Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2

by Tecmo Koei

• New Playable Characters - Ninja Gaiden's Rachel, Ayane from Dead or Alive and Momiji from Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword appear as sexy new playable characters
• Online Co-op - Two people can engage in online co-op play, with voice chat, in 10 different stages (in 4 difficulty settings) to complete special missions.
• Visual Diversity - Over 30 unique characters, 17 stages with a variety of environments, and a storyline which unfolds in 70 impressive cut scenes
• New Enemies - A variety of new enemies and bosses have been incorporated into the stunning enhanced environments
• Variable AI - Contributing to the increased difficulty level, the gameplay differs each time you appear in a level as enemies engage in a variety of different actions as they assess the current situation

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B0029MAXR2
• Product Dimensions: 6.8 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches ; 1.2 pounds
• Media: Video Game
• Release Date: September 29, 2009
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (68 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,755 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
  • #71 in Video Games > PlayStation 3 > Games > Action > Fighting
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

The most intense, challenging, action-packed ninja adventure is back, exclusively on the PLAYSTATION3 computer entertainment system! Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 is the “ultimate” Ninja Gaiden, featuring characters from the previous installments that have defined the franchise. It radiates a striking visual appeal in high resolution display, featuring character and environmental graphics whose quality exceeds the original Ninja Gaiden Sigma.  Combining both melee and long-range battles against enemies, the game requires skillful and strategic playing to successfully journey through the missions

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 40 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Good button-mashing ninja fun now with new bosses, playable female characters, and less blood October 4, 2009

By buru buru piggu TOP 500 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Amazon Verified Purchase

Fun: 5.0 out of 5 stars   

By now, you are familiar with the infamous Ninja Gaiden double-dip. Released a little over a year ago on the XBOX360, Ninja Gaiden II comes to the PS3 as Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2.

After a lengthy 8 minute install, you begin the game. The wait is made a little better (or worse, depending on your perspective) by a series of comic book stills with cheesy voices and sound effects while it's copying. The improvements are vast and numerous, starting with the graphics. As good as the 360 version was, Sigma 2 is better. Enemies are lavishly detailed, moves are flashy and spectacular with terrific lighting effects, and bosses are absolutely HUGE. Some levels, gameplay mechanics and enemies received small tweaks, and some are completely revamped. I beat the 360 version and now having completed Sigma 2, I can say that playing the PS3 version is almost like a new experience, especially because of the introduction of several new bosses, online play, mission mode, and 3 new playable characters: Momiji, Rachael, and Ayane. There are a total of 17 levels, 2 or 3 of which are totally new (1 level each for the playable characters). There is none of the slowdown that plagued the 360 version, although I noticed that some bodies now vaporize in order to save processing power. Story is pretty much nonsense and a lot less focused than Ninja Gaiden/Sigma, having you jump around the world, so just ignore it.

First of the changes is the oft-mentioned easier difficulty. I played on "Path of the Warrior" ("Path of the Acolyte" is the other starting difficulty) and found it very easy to defeat many of the bosses. You can just brute-force attack many of them and spam with the same moves over and over.... This is how I defeated most of the bosses, even the later ones in the game. The last 3 bosses are especially easy. Arrows and projectiles are on auto-aim. Often you can just jump up and shoot blindly while facing in the direction of opponents. Pushing L1 also snaps to targets, making it very easy to kill attackers from a distance, especially those annoying archers or rocket launcher soldiers. Arrows (and all projectile weapons, including Ayane's exploding shuriken and Rachel's sub-machine gun) are now unlimited, removing a lot of the tactical decision-making and conserving you need to do. You can also move now while aiming, which is a plus. Gone are Ryu's windmill shuriken and incendiary shuriken. I miss the windmill shuriken.

Powering up your Ultimate Technique now is a lot faster it seems. The controls are very forgiving and don't require precise timing as they did in the past. Many of the combos also seem easier to execute and often times, I wonder if I've been triggering combo fatalities by accident. Items and save points are much more numerous. This is the first game in the series where I've actually had a problem with too many items. You can only carry a max of 3 of each of the restore items (small health restore, big health restore, magic restore). Items don't increase in price each time you buy them from Muramasa like they did before. Also, a big change is that he now upgrades your weapons for free. There is usually one or two upgrade statue per level. You can upgrade one weapon once per shop. Previous versions allowed you to upgrade whenever you wanted, as long as you had the money (very expensive), forcing you to save up and strive for more ultimate technique kills because they rewarded you with more essence. The abundance of items and the free upgrades makes collecting essence now rather pointless, because you'll have all this money but nothing to buy. Lastly, load times after dying have been greatly reduced to a few seconds, removing a lot of frustration experienced by players in previous NG games. The downside is that menu load times are inordinately long. If you find a magic scroll or technique scroll, it can take several seconds for the demo video to load, and several seconds after pushing X to close the screen.

Next is the toned-down violence. The menu system is now painted blue instead of red blood splatters. Arms, legs and heads can get chopped off, but they disappear in a wisp of blue ether instead of rolling onto the floor. In the 360 version, heads rolled everywhere and buckets of blood sprayed out from severed limbs. It's all gone here.

New bosses include a giant Buddhist statue at the end of the first level, a pair of tengu, and even the Statue of Fricking Liberty! Some of the bosses have their special attacks removed and made a lot less aggressive about attacking and blocking. You no longer have to time attacks perfectly. Just button mash.

Thankfully, a lot of the "cheap" moments players complained about from Sigma are gone. The piranha ghost fish are still here though, but those extremely annoying exploding jellyfish are gone. Gone also is the ridiculous ability to swim in lava. "Invisible walls" are also a lot less apparent. In the previous game, areas that looked like you could walk around are unreachable, destroying the illusion of depth. In Sigma 2, it's not as noticeable.

Weapons are fun to use, with some being very flashy and cool to see in action, like the tonfa, which turns Ryu into a lethal whirlwind of skull and limb cracking goodness. I don't ever get tired of powering up Ryu and seeing him go berserk on a group of bad guys. Locales include a futuristic Tokyo, NYC, Venice, South America, Mt. Fuji, some non-descript sewers and tunnels of hell or some other demonic dimensional warp. Sky City Tokyo is beautiful and lovingly rendered. NYC is less so. Times Square, Brooklyn, and Liberty Island look bland and inauthentic (because I live here). Some of the levels feel recycled directlty from Sigma (Airship Daedalus = airship stage from previous, Draga Dai = Vigoor city, sewers, lava levels).

Verdict:

Are all the gameplay changes good? No. Is Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 fun? Yes, without a doubt. I enjoyed playing the new sexy female characters and the mission mode. It's a shame you can't play the entire game as one of the girls and you lose all your weapons when you begin a new game. One of the weirdest, most juvenile and sexist things you can do is jiggle the girls' goodies with the SIXAXIS.

Replaying on Path of the Mentor (unlocked by beating the game), I found it a lot harder and I got killed several times on level 1 by even minor enemies. They are a lot more lethal and harder to kill. Too bad this difficulty wasn't available at the very beginning to choose from. Chapter Mode also opens up, which lets you choose any chapter to replay.

All in all, a fun game with good replay value, and I'm glad I bought it. It's a stunning display of the PS3's capabilities and a blast to play as everyone's favorite ninja.

My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars. Read more ›

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The wait is over. September 30, 2009

By Va- Bank

Fun: 5.0 out of 5 stars   

I almost bought an Xbox 360 just to play Ninja Gaiden 2.

Luckily, if you only have a PS3 you can have this not-so-new, but improved game. I'm a huge fan of the series and this one bears the Ninja Gaiden name proudly. You can get an overview of the game in better places then my review, so I'll just get to the point:

- Game looks and plays fantastic. No slowdown, which 360 owners were reporting, but just a minor occurence of screen-tearing, barely noticeable and does not affect the experience.

- Difficulty. This is no easy game, but it's by far the easiest Ninja Gaiden I ever played. Veterans will find their challenge in difficulty settings that will get unlocked after you play through the game the first time. Newcomers to the series will enjoy the action without smashing their controllers when playing on Alcolyte and Warrior modes offered from the beginning. I think it was a smart decision on part of developers.

- Blood and Gore. Many people have complained about the removal of over-the-top blood and gore that Ninja Gaiden 2 on Xbox was famous for. I'd say the level of depiction of violence in Sigma 2 is on par with Sigma 1 - some blood, but nothing like the Xbox version. What I don't understand is why this game is still rated M.

- New Characters. These are actually fun to play with, not just thrown in for the sake of putting them on the game cover.

In short, I recommend this to anyone who likes action games. Previous Ninja Gaiden games were not for everyone due to their crushing difficulty. The only exception to my recommendation: if you already played Ninja Gaiden 2 on Xbox, you may not find that this game is worth the full price. If not - get it, it's one of the best games this year.

29 of 39 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Ninja Gaiden Sanitized 2.. I mean Sigma! October 1, 2009

By Movie Fan

Fun: 5.0 out of 5 stars   

I have been looking forward to this release ever since I first heard it was coming out at this year's E3. I own an Xbox 360 and Ninja Gaiden II is still my favorite game for that system.
I still play the Xbox version like it was new, so when I heard an exclusive expanded version was coming out for the just reduced price PlayStation 3 120 GB, I had to buy both the system
and the game the day it came out. Since I own both versions, I wanted to compare both and let owners of both consoles decide if this latest version is worth picking up.
First, the Xbox version has better graphics for the most part. Some character models on the PS3 version have been improved, which is nice, but the backgrounds which were highly detailed on the Xbox 360
version are slightly downgraded here. For most, this wont be an issue, but I wanted to point it out. There were slowdown issues on the Xbox 360 version and the only time my PS3 game slowed down, was when
I was awarded a trophy during in game play, otherwise, the PS3 version is clean and fast paced. Sigma in many ways has improved the game over it's original Xbox 360 version. Some of the levels have been
redesigned and have better layouts than in the Xbox version. Also, lame bosses from the Xbox version have been replaced with all new enemies that are a million times more fun to fight than the previous bosses.
For example, the two gold dragons at the end of Chapter 9 have been replaced with one awesome looking black dragon. The double armadillo fight from Chapter 12 has been replaced with a new fiend, awesome!...
Enough has been changed from the Xbox 360 version to keep veteran players like myself on our toes. Enemies you're use to facing in one section of the game, have been replaced with others, that kind of thing.
Plus, the ability to play important side missions as Rachel, Ayane and Momiji really add to the game. For example, in Ayane's segment you get to play as her and discover how she obtained the jewel she gives
Ryu to create the true dragon sword, cool stuff! Playing as the female characters makes me wonder why Tecmo has never released an action game staring the female characters from DOA, it would
be great to see that someday.
There have also been several surprising subtractions from the original Xbox 360 game, the biggest is the reduction in blood and gore. All blood and gore have been removed from the cut scenes
and while there is still a little bit of blood present during battles, most of it has been replaced with what I can only describe as a magic purple mist. Basically, the game went from reminding me of Kill Bill Vol. 1, to
an episode of Inuyasha. The game has a more anime feel to it now because of it, while the original was more visceral and pulled the player in. Also missing are: Incendiary Shurikens for Ryu (Ayane has them), the Tests
of Valor (one of my favorite things about the original game) and the ability to save your Spirit of the Devils, Lives of the Gods and Lives of the Thousand Gods items. They are now used as soon as you find them instead of
being able to save them and use them at will. Also, one of the original game's coolest moments has been watered down. Remember the massive fight against a seemingly never ending horde of ninjas up the steps to the temple
in Chapter 10? Well, it's not quite such a horde now, it's more like just a few dozen guys. Now, I'm hoping the number of ninjas increases as the difficulty goes up, but who knows?

I've beaten the game on Acolyte and I've gotta tell you, it's a million times easier now. Maybe it will get harder as I defeat the other difficulties, but I'm shocked at how much easier this game is. When I saw the credits,
I understood why. Tomonobu Itagaki was absent from the credits. Itagaki quit or was fired from Tecmo, depending on who you believe, last year and he was responsible for designing the DOA & Ninja Gaiden games, along with
Team Ninja, for Tecmo. He was very adamant about how difficult his games should be, some say he took it too far, and I guess Tecmo agreed because it's a cake walk now. I proudly defeated Master Ninja mode on Ninja Gaiden
2 on the Xbox, so to see the game become so easy now is a little bit of a let down, but hopefully it will get more challenging. With the Sigma version, the playing field has been leveled out. For example, you can now hit Genshin
with magic, the drawback is that now he uses it on you as well. The designers must have thought the Eclipse Scythe was too powerful because now it takes more than one ultimate attack to bring down characters that previously
only took one. And characters that could come close to killing you with one of their combos, now only take away a small amount of health. So, this is radically different from Itagaki's original vision, for better or worse. If you're
like me and enjoyed the challenge of the original, you may be disappointed. If you played the original 360 version and was frustrated beyond belief with it, here's your chance to simply enjoy the game without wanting to smash
your controller.

With all that said, let's pretend for a moment that there was never an Xbox 360 version. So, is this a great game? Absolutely! PS3 owners craving some hardcore ninja action should pick this one up asap. It's one of the most action
packed and addictive games I've ever played and wont disappoint! The only reason I gave it 4 stars was because of the subtractions that were made from the Xbox version. Otherwise it would've been perfect!
However, if you also own an Xbox 360 and have this game, the addition of the 3 new playable characters, new game modes and overall changes may not justify your purchase, but I was very pleased overall with the game. Read more ›