this game, on its own, is a watered down port of Ninja Gaiden 2, but with some great quality of life updates like not having to go to the chapter screen every time you die, and extreme performance/framerate increases, a new weapon, and a cool mode in Ninja race. but the increased health of enemies and less enemies per encounter just makes fight feel significantly less fun, since what used to be a game of thrillingly dodging between tons of enemies as you cut through them turned into dodging two enemies and slowly hitting them until you got a lucky dismemberment
then enter the mod Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Black, and the game becomes perfect, essentially just removes the bad of Sigma while keeping the positives. it reduces enemy health, appropriately adjusts damage and makes dismemberment feel like it did in the original. and because its on PC, you don't have to worry about the insane enemy counts resulting in the game starting to lag, you keep the quality of life updates and extra gamemodes, and you get the new weapon which is one of my favorites in the game.
if you loved Ninja Gaiden 2, this modded version is a must play, and the only real way to play the master edition on PC as far as I'm concerned, even worth its price tag. god tier game