I think you can sum up the modern Ninja Gaiden series through the arc of chapter 7: you storm an airship, fighting a bunch of fun mobs and destroying it from the inside. You face off against a rival ninja, before driving a motorcycle out of the crashing wreckage. So sick... And then you randomly fight a giant turtle that just wanders around in a circle. The game repeatedly builds sequences up to a slam dunk and then punctuates it with a brick.
It was forgivable in the first game, but the sequel foregrounds the issue. Ultimately, this is a consequence of the maximalist philosophy of NG2 - there is no restraint, everything is more. Most of the worst elements could have simply been cut from the game and it wouldn't have even felt like anything was missing. But chapter 7 needed two boss fights, because we can't let that brilliant turtle boss design go to waste. Hell, let's make you fight two of them later on, really get our money's worth. It doubles down on its worst impulses.
Again, the core combat is excellent, but I just can't look past that stuff. Good boss fights are make or break for me, so no game with that Gigadeath fight could ever earn more than three stars, and I'm not even sure that's the worst boss in the game. With such great melee combat, why are there so many boss fights where the optimal (and often only) strategy is just "use bow and arrow until dead," or worse, some lame cheese? I want to square up and fight. These games have a handful of good duels (e.g. Murai, Doku, Genshin) but they just keep giving you lazy ranged fights and giant enemies with limited movesets.
Similar to NGB, a big part of the problem is the game's superlative reputation. For years I heard nothing but praise about these games - the pinnacle of the action genre, total masterpiece. It's not totally unfounded; I can see glimmers, and sometimes the games really shine. But I guess I do understand why, whenever I saw clips of the gameplay, it was never a boss fight.
It was forgivable in the first game, but the sequel foregrounds the issue. Ultimately, this is a consequence of the maximalist philosophy of NG2 - there is no restraint, everything is more. Most of the worst elements could have simply been cut from the game and it wouldn't have even felt like anything was missing. But chapter 7 needed two boss fights, because we can't let that brilliant turtle boss design go to waste. Hell, let's make you fight two of them later on, really get our money's worth. It doubles down on its worst impulses.
Again, the core combat is excellent, but I just can't look past that stuff. Good boss fights are make or break for me, so no game with that Gigadeath fight could ever earn more than three stars, and I'm not even sure that's the worst boss in the game. With such great melee combat, why are there so many boss fights where the optimal (and often only) strategy is just "use bow and arrow until dead," or worse, some lame cheese? I want to square up and fight. These games have a handful of good duels (e.g. Murai, Doku, Genshin) but they just keep giving you lazy ranged fights and giant enemies with limited movesets.
Similar to NGB, a big part of the problem is the game's superlative reputation. For years I heard nothing but praise about these games - the pinnacle of the action genre, total masterpiece. It's not totally unfounded; I can see glimmers, and sometimes the games really shine. But I guess I do understand why, whenever I saw clips of the gameplay, it was never a boss fight.
ThePunkBuster
1 day ago