Welcome back to the Ninja Gaiden Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’ll be looking at Ninja Gaiden 3 and its revised version, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge. This was the first entry in the modern series without the involvement of Tomonobu Itagaki, who left Tecmo-Koei due to contract disputes. Ninja Gaiden 3 game was reviled on release and, while Razor’s Edge was generally considered a big improvement, it still was not looked on very fondly either. I remember finding Razor’s Edge enjoyable when I first played it, but how does it hold up in 2025? Read on to find out…

As I’ve already kind of spoiled, Ninja Gaiden 3 has had two versions released. Unlike other games with multiple versions in this franchise, the differences between Ninja Gaiden 3 and Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge are quite drastic. We’ll get into the finer differences between them in the Love/Hate sections, but to put it simply:

• First of all, there was the original release of Ninja Gaiden 3 for PS3 and Xbox 360. This was the game as originally intended and presented, with a combat system which has been changed significantly from the previous two games and with a bunch of trend-chasing “cinematic” moments.
• Then there was Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge, which was first released as a goddamn Wii U exclusive launch title (although this version of the game would get ported to PS3 and Xbox 360 not long thereafter). The game would then be ported again in the Master Collection, identical aside from missing all online features. This overhaul of Ninja Gaiden 3 has the same basic structure, but the combat feels more in-line with the first two Ninja Gaiden games, remixes some mechanics for the better, and jettisons the more unpopular design choices which bogged down the original release.

For this Love/Hate series, I started playing through the original release of Ninja Gaiden 3 on Hard mode, but dropped to Normal halfway through chapter three (we’ll explain why later). I also played through Razor’s Edge on my Steam Deck on Hard mode. I had played Razor’s Edge on PS3 previously, but the original Ninja Gaiden 3 was a completely new experience for me, so it was interesting to get to compare them first-hand.

Also, one last thing before we get into the list: since certain points are specific to certain versions of this game, every Love or Hate bullet-point will specify NG3, RE, or both. This should keep things from getting too confusing and let me keep all my thoughts to one article. Got it? Let’s go.

Love

• Steel on Bone (RE) – Steel on Bone was one of the flashier new additions in vanilla Ninja Gaiden 3, but its implementation doesn’t change up combat all that much. While it is apparently activated by sliding towards an enemy and making a strong attack, it seems to go off at random, so it’s not really something you come to rely on. Razor’s Edge completely overhauls the mechanic though, to the point where it’s easily my favourite part of the game. Ninja Gaiden 3 introduced the concept that enemies will glow red when they’re making an unblockable attack, but Razor’s Edge changes Steel on Bone so that this red glow signals an opportunity to instantly kill the enemy: land a strong attack on a glowing enemy and you will one-shot them, and then this can be chained to also kill several nearby enemies in the process. Each kill also heals you a little bit as an extra bonus! This makes for a great risk/reward system that feels so satisfying to get good at and helps to deal with the plethora of enemies this game throws at you.
  • In general, the combat system in Razor’s Edge feels quite good. That said, I’m not giving the combat system a whole section of its own, though: much of what makes Razor’s Edge feel good is that it just copies Ninja Gaiden II, with Steel on Bone being the most positive deviation from that template.
• Dodge Slide (both) – Ninja Gaiden II made the dodge move into a short slide, but it was largely the same idea as the previous game’s dodge roll. Ninja Gaiden 3 indisputably improves this by giving you a fast and lengthy dodge slide. Not only does this let you cover more ground, but it can also be used offensively: if you dodge slide into an enemy, it can knock them off-balance, or even launch them into the air for an instant-kill overhead slash! It’s a pretty small change, but holy crap does it make Ninja Gaiden‘s combat even more fun.
• Brutality (NG3) – The original release of Ninja Gaiden 3 is trying really hard to be edgy and serious. They really want to make Ryu seem like a monster as he tears through his enemies, and the game demonstrates that to visceral effect. Human enemies will eventually take so much damage that they pitifully stagger, crawl, bleed out from their wounds, scream in terror, surrender, and beg for mercy before you finish them off. This is supposed to make you question the morality of Ryu’s actions but, unfortunately, this is undermined by the fact that it feels awesome to destroy your enemies in such brutal fashion. Hell, the game incentivizes it: special attacks will instantly leave enemies in a dying state, and your ki bar fills faster if you finish them off yourself. It’s very in-your-face, but we rarely get to see games indulge in this kind of brutality, so it gives the game a special sort of identity at least.
  • This is actually one of the few things that Razor’s Edge scrapped that I kind of miss. Like, sure, I’ll take delimbing and obliteration techniques over Ninja Gaiden 3‘s brutality any day of the week, and finishing off these dying enemies can feel like a chore, but goddamn do you feel like an unstoppable beast when you’re in the heat of combat and see multiple enemies crawling in a pathetic bid to escape from you.
• Upgrade System (RE) – Razor’s Edge adds an upgrade system where you spend karma points earned in-game to get new abilities, weapons, and ninpo (this effectively replaces the old Muramasa shops from the last two games and can be accessed at any time). While I’m kind of annoyed that this effectively paywalls some basic techniques from Ryu’s arsenal, there are some interesting new abilities which balance this out. Furthermore, it really allows you to personalize your playstyle, allowing you to avoid spending karma on abilities you don’t use, or fast-tracking the stuff that matters more to you (eg, my Razor’s Edge run went more smoothly than in vanilla Ninja Gaiden 3, in part because I was able to get a level two sword much earlier to expand my combat options). Ultimately, I’m happy that this system was added and its omission from the base game feels so glaring (especially in that one level where they troll you with the Muramasa shop theme).
• Ayane is Just the Coolest (RE) – Look, you let me play as Ayane and I’m going to be happy no matter what, but that said, I really enjoyed her bonus chapters in Razor’s Edge! In my opinion, they’re easily the best bonus chapters in the trilogy, largely due to how well Ayane plays. She’s missing some of Ryu’s expertise and diversity, but she’s much faster than he is, without feeling any weaker in the process.
• A Couple Good Bosses… (both) – Ninja Gaiden games aren’t exactly known for their boss fights (Ninja Gaiden II, in particular, has a bunch of bad ones). Ninja Gaiden 3 actually improves things on that front, giving us some franchise highlight bosses:
  • The first is the Regent of the Mask. While it is annoying that you have to fight him four times over the course of the game, the actual mechanics of the fight are a lot of fun. He’s got a swashbuckling combat style, so his attacks are precise and reasonably-telegraphed to allow you to react. He also gains new tricks with each subsequent battle, so he retains some freshness throughout. Plus it also helps that he’s a really charismatic antagonist!
  • The second is the prototype goddess. This transforming demi-god offers a diversity of combat styles and enjoyably-telegraphed attacks to make the battle feel fair. This fight is even better in Razor’s Edge, where the boss becomes vulnerable to Steel on Bone punishment. You fight a trio of them as Ayane later in the game, which is also quite fun!
  • The third is the doppelganger boss. We would get doppelganger fights on the higher difficulties in Ninja Gaiden Black/Sigma, but here they’re a full-on boss and make for a fun bout. My main issue with them is that the Izuna drop is fucking overpowered, but that’s kind of the point when facing an enemy with the same skills as you, right? It also helps that, if you’re familiar with the weapons it wields, that also means that you’re instantly familiar with its recovery times, so you will know when to go for the punish. Overall, a very tense, fair, and fun showdown with an equally-skilled opponent!
• Fan Service (both) – Perhaps it doesn’t reflect so well on Ninja Gaiden 3‘s story that its biggest highlights are when it reminds us of better games. That aside, I was legitimately hyped throughout Day Five, which opens with Ryu preparing for the trials ahead of him by returning to the sword graves of the Black Spider Ninja clan to borrow Genshin’s sword. Things just get cooler as we get to explore the Hayabusa village in full-repair, seeing how people live, and getting to see some familiar faces that haven’t been seen since Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword. We get to see Ryu pay his respects at Kureha’s grave once more. And, to top it all off, we then get to spend the second half of the chapter doing a tag-team with Momiji! It’s all meaningless to a non-fan, but my God was this chapter a joy for me specifically.
  • To my great surprise, Razor’s Edge does not change how this chapter plays! It’s definitely the most slow-paced, narrative-centered level in the game, but I love it as a bit of downtime from the dull main plot.
• The Girls (RE) – So not only can you play two chapters with Ayane, but you can unlock Ayane, Momiji and Kasumi in chapter challenge as playable characters, all with distinct and unique playstyles. This effectively allows you to replay most of the game with whatever character tickles your fancy. This is, quite frankly, an incredible bonus that can essentially get you three additional playthroughs if you want to see everything on offer!

Mixed

• Ninpo System (both) – One of the more fundamental changes in Ninja Gaiden 3 vs its predecessors is that the ninpo system has been changed pretty drastically:
  • There’s only one ninpo available to you in Ninja Gaiden 3, inferno, but it’s metal as fuck: Ryu summons a giant, flaming dragon, which grabs every enemy in the area and then violently devours them as they scream in terror! It’s designed to be very overpowered, but it comes with some drawbacks. For one thing, ninpo can now only be used if you fill a ki bar by killing several enemies first. You start a combat encounter with no ki and you lose all accumulated ki at the end of the fight (although at least any lost ki gets converted into healing). As a result of these changes, you can’t really use ninpo when you’d like to. In previous Ninja Gaiden games, you could always bank some ninpo uses for if you got into a tight spot, but in Ninja Gaiden 3 you kind of feel forced into using ninpo when you have it. Inferno also feels particularly deflating due to the way enemies spawn in: you’ll wipe out an entire screen of enemies with an awesome animation, and then the game cuts back to Ryu and you’re staring at a screen of enemies as if nothing happened; it’s legitimately deflating.
  • Meanwhile, Razor’s Edge shakes things up a bit by giving you multiple ninpo options, all of which require different amounts of ki to use, which adds some variety and strategy. The overpowered True Inferno is here as well, but only available if you find enough golden scarabs first and it requires a TON of ki to use. The ki meter also does not reset at the start of a combat encounter anymore, so you can bank ninpo for when you need it! However, I just don’t like this ki bar system as much as the essence/item refill system from its predecessors. Functionally, they’re fairly similar: you have to kill a bunch of enemies to get essence, so it’s not that dissimilar… but it just feels worse, and I cannot shake it. I also get really annoyed at some special abilities which use your ki, which I kept accidentally activating.
• Ultimate Techniques (both) – Ultimate techniques were an aspect of the previous two games that I’ve always been kind of mixed on. On the one hand, they are really flashy and show off the game’s hyperviolence. On the other hand, you can break combat by spamming them, and it feels weird that the game’s “ultimate” move requires you to… just sit and watch for a few seconds. This was always mediated by making you have to charge up an ultimate technique to use it, but Ninja Gaiden 3 shakes this up by making the ultimate technique occur nearly-instantly. To offset this, it can only be done by killing several enemies first, which causes Ryu’s arm to glow, signalling that he can now use an ultimate technique once. I kind of like that this is now a risk-free, screen-clearing reward that you get occasionally… but I also kind of liked that risk that was inherent in the old system. Not being able to have an ultimate technique in your back pocket when you need it also kind of sucks. I dunno, this is a real “mixed” entry if I ever saw one.

Hate

• The Health System (both) – One of the most fundamental changes made to Ninja Gaiden 3 is the way healing and damage works. The game has a similar sort of system to Ninja Gaiden II, where you automatically heal at the end of a combat encounter, but every time you take damage, a chunk of your health bar goes away until you can reach a save point. Ninja Gaiden II was pretty forgiving about this though: you could get blue essence in combat to heal passively (and even restore some of the lost health bar if you did well enough), and you had plenty of healing items to use in a pinch. Ninja Gaiden 3, on the other hand, has removed essence and healing items entirely. As you’d expect, this leads to a lot of frustration in a franchise this difficult:
  • Every bit of damage you take in this game feels so punishing, especially if it happens right after a save point. You have very little margin for error or forgiveness for making a mistake. You only get a couple saves per chapter, with lots of combat encounters in between them, so every bit of health bar you lose makes each subsequent encounter that much more difficult. This is especially true with boss encounters, who have much more health than previous Ninja Gaiden games and can instantly one-shot you if you have taken too much damage going into the fight. This is the main reason I dropped from Hard to Normal in vanilla Ninja Gaiden 3: I was having such a miserable time with the game, that the “challenge” wasn’t even worth it. Normal is certainly a lot easier, but at least it doesn’t leave you raging the entire time.
  • Also of note: Ninja Gaiden 3 is pretty generous with checkpoints, but this actually works against the healing system. The game doesn’t reset damage upon death, so if you made some mistakes and reached a checkpoint, then you now have to either reset from the last save, or persevere with your diminished health bar. This is especially bad during boss fights, since you’re trying to learn the boss’s patterns and are inevitably going to take damage during their first phase doing so.
  • In Ninja Gaiden 3, the only way to heal damage during combat is to use ninpo which, as I’ve said, can take a while to charge up when you really need it. As a result, the game often feels like this anxious race to fire off your ninpo attack or die trying. Ninpo is also in short supply during a boss fight, so you’re generally expected to get through a multi-phase boss fight with no healing at all. Suffice to say, this feels incredibly punishing at times, especially if you go into the boss fight already damaged.
  • Razor’s Edge is a little more forgiving: while you get less health back from ninpo attacks, ninpo is much more reliable since it doesn’t reset at the start of every encounter, and you now regain a bit of health when you successfully execute a Steel on Bone attack. If you find enough Golden Scarabs, you can also purchase up to five health upgrades, which fully heal you when used. These are incredibly useful for some of the bosses you’ll encounter towards the end of the game. That said, I’d prefer if they had brought back healing items, but the entire game was balanced around this health system, and I imagine that they didn’t have enough time to rebalance everything if this was implemented.
• The Story (both) – The modern Ninja Gaiden games were never really known for their stories, so it can be kind of jarring to remember that the NES games were ground-breaking for their commitment to narrative. I think that that legacy made Team Ninja want to put a lot more emphasis on the story in Ninja Gaiden 3. To some respect, they succeeded: the narrative sure is a lot more involved and complex here… however, it also sucks, which makes it feel significantly worse than the simple and shallow stories of the prior two games:
  • First of all, focusing the entire narrative around accusing Ryu Hayabusa of being a murderer is just plain dumb. Metal Gear Rising had the same issue, and it largely stems from the same problem: we know that the protagonist is a killer, and we do not care. Every person Ryu has killed has been a kill-or-be-killed situation. Hell, he spent the entirety of the last two games stopping demons from taking over the world and killing everyone. Having the bad guys (who do forced experiments on humans and are trying to commit a global genocide) lecture me about morality is just fucking idiotic. It’s like they’re trying to pull off a big Bioshock-style twist, but lack anything substantial to say. If anything, Razor’s Edge‘s story actually feels even more half-assed since the over-the-top brutality and sequences where Ryu cuts down surrendering enemies have been removed – say what you will about the original Ninja Gaiden 3‘s approach, but at least it committed to its stupid story.
  • Secondly, the overarching narrative here makes little sense. The bad guys’ entire plan is, apparently, to draw Ryu Hayabusa out to get access to the blood of the dragon lineage, which they need to create a new god to remake the world. But also, they need him to get close to Canna, so that she can see him inadvertently kill her father (who has been brainwashed and is serving the bad guys), causing Canna to freak out and transform into their prophesied goddess… Oh, and all this was being orchestrated by a fucking nerd in the Japanese military who they knew was crooked, but let him do as he pleased so they could try to figure out what his angle is… also, that nerd wants to fuck his niece, fucking what?
  • Thirdly, I know I gushed about the fifth chapter and all its fanservice, but for a game that’s trying to tell a compelling narrative, it makes no sense to spend a substantial chunk of the middle-portion of the game going off on an entirely superfluous side-quest with a bunch of enemies and characters who have no bearing on the plot. Again, it’s probably my favourite part of the game, but that alone should be kind of damning for how poor the main plot is.
  • Lastly, one of the more controversial aspects of Ninja Gaiden 3 is how it changes how characters were established in the prior two games. Specifically, I’ve seen people complain that Ryu is suddenly being forced into being a father figure for Canna, he takes his mask off, Ayane is suddenly “a bitch”, amongst other things. For what it’s worth, I feel like these particular complaints are actually just Ninja Gaiden 3 caring more about fitting in with established canon with the wider Ninja Gaiden/Dead or Alive universe. Ryu has taken his mask off in Dragon Sword and the Dead or Alive games, not to mention the NES trilogy. Dragon Sword established that he gets along well with the kids in the Hayabusa village (and, honestly, it fills me with joy to see him so caring and respectful to them). The issue isn’t so much that he’s good with kids, it’s that they really force the idea of him really wanting to be a father to her. As for Ayane, her character in Razor’s Edge is far more in-line with her portrayal in Dead or Alive and is far more interesting than her nothing-burger personality in the first couple Ninja Gaiden games.
• Spongy Enemies (NG3) – As I’ve said many times in the past, I hate games with spongey enemies. In general, it shouldn’t take more than a single combo or a few bullets to kill basic enemies. Well, because Ninja Gaiden 3 removed the delimbing/obliteration technique system from the previous game, you are almost always having to reduce enemies to zero hit points to kill them, which often takes more than a single combo for even a basic enemy. As if that wasn’t tedious on its own, they spawn in in staggered waves: I don’t know how many times I cleared an area after a lengthy fight, only to see more fucking enemies approach. I literally said “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?” on two separate occasions due to this. Making matters worse, there’s little more deflating that firing off a screen-clearing ninpo move, only to see every single enemy you just killed respawned back in before the animation has even ended. It makes combat a total slog and is the number one reason why Razor’s Edge is a vastly superior game to the original Ninja Gaiden 3.
  • It’s worth noting that, in the last couple chapters of Ninja Gaiden 3, enemies suddenly lose their sponginess and start dying like flies (even previously-tanky enemies like the alchemists). You haven’t gotten any power-ups or upgrades to cause this, the game just suddenly decides that you do more damage now. Honestly, it makes the game far more fun since you no longer have to deal with its arbitrary, tedious bullshit anymore, even if it throws the idea of challenge completely out the window.
• “Appealing to the West” (NG3) – A lot of this game’s issues can be traced back to the insecurity of the Japanese game publishing scene in the late 2000s to early 2010s. Capcom really spear-headed this idea of “appealing to the west” by discarding the quirks of Japanese culture in favour of more Westernized appeal. Bionic Commando, Dead Rising, Lost Planet, Dark Void, and Resident Evil 5 were some of the early examples we got of this, and they only got more generic and bloated as time went on, as this morphed into a bunch of trend-chasing which grew stale immediately: copious amounts of QTEs, slow walking narrative segments that grind the narrative to a halt, gimmicky stealth sequences (which show up twice at the start of the game and then never happen again), a fucking turret section, and bombastic set-pieces that look cool but take all control away from you. It’s all just a bunch of guff that adds nothing to the game and makes it more tedious to play through.
  • Of particular note, there’s a special place in hell for the person who forced kunai and rope climbing into the game. Having to alternate L1 + R1 just to move forward is annoying and legitimately starts to hurt your hands during some of the longer sequences.
• …And Some Awful Bosses (both) – While Ninja Gaiden 3 does have some of the franchise’s best bosses, it’s a double-edged sword because it also has some of the absolute worst in the franchise:
  • First of all, there’s a fucking giant helicopter. This isn’t that bad at first, but there are three phases, so by the time you reach the third phase your health bar is going to be a sliver as you try to dodge missiles, bombs, swooping attacks and a bunch of adds spawning in. The only reason I managed to get through this is because I found out you can tap R3 while aiming your bow to slow down time to line up your shots, which the game doesn’t bother telling you.
  • The Giganotosaurus boss fight is also really stupid. If you go in having already taken damage, it will straight-up one-shot you. You have very little margin for error with this boss, which is why they made her incredibly stupid with a trivialized pattern – she’ll run around the arena, and then trip and fall on her own face, giving you a ton of time to get in easy damage. You basically have to do the entire fight in a very specific way to avoid dying, it’s more about trial and error than any actual skill.
  • Then there’s Obaba, who shows up in chapter five after getting her ass handed to herself in Dragon Sword and Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. She’s honestly more of a God of War boss than a Ninja Gaiden one: she’s enormous, and you spend the entire fight battling basic enemies, occasionally firing a shot at her, and popping some pimples to kill her. This fight was honestly kind of embarrassing when I got to it in Razor’s Edge – having already learned the process in Ninja Gaiden 3, I breezed through it in a single try having barely taken any damage, despite being on a harder difficulty.
  • Then there’s the double spider tank battle. The initial spider tank battle at the start of the game isn’t too bad, aside from its spamming of missiles and shockwaves, which force you to endlessly dodge for the entire fight and make going on offense incredibly risky. However, having two spider tanks blasting away at you the entire time just gets ridiculous. To make matters worse, you then have another boss fight immediately after with no chance to heal. Thankfully, that boss fight isn’t very difficult, but you’ll likely have so little health left by that point that a single hit could kill you. On Normal mode I could just tank the damage, but on Hard mode it was incredibly frustrating.
  • Finally, there’s the Goddess, the final boss. Honestly, I didn’t find it too bad in vanilla Ninja Gaiden 3 on Normal mode… but in Razor’s Edge on Hard mode? Holy fucking shit this fight is stupid. The first (and hardest) part of the fight is immediately after the last Regent fight, so you come in without a full health bar. You then spend at least a couple minutes killing some of the most annoying enemies in the game while the boss spams you with projectiles and arm slams, all while you have to max charge your ki meter to pull off a special ninpo attack. If you survive this (and, if you have not packed at least one of your health bar upgrades, you probably will not), then the second half of the fight is not quite as bad. The worst part of it is that you will get spammed with even more projectiles, and the Goddess will occasionally swing a sword at you which you need to be very precise to dodge. Honestly, she wasn’t quite as bad for me as the giant helicopter was, but I totally understand why people fucking hate her.
• Just… So Many NG3 Things (NG3, obviously) – Look, I can go on and on complaining about Ninja Gaiden 3‘s myriad of boneheaded decisions, but this article is long enough, so it’s time for a lightning round of smaller-scale bullshit: you only have one weapon for the entire game with zero upgrades, you only get one ninpo technique, the time-wasting grip of murder sequences, bosses don’t have health bars, no obliteration techniques, extremely linear level design… oh, and the fucking main menu. Yes, I’m serious here, I started this game and was immediately turned off by the main menu, which is sideways for no reason at all. What kind of idiot designs a sideways main fucking menu!??? Like, this sounds like nitpicking, and I wouldn’t care if the rest of the game was great… but when your very first impression of the game is bafflement over the ground-level basics like that, it says something about the idiocy behind this game’s design. (For the record, Razor’s Edge fixed the main menu, which told me right away that they understood the assignment.)

Ninja Gaiden 3 is a tale of two halves. The original release is a baffling and tedious experience, undermined by so many bone-headed decisions. Razor’s Edge, while still bogged down by the story, bosses, and a questionable health system, is a major improvement. It makes for a really interesting lesson on game design: Razor’s Edge is fundamentally the same game in many ways, but with some well-considered changes to the combat system, and cutting out a bunch of useless, trend-chasing guff, you can go from “one of the worst games I’ve played” to a really fun experience overall. I’d still agree that it’s easily the weakest entry in the modern trilogy, but Razor’s Edge is well worth playing! As for the original Ninja Gaiden 3? It’s nice to check it out as a curiosity, but it’s unquestionably an inferior experience. If you must try it, then just do it on Normal mode and save yourself the frustration.

Welcome back to the Ninja Gaiden Love/Hate series! In this entry, we’ll be looking at Ninja Gaiden II, which was originally released in 2008 on the Xbox 360. This was the first Ninja Gaiden game I played, which means that, in addition to getting me into this franchise, it was also the catalyst for my obsession with the Dead or Alive movie and games. I liked it at the time, but does the game hold up in 2025? Read on to find out…

As usual for this franchise, there are a ton of different versions of this game. However, Ninja Gaiden II has probably the most splintered and non-definitive release history in the franchise:

• First off, there’s the original Xbox 360 version (which I will refer to as “OG”). This version stands out due to the hordes of aggressive enemies you’ll face. Combat has been balanced so that enemies are more numerous, but they die faster than in later re-releases. The difficulty can occasionally get downright unfair about halfway through the game, and there are some lazy, recycled boss encounters in the final stretch which are excised in future releases.
• Then there’s Sigma 2 on PS3 (I will refer to this version as “Sigma“). This version added a bunch of things (most notably, bonus chapters for Momiji, Rachel, and Ayane), and changed and remixed enemy encounters to be less frustrating (including removing most of the water and ranged combat sequences). However, there’s two major caveats to this:
  • The number of enemies on-screen has been noticeably reduced, and their health has been increased to compensate. This results in a game that has large combat arenas which feel kind of empty, while also making combat a somewhat grindier affair.
  • To make matters worse, the fountains of blood and gore have also been removed, which further makes combat less satisfying.
• Then there was Sigma 2 Plus for the PS Vita (most commentary about falls under the Sigma umbrella, but if I need to refer to this version in particular, I’ll call it “Sigma Plus“). This version adds more new content to Sigma, including more difficulty modes, costumes, game modes, and it restores the gore. However, this version suffers immensely from really poor performance: the game will dip below 30 FPS regularly, the resolution will also get lowered dynamically to try to compensate, and the game’s frequently interrupted by load times… Unfortunately, this makes the game really difficult to recommend.
• Then there was Sigma 2 on the Ninja Gaiden Master Collection (again, if I am referring to this game, it’ll be under the “Sigma” umbrella). This version is based on Sigma Plus, but with much better performance… however, for some ungodly reason, they removed the gore again. WHY…!?!!
• Finally, we recently got Ninja Gaiden 2 Black (which I will refer to as “Black“). This version is running on Sigma code in Unreal Engine 5, making it far and away the most graphically impressive version of the game thus far. While it is based on Sigma, several encounters have been removed or remixed in order to bring it closer to the OG version, ultimately landing somewhere in between OG and Sigma. While it does not have quite the enemy count or aggressive chaos of OG, it also has all of the gameplay improvements of Sigma, leading to a much less frustrating experience, making it probably the best version of the game for new players.

For this Love/Hate series, I played through Ninja Gaiden II on Xbox 360 backwards compatibility and Ninja Gaiden 2 Black on PC. I played through both on path of the warrior (aka, hard mode). I also played some Sigma 2 Plus during the course of this review (this is the version I originally played back when I first tried the series) and some of the Master Collection version of Sigma 2. My thoughts here are based on a general overview of the various versions, but if any opinions are specific to one version, I will note that.

Love

• Classic Hack ‘N Slash Gameplay – Goddammit, I cannot believe I’m saying this about a game released on the Xbox 360, but the gameplay here leaves me nostalgic. This game was released pre-Dark Souls, in the era before action games slowed their pace, gave everyone stamina bars, and discouraged blocking. That’s not to say that I don’t like Souls games (far from it!), but their gameplay style has become so ubiquitous that it’s a legitimate breath of fresh air to go back to this kind of fast-paced, free-form character action. This game is just pure, unadulterated mayhem as you slice through swarms of enemies at high speed and try to avoid getting killed in the process. Even the 360-era jank that we’ve refined away over the years (camera issues, weird collision detection, etc) just fuels the nostalgia at this point, although I also never really felt like they presented me with any hurdles in my playthrough.
• Combat – It should probably go without saying, but Ninja Gaiden II really nails the feel of combat. While the first game had a very deliberate pace to every encounter, Ninja Gaiden II‘s combat is pure chaos, a flurry of blades and blood as you try to kill your enemies faster than they kill you. You feel like an absolute badass as you effortlessly cut through enemies, and the dismemberment/gore acts as the crimson cherry on top (which is a big reason why I am not a fan of most of the Sigma versions of this game; the fountains of blood make every kill so satisfying). Making it through an encounter while sustaining minimal damage really feels great, and it nails the fantasy of being the ultimate ninja badass.
• Healing – For how hard these games are, I really like how fair Ninja Gaiden II feels with its healing. Whereas the first Ninja Gaiden forced you to rely on health elixirs and blue essence to stave off damage, you could be reasonably expected to minimize damage if you were playing carefully, and you had enough resources available to make a reasonable number of mistakes not feel overly punishing. In contrast, Ninja Gaiden II throws so much at you that it expects you to take damage, and it has given you way more opportunities to heal as a result. Every time you take damage, a small amount of HP will no longer be available unless you use an item or find an unused save point to clear it. However, after every enemy encounter ends, the rest of your HP bar will refill. As a result, the game is designed under the assumption that you’re going into each fight with plenty of health, and encounters can be balanced accordingly. This also means that, even if you make a mistake and lose a lot of health, you’re never too far from the next full heal. Even then, you can carry up to six healing items on you, so you have options to mitigate mistakes if needed. It’s a great system, easily the best implementation of healing items in the franchise, in my opinion.
• Volf – This greater fiend is an absolute chad. First of all, he’s a demon werewolf, which instantly makes me love him. However, what really makes him great is how much respect he has for Ryu Hayabusa. He relishes a challenge and is legitimately excited to face off against us in one-on-one combat. His boss fight is easily one of the more enjoyable ones in the game too, and it all culminates in this great moment where we defeat him and add his special scythe to our arsenal.
• Genshin – Speaking of great bosses, Genshin is also a fantastic rival for Ryu Hayabusa. As a leader of the rival Black Spider Clan Ninjas, he gets to show off his strength a few times in the story. We discover that he harbours a hatred of the Hayabusa clan after his brother was killed by Murai… which, honestly, is a really fair justification for his actions. When Ryu finally defeats him, he reveals that his actions came from a legitimate conviction that he was doing what was best for his clan’s future. In turn, Ryu shows him a ton of respect, taking his sword to honour him and kicking Elizébet’s ass when she disrespects the fallen warrior’s corpse. He’s just a solid antagonist and a great foil for Ryu, helping to provide some depth to both characters. Hell, you fight the guy four times over the course of the game, but it doesn’t get old at all.
• Flying Fortress Daedalus – While I enjoyed most of the chapters in Ninja Gaiden II, I have to give special shout-out to Flying Fortress Daedalus, which sees Ryu and Sonia infiltrating a massive flying ninja fortress and then dismantling it from the inside out. This seems like it should be pretty difficult to pull off from a level-design perspective, but the layout of the level makes enough sense to be believable, the enemies are relentless, and there’s so much bombastic action that the entire thing would make Michael Bay jealous. In a game that is all about making you feel like the ultimate ninja badass, Flying Fortress Daedalus was the absolute pinnacle of that for me.
• The Story – Look, don’t get me wrong here: Ninja Gaiden II‘s narrative is extremely simple and utter nonsense. In fact, it’s somehow even more dumbed down than the first game was, with zero character development or twists: the fiends and Black Spider ninjas have stolen the demon statue and are trying to resurrect the Archfiend, it’s up to Ryu to stop them. However, this narrative does exactly what it needs to do, and shuffles Ryu off from new locale to new locale, keeping things fresh and interesting as it goes. There’s a very campy and fun tone, which works much better than the original game’s much more serious tone did. It’s trash, but it’s the most exquisite trash you could ask for, and really cements Ryu as the ultimate ninja badass.
• Black Spider Clan Ninjas – By far the most fun enemies to fight are the standard Black Spider Clan ninjas. They die fast, their limbs and viscera are flying everywhere as soon as you start fighting them, and you mow them down by the dozen… but if you’re playing sloppily, then they can melt your health bar uncomfortably fast. They’re a great standard enemy type and every time they show up, it’s a treat.
• The Staircase – There’s a legendary sequence in the return to Hayabusa Village level near the end of the game which fans of the series just refer to as “the staircase” or, more affectionately, “the staircase of doom”. Put simply, it’s a seemingly endless, straight staircase which leads directly up the mountainside. By the time you get to it, you’ve already been in a couple substantial fights, so you’re itching to get to a save point. Luckily for you, there’s one at the top of the staircase. Unluckily for you, you’ll just have to fight your way through dozens and dozens of ninjas swarming you to get there. It’s an exhilarating fight to experience, as you struggle to deal with the barrage of enemies attacking you from all angles, managing your health and resources to endure the onslaught, while the music just gets more and more hype the further in you get, all while under the knowledge that you are desperately needing to get to that next save point. It’s everything great about Ninja Gaiden II, distilled into one small slice of gameplay.
  • Note: this sequence is kind of nerfed in Sigma due to the lower enemy count and higher health pool of enemies. OG and Black though? Glorious.

Mixed

• Linear Level Design – Honestly, if Ninja Gaiden games were always linear experiences, I wouldn’t even complain about the level design in this game. However, one of the best aspects of Ninja Gaiden 2004 was its exploration and hub-based level design, which has been completely jettisoned in Ninja Gaiden II in favour of a bunch of purely linear corridors. This does play into this game’s sole focus of throwing hundreds of enemies at you at a relentless pace, but it sucks that an aspect of the previous game’s formula is just gone entirely. Not only that, but it also renders most of your cool ninja moves, like wall running, mostly useless outside of a handful of sequences where you are forced to use them to progress.
• The Girls’ Chapters – Considering how mediocre Rachels’ chapters were in the original Sigma, it should probably come as no surprise that Ninja Gaiden II‘s bonus chapters where you get to play as Momiji, Rachel, and Ayane aren’t particularly great. They are basically asset flips, reusing levels and bosses from the main game, and overall they just aren’t as fun as the main chapters. However, as a big fan of this franchise, I’d be lying if I didn’t say that these levels were really exciting regardless. Sure, they completely halt the game’s pacing and I still don’t even particularly like how Rachel plays, but goddamn is it great to see Momiji and Ayane in action (especially in crisp, ultra-detailed HD in 2 Black)! I also appreciate how differently they all play from Ryu, which helps make these chapters short, enjoyable distractions, rather than a slog. I legitimately felt their absence during my playthrough of the OG game and missed the little break and freshened gameplay they would provide.
• Sigma 2 – Don’t get me wrong: all versions of Ninja Gaiden II are fun and perfectly playable, and there are some good changes that have been made to the base game… but, my God, Sigma leaves me with a real sour taste in my mouth. Like I said before, I hate spongey enemies in any video game, so making enemies arbitrarily have to take more hits to kill just sucks. Even then, the lack of gore removes a major component of what makes combat feel so satisfying. Honestly, it’s no so different that it ruins the entire experience. Likewise, if it’s the only version of the game you’ve ever played, then it’s close enough that you don’t necessarily need to try a different version. But if you’ve sampled any other version of Ninja Gaiden II, you can’t help but feel that it’s a fundamentally compromised vision. I’d definitely recommend checking out OG or Black at this point rather than Sigma if you have the opportunity.

Hate

• The Bosses – Unfortunately, while the pre-Souls era action combat is one of the best aspects of this game, it also means that Ninja Gaiden II carries over that era’s terrible boss design philosophy. Bosses in the first Ninja Gaiden weren’t exactly amazing, but they were enjoyable enough to fight and felt reasonably fair (even with their auto-blocks). Most bosses here are a joke, spamming a handful of moves and taking a ton of damage with every hit. However, there are a few bosses which are just bullshit:
  • Basically any boss that you have to use the bow to kill is incredibly tedious (looking at you water dragon, the Quetzalcoatls and, egregiously, the Archfiend – what idiot makes the final boss of their hack ‘n slash ninja combat game only able to be hurt by the bow?!).
  • Perhaps the most notorious boss in the game across all of its versions, the Fire Armadillo is fucking bullshit. When it gets low on health it rains down a constant barrage of flaming meteors which will hit you if you stay still for even a fraction of a second. Oh, and this is an endurance fight as well, so good luck dealing with that while also doing damage. It got bad enough that I just had to try to cheese the fight. The armadillo’s head takes more damage than anywhere else, so you can spam the Flying Swallow technique with a level 3 Dragon Sword to get decent damage in on the boss at least relatively safely… and I say “relatively” here, because this move will occasionally open you up to a bite attack that erases half your health bar in one go. Still, it’s better than slogging through this fight any other way.
    • OG has an extra “fuck you” in store as it is the only version with a bonus double fucking fire armadillo boss fight. It’s about as bullshit as you’d expect that to be.
  • Oh and special shout-out to the last couple chapters, where you go to the underworld have to re-fight every major boss again (only this time with a bunch of adds that you need to deal with). These sorts of boss rehashes always feel like transparent attempts to extend the game’s runtime just a bit longer, and it really hurts the pacing in the final levels as a result.
• Claw Ninjas – This is just me venting here, but goddammit I hate the guys that I like to call “claw ninjas”. They are very fast, constantly on the move, have more health than most other ninja enemies, and they can decimate your health bar before you even realize it, especially on higher difficulties. They get even worse in the latter half of the game when they start spamming incendiary kunai faster than you can react… oh, speaking of which…
• Explosive Spam – The explosive spam in this game gets ridiculous. Enemies will constantly bombard you with rocket launchers and explosive kunai, which become so oppressive that you can barely even see what’s going on due to all the explosions. It is, quite frankly, stupid. Making matters worse, if you get hit by an explosive, it stuns you momentarily, but there are so many projectiles getting launched at once that you can easily get stun locked without realizing it due to the screen-filling explosions.
  • Note: this problem is better or worse, depending on the version of the game you’re playing and the difficulty mode chosen. OG is probably the worst for this, with even the standard difficulties featuring the aforementioned claw ninjas and enemies firing rocket launchers that fire a half dozen rockets every couple seconds, only to spawn even more of the fuckers out of nowhere from behind you. Sigma and Black tone it down significantly to save that sort of shit for the highest difficulties.
• Xbox 360 Version-specific Bullshit – The OG version of Ninja Gaiden II is probably my preferred version of the game, thanks to its more chaotic and fast combat. However, I can’t deny that it has some particular bullshit that I’m glad its re-releases improved upon and make me dread the idea of a replay…
  • First of all, the camera is constantly causing you trouble. I saw people complaining about the camera in Black, but it rarely bothered me. In OG Ninja Gaiden II though? All the time. It’s sluggish to control and doesn’t seem to be able to keep up with you at times. It’s at its apex towards the end of the game when you have bosses that the camera locks onto, causing the hordes of adds that they spawn in to be constantly attacking you from off-screen.
  • Enemy projectile spam is prevalent in this version of the game, which, for a hack ‘n slash game, is about as annoying as you’d expect it to be. It’s so bad that even the fucking werewolves in this version have a ranged attack (which, hilariously, involves them chucking the eviscerated torso of one of their comrades at you). This just gets worse in the later levels when the ranged projectiles start turning into the aforementioned constant explosive spam. Chapter 8 in particular is damn-near ruined due to the incessant explosives.
  • This version of the game clearly wanted to make water combat a thing. However, they didn’t account for one thing: fighting while in the water SUUUUUCKS. Not only is your movement much more difficult, but one wrong button press and you get thrown underwater, where you will inevitably take multiple hits with no way to defend yourself.
  • Ninja Gaiden II was the last game released by Dead or Alive creator and Ninja Gaiden director Tomonobu Itagaki, who left Tecmo-Koei prior to the game’s release and was feuding with upper management. It is speculated that Ninja Gaiden II was not fully completed as a result of this, which would explain some of the really questionable design choices in this game. In particular, chapters 8 and 9 (Russia and the first South America level) are just fucking bullshit. Chapter 8 is a pain in the fucking ass thanks to the endless explosive spam. Meanwhile, Chapter 9 has some of the most blatantly unfinished level design and boss fights this side of Lost Izalith. I was extremely close to just giving up on the chapter 9 boss fight, but I persevered and, thankfully, the game improved significantly again. That said, the boss rush gauntlet in this version of the game gets really infuriating, with the aforementioned double fire armadillo fight at the very start making me want to rage (especially because, if you forget to backtrack to a save point, there’s three pretty challenging encounters after it until you are able to find your next checkpoint, so if you die, you have to redo the entire fight again…).

Ninja Gaiden II is a fun time. It’s unfortunate that there are so many disparate versions of the game, all with their own unique qualities, but at the end of the day, they’re all Ninja Gaiden II: you’re going to enjoy yourself one way or another. While I do think that the linear level design is disappointing, and the last couple chapters are a bit of a slog, this is still a very solid and fun game that is well worth experiencing.

Welcome back to the Ninja Gaiden Love/Hate series on IC2S! In this entry, we’ll be looking at Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword, a curious little interquel released on the Nintendo DS. This game was very experimental, using the DS in unconventional ways to play the entire experience with the stylus rather than a traditional button layout. I’ve played enough gimmicky handheld experiences to be pretty leery about such experiments: would Dragon Sword turn out any better? Read on to find out…

Unlike many other entries in this franchise, Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword only had the one release, that being on Nintendo DS, with no subsequent revisions or re-releases. For this article, I played through the game on Normal mode on my 3DS… and thank God I did. I can’t even imagine trying to emulate this game on my Retroid Pocket 4 Pro or Steam Deck: this game is intrinsically designed around the DS’s hardware.

Love

• Momiji!!! – Dragon Sword marks the franchise introduction of Momiji and, as you may have garnered from her S-ranking in my tier list of Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden characters, that wins this game major points from me! I can distinctly remember when this game came out, as the preview images of Momiji’s bright and cheerful art contrasted with Ryu’s darker, more serious design started my love affair with her character. While she doesn’t get to do a whole lot in this game, there is a secret mode where, if you beat the first boss as Momiji (which you are supposed to lose against), then you’ll get to play through the game as her instead of Ryu (well, technically you’re playing an identical ninja called “Rin”, but it’s literally just Momiji so they don’t have to explain why she’s saving herself from the Black Spider Clan).
• Fan Service! – I don’t even mean this in the usual way you’d expect from Team Ninja (in fact, Dragon Sword is very restrained in that regard). Dragon Sword is an absolute treat for hardcore fans of this franchise’s world, narrative, characters, and their relationships with one another. I was squealing with glee so often as we get new details about this strange setting that we just would not get from a more traditional Ninja Gaiden experience. Like, the game opens with Muramasa visiting Kureha’s grave, immediately rectifying one of my issues with Ninja Gaiden (2004)’s story. We get to meet a bunch of the denizens of the Hayabusa village and see how they go about their lives. We get to see more about the people, culture and methods of the rival Black Spider Clan (who, at this time, would have only been known to fans for their mysterious cameos in Ninja Gaiden [2004], and would get further fleshed out in Ninja Gaiden II). We re-visit several areas from Ninja Gaiden (2004), so there’s a sense of comforting familiarity when traversing the world map. The game also acts as the payoff for Rachel’s chapters in Ninja Gaiden Sigma: she spends some time hunting for the twin greater fiends, Ishtaros and Nicchae, and even gets captured by them after an unwinnable boss fight. In Dragon Sword, Ishtaros and Nicchae are the primary antagonists. If you’re obsessed with this world like I am, then this is all just awesome to behold.
• Character Art – I love Mariko Hirokane, Hiroki Omote, Natsuko Kawakami and Shuichi Wada’s manga-style cutscenes and character art in this game! It’s easily some of the most memorable character art in the modern franchise and gives Dragon Sword a lot of charm. I just wish I had an artbook for this game so I could appreciate it at my own pace!
• Left/Right-handed Options – As a southpaw, I just have to say: THANK GOD Team Ninja added in options to change the hand you use to play the game! It’s something that could easily get overlooked, but I appreciate that I was considered.

Mixed

• Stylus Controls – Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword‘s big gimmick is that the entire game is played using the stylus and holding the DS sideways like a storybook. This sounds like a terrible idea, but the execution is pretty flawless, even if its implementation results in compromises to the overall experience. The gestures that you need to use to perform an action (tap to throw a shuriken, swipe up to jump, swipe to the side to do a sword slash, etc) are intuitive and specific, to the point where I was rarely performing a gesture I did not intend to. It also allows for some pretty unique and distinctive gameplay, since there are very few games with this kind of gimmick. So, yeah, you can play an entire Ninja Gaiden game using just a stylus, that’s cool! Would I want them to release another game with the same control scheme? Hell no. It works, but I would, without hesitation, prefer a more traditional and precise control scheme any day of the week. Hell, I’d be excited if they somehow figured out a way to rerelease this game with a traditional control scheme, which should really illustrate my feelings on this game’s gimmicks.
  • Also, on a related note: holding the DS one-handed this way starts to hurt after a while. Thankfully the game is not particularly long, so this is somewhat mitigated, but I was noticing some strain in my hands after each play session.

Hate

• Reused Assets – Very early in Dragon Sword you end up back in the Hayabusa village. “Oh cool!” I said, recognizing the exact layout from Ninja Gaiden (2004). The game uses a prerendered isometric style like the PS1 Resident Evil and Final Fantasy games, so they had clearly took the Hayabusa village assets from the previous game and then used them to make the game’s backgrounds. This was neat the first time… but then we go back to the Vigoorian Monastery… and then the Underground Sanctuary… and then the fiend realm… and it just keeps going on from there, very few areas in this game are wholly original. I get that reusing assets is a great way to save time and work, but at a certain point, they become distracting. Not only that, but they also draw attention to all the other ways this game is reusing assets from Ninja Gaiden (2004) and Ninja Gaiden II: sound effects, music, animations, enemies, and nearly the entire boss roster from Ninja Gaiden (including the main antagonists of this game) are lifted wholesale.
• Graphics – The Nintendo DS wasn’t exactly known for its 3D graphics, but Dragon Sword‘s 3D models just look bad. You’d hope that the pre-rendered backgrounds would help to be able to allocate more graphical horsepower to the character models with this, but no. Despite having the entire DS’s computing power at their disposal, the character models are so muddy that I can barely tell what I’m looking at. This is especially true for the reused character models (probably because, again, they weren’t intended to be seen at resolutions this low).
• Combat is Dull – While using the stylus to control the entire game works a lot better than you’d expect, that’s not to say that it’s all that great an experience. The novelty wears off pretty quickly and combat soon becomes rather dull. While you can pull off specific techniques when you want, there’s only a few available, and your only weapon is the titular Dragon Sword. Enemies also don’t present much of a challenge, and you never have more than three NPCs on-screen at once, so you soon just get into the rhythm of trying to get combat over as quickly as possible. This means that you’ve got lots of encounters where you’re just mindlessly slashing enemies a few times over and over and over and over until they stop respawning. I just feel that this is an unavoidable issue with making this game only playable with the stylus: to keep the game easy to remember, you can only have a handful of commands implemented. Furthermore, as the stylus provides a less-precise control method, the game needs to be much more forgiving than with a controller, so you’re rarely in any danger of death. It just makes for a game where combat is a bit of a slog.
• Dodge Rolls – One of the few commands in the game that involves any button presses, you can dodge roll by pressing any face button and then swiping the screen. You’d think that Ryu would go in the direction you swipe… but no, for some reason, if you just dodged in one direction, a second swipe in the same direction will often cause Ryu to go back to where he just was. I don’t understand why they’d do it this way, it makes zero sense. It’s especially infuriating when you’re trying to get past environmental obstacles and end up taking damage when Ryu rolls back and forth right into a bunch of spikes.
• The Story – Okay, I shouldn’t expect much from a Ninja Gaiden game’s story, but Dragon Sword‘s narrative is pretty disappointing. It starts off intriguingly as Momiji is captured by the Black Spider Clan and then Ryu encounters the denizens of the Hayabusa village. However, it soon turns into a repetitive fetch quest until Ryu is able to rescue Momiji. While I do like some of the subtler moments (you can tell that Ryu feels guilty for Kureha’s death and is extra protective of Momiji as a result), the narrative is just far too shallow overall.
  • Making matters worse, the recycled assets certainly don’t help matters much. All the reused locations and bosses make the narrative forgettable.
• Voice Commands – While the stylus controls work pretty well in this game, Dragon Sword gets a bit too cute with its gimmicks by asking you to speak into the DS microphone to wake up Muramasa or flush out hidden spirit birds. Unfortunately, the voice recognition is not great in my experience, and I was having to loudly repeat commands multiple times to get it to register, much to the confusion and chagrin of my family.

I was left a bit disappointed by Dragon Sword. I had always heard that it was a great game and had been excited for years to try it, but its gimmicky controls and repetitive gameplay wore thin pretty quickly. I was banging out multiple NES-era Ninja Gaiden games per day in spite of their difficulty, but Dragon Sword just felt like a slog to get through. That’s not to say it’s bad by any means, but I was hoping for so much more.

Welcome back to the Ninja Gaiden Love/Hate series on IC2S! It’s finally time for the entry you’ve all been waiting for: the 2004 reboot of Ninja Gaiden! This game was actually the second Ninja Gaiden game I had played, but I absolutely adored it, to the point where it made the top 25 of my all-time favourite games list. It has been more than a decade since I last played it and, in the time since, the action game landscape has completely changed. The character action game has basically disappeared and, in its place, the Soulslike has become utterly dominant. How does Ninja Gaiden‘s more old-school approach hold up after all these years? Read on to find out…

This is going to be a trend as we go through the 3D Ninja Gaiden games, but several different versions of Ninja Gaiden (2004) have been released over the years:

• First off, there’s the original game on Xbox. While it does have a few unique quirks which would be ironed out or removed later, this is basically just the base experience of Ninja Gaiden with no bells and whistles.
• Then there was Ninja Gaiden Black, which is largely a compilation of Ninja Gaiden and its DLC packs (minus one costume and one overpowered technique), plus some added weapons, enemies, bosses, difficulty modes, and small tweaks and quality of life improvements.
• Then there’s Ninja Gaiden Sigma. This version of the game was made to be a PS3 port, although it made several changes which fans are pretty mixed on. Changes include: improved graphics, many platforming and puzzle sections have been removed to make it more action-oriented and to cut down on backtracking, remixed enemy placements, there are new bosses, a new weapon, and some quality of life improvements to make the game feel less clunky. The biggest change though is that three bonus chapters for Rachel have been added, but these are very divisive since these chapters break the pacing, spoil some areas that you’ll be going to later, and a lot of fans do not like how she plays.
• Then there’s Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus. This was a PS Vita port of Sigma (and the way that I first played this game back in the day). It’s largely the same as Sigma, but it has some PS Vita gimmicky controls which hurt the experience at times and it has a lower framerate than its console counter-parts. That said, it’s perfectly playable and as fine a way to experience this game as any other if you don’t have access to a different version.
• Finally, there’s the Ninja Gaiden Master Collection version of Ninja Gaiden Sigma. This is based on the Sigma Plus version of the game, sans Vita gimmicks, and is easily the most accessible version available today.

For this Love/Hate series, I played through Ninja Gaiden Black through Xbox backwards compatibility and Ninja Gaiden Sigma on Steam Deck. I played through Black and Sigma on normal mode (in part because normal is the only mode available from the start in Black). I also played some Sigma Plus to get a feel for that version’s particular quirks. My thoughts here are based on a general overview of the various versions, but if any opinions are specific to one version, I will note that.

Love

• Combat – Ninja Gaiden has a very deliberate pace to its combat. Compared to its sequels, combat is much slower, more based around your defense and counter-attacking when it’s safe, and you rarely face more than a few enemies at one time. Furthermore, you can only heal by using items or by getting blue essence from slain enemies, which further incentivizes defensive play to survive (especially on the higher difficulties). However, as you learn to play and get deeper into the campaign, the pace of combat quickens – not so much because anything has changed (if anything, the game has gotten significantly harder by then), but because you’ve learned how combat works, when you can attack, and can afford to be more aggressive. This tangible sense of improvement as you go makes combat feel incredibly satisfying, and each new challenge you overcome feels all the more rewarding.
  • I also want to add that I rather like how Ultimate Techniques have been implemented in this game. Charging a UT is a fairly slow process, even if there is essence nearby when you do it, so you can’t just spam them to try to get an easy kill. You either need to be very deliberate about how you use them (like all the other aspects of this game’s combat), or you need to get really good at the timing of executing an immediate UT charge after jumping, which rewards skilled players. This game also causes UT charges to burn the essence that you absorb, so you need to make sure that you are willing to risk losing currency or health drops. This higher risk makes the greater essence dropped by enemies killed by the UT make more sense too.
• Difficulty – Ninja Gaiden games are well-known for their high difficulty, but like I said in the combat section, this difficulty actually contributes to why this game is so much fun. For all its difficulty, Ninja Gaiden feels very fair from start to finish. Difficulty is handled in a very linear fashion: you have some pretty basic challenges at the start with very exploitable enemy types. Then the game will steadily introduce new enemy types and scenarios which will you have to learn how to overcome. By the time you’re a few chapters in, you’re fighting enemies and pulling off moves that that would have gotten you annihilated you at the start of the game. By the end of a playthrough, you’re then more-or-less ready to attempt the next difficulty level, which is where Ninja Gaiden‘s difficult reveals its next trick: the linear difficulty curve continues into the next difficulty level and each difficulty is clearly intended to be played after completing the one before it and mastering its challenges (in fact, Black does not allow you to choose difficulty at the start at all, which reinforces that this is the “intended” way to play). Higher difficulties will introduce harder enemies earlier in the game, entirely new enemies are exclusive to higher difficulties, there’s new enemy spawns, less health items, and various other surprises sprinkled in. If you love Ninja Gaiden and want a challenge, then this game does a great job of incentivizing multiple replays.
  • This also means that skipping to a higher difficulty mode (as you can do in Sigma) actually makes that playthrough exponentially harder, because the game’s operating under the assumption that you already beat the whole thing on Normal and are coming in with the accumulated skillset that would entail. I was having a pretty manageable time on Normal in Black, so I decided to skip to Hard on Sigma since I figured I could handle it… and I was getting absolutely wrecked. I soon learned how to fight the upgraded ninja enemies, but then, whenever I got faced with a new combat scenario or a new enemy was introduced, I’d get demolished. It got to the point where I just had to give up and go back to Normal mode (which I was breezing through, thanks to playing Black at the same time).
  • Oh, and on top of all this, Ninja Gaiden has some bonus challenges for those who really want to test their might in the form of Fiend Challenges. These encounters are generally hidden off the main path and have you fight several relentless waves of fiends. They can really drain your resources if you are not at the top of your game, but they usually have some sort of major reward at the end that makes it worth your while (plus, y’know, it’s fun getting to put this game’s combat engine to its limits).
• Level Design – The original 3D Ninja Gaiden really stands out from its sequels due to its level design. Much of the game takes place in the city of Tairon, and you have a fair bit of freedom to explore, find secret areas, and figure out where you need to go next. It reminds me a lot of Resident Evil, where you’re finding keys and items to open up the next area, before looping back and giving you some kind of new shortcut to make navigation easier. Furthermore, this hub area changes over the course of the playthrough, with the city going under martial law at one point, meaning that you now need to deal with the Vigoorian military and LAVs in the streets hunting you down. I also love the bevy of secret areas which require you to platform using your ninja skills to find secrets and rewards (the Xbox easter egg that gives you the Windmill Shuriken and totally heals you for free is a particular highlight). Ultimately, Ninja Gaiden is set apart from its sequels because combat is just one part of the game: exploration and traversal are just as much a core tenet of the game design.
• Graphics – As is often the case for Team Ninja games (especially in this time period), Ninja Gaiden is no slouch visually. It has some rough edges from a modern standpoint, but it looks and feels great in motion. However, as good as the game looks on Xbox, Ninja Gaiden Sigma still looks fantastic. The colour palette has been made more saturated and vibrant, and everything is much higher fidelity (as you’d expect from a next-gen update).

Mixed

• The Story – The narrative of Ninja Gaiden is a real mixed bag. It’s extremely simple: Doku attacks the Hayabusa village and steals the Dark Dragon Blade. Ryu goes on a rampage to the Vigoorian Empire to get revenge against him. We do get introduced to some characters in the process, and there’s a bit of mystery and intrigue associated with this, but there is shockingly little narrative or character development beyond this initial setup.
  • On the one hand, the narrative presentation is amazing: the game will often feature gorgeous FMV cutscenes which are very slick and have striking direction that makes everything seem cool as fuck. This game’s presentation is told in a very serious way and it’s all about making everything and everyone seem like the coolest shit you’ve ever seen. In that regard, it succeeds in spades.
  • On the other hand, the narrative undermines itself in several ways. Like I said before, there’s next to no development once you arrive in Tairon: you want to kill Doku and get the Dark Dragon Blade, so you spend the next several hours trying to do exactly that. However, the game also fails to make its “big moments” land. For example, Kureha’s death is supposed to be this huge moment for Ryu: she’s one of his closest friends, and her death is a key reason why Ryu is so pissed throughout this game. However, when she’s killed right in front of him, her death barely even gets a response out of Ryu. The reveal of the game’s “real” villain is also really lame, especially after spending the entire game hyping up how much of a terrifying badass Doku is. But the real big issue with the narrative has to be…
  • Rachel. Really, I need to give her a whole bullet-point for herself, because the narrative fucks her over at every turn. She actually has a pretty interesting characterization and motivation: her family have fiend blood in their lineage, and this was used to turn her sister, Alma, into a greater fiend. Rachel then became a fiend hunter to try to kill Alma and free her soul. This is a legitimately interesting backstory and it gives her a bit more personality to latch onto than Ryu’s uber-serious stoicism. She also seems pretty competent initially and has a cool grappling hook to swing around on. However, she gets shat on by the narrative at every possible opportunity: immediately after talking shit about Ryu, she gets vored by a giant fiend, and she gets one-shotted by a bitch slap from Doku, necessitating a second rescue from Ryu. She fucks off as soon as you rescue her from Doku, only for her to immediately get captured again, fucking hell. She even fails to kill Alma when she gets the opportunity to (which is supposed to be her entire character motivation). Obviously, this could have been an interesting bit of character development, but when she doesn’t to do anything else of note in the story, it just makes her feel worthless. Oh and, to top it all off, at the end of the game she tries to fuck Ryu and he turns her down, so she’s just absolutely shit on from start to finish. At this point, does it even bear mentioning that her character design is ridiculous? Fighting demons in bondage gear makes her hard to take seriously, and her complete inability to do anything of note just reinforces that she’s clearly just here to be eye candy. At least in Sigma we get to see her beating down some fiends, but it’s far from redeeming her.

Hate

• Clunky Systems – Even for a game released more than twenty years ago, Ninja Gaiden has some weird design decisions that make playing it more of a cumbersome experience than it needed to be.
  • For one thing, you’re going to be spending a lot of time pausing the game to dive through menus. Any time you want to change your melee/ranged weapon, or heal, or use some sort of item, you’ll have to cycle through menus and halt the game’s pace momentarily. Sigma improves this a bit since it does allow you to cycle through your healing items without pausing, although I personally would have preferred a way to quick-swap between weapons.
  • Black has some really weird camera controls. Most of the time, the right analog stick puts you into first person mode (with inverted controls!!!)… however, there are some areas where you can control the camera, but you won’t really know if this is in effect until you try it. Generally, you have to just press R2 to automatically re-center the camera and hope that that’s sufficient. Similarly, aiming with the bow happens if you press B + left analog stick, which can be annoying if you’re trying to shoot quickly and then immediately move. Sigma, thankfully, has added free camera control to the right analog stick and maps first person mode to L1. The bow controls are also mapped to their own button, and the game even adds a reticle for easier aiming.
  • The controls for running on water also suuuuuck in Black. You need to run into the water and then immediately start pressing the jump button. However, if you jump too early or too late, you’ll sink and need to retry it. Thankfully, this is a pretty insignificant technique in this game… and thank God, or I might have raged. Sigma just makes you run on water automatically without requiring any button input, which is a bit too excessively dumbed-down… but, then again, it’s leagues better than Black‘s take on it.
  • For some ungodly reason, Ninja Gaiden does not give you access to an options menu while in-game. Hell, you can’t even quit to main menu without restarting the game itself… WHY??? Making matters worse, this isn’t even something Sigma improved, so I sure as hell hope that you like how everything is configured when you start playing, because tweaking it to suit your liking is going to be an absolute bitch.
• Auto-targeting – Ninja Gaiden does a fairly good job of making your attacks land where you want them to without a manual lock-on option, but there are times where your attack will not go where you want it to. This is especially prevalent when you use a single-target ninpo attack when there are multiple enemies on-screen, and it’s an utter crap-shoot which one will get hit.
• Grabs – So, like, I get why grabs are a thing in this game: if you are relying on blocking attacks for long periods of time to stay alive, they punish you severely. As a result, you quickly learn how and when to go on the offensive and limit your time spent blocking. That said… this game’s grabs are so fucking annoying. You get barely any time to react to an enemy’s grab, so when one goes off, you feel like you get stuck with unavoidable damage (and these things hit HARD).
• Random Auto-Blocks – Easily the worst aspect of this game’s combat engine is that enemies will randomly auto-block your attacks at times. This is especially noticeable with the Flying Swallow technique, and particularly when fighting bosses. There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to it, they’ll just randomly, instantly block attacks sometimes, presumably to nerf certain techniques or make bosses seem “harder”. This basically forces you to just make your attack and then react based on whether the game lets you do damage or not, although it can be particularly annoying against the hardest bosses (looking at you, Alma).

Ninja Gaiden is a fantastic game. I love how it balances combat, exploration, and traversal. You can tangibly feel the meticulous design that has been put into every encounter, which helps make it difficulty feel fair and satisfying to get to grips with. My “hates” here are really gripes in comparison to this game’s strengths. I heartily recommend Ninja Gaiden (any of its versions!) to anyone who loves action games and is up for a challenge!