but I'm still highly skeptical - refusing to get any hopes up after the disappointment of Ninja Gaiden 2. Not that I have a Wii U yet... but I intend to one day.

@nacthenud

Never played the XBox/360 games (because I didn't own a next-gen system at the time) which is why I am giving this one a shot. I just beat the T-Rex boss recently...violent, but mindless (I'm playing on Hero) fun with somewhat of a challenge. I was playing on normal and getting my rear handed to me constantly.

@ludist210

See in the original Xbox version, there was no such thing as an easy mode. And the very first boss of the game acted as a gate post for learning how to play the game properly. If you were button-mashing or not playing smartly you could not pass that first boss. You had to learn to be defensive and always keep moving and looking for the right moments to counter-attack or you were toast. It took me a good ten tries to stop being all-offense all the time and get past it, but I'm SOOO glad they did it that way because it made the game great. It forced me to become better at the game and through doing so, really appreciate the mechanics they'd built. It was an action game with all the depth in combat of a fighting game. Moreover, it was a game with competent opponents. If you let your guard down and screwed up, you could be punished by the most basic henchman, but it was done in a way that always felt fair - not cheap.

Ninja Gaiden was all about getting good enough to play competently at higher difficulties. Ninja Gaiden 2 was no fun at all on higher difficulties because it didn't make the opponents' smarter, it made the game cheaper.

That's a key element that I'd hope for in a new Ninja Gaiden game and I guess I'd have to play this one for myself to find out.

@nacthenud

Oh you still have to be defensive-minded in this one. You can button mash and get when you're playing on Hero (easy) mode, sure, but you lose huge chunks of health if you go that way. Don't try that on Normal...doesn't work.

Cool. I appreciate the feedback.

@Mr_Mustache

yeah, I was afraid of that.

So the Wii U Razor's Edge version of NG3 is being ported over to 360 and PS3. There was a demo up on PS3. It was painful to play, because it's such a pale, pale shade of the original Xbox Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden Black.

1) The combat was nowhere near it's former glory. In the old Ninja Gaiden enemies were thoughtful and calculating. Sometimes you'd find yourself in a fight with three ninjas and everyone is just trying to get good positioning. Nobody attacking, just waiting for each other to flinch and then counter. This demo's combat was just spastic. They just threw a bunch of enemies in there and the "A.I." just had them constantly attacking. Always attacking, all the time. And then throw in a couple of dudes up on platforms just firing rockets down into the battlefield throughout.

Where the original Ninja Gaiden excelled through combat that felt elevated and advanced, this demo was way more in the style of "BAM, BAM, BAMBAMBAM, WHEEEEEE!"

And the lack of essense orbs dropped by opponents removes a lot of the strategy. In the old game, yellow essence could just be collected for "gold" or it could be used to perform an ultimate attack. If that ultimate attack killed the opponent, they would drop a larger stash of yellow essence... but if it missed or failed to kill, the yellow essense was lost entirely. Risk/Reward.

And Blue Essense - do I use it for a quick healing or do I use it for an instant Level 2 Ultimate Attack. Red Essense - Instant level 2 or a refill on my Ninpo.

2) The level design just felt like a side-scrolling throw-away environment. Part of what I loved about the original was how the city seemed fairly linear at first, but then from level to level more of the city opened up and it became this interconnected hub. A place you kept coming back to that felt familiar, yet constantly new through areas you couldn't previously access.

3) All the adventure aspects of the game seem to have been removed in favour of keeping the focus always on combat. I get the feeling there is no inventory management. Health just auto-fills after a fight, so there is no thought of using healing items vs saving them for an upcoming boss fight.

And there were Golden Scarabs to be found, but instead of being a reward for paying careful attention to the environment and finding a way to get yourself up to that seemingly inaccessible ledge or careful exploration, they're just lying on the ground. Sure, one I collected by walking the "Wrong way", but it was still just lying there on the ground. I don't even think there were any clever hidden areas in the level to be found.

4) Along the same lines, I get the feeling there will not be any puzzle solving going on. No platforming to a series of levers that moves hanging platforms around until I find the right combination and sequence to allow passage. No scouring the level for pieces of ore to be smelted and forged into a mould to create a copy of a key needed to progress. No finding a code to combination safe. Just funnel from one combat arena to the next.

5) One of my favourite parts of the original XBox games was mobility and use of the environment. I loved the way running along walls as you closed the gap between yourself and an armed foe was an effective way of dodging the gunfire and launching off the wall in an attack towards him. Or timing a beast's charge as you run up the side of the wall and come down hard behind him. You can still do stuff like that in this demo, but none of it feels natural or dynamic and an integral part of the game design. And the rolling has been removed in favour of a dash. I miss the natural motion of the roll-jump-roll-jump flow.

6) Like the NG2, the game delights in it's blood and gore. Ugh.

7) There were several times that I lost myself in the crowd. That sort of thing never happened in the original. Whether because of the zoomed out camera or the costume colours of the opponents or both, there were times when I thought I was someone else on the screen and that's not a good thing.

In short, this is not the Ninja Gaiden I was hoping for. I didn't even finish the demo. My wife came home and I felt no hesitation in turning it off to watch a show with her. And I don't have any desire to try it again - all it really made me do was want to go back to the original. Or even Sigma on the PSVita (which itself isn't as good as the Xbox versions, but still a far sight better than this immitation).

This game (along with Arkham) is on sale for thirty-ish at Best Buy. Mustache May Cry!

Games can be ported an infinite amount of times, with minor enhancements every time. It's like port ping-pong.

Should have waited for the PS3 version, it is apparently the best game EVAR MADE.

I should have waited too! Waaaah!

I've been playing the story again. I'm on Day...6 I think? It's the day that Ryu's in the snow.

Fun action game, though the missles and lasers are cheap.