I’m not too familiar with the Ninja Gaiden series. The only other game I’ve played to a significant degree is the NES original. So, one may wonder, why did I play the modern Ninja Gaiden II instead of its more beloved predecessor Ninja Gaiden Black? Well, I’m not like other Backloggd users. I say ‘Castleroid’ instead of ‘Metroidvania’, I don’t quote other users in my reviews, I hate ironic humour, I always commit to my comedic bits unwaveringly, and I just like playing sequels before the original games (The real reason is that I had trouble trying to emulate Black and happened to see this one at a game store).
All of that being said, the game is pretty good, but fairly different than other action games I’ve played. To quote user Herbert in his review of Ultrakill, “Doom Eternal was Ninja Gaiden Black (for FPS games)”. I can’t attest to how similar Doom Eternal is to Ninja Gaiden Black, but it is pretty similar to the latter’s sequel. The brutality, the need to consider every enemy, the gratifying finisher moves, a bit of platforming every once and a while, etc… However, part of the reason I like Ninja Gaiden II much more than Doom Eternal is that you have options in this game. The best way to display this is the fact that this game has achievements for clearing the story with a single weapon. Anyone whose played Doom Eternal knows that trying to use one weapon in that game is pretty much impossible due to the way enemies and resources are designed. You will use every weapon in the ‘right’ way, or you just won’t take down enemies efficiently. Personally, this kind of restriction is not appealing.
In Ninja Gaiden II, there’s still ‘right’ ways to take down enemies, there’s just way more of them. You have a pretty solid set of weapons to use, swords, claws, staffs, chain blades, and more. Each one has different moves that will greatly change the way you need to fight. Attack power, speed, range, mobility, and even specific moves are all things to consider when choosing a weapon to wield. I mostly stuck to the Dragon Sword because it was quick and allowed for a lot of mobility and the Lunar staff because it had good range and crowd control, but I’d switch to the other weapons for certain situations too. This game is far from accessible or easy, but this one allowance is what makes the game engaging for me. Certain moves work well for certain situations, but I had to learn them for myself, and if I didn’t like that move, I could try another weapons’ alternative that, while not identical, would usually get the job done. You also have a good selection of ranged weapons that have different use cases, usually firing quick shots can be a nice disruptor while a focused attack can be used to kill weaker ranged enemies.
It also helps that the normal enemy design, while extremely brutal at times, makes fights super fun. While you have the potential to eviscerate enemies, they can do the same to you. Enemies will lose body parts in fights, and if you don’t finish them off, they will suicide attack you for a third of your health, so every enemy needs to be taken seriously. I know some people say the camera is ‘outdated’, but the truth is that enemies are too aggressive and plenty to be approached with a lock-on akin to Ocarina of Time, and the soft lock-on here was pretty consistent for me personally. Anyway, the multitude of strong enemies means you’ll need to master finishers, essence charges, and a few fundamental combos like the izuna drop to annihilate your enemies. What ties this together is the covertly brilliant ‘lasting damage system’. While health pickups are generous and you actually recover health when no enemies are nearby, your max health will slowly go down the more damage you take, and the only way to restore it is with save points and items. This makes every fight feel tense, because not only can one wrong move massively cut down your health, but even if you do overcome this particular challenge, you’re going into your next fight with a bit of a disadvantage. This means many fights have not only the frantic, all-or-nothing feeling that games with generous checkpoints do, but also the tension and call to mastery that more scarce checkpoints create. More games need to try something like this.
Honestly though, while the common enemies are mostly great, the bosses are a bit mixed. There are some good ones, and they’re usually the most conventional opponents, humanoid bosses that are hard but feel fairly similar in design to common enemies. However, way too many require you to use the bow, and I don’t mean you just fire off a shot and then go in with your blades, you have to stand still, charge an arrow for a few seconds, and shoot, and for some bosses this is the optimal way to deal damage for the entire fight, at least to my knowledge. Really though, I think one issue that hurts all bosses a little is that you can’t combo on them nearly as hard as with normal enemies. All of this makes the fights feel a little more reserved in a way I don’t entirely like that for this kind of game.
I suppose that brings us to the level design. Apparently Ninja Gaiden Black has an interconnected map similar to a Metroidvania or something, but this game has mostly linear levels. They’re pretty solid. It’s hard to get lost, but you do have some optional areas and backtracking to keep things interesting. Ranged enemies are often placed in areas above, and you usually want to deal with them first, be it by shooting them a lot or climbing up and dealing with close-range. There’s some light platforming present, which is thankfully much better than in games like God of War where it’s boring and one mistake instantly kills you. The level design is mostly a really nice blend of fighting and light platforming, and some attacks even depend on jumping off walls to use, which means level design has an added importance to fights that works well with the agility of Ryu.
Alright, I usually only nitpick the stories of games (We’d be here a while if I did so with this one), but there were a lot of specific gameplay moments that really annoyed me. First though, I have to talk about the performance and glitches. I played this game vanilla on 360, so maybe this isn’t the best way to play the game, but frame drops weren’t uncommon and there were a significant amount of glitches. One time, an enemy got stuck behind a gate. The only way to open this gate is to kill the enemy, and since I couldn’t reach the enemy, I had to reload a save. One time these enemies that sprout up from underground started coming up too high before suddenly disappearing and repeating. This made the fight trivial but annoying. A few times an enemy just started standing in the air for some reason. These kinds of things weren’t super common, but they happened enough that I’m convinced that this game needed a little more polish. Load times can be pretty long too, and that one staircase fight’s reputation is completely earned. It would be really cool if it wasn’t in slow-mo! And look, I like hard games, but sometimes this game is just mean. After beating a boss one time, it just exploded and killed me in one hit. “Ok, next time I’ll run away before it explodes.” I thought. Still, it killed me in one hit despite me being far away from the explosion. I don’t usually like looking stuff up for games, but I ended up just searching the solution so I wouldn’t waste more of my time, and it turns out you just have to block it. This is the definition of a beginner’s trap. It’s trivial to avoid if you know about it, but the punishment is harsh if you don’t. Another time, I killed a boss on an island surrounded by lava. This isn’t a big deal because Ryu can obviously run on lava, but some sadistic bastard at Tecmo decided to put some lava bombs under the lava on the way to the exit. I didn’t notice the subtle tell of these bombs, so I died and had to fight the boss again. Again, dealing with these is no problem if you’re aware of them, so their inclusion serves no purpose other than to punish someone who already defeated a hard boss.
It's honestly the stuff in the previous paragraph that made me bump this down from an 8 to a 7/10. This does mean a replay on an emulator/updated version might have the potential to bring it back up to an 8, but I think I want to play Ninja Gaiden Black first. If that game has what I like about this one and what I don’t like isn’t present, I could see it becoming a personal favorite. As for this game, 7/10.
All of that being said, the game is pretty good, but fairly different than other action games I’ve played. To quote user Herbert in his review of Ultrakill, “Doom Eternal was Ninja Gaiden Black (for FPS games)”. I can’t attest to how similar Doom Eternal is to Ninja Gaiden Black, but it is pretty similar to the latter’s sequel. The brutality, the need to consider every enemy, the gratifying finisher moves, a bit of platforming every once and a while, etc… However, part of the reason I like Ninja Gaiden II much more than Doom Eternal is that you have options in this game. The best way to display this is the fact that this game has achievements for clearing the story with a single weapon. Anyone whose played Doom Eternal knows that trying to use one weapon in that game is pretty much impossible due to the way enemies and resources are designed. You will use every weapon in the ‘right’ way, or you just won’t take down enemies efficiently. Personally, this kind of restriction is not appealing.
In Ninja Gaiden II, there’s still ‘right’ ways to take down enemies, there’s just way more of them. You have a pretty solid set of weapons to use, swords, claws, staffs, chain blades, and more. Each one has different moves that will greatly change the way you need to fight. Attack power, speed, range, mobility, and even specific moves are all things to consider when choosing a weapon to wield. I mostly stuck to the Dragon Sword because it was quick and allowed for a lot of mobility and the Lunar staff because it had good range and crowd control, but I’d switch to the other weapons for certain situations too. This game is far from accessible or easy, but this one allowance is what makes the game engaging for me. Certain moves work well for certain situations, but I had to learn them for myself, and if I didn’t like that move, I could try another weapons’ alternative that, while not identical, would usually get the job done. You also have a good selection of ranged weapons that have different use cases, usually firing quick shots can be a nice disruptor while a focused attack can be used to kill weaker ranged enemies.
It also helps that the normal enemy design, while extremely brutal at times, makes fights super fun. While you have the potential to eviscerate enemies, they can do the same to you. Enemies will lose body parts in fights, and if you don’t finish them off, they will suicide attack you for a third of your health, so every enemy needs to be taken seriously. I know some people say the camera is ‘outdated’, but the truth is that enemies are too aggressive and plenty to be approached with a lock-on akin to Ocarina of Time, and the soft lock-on here was pretty consistent for me personally. Anyway, the multitude of strong enemies means you’ll need to master finishers, essence charges, and a few fundamental combos like the izuna drop to annihilate your enemies. What ties this together is the covertly brilliant ‘lasting damage system’. While health pickups are generous and you actually recover health when no enemies are nearby, your max health will slowly go down the more damage you take, and the only way to restore it is with save points and items. This makes every fight feel tense, because not only can one wrong move massively cut down your health, but even if you do overcome this particular challenge, you’re going into your next fight with a bit of a disadvantage. This means many fights have not only the frantic, all-or-nothing feeling that games with generous checkpoints do, but also the tension and call to mastery that more scarce checkpoints create. More games need to try something like this.
Honestly though, while the common enemies are mostly great, the bosses are a bit mixed. There are some good ones, and they’re usually the most conventional opponents, humanoid bosses that are hard but feel fairly similar in design to common enemies. However, way too many require you to use the bow, and I don’t mean you just fire off a shot and then go in with your blades, you have to stand still, charge an arrow for a few seconds, and shoot, and for some bosses this is the optimal way to deal damage for the entire fight, at least to my knowledge. Really though, I think one issue that hurts all bosses a little is that you can’t combo on them nearly as hard as with normal enemies. All of this makes the fights feel a little more reserved in a way I don’t entirely like that for this kind of game.
I suppose that brings us to the level design. Apparently Ninja Gaiden Black has an interconnected map similar to a Metroidvania or something, but this game has mostly linear levels. They’re pretty solid. It’s hard to get lost, but you do have some optional areas and backtracking to keep things interesting. Ranged enemies are often placed in areas above, and you usually want to deal with them first, be it by shooting them a lot or climbing up and dealing with close-range. There’s some light platforming present, which is thankfully much better than in games like God of War where it’s boring and one mistake instantly kills you. The level design is mostly a really nice blend of fighting and light platforming, and some attacks even depend on jumping off walls to use, which means level design has an added importance to fights that works well with the agility of Ryu.
Alright, I usually only nitpick the stories of games (We’d be here a while if I did so with this one), but there were a lot of specific gameplay moments that really annoyed me. First though, I have to talk about the performance and glitches. I played this game vanilla on 360, so maybe this isn’t the best way to play the game, but frame drops weren’t uncommon and there were a significant amount of glitches. One time, an enemy got stuck behind a gate. The only way to open this gate is to kill the enemy, and since I couldn’t reach the enemy, I had to reload a save. One time these enemies that sprout up from underground started coming up too high before suddenly disappearing and repeating. This made the fight trivial but annoying. A few times an enemy just started standing in the air for some reason. These kinds of things weren’t super common, but they happened enough that I’m convinced that this game needed a little more polish. Load times can be pretty long too, and that one staircase fight’s reputation is completely earned. It would be really cool if it wasn’t in slow-mo! And look, I like hard games, but sometimes this game is just mean. After beating a boss one time, it just exploded and killed me in one hit. “Ok, next time I’ll run away before it explodes.” I thought. Still, it killed me in one hit despite me being far away from the explosion. I don’t usually like looking stuff up for games, but I ended up just searching the solution so I wouldn’t waste more of my time, and it turns out you just have to block it. This is the definition of a beginner’s trap. It’s trivial to avoid if you know about it, but the punishment is harsh if you don’t. Another time, I killed a boss on an island surrounded by lava. This isn’t a big deal because Ryu can obviously run on lava, but some sadistic bastard at Tecmo decided to put some lava bombs under the lava on the way to the exit. I didn’t notice the subtle tell of these bombs, so I died and had to fight the boss again. Again, dealing with these is no problem if you’re aware of them, so their inclusion serves no purpose other than to punish someone who already defeated a hard boss.
It's honestly the stuff in the previous paragraph that made me bump this down from an 8 to a 7/10. This does mean a replay on an emulator/updated version might have the potential to bring it back up to an 8, but I think I want to play Ninja Gaiden Black first. If that game has what I like about this one and what I don’t like isn’t present, I could see it becoming a personal favorite. As for this game, 7/10.
6 Comments
Also wtf play Black ASAP
@Rexailos I've had a little trouble setting up an Xbox emulator but once I get it working I definitely will.
In the comparison to Doom Eternal- I do actually agree that it doesn't perfectly hit the mark though I don't think Doom Eternal is actually too strict, it's just too afraid of the player not getting "it" that it ends up looking strict; Weapons in Ninja Gaiden are multipurpose, with overlapping movelists with lots of similar attacks- Each weapon in Doom Eternal represents a single attack in a move list (herein is the first problem- it tries to draw out progression so as to not overwhelm the player, slowly drip feeding weapons, and locks instant weapon swapping behind a perk, instant weapon swapping being essential to building combos out of individual weapon attacks). Almost every weapon in Ninja Gaiden has "flying swallow" or something similar for example, which is perfect for quickly beheading a single mook but has poor crowd control and makes you fairly vulnerable after. Doom Eternal will pull you aside to show you that you can shoot a grenade in a Cacodemon's mouth for a glory kill, which is a slow method that requires repositioning and leaves you very vulnerable, vs just using a rocket + ballista combo shot or a billion other options. It's like if Ninja Gaiden pulled you aside and said "use flying swallow on these guys" people would use nothing but flying swallow and not experiment. Doom Eternal's fear of the player not coming to terms with it's game mechanics ironically discourages exploration of the mechanics and pushes the player away from the deeper levels, Ninja Gaiden's self-confidence draws the player further in.
Also if you ever decide to replay it, each subsequent difficulty level replaces the enemies spawns with different enemies completely, it's very thrilling. The bosses suck on every difficulty though.
Also if you ever decide to replay it, each subsequent difficulty level replaces the enemies spawns with different enemies completely, it's very thrilling. The bosses suck on every difficulty though.
@Herbert Honestly, you make some compelling points. I did consider turning off the tutorials midway through playing Doom Eternal, but I was under the impression that since the default was to have the tutorials, taking out enemies would be tedious if I didn't know the optimal way the game wanted me to do it. I also got that impression from fans because most opinions similar to mine I saw online were met with some form of "Skill issue" instead of something like your comment. I think Eternal was very well made in many aspects, so if I ever do a second playthrough I'll likely try it without the tutorials to see if it's more fun that way.
being the only doom eternal liker who can string together full sentences is a terrible burden
SOLERO
4 months ago