Ninja Gaiden II is an action-adventure video game developed by Team Ninja and published by Microsoft Corporation. It is the sequel to the 2004 title Ninja Gaiden and was released worldwide for the Xbox 360 in June 2008.
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Genuinely shocked I was able to beat this, considering how crazy challenging it tended to get. I played this once or twice previously but I don't think I even managed to get past the second stage, so it's wild that I overcame that hurdle and managed to experience NGII in all its manic and insane glory.
Enemies keep coming at you, folks who can individually deal some real damage if you're not careful, so you're always encouraged to stay on your guard, adapt to whatever nonsense gets thrown at you and keep pushing. I played this on the lowest difficulty level, but it's by no means the easy mode and I experienced an appropriate amount of challenge.
Something I really appreciated is that there's often enough wiggle room, in your moves, the weapons, the items you can use and whatnot, that I never felt truly stuck. If I got my ass handed to me, I just needed to take a different approach and that would usually be enough to tip the scales in my favour. Admittedly using my best friend the eclipse scythe at more or less every opportunity helped with that, it's an excellent enemy shredder.
Couple of my favourite moments from the third act: fighting that army of ninjas up the staircase, where there's so many of them that the framerate slows way the heck down. It's genuinely beautiful to see the game struggle to render its ambitions, almost acting like a dramatic slo-mo fight scene, and the way it just kept going made me smile to no end.
An unexpected surprise came in the chapter where you return to the Dragon Ninja Village, and gradually make your way out through the woods, until you reach the ninja fortress that was the very first level of the 2004 Ninja Gaiden. I first played that game 18 years and, as someone who wasn't very good at it, replayed that opening level many times, so it was so strange to be exploring that ninja fortress - only now in ruins with most places unexplorable. It felt so oddly melancholic to revisit this place after a much longer gap in time than the original release (just under 4 years if you were playing these at launch), and such an unexpected walk down memory lane.
Enemies keep coming at you, folks who can individually deal some real damage if you're not careful, so you're always encouraged to stay on your guard, adapt to whatever nonsense gets thrown at you and keep pushing. I played this on the lowest difficulty level, but it's by no means the easy mode and I experienced an appropriate amount of challenge.
Something I really appreciated is that there's often enough wiggle room, in your moves, the weapons, the items you can use and whatnot, that I never felt truly stuck. If I got my ass handed to me, I just needed to take a different approach and that would usually be enough to tip the scales in my favour. Admittedly using my best friend the eclipse scythe at more or less every opportunity helped with that, it's an excellent enemy shredder.
Couple of my favourite moments from the third act: fighting that army of ninjas up the staircase, where there's so many of them that the framerate slows way the heck down. It's genuinely beautiful to see the game struggle to render its ambitions, almost acting like a dramatic slo-mo fight scene, and the way it just kept going made me smile to no end.
An unexpected surprise came in the chapter where you return to the Dragon Ninja Village, and gradually make your way out through the woods, until you reach the ninja fortress that was the very first level of the 2004 Ninja Gaiden. I first played that game 18 years and, as someone who wasn't very good at it, replayed that opening level many times, so it was so strange to be exploring that ninja fortress - only now in ruins with most places unexplorable. It felt so oddly melancholic to revisit this place after a much longer gap in time than the original release (just under 4 years if you were playing these at launch), and such an unexpected walk down memory lane.
Travou no estagio 12, é foda
Simultaneously the best and worst action game of all time. Pushing through the ludicrous Itagaki off-screen projectile spam bullshit feels worth it for those base combat encounters.
I think you can sum up the modern Ninja Gaiden series through the arc of chapter 7: you storm an airship, fighting a bunch of fun mobs and destroying it from the inside. You face off against a rival ninja, before driving a motorcycle out of the crashing wreckage. So sick... And then you randomly fight a giant turtle that just wanders around in a circle. The game repeatedly builds sequences up to a slam dunk and then punctuates it with a brick.
It was forgivable in the first game, but the sequel foregrounds the issue. Ultimately, this is a consequence of the maximalist philosophy of NG2 - there is no restraint, everything is more. Most of the worst elements could have simply been cut from the game and it wouldn't have even felt like anything was missing. But chapter 7 needed two boss fights, because we can't let that brilliant turtle boss design go to waste. Hell, let's make you fight two of them later on, really get our money's worth. It doubles down on its worst impulses.
Again, the core combat is excellent, but I just can't look past that stuff. Good boss fights are make or break for me, so no game with that Gigadeath fight could ever earn more than three stars, and I'm not even sure that's the worst boss in the game. With such great melee combat, why are there so many boss fights where the optimal (and often only) strategy is just "use bow and arrow until dead," or worse, some lame cheese? I want to square up and fight. These games have a handful of good duels (e.g. Murai, Doku, Genshin) but they just keep giving you lazy ranged fights and giant enemies with limited movesets.
Similar to NGB, a big part of the problem is the game's superlative reputation. For years I heard nothing but praise about these games - the pinnacle of the action genre, total masterpiece. It's not totally unfounded; I can see glimmers, and sometimes the games really shine. But I guess I do understand why, whenever I saw clips of the gameplay, it was never a boss fight.
It was forgivable in the first game, but the sequel foregrounds the issue. Ultimately, this is a consequence of the maximalist philosophy of NG2 - there is no restraint, everything is more. Most of the worst elements could have simply been cut from the game and it wouldn't have even felt like anything was missing. But chapter 7 needed two boss fights, because we can't let that brilliant turtle boss design go to waste. Hell, let's make you fight two of them later on, really get our money's worth. It doubles down on its worst impulses.
Again, the core combat is excellent, but I just can't look past that stuff. Good boss fights are make or break for me, so no game with that Gigadeath fight could ever earn more than three stars, and I'm not even sure that's the worst boss in the game. With such great melee combat, why are there so many boss fights where the optimal (and often only) strategy is just "use bow and arrow until dead," or worse, some lame cheese? I want to square up and fight. These games have a handful of good duels (e.g. Murai, Doku, Genshin) but they just keep giving you lazy ranged fights and giant enemies with limited movesets.
Similar to NGB, a big part of the problem is the game's superlative reputation. For years I heard nothing but praise about these games - the pinnacle of the action genre, total masterpiece. It's not totally unfounded; I can see glimmers, and sometimes the games really shine. But I guess I do understand why, whenever I saw clips of the gameplay, it was never a boss fight.
ayane (ayane)