A true icon in gaming history. A perfect action and hack and slash game. Tough as nails, gritty, and brutal action leaves players to learn and adapt with the games combos and mechanics. Combat is fluid and rewarding with well timed attacks and defense. The main glaring flaw is the bane of most early 3D games, the camera. Alongside the problems of the camera, move registration and lock-on can occasionally be wonky (specifically with the Flying Swallow) but is not very noticeable. Level and enemy design is almost perfect (Temple chapter with mummies, Water level with swimming, and the Ice chapter is just boring). The soundtrack is a perfect blend of a stealthy ninja movie and a cinematic thriller tone. Story is lacking but doesn't need to be as fleshed out due to the gameplay more than making up for it. Characters are fine and serve their purpose. Ryu is a serious no-nonsense character who has simple and determined goals. Rachel leaves more to be desired as a side character. Ninja Gaiden Black retains its identity from the classic 2D arcade games while evolving into the 3D scene. A true gamers game. Izuna Drop is the best thing in gaming.

the simultaneous success of dmc1 and failure of dmc2 put a variety of studios in an interesting position of "who could develop the next essential character action title," and team ninja really capitalized on the opportunity to try to take the crown. this became apparent to me during the game's beefy runtime considering just how different it is than today's CAGs in terms of structure and focus. in many ways ninja gaiden '04 (and by extension black) is a bold attempt at the 3D action-adventure game that sits as a bit of an evolutionary dead-end as CAGs have become increasingly combat-focused.

much of this can be seen in parallels between ninja gaiden and devil may cry 3, which released just a year after the former. dmc3 still retains some of the resident evil-derived exploration and interconnected world of its predecessors, but really pushes towards a focus on flashy and dynamic combat at every turn. ninja gaiden instead truly leaned into the scenario design that dmc1 played around with. instead of focusing on a single castle awkwardly chopped up into different missions, ninja gaiden generally focuses each chapter on a completely different area of the map, serving as mini-dungeons with their own puzzles, unique hazards, enemy types. as the game comes to a close these areas become more and more entwined, but the level segmentation is tremendously well-planned, and it clears up much ambiguity over what key items work where and how to progress the story. thanks to helpful notes from ayane, objectives are explained to the player, and if you pay any attention to the various locks around the game world it's easy to keep track of where to go. this kind of simple exploration really does wonders to vary the pace and avoid the trap of "I just did combat arenas for an hour straight and it's all memory-sludge in my head."

on the contrary, each scenario sticks out so precisely in my head that it's a wonder they came up with so many excellent ideas. taking down the airship by destroying the main generators and slaughtering a cyborg on the roof while flying through a storm, descending into the crypt and rising back up to place the chalice at the altar only to fight a giant skeleton monster and watch it crash to the bottom, where the floor has collapsed into a egyptian-tinged den of traps, the half-ice half-magma section where you switch between sides in order to eventually relight a furnace; hell, they nailed a 40-minute underwater section that serves as a great breather between non-stop action otherwise. unlike devil may cry, ninja gaiden manages to entirely switch its mood and playstyle on a dime when it wants to and surprise the player with some new idea at every turn. the variety kept me going "one more save point" over and over again where most CAGs generally lose me at 60/90 minute sessions, which is a credit to how itagaki and the team understood how to perfectly scale the intensity of an adventure over a 16 hour runtime.

of course, with so many great ideas thrown into the mix, there's bound to be some bad ones, and unfortunately there are some major clunkers to be found here. the entire military base raid for one is suffocating both in how the enemy forces exclusively use firearms which stagger the battle pacing and how there are not one but three different vehicular bosses in this section, all of which necessitate use of the clunky OOT-style first-person bow aiming controls. another particular sore point for me near the end of the game was the dreadful phantom pirahna labyrinth, where the game explicitly tells you to spam your flail light attack to avoid needing to mash out of their bite grab that bleeds your health as more and more leech onto you. the fact that these fish will blip into existence as others die really ratchets up the frustration during these sections, which frankly I died to the most during the last two chapters of the game (and ghost doku lmao). smaller puzzles and platforming sections will likely jolt you as the game wears on much as they did me, and it occasionally requires taking a break and coming back to it another time when the brutality of failure in one of these less-than-fair sections becomes too heavy.

thankfully overall I found the rest of the game surprisingly fair. given that ryu's powerful ultimate technique attack harnesses "essence" drops from enemies (colored orb drops shamelessly cribbed from dmc), currency and health drops are exceedingly frequent, and you will have an abundance of currency and health at any point in the game so long as you balance your UT usage. health consumables are also in fair supply, and the smaller variety are rather cheap at the in-game store; I virtually always bought a full set without significantly denting my essence reserves. save points are smartly placed in high foot-traffic locations and replaying sections will rarely take more than a few minutes as long as you diligently save. this latter point is frequently harped upon as a major problem with the game, and I have to assume people bothered by it are simply not used to having to replay sections of games at all; the devs thankfully didn't force us to restart the mission entirely as in dmc1 or pre-SE dmc3, and the backtracking necessary in most levels makes frequently passing by save points common. on that note: I never found the lack of lock-on frustrating given that ryu's soft lock-on is intelligent and don't really see a need for it in a game without firearms anyway. rarely did I whiff without it being completely my fault, and if you're blocking and countering frequently you should already be lined up with your foe.

I've neglected to discuss the combat given that I wanted to highlight less-discussed elements of the game, but yes, the combat is phenomenal. another aspect of this game's odd branch off of dmc1 is its more traditional and less combo-focused combat that instead favors rapid decision-making and opponent reads. it's not surprising to me that this was developed by a fighting game studio, because the combat first-and-foremost reminded me of something like tekken. in those games I am frequently weaving around opponents, waiting for openings, and then seizing on split-second encounters to score a juicy launcher and deal the bulk of my damage. here it's the same, removed from the one-to-one paradigm to instead wider groups of enemies all vying to attack you at once. izuna drop was my bread-and-butter and securing that light attack (or simply whiffing and catching them with the launcher) was my prize. much like a fighting game enemies will punish you for repetition of simple maneuvers or grab you out of a block frequently, and thus staying instinctual and reactive during combat is a must. it's free-flowing and easy to come up with new links or surprise enders given ryu's strong moveset and stable of weaponry, and while I primarily stuck to dragon sword during my playthrough, I still felt like I was discovering new things and improving the more I played.

a few minor quibbles about the combat (mainly controls) that I would like to bring up however: for one, the density of different button combinations and the amount of contextual ones meant that it occasionally felt like a crapshoot on what would actually come out at any given time. flying swallow was a particularly noticeable one for me, as I didn't really nail down its use until I started incorporating the homing jump into my play, and even afterwards it was a bit dodgy even when I was clearly pointing towards an opponent. incorporating the platforming moves in also never came naturally to me, especially since ryu's wall-run can be spotty on whether it will go vertical or horizontal, and the battle camera further aggravates that. in general I would say ryu's platforming is a little slippery: for 2004/5 it's excellent and an improvement on dmc1's stiff movement and a contemporary like sands of time's rigid traversal system, but it definitely shows its age and results in some unneeded frustration.

bosses are also mostly good, but not particularly ambitious in terms of movesets of fight setup. larger bosses mostly boil down to typical [look to the windup -> dodge the move -> spam an attack for a bit] flowcharts that leave a bit to be desired, especially for bosses like the dragon where I felt like I was mainly just chipping away with the windmill shuriken. humanoid bosses tend to suffer from ryu being too fast and dynamic and the boss needing to stay somewhat calm in order to be fair and predictable, and thus to balance it away from ryu's favor there's a lot of indeterminate blocking that I found annoying and perplexing. using two flying swallows back to back with one clinking off and one hitting makes little sense, and it ruins some of the immersion of trying to figure out the fight when it feels like random chance and not taking advantage of openings. none of them are particularly bad though (except the tanks/copters), and all of them are absolutely manageable or even a little easier than you would expect given the notorious difficulty of the game. the endgame fight where you float on a chunk of rock was also way better than the space harrier section of dmc1, so major props to team ninja there.

there's so much to discuss with this game, and I'm not sure I can even accurately give an opinion given that I've only done a normal playthrough and will likely not go for a hard run anytime in the near future (that's just not how I play games unfortunately). there's so much more content waiting for me when I get back, and hopefully I will given how much this game has imprinted on my brain. equally invigorating, anxiety-inducing, thrilling, and frustrating in all the best of ways.

WARNING: WAY TOO LONG REVIEW INCOMING!!! TL:DR GAME IS GREAT!! PLAY IT!

There is this weird misconception in the idea of games being art that artfulness is all in narrative and story, and that the act of play is just a part of the form and not also an extension of that. It's what I notice when I play games that strive for an artistic expression, that they seem to regard actually PLAYING a video game as a formality. I very much disagree with this line of thinking, as there is an artistic brilliance to classic arcade games like Galaga that has me dumping quarter after quarter into them just to play more. The feedback of getting really good at dodging, weaving, blasting, it's an artistic expression in itself. Games are the only ones that can provide this.

So anyway here is Ninja Gaiden Black.

A franchise that is regularly used in the same breath as words like "excess" and "gratuitous" might not seem like an art game, but when it plays this well, looks this great, and mechanically is just rock fucking solid? That's artwork to me. What's most interesting though is how deftly put together NGB really is when you really sit down to play it! Just saying "oh the ninja game with the big booby ninjas where you slash dudes a lot" completely downplays what work has went into making Ninja Gaiden a cohesive experience from open to close. The pacing in this game!! Holy shit!! I can casually play through half the game without even realizing it because it is always keeping things fresh and interesting. You're in a night time city, fighting ninjas and solving traversal puzzles, now you're in a monastery battling fiends, now you go underground to explore crypts, oh shit! it's the military! go to their base and disrupt their communications!
It's such a finely tuned experience.

What you also don't expect going into NGB is the atmosphere, and a lot of that is helped by the game's peerless visual presentation. For an Xbox game from 2005,
this looks amazing even today. Animations are just slick as hell, enivornments are varied and gorgeous to behold, it is no surprise that this was considered the tour-de-force as far as graphics on the Xbox were concerned. Some of the vistas later in the game will make you glad you can go into first person and take a look
at everything, it's just such an interesting world to exist in.

I'm also really fond of the music, which NGB takes a surprisingly understated approach to. It's all very atmospheric and moody electronics, with occasional breaks into early 2000s industrial rock or drum'n'bass. So it's essentially my dream OST. I especially love the music in the caverns, that's when it really dawned on me how considered the atmosphere of this game really was. There's something genuinely incredible about getting into an incredible beat down with fiends and ogres while soft
beautiful bells chime in the background. What a game.

As for gameplay, I mean, what needs to be said? Ninja Gaiden plays like a dream. I suppose the extremely high skill-floor is a point to look at, and it is absolutely true:
this game is so vicious to first-time players. But it creates one of the most incredible sensations I've gotten from a game: getting GOOD at it. I'm not talking the asinine "git gud" mentality that Dark Souls has bred into people whose only action game has been Dark Souls, but the actual feeling of getting good at a skill. I play guitar,
and Ninja Gaiden hits that same part of the brain that goes nuts when I play something difficult flawlessly, something hard to describe but when you feel it you feel it.

I think it's absolutely worth considering a game as art when mechanically playing it and getting good at it is extremely fulfilling in a way few games are. I don't want to get
weepy about NGB but you have to understand, this game is just so much fucking fun to play. Every difficulty you ascend gives a sensation of personal growth, that you accomplished something that seemed impossible by just putting the effort in. When I first played, black spider ninjas were just impossible to deal with, they were killing me over and over again, I had to drop to Ninja Dog and learn the game. Now? Smoke bomb, izuna drop, counter, on-landing, simple. Jump to hard mode. Damn, they're replaced with cat fiends now?
They can flying swallow ME?? No way I'm ever beating this. Well, how about this? Their recovery from whiffing a flying swallow is pretty bad, you can easily exploit that.

It goes on and on like that, just learning, adapting, trying new things, it's so exciting. You never fall into a pattern because Ninja Gaiden's enemies defy your attempts to, the game
requires reactive play rather than reflexive. You can't block and dodge-roll through everything, because an enemy will counter you eventually, you have to observe, adapt and overcome the odds.
It means that fights never play out the same, that the game always feels fresh no matter how much you play it, and that learning to deal with total bastards like Ogres and Berserkers is like unlocking a cheat code.

I also really love the enemy designs here, not since Devil May Cry 1 has an action game had such a great assortment of foes to beat the hell out of. I mentioned Berserkers, but goddamn those guys are awesome. One of my favorite enemy types in any game. I also love the cat fiends, they are relentless but also a lot of fun to guilottine throw. Oh, and yes, even ghost fish. Weaklings see ghost fish and think "oh no I'm going to die!!" Chads see ghost fish and think, "Oh my god I am going to get some yellow essence!" The art design is also so well-considered, Ryu's outfit might seem outrageous (which I mean, it is. He's a ninja battling monsters. I feel like he should have an outfit for that) but from a gameplay perspective it's perfect: Ryu is always visible, the camera is focused on him, nothing else in the game has the same coloring as his outfit, his arms being visible makes it easy to read what moves he's doing, nothing clashes against him.
Every design seems crafted towards making sure enemy moves are telegraphed and nothing gets lost. You might think I'm reading too much into it, and perhaps I am, but with how much time went into the making of this game, I am dead-certain they turned every stone over to make sure it all worked together.

Of course it isn't all perfect, I know the story gets dinged a lot, which I mean, it's functional. I personally do resent games that just focus on action and take a "So random" approach to storytelling or world building. It's why I bounce so hard off of shit like My Friend Pedro in particular. Feeling like a badass is more fun when it's contextualized in a world, when the world boils down to "it is a video game LOL!!!" it's almost impossible to feel any stakes, odds, or pressure against you. Ryu is the master ninja, he is a stoic professional, and his demeanor makes me want to perform at that level, to inhabit the title of Master Ninja. It's why Thief is more fun when you are not killing people and going thorugh like a ghost, because Garrett is the master thief and would absolutely pull a job off like that. So, while Ninja Gaiden definitely doesn't have a gripping narrative, it absolutely doesn't have a random events plot that is without meaning or merit. Even still, it does have a competent story with effective story beats, such as Alma using the last of her humanity to save her sister before dying, or Ryu going to the shrine maiden's grave to get the gem to power up the dragon sword. Yeah it's not going to blow your mind but you'll be able to understand character motivations the whole way through.

Oftentimes in reviews you'll see people discuss the theme of a game, but they'll just use keywords. A game is about abuse, violence, war, greed, etc. Those aren't descriptive enough in my opinion to describe a narrative's thematic angle. It's like saying Metal Gear Solid is about "war." It's technically true, but some a vague descriptor. A good theme should reflect in your head when you are done playing, as a question you ask yourself, something you are meant to take away with you when you finish a piece of art. When you finish Metal Gear Solid 3, for example, the question the story should have you asking is "how right is it for our allegiances to change our enemies within a day?" I believe Ninja Gaiden wants you asking, "what does it mean to be the master ninja?" But not just in the context of Ryu in the story, but for the player and how much they are willing to learn and improve until they truly are a master ninja. It's a game that extends its theme outwards to the player, it's why Ryu's inputs are so precise to what the player does, you are connected to him and through him you are the master ninja.

This shit is getting pretentious so I will simplify it a little: it's a meticulously crafted action game where you fight a lot of ninjas and demons. Its easy to understand at a glance which makes it easier to get immersed in the extreme mechanical density of its combat.

A lot of common complaints you'll hear about this game usually come down to 2 very important things: 1. Ninja Gaiden is NOT Devil May Cry. These games have similar verbs and on a surface level look alike, but are completely distinct entities. 2. Ninja Gaiden is a game you learn. The camera, the lock-on system, it's all elements of the game you end up learning to use to your advantage. I feel like these things trip people up, going in expecting it to play Devil May Cry With Ninjas, when it is Ninja Gaiden. There is this irritating mentality I've seen online where every game has to be like Dark Souls, when Dark Souls is its own game, other games can be other games. It sounds obvious, but it bleeds into people getting mad at Ninja Gaiden for not being like something else, when there is NOTHING like NG, so to strip it of its idenity and what makes it click with so many people is an Art Crime.

Oh this game has also been ported a shit-ton. Black itself is a re-release of Ninja Gaiden 2004 with every enhancement from the Hurricane Packs minus the intercept move (the world was not ready for a sensual ninja to parry it back intercept style...) So you might wonder, which version should I play? Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus Ultra HD Arcade Neo Edition or Ninja Gaiden 2004? Well it's pretty simple actually! Do you own an Xbox One/Series X? Buy Black! Even a physical copy isn't that bad and digitally it's 10 bucks if memory serves. Don't have an Xbox? The Master Collection is a fine game! Sigma compromises the experience slightly in ways I'm not crazy about but might be more your taste. Removes a lot of the adventure elements that make NG so unique in its pacing, adds in some dogshit new enemies, and makes Rachel playable in fun ableit short chapters. Also Ryu's outfit is very shiny in a way that I don't like, but your mileage may vary. Probably don't buy it on Switch though because that piece of shit will no doubt chug trying to run a game from 2007.

Okay that's my overlong Ninja Gaiden review bye!!!!

This game has a really cool premise in terms of its game design... but alas that's all it does for me. This is the third Team Ninja game I've played that has me really uncomfortable/frustrated with their game design. I'm starting to acknowledge that personally their games are just not for me which sucks cuz they have a really incredible library of games that I really wanted to play. I can definitely say its a far better version of Sega's PS2 game Shinobi which plays somewhat similarly to Ninja Gaiden, but FAR worse.

Definitely was not a wasteful experience though. I did enjoy the game when I felt like I was understanding it's combat mechanics. I may even go back to this game when I feel like I have a better understanding of Team Ninja's game design philosophy or someone teaches me more about how the game should be played, but until then I am content with leaving it shelved for the time being.

Video game equivalent of stepping outside the bar and getting jumped by four guys all kicking you at the same time while you're down (this is a good thing).

It's stunning how much depth NGB's high enemy aggression adds to the combat, even simple mob encounters are intense because it's all about managing their numbers, distancing yourself or closing in, deciding who to attack... Ryu's arsenal has a lot of simple moves and combos (usually just alternating weak and strong attacks) that are not often suited to crowd control, but rather to deal high damage against one enemy. Longer, more flashy combos would not fare as well since you'd be getting interrupted a lot. Instead, the approach is to find gaps, kill fast and get out.

Action is fast, and some opponents are just as agile as Ryu, but may outnumber you. Yet you can also dispatch enemies fairly quickly: chains often kill on their last hit (which generally do the most damage in a combo), especially fast foes which usually aren't tanky.

It demands your attention to everyone onscreen (and offscreen!) rather than have enemies that you're not fighting wait on you. Focusing just on who you're attacking means death. It also requires you learn their patterns, since it's essential to know which attacks are better to dodge, roll or counter; in order to find openings between the onslaught. Spamming block just means they'll grab you, and attacking mindlessly has them dodge.

That is not to say you're forced to play defensively, quite the opposite. There's plenty of moves and strategies for each situation, allowing you to guide the flow of the battle; and in general it's just as necessary to damage, stun or kill enemies in order to deal with numbers as it is dodging and blocking. So long as you know which attacks are suited best for the situation and react fast to enemies you can do almost everything.

There's also some weapons that are a bit better for crowd control, like the Lunar. Or heavy hitting ones like the Dabilahro. They're situational, may be faster but weaker, very good against a certain enemy, require a different type of playing... but the variety is good enough even though half of them are reskins.

The enemies though, fiends as a whole are a bit underwhelming. By the end I was a bit tired of the pink fiends, and non-humanoid fiends didn't really seem like a good fit: no room for aerial combos and usually best to stomp them with a heavy weapon, while I much prefer the fast paced exchanges with humanoid enemies such as ninjas. And bossfights are even more of a mixed bag; the most unremarkable ones are also the ones you fight the most. And in general, giant bosses do not flow well with the combat either. Worms, hydracubus, tanks, bone dragon, emperor... even if they're not hard it's like a chore. But the game does have some good challenges. I enjoyed fighting Alma and Doku, but they feel more like exceptions than anything.

There's other shortcomings for me. Water segments are boring and underwater controls very limiting. While platforming isn't the best it does feel good, especially wall running in combat or going around fast with your moveset. Yet there's not much fun to be found in water. In general level design is not too much of a pain but I don't particularly enjoy picking up every last secret in the game or missing out on an item or upgrade because I found only 49 out of 50. Not many 'puzzles' or exploring around or rather, it's simple enough, which I think is for the best. Just enough to break up combat segments while not trying to be another type of game.

Fiend challenges are ok, especially early on, facing the same enemy really helps you to know them, but then a bit boring when you see the best tactic is just to constantly use orbs and UT to kill every wave. And later on you're doing challenges against the same enemy in a different room.

There's some seemingly 'cheaper' tactics like izuna drop, charged UT, wind slash or wall attacks; but they still have you vulnerable at times, and they're less cheesy the more you advance in the game or in difficulty and meet new foes with tactics against it. Besides, it's just more fun to engage enemies than to constantly run up the fucking wall, if you want to not have fun go ahead.

And I must emphasize how much these faults are far outweighed by its strong points. Combat here is the focus and it does it extremely well. In addition to that, higher difficulties add a lot by really switching it up and if that's not enough there's also mission mode with a lot of content and challenges as well.

In an interview by 1up.com in the year 2000, prior to Ninja Gaiden's (2004) release on the Xbox, creator Tomonobu Itagaki stated "Ninja Gaiden for Xbox will have a higher difficulty level than what most people are probably used to from recent action games. However, this will not be an unreasonable or frustrating amount of difficulty; it will be very fair. Gamers might find it difficult at first, but as they play, they will become surprised at their increasing ability to play well."

When I first picked up the game, I was getting completely bodied. The enemies were, in a word, unrelenting. The first chapter's boss curb-stomped me more times than I'd like to admit. I pressed onward, albeit feeling as if I was brute-forcing my way through chapter 2. And then, in chapters 3-4, I don't know what changed, but something began to click with the game's combat. The game hadn't gotten easier; threats only escalate as the game goes on. No, this was the feeling of me getting better at the game.

Ninja Gaiden Black is a game where you need to learn how to play the game. I don't mean that in an "uwu here's the controls" way, I mean that you experiment and learn what works. Understanding the moves at your disposal is crucial for survival. It's just as important to study your enemies' movements and abilities, and react accordingly. It all results in a game that only grows more satisfying as you keep playing, and where taking damage usually feels like it's entirely your fault.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that NGB actually has really cool level design and setpieces. The game looks excellent and runs at a silky-smooth 60 FPS (Team Ninja always had a gift when it came to polished visuals). Levels have a ton of useful items and secrets if you go out of your way to explore, and I enjoyed the light puzzle-solving that you did along the way as well. Just when you think you're getting the hang of things, the game introduces new enemies or a boss that will obliterate you in a couple hits. The title screen's attract mode also showed me enemies that I didn't encounter on normal difficulty, making this a game where higher difficulties actually introduce new threats (instead of being "same game but more of same enemies and they hit harder"). This is a game I can actually see myself returning to on higher difficulties in the future.

The game isn't flawless by any means; I think the worst enemy I fought in the game was the camera, and that's not something you can simply defeat with Ryu Hayabusa's Dragon Sword. Fortunately, the camera is an elusive enemy who rarely wreaks havoc upon the player. However, when it does decide to rear its ugly head, it's often at the worst possible times, and you have very few ways to control it. Second-worst enemy was Awakened Alma, that boss is just painful.

Ninja Gaiden Black walks the thin line of "hard but fair" unlike any other action game I've played in my life. I've got very little to complain about, I fucking loved this game. Listen, if a chump like me can beat this game, I believe that you can too.

A true masterpiece of the action game genre. A game that rewards skill and precision over everything else and isn't concerned with handing out cool animations to all players because they hit a button a few times. Every time you look cool playing Ninja Gaiden is earned through practice and execution and that makes everything ten times more rewarding than a lot of other games.

Replaying this in 2022, I could not believe how FRESH it felt. The at first quite stiff movement seems like it isn't fit for purpose but you quickly find out how to use every single part of Ryu Hayabusa's arsenal to deal with the increasingly challenging situations thrown at you. It gives the game a feel like no other action game.

Honestly, I couldn't recommend this enough.

This is one of the greatest character action games of all time, DMC5 can eat my ass, this was so much more fun.

Im genuinely shocked this game originally came out in 2004, its aged like the finest of wines, the visuals are obviously dated but the art design has that PS2 charm that im a sucker for.
But the real reason this game is still so good is because its nearly mechanically perfect. The combat is brilliant, the enemy variety and the level design are excellent. And a lot of the bosses have that sekiro feeling of getting to the point where you have mastered everything they can throw it you and you begin to dodge and punish everything perfectly, its extremely rewarding at times solely due to its mechanical depth.
The parkour elements are genuinely impressive, especially for this era, although they are slightly frustrating. This game is hard, really hard, im not sure where it ranks yet as far as hardest games ive played but its defo up there and i love it all the more for that. It wont be for everyone though, this game punishes the new player quite heavily and can initially be quite hard to get into as there really are a lot of early game walls that you can hit hard. Personally though i adore this type of game and its up there with some of my all time faves.