If you try and play Shinobi like a traditional hack-and-slash combo-heavy character action game, you'll probably find yourself getting frustrated within minutes. You can't dash or jump cancel sword swing animations, nor can you rotate your character's swings during the animation, so button mashing is discouraged and every attack matters that much more. Instead, the goal is to wrap up enemy encounters as quickly as possible, diving and dashing between foes to chain them together in a manner akin to abusing Sonic's homing attack (albeit with tougher execution). This is encouraged two-fold: firstly, Hotsuma's cursed sword requires sacrifices in the form of enemy blood (and running out of souls will cause the sword to sap his health instead), so slaying foes is in succession the most effective way to farm souls and satiate the sword's hunger. Just as importantly however, successfully chaining enemies builds up Hotsuma's damage output, so it becomes integral to prioritize weaker and clustered enemies so later hits can deal massive damage to bulkier foes; it's a great way to both highlight Shinobi's arcade puzzle-like qualities of efficiently navigating a room as well as giving the player a viable and clean strategy to quickly dispose of spongier enemies. This also applies towards boss fights, and there's nothing more satisfying than biding your time, waiting for the boss's goons to stack up, and then tearing your way through to finally slice the boss in one fell swoop.
To be fair, while a lot of Shinobi's criticism comes in the form of not understanding the above Tate system, there are other factors at play. I can admit that Shinobi doesn't feel very beginner friendly despite the seeming simplicity of its core concepts; there's no tutorial or in-game explanation of the game's mechanics, and if you don't understand basics like wall-running or stealth dashing behind foes to get around enemy stances (since side and back attacks deal more damage and some foes can block frontal strikes), you'll find yourself getting walled and wombo comboed by foes rather quickly due to what appears to be a lack of both invincibility frames and the game's inclination towards stun-heavy enemy attacks. Moreover, the game is definitely quite punishing: health drops can feel a bit scarce at times, jumps feel quite committal since you can't alter your aerial drift mid-jump and must rely on expending your double jump or dash, and falling off the stage will result in instant death with no midway checkpoints attached to any stage. That said, the biggest challenge for me was the rudimentary camera. It's fairly static, and as a result, it becomes a bit of a chore having to constantly rotate the camera mid-combat to spot all appearing foes so you don't have to attack while they're off-screen. The lock-on system makes it easier to target singular enemies at a time (and is often essential because there's no way to dash upwards/downwards towards foes without it), but it does present the additional issue of constantly needing to tilt the camera up and down afterwards: if the camera is pointed downwards, aerial enemies and floating collectibles are tough to spot, but if the camera is pointed upwards, then blind platforming becomes a nightmare. The other prevalent critique that comes to mind are the level designs themselves: while I don't have complaints towards enemy placements, I find that the level design motifs tend to bleed into one another within individual stages (i.e. specific platform and wall placements are repeated verbatim within the span of a few minutes), which can make the stages feel like they drag on too long, especially when no midway checkpoints exist. I also wish that there weren't so many straight corridors/tunnels present throughout the game, and could have done with more open room environments with wall-running opportunities. Finally, the final boss was unfortunately a miserable experience due to wonky mob hurtboxes (my sword kept phasing through and missing the spawned small-fry), the multitude of stun-heavy attacks from foes, and the element of luck involved (since the final boss loved to turn temporarily invulnerable or teleport away many instances after I had successfully chained the weaker minions for damage).
Even despite my criticisms however, I don't think Shinobi is anywhere as hard as a lot of players have made it out to be, and it is exactly what I had envisioned a ninja game to be: swift and efficient bread & butter combat that emphasized quick thinking and efficient traversal just as much as steady reflexes. It really never gets old slashing and dashing between scores of foes, and then cutting straight away to a cinematic of Hotsuma dramatically turning his blade while his prey is simultaneously sliced to shreds behind him. In conjunction, I certainly enjoyed the campy narrative regarding themes of light vs dark and revenge and honor between a bunch of folks who studied the blade. Lastly, the varied and fantastic soundtrack alongside the sleek visuals was the cherry on top to elevate those vibes. If you're willing to meet this game halfway despite all the classic 2000s PS2 jank and the intimidating learning curve, then I think you'll find a truly exhilarating experience that was ahead of its time in many ways despite the lack of polish, and a title that I think modern developers could learn a lot from.
To be fair, while a lot of Shinobi's criticism comes in the form of not understanding the above Tate system, there are other factors at play. I can admit that Shinobi doesn't feel very beginner friendly despite the seeming simplicity of its core concepts; there's no tutorial or in-game explanation of the game's mechanics, and if you don't understand basics like wall-running or stealth dashing behind foes to get around enemy stances (since side and back attacks deal more damage and some foes can block frontal strikes), you'll find yourself getting walled and wombo comboed by foes rather quickly due to what appears to be a lack of both invincibility frames and the game's inclination towards stun-heavy enemy attacks. Moreover, the game is definitely quite punishing: health drops can feel a bit scarce at times, jumps feel quite committal since you can't alter your aerial drift mid-jump and must rely on expending your double jump or dash, and falling off the stage will result in instant death with no midway checkpoints attached to any stage. That said, the biggest challenge for me was the rudimentary camera. It's fairly static, and as a result, it becomes a bit of a chore having to constantly rotate the camera mid-combat to spot all appearing foes so you don't have to attack while they're off-screen. The lock-on system makes it easier to target singular enemies at a time (and is often essential because there's no way to dash upwards/downwards towards foes without it), but it does present the additional issue of constantly needing to tilt the camera up and down afterwards: if the camera is pointed downwards, aerial enemies and floating collectibles are tough to spot, but if the camera is pointed upwards, then blind platforming becomes a nightmare. The other prevalent critique that comes to mind are the level designs themselves: while I don't have complaints towards enemy placements, I find that the level design motifs tend to bleed into one another within individual stages (i.e. specific platform and wall placements are repeated verbatim within the span of a few minutes), which can make the stages feel like they drag on too long, especially when no midway checkpoints exist. I also wish that there weren't so many straight corridors/tunnels present throughout the game, and could have done with more open room environments with wall-running opportunities. Finally, the final boss was unfortunately a miserable experience due to wonky mob hurtboxes (my sword kept phasing through and missing the spawned small-fry), the multitude of stun-heavy attacks from foes, and the element of luck involved (since the final boss loved to turn temporarily invulnerable or teleport away many instances after I had successfully chained the weaker minions for damage).
Even despite my criticisms however, I don't think Shinobi is anywhere as hard as a lot of players have made it out to be, and it is exactly what I had envisioned a ninja game to be: swift and efficient bread & butter combat that emphasized quick thinking and efficient traversal just as much as steady reflexes. It really never gets old slashing and dashing between scores of foes, and then cutting straight away to a cinematic of Hotsuma dramatically turning his blade while his prey is simultaneously sliced to shreds behind him. In conjunction, I certainly enjoyed the campy narrative regarding themes of light vs dark and revenge and honor between a bunch of folks who studied the blade. Lastly, the varied and fantastic soundtrack alongside the sleek visuals was the cherry on top to elevate those vibes. If you're willing to meet this game halfway despite all the classic 2000s PS2 jank and the intimidating learning curve, then I think you'll find a truly exhilarating experience that was ahead of its time in many ways despite the lack of polish, and a title that I think modern developers could learn a lot from.
2 Comments
@BlazingWaters: You pretty much got to most of my qualms; I didn't struggle as much as I expected with Stage 5's flooded waterways surprisingly, probably because I didn't focus too heavily on combat while wallrunning there, but Stage 6 definitely felt like a pain in the ass at times with how many vertical rooms there are that require you to slowly scale downwards while fighting off foes and destroying the necessary talismans. I stopped keeping count of how many times I fell into the drink in that level, eventually I just had to bide my time and approach those slowly while trying to rush through the optional enemies elsewhere.
I do have to admit that I'm kind of attached to the exaggerated English dub, if anything the final boss yelling "i SuMmOn tHe PoWeR oF tHe HeAvEnS" was my one solace in having to endure the waves of attacks and strange mob hurtboxes. But yeah, I find the bosses in general kind of endearing; you either know what you're doing and just chain the Tate system to body them in a couple of minutes or you don't know what you're doing and you have to slowly chip away and dodge a kajillion attacks while doing so. I'd pretty much agree that I like the core gameplay and the flow of the more memorable stages like stage 8 and surprisingly enough, most of stage 4 (the fire level) to recommend the game even despite my other issues here and there. Really wish we had more combat action games that prioritized zooming through enemies like usable obstacles, and I'd be ecstatic if SEGA ever rereleased the game.
I do have to admit that I'm kind of attached to the exaggerated English dub, if anything the final boss yelling "i SuMmOn tHe PoWeR oF tHe HeAvEnS" was my one solace in having to endure the waves of attacks and strange mob hurtboxes. But yeah, I find the bosses in general kind of endearing; you either know what you're doing and just chain the Tate system to body them in a couple of minutes or you don't know what you're doing and you have to slowly chip away and dodge a kajillion attacks while doing so. I'd pretty much agree that I like the core gameplay and the flow of the more memorable stages like stage 8 and surprisingly enough, most of stage 4 (the fire level) to recommend the game even despite my other issues here and there. Really wish we had more combat action games that prioritized zooming through enemies like usable obstacles, and I'd be ecstatic if SEGA ever rereleased the game.
BlazingWaters
9 months ago
Shinobi PS2's bosses are some of my most humorous outings in any game from this gen though. They're mostly obscenely tough and require precise setups or are so easy to abuse the Tate system that they're gone within the minute or two. The only one I'd call outright bad is, as you mentioned, the final one. Had to abuse PCSX2's save states to be able to take them down...