Its over....

Turns into a bird

This game is sweet, but I think I hate it? Or love it? Or maybe I hate how much the game hates me? Weird Checkpoints, inconsistent boss blocking, BS grabs, awful camera, and Rachel's sections. The list goes on. Yet, the combat and the movement are so freaking good, especially when the game finally clicks. The difficulty, however, is really inconsistent, where I was able to beat the final boss on my 3rd go, but two bosses before that almost made me break my PC.

I never played Black, so I have no grounds to talk on the changes, but aesthetically, Black seems much more interesting. (UI, Combo Counter, etc.) A frustratingly enjoyable game that tends to show its age a little too much, and I think Sigma's more polished look really tries to hide that at its core, this is a Xbox game from 2004...

7/10

Let's talk about character action games. While not the most niche of genres, they never reached a mainstream audience until perhaps the release of Devil May Cry 5. However, these types of games always found their audience, with each different one bringing something to the table. Whenever character action games are a subject of discussion, the so called "Big 3" of the genre (DMC, Bayonetta and Ninja Gaiden) will always end up being mentioned one way or another. Today, I wanted to share my take on the Sigma version of the original Ninja Gaiden.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma is, in a lot of ways, a product of it's time, a time when game design philosophy prioritized a fun experience, a time when the devs thought of the player as a person capable of performing complex actions and didn't need their hand held to reach the finish line.
While this is in a lot of ways a positive, it can also sometimes reflect negatively on the outdated design.
To put it bluntly, Ninja Gaiden is a hard game, and many times it threads the fine line between challenging and unfair.
To elaborate a bit on that thought, I'd like to present my biggest complaint when playing the game: The punish windows on some of the enemies and the outdated (and sometimes unfair) boss mechanics.
Frankly, the punish windows on some bosses straight up feel random. For example, when fighting Gamov, he has a very clear window to be attacked at the end of his combo. On the other hand, bosses like Spirit Doku and Awakened Alma have very strict windows where they can be attacked, almost frame perfect, making it seem like it has a random nature to it when it looks like you clearly punished the attack of the boss, just for you sword to bounce off them as the block VFX plays.
About the enemy design...Well, while most of them are fine, some just look downright goofy and out of place in the game, like the Red Dinosaur Fiends or the Catgirl Fiends.
As for enemy mechanics, most of them have a varied moveset with clear counters and tells, except for one common thing that most enemies share and that I've seen quite a few people complain about in this game: the grabs.
Since this game has more of an emphasis on good positioning and decision-making, a lot of Ryu's moves have different recovery frames, which makes some options like Flying Swallow very unsafe if not correctly performed. And by virtue of that more tactical combat, there comes the problem with grabs.
A lot of the aforementioned grabs are really fast, some of them pretty much unreactable, and can catch Ryu during any animation of his that has no Invincibility Frames, making it so the player takes a punish that most of the times they couldn't avoid, either because they were animation locked, or in recovery from an animation. Hell, some enemies can even armor through Ryu's combos to grab him, which while I understand comes as a warning to not spam attacks, due to the animation lock I mentioned before, it just feels like an unfair punish (and don't even get me started on the fucking Ghost Fish, contender for Worst Enemy in Gaming History right there).
While the combat does have these minor issues of animation locking and not having animation cancel for dodging, it's hardly ever a problem when the player starts to get familiar with the moveset of the enemies and his own, understanding what attacks have I-frames, what attacks have too much recovery, and what attacks can easily be cancelled into a block.
This formula coupled with the usually good enemy design makes for fun and engaging combat, with just the right touch of challenge, and with plenty of room for the players most familiar with the game to perform stylish and crazy combos, making Ryu look like a superhero at times.
However, there is one thing greatly holding back the combat in this game: the camera.
While not an issue most of the time, whenever it shows it's problems, it really shows them.
While the player has minimum control of the camera, it's turn speed is sluggish, making it a chore to control during combat. If it weren't for the button that centers the camera on whatever direction Ryu is looking at, it would doom the combat.
You can especially see this problem on some of the faster enemies, that require the player to constantly chase them as they evade.
A bit smaller gripe I have with the combat mechanics, is the lack of a hard lock-on.
While not as big a problem as the camera and a lot less common, it becomes a nuisance when it happens.
To explain further, this game has a soft lock on system, which means that Ryu's attacks will go towards the enemy in the general direction the player is poiting their attack towards, and it mostly works, but sometimes I saw my character attacking a completely different enemy than the one I wanted to target, which did bring me some frustration during the playthrough.
These are the few things holding back the combat of this game from being truly amazing, but I chalked it up mostly to the limitations of it's time and hardware.
Moving on to the story, there's not much to say about it. It's a pretty subpar story about searching for the MacGuffin the evil bad guys plan on using to dominate the world. As for the characters, well... Calling them "shallow" at most would be saying too much. Most of them only exist to give plot exposition, and barely interact with Ryu at all. This is especially noticeable on the game's main love interest, Rachel, who has the personality of a dried up newspaper left at the front porch for a week during summertime. Hell, even Ryu himself seems not to care about the characters, which could sometimes be interpreted as funny, due to how overly serious Ryu is about his mission, showing no interest in anything or anyone besides it.
As for graphics, I think Sigma did a good job of fixing the original's aesthethic, which had those "2000's game" aesthetic where the color palette is made only of browns and grays. This version of the game adds some much needed color and graphical improvements, which are not bad on the eye at all, considering just how old it is.
As for the world design, it feels pretty generic. Tairon doesn't really stand-out as far as videogame locations go, and besides a couple of outliers like the entrance to the Vigoorian Palace or the Monastery, most locations are really generic.
As for level design, it's decent for it's time I guess. The game has a semi-open world structure, with every few chapters the player returning to Tairon to backtrack in search of a door he can open with whatever new key he obtained at that moment. While the level design isn't anything to write home about, it doesn't distract from the game by being bad, so decent is really the word to describe, since it's after all just a stage for the action, and not a main selling point of the game.
The soundtrack also isn't anything to give a standing ovation for, but it complements whatever mood the game is currently going for at the moment (especially the combat tracks), and that's about enough to be considered good.

As for closing thoughts, I have some mixed feelings about the game. Sure I enjoyed it, and sure I had some fun with it, but I felt like the things that hold it back, truly hold it back from being a legendary piece of media to be remembered throughout the ages. While it is for sure an anchor of the character action genre and a memorable game, I think it would really benefit from a remake that fixes some of the gaps in the design, so the game can finally realize it's potential and take a spot in the Hall of Fame.

Man, you know those games that you just kind of lose the drive to play part way through and gradually chip away at over the months? Ninja Gaiden Sigma was kind of that for me. I dedicated early 2022 to getting the great Ninja Gaiden 2 and absolute dogshit NG3 off the backlog, after having played Ninja Gaiden Black in 2020. In addition to having to work a soulcrushing warehouse job, Ninja Gaiden Sigma, the PS3 remaster of the original title, fell to the wayside and I'm only just finishing it now.

"But hey, Ninja Gaiden Sigma is just Ninja Gaiden Black!" I hear you call. "Why even bother giving it a separate review?" Well, Ninja Gaiden Sigma might look like Ninja Gaiden Black to the unasumming eye. It's got the same crunchy, visceral sound design, the same weighty, brutal and satisfying combat, the same mostly crappy bosses, the same tendancy tell you to go and fuck yourself with things like the unreactable grabs and the Ghost Fish. At its core, the average player would think they'd just played a straight one-to-one remaster of Ninja Gaiden Black, with a few extra bells and whistles.

But alas, Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2's Sigma rereleases aren't just the series' variant of Devil May Cry's Special Edition rereleases. Rather, they serve as incredibly strange sidegrades to the titles in question, with additions and subtractions across the board. They also aren't helmed by the original director, alledged creepy sex pervert, and current NFT grifter, Tomonobu Itagaki, who was pretty outspoken on his less than positive feelings about these versions of his directed titles.

Rather, they're both directed by Yosuke Hayashi, who isn't any stranger to the series. He worked on the enemy AI for the 04 release, is listed as a project lead on Black, and would go on to direct Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword for the DS, and then serve to absolutely shit the bed when the time came to direct Ninja Gaiden 3. He was also one of three directors on Metroid Other M, but on the plus side, he also went on to direct Nioh, so he's had some good and bad days.

So, what's NG Sigma got for itself to call its own? Well, there's the dual katanas that would later go on to be in NG2! They're super fun to use there, and super fun to use here, so that's neat. You can cycle through and use potions on the fly, which is super handy because anything to do away with additional menuing in a game like these is nice. Also means that you're way less likely to die from getting grabbed because of the game preventing you from pausing when you're getting caught by a nigh-unreactable, untechable grab. If you're playing the Vita version, or the Master Collection release, you also get additional accessories to play around with, mostly allowing you to increase attack in return for lowered defence or vice versa. Nice for the players who might need to take a few extra hits, even better for the pros who can effortlessly tear their foes to pieces with nary a scratch, increased damage be damned.

But then there's the attempts to readjust the foundation that Ninja Gaiden was built upon, with changes to the level design. Various puzzle rooms are tweaked if not outright replaced with simple fights, which might seem like a weird thing to complain about in a game where the combat is the defining feature, but it's coming at the expense of the original vision of Team Ninja, and Itagaki. There's also a lot more shops and save points littered around the game, but I don't mind that too much. I think that the original kept its save points where they were for a reason, but I'm also the kind of guy who saves any time a save point is around. Nice for people like me to have as an option.

But ya know what really brings Sigma down? Rachel. Originally an NPC and fanservice jobber in Black, she now gets 3 tacked on stages that you have to play through whenever you're going through the campaign. I'm usually all for extra playable characters in action games, provided they all feel unique and fun, and Rachel really isn't. She's only got one weapon, her big ass hammer that Ryu also gets, and lacks the ability to wall run, Izuna Drop, or be fun. Her stages also fall into just being retreads of stages Ryu already ran through, which is only a bigger issue. She's the kind of content where you can tell it was thrown into a rerelease to say they had more content, except she isn't relegated into her own small side campaign or being unlocked upon completion to be used in a repeated playthrough, like Vergil in DMC3 or Jeanne in Bayonetta. Just crammed into the main playthrough with zero rhyme or reason, and that's a shame.

I also really wish Sigma addressed the single most annoying issue I personally have with NGB that could've easily been remedied here; which is the lack of both level select and New Game Plus. Every playthrough, on every difficulty, you've gotta start back at mission 1 with base Ryu, needing to collect all 50 Gold Scarabs and Life of the Gods, and level up all your weapons from square one. It's one thing if you're looking to climb the difficulty levels to experience how NG changes even its most basic combat encounters up, but it's another beast if you're choosing to brave the weather of Ninja Gaiden's kind of awful ranking system and chase all the Master Ninja rankings, as you've basically got to save scum through the entire game if you miss a single MN rank. Even if you're just wanting to replay a specific chapter in your own time, it's no dice.

It's a shame, and something that would've really helped in Sigma's favour. There's definitely a certain mistique to being able to tackle the higher difficulties on a fresh save file, to be sure, and I think it should always be an option in an action game. Let those players who want to push both the game's mechanics and their own skills to the fullest, give them the ability to flex. But in action games, a NG+ feature has been standard since Devil May Cry 1, and stage selects since Devil May Cry 2. Just skipping over them, especially when 2, Sigma 2 and 3 gradually went on to include these features, feels like a really strange oversight in a game with a mission by mission structure. As great as any action game having a mission mode with a ton of unique and specialised encounters is, and Sigma especially has them by the truckload, it isn't quite the same as being able to pick Mission 19 in DMC5 and just going to smack up Vergil.

I probably came off super harsh towards NG Sigma throughout this review, and I want to stress that it isn't a bad game at all. Far from it, it's just a worse way of playing Ninja Gaiden Black, and the main crux of the issue really is Rachel's few levels serving as really annoying pacebreakers that put me off from giving it quite as strong a recommendation as I would NGB. A lot of the other changes I can take or leave and aren't going to be noticed by a new first timer, and there's a few issues that are more just holdovers from the original release and are disappointingly left unaccounted for.

Would I recommend you snatch a copy of Black and play it on the Xbox Series X? Yeah, if that's a possiblity for you. But Sigma isn't a halfway bad way to experience the OG NG if you're unable or unwilling to buy an Xbox to just make it your Ninja Gaiden machine. Personally, I wish a perfect world existed, where both versions of the titles could exist in perfect harmony, with both vanilla and rereleases of 1, 2 and even 3 all bundled together in a snug little collection, so new players don't have to buy a console they otherwise might have no interest in, or fumble with emulators in hopes of maybe getting them to work. But, either due to missing source code, Team Ninja seeing these as the definitive releases of the games, in spite of fandom disagreement, or just being easier to port, the Sigma releases are all we've got. It is what it is, and what it is, is kind of a bitch.

I think Ryu Hayabusa is a 10/10 action game character stuck in a 5/10 action game. Fighting grunts is the best part of the game because Ryu's moveset is so robust and killing stuff feels so good. Combos are fast and fluid while also not being too difficult to pull off and the Izuna Drop may be one of the best attacks in a video game. The enemies also all pose a threat to some extent so unlike in DMC you have to constantly be on your toes. The problems arise in literally everything else. While Ryu's fast far-reaching jumps are good in combat, they end up being a liability during exploration platforming sections. Countless times I intended to do a wall run and ended up running straight up the wall instead or I just wanted to jump forward and Ryu decides to cling to random nearby structures. The levels are fairly uninteresting both to look at and traverse and this is especially bad given the amount of backtracking you need to do. While fighting grunts generally is fun, the military level manages to make even that subpar by dumping you in an area full of enemies with guns so someone is ALWAYS hitting you. The ghost fish are absolute abominations and drag chapters 17 and 18 down tremendously. The bosses are typically either frustrating, unfun, short, or some mixture of the 3. Bosses lack any sort of personality and I wouldn't really describe any of them as fun or memorable. The way they seemingly decide when to block your attacks at random and nullify your techniques likes ninpo, flying swallow and izuna drops makes them intrinsically less fun to fight than grunts. I realize most people prefer ninja gaiden black so I poured over all the differences I could find to make sure I wasn't making some big mistake by playing Sigma instead and I can't say I would've liked Black much better. The Rachel missions are pretty lame but they're short and I didn't mind them too much. The ability to fire projectiles mid-jump is good and makes fighting flying enemies and the helicopter/tanks much more bearable. The new burning village chapter was pretty good as well. I also don't really like Rachel that much, I think her outfit looks really stupid and I would've much preferred playing as Ayane. I didn't really dislike the game and as much as I got frustrated, I still had plenty of fun thanks to how good the general combat is.

Regardless of what people tend to regurgitate, I welcome most of Sigma's changes, making the game flow more seamlessly and putting a focus on the combat itself by streamlining the boring puzzles of the original, it's a better experience through out.

Even then, the game fundamentally has aged and it shows, the camera is really janky and most of the time you'll be looking at Ryu's shiny ass and in tight rooms especially it's super prominent and just adds another hurdle to the already difficult game.
The game also does a poor job at telegraphing some enemy attacks making them feel like cheese because they're just a blatant knowledge check rather than any mechanical skill, but overall it's still a great game, with a super satisfying combat system and it made every weapon feel necessary at some point as they're better at certain types of enemies.

It's the less acknowledged fellow pioneer of the Character Action genre next to DMC but I do think it has aged a tiny bit better in comparison, granted it's also a bit newer.

Tá... por que eu faço isso comigo?
Eu consigo até ver algumas possíveis qualidades que o jogo poderia ter, principalmente na época que o original saiu, em principal o sistema de Combo que é extremamente mais rápido, dinâmico e completo do que a grande maioria dos jogos do gênero que haviam na época... porem isso hj em dia é o maior dos problemas.
Esse jogo envelheceu pior do que leite fora da geladeira depois de 1 semana.
A gameplay é travada, os controles são pouco responsivos, a câmera é caótica, os combos raramente funcionam como deveriam.
Combinado ao fato que o jogo já tem uma dificuldade elevada propositalmente, com uma IA agressiva e que dá poucas brechas, nos temos um jogo que acaba sendo injusto, por que diversos momentos é quase impossível reagir bem contra os inimigos quando você não enxerga pela câmera tendo um derrame e pelo Ryu não fazendo o golpe que você quer por que o input não tá respondendo corretamente.
E pra terminar de jogar sal na ferida nos 2 últimos capítulos temos uma sequencia desgraçada de inimigos extremamente fortes e um boss rush junto a uma escassez de recursos devido a não ter lojas, tornando o jogo punitivo pra quem acaba dependendo dos itens, coisa que poderia ser resolvido facilmente colocando opção de loja no começo de cada Capitulo, como em Devil May Cry por exemplo.

Ninja Gaiden is one of my favorite childhood games on the Xbox Original
so it feels kinda nostalgic to play it now

but when I completed it, it has some issues

First the boss "most of them" is bad
they will be only too easy, or too hard that make me nervous
some level design is not good
Playing with Rachel is good for diversity but it's restricted

But The combat system is great, very great
normal Enemies and diversification of them is good، but their spawn is bad.

the camera is Horrible.

The CGI cutscenes quality is so bad, some time you can see pixels in the screen.

I don't recommend play it if you don't like the hard games.