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.
tsubasasleeping
17 days ago