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36 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
good game overall. slighty disappointing, June 8, 2008
Fun:4.0 out of 5 stars
NG2 had a lot of expectations to live up to. Having beat it, here's my review of what Team Ninja got right and what it got wrong. (I played on Path of the Warrior difficulty, so the easy setting may be slightly different)
Good:
* Much more detailed enemies and graphics, including the ability of nearly every bad guy to be amputated/decapitated and or chopped in half.
* Bodies of most enemies stay around after death, giving you an increased feeling of carnage and destruction. Leave a trail of death to follow!
* Cool weapons
* Easy saving of games at Dragon Statues
* Massive Boobage - unrealistic proportions and extra jiggliness
Bad:
* Some massive slowdown in certain levels when lots of enemies are onscreen. Game over screen visual effects styling is bad and often VERY slow framerate.
* No map. WTH? Some levels you need a map
* Almost completely WORTHLESS ninpo! The Inferno magic is about the only one that does anything (homes in on baddies). But being that many of the bosses are fire-based demons or flyers, magic is almost worthless. Piercing Void is absolutely useless as it requires you to target an enemy and by the time you launch he ball, the baddie has moved. Short-range on the wind magic equally useless.
* Some lackluster level designs, especially caves, tunnels, or building interiors. Several levels feel rehased, especially the Flying Fortress level.
* Added feeling of "cheapness", due to reliance on button mashing and cheap tricks by the level designers. Several areas of the game are maddeningly frustrating due to this kind of cheapness, whose idea of challenging you is to throw wave after wave of the same enemies at you, or put ranged attackers well out of your reach. Examples are the grenade launching soldiers that spam explosives at you from afar or archers, usually appearing in pairs. Exploding jellyfish/mines that respawn. There must be at least 30 of these each time you encounter them.
* The damn biting fish are all back, including the big grabby swimming ones and the airborne ghost piranhas.
* Stupid looking/ugly enemies, with lots of them having some skull motif. Many of the enemies' faces are modified versions of skulls. Stupidness includes wolves that hold katana in their mouths and chop you with them?!
* Having to kill bosses a second time. 1 guy you have to kill 4 times. I know this is a trademark of the NG series, but 4 times???
* Lack of replay value. NO UNLOCKABLES except a measly sound test option and new colored costumes when you begin the game again after beating it. No Sonia as a playable character, no Missions like in NG Sigma. Would be great to be able to play Sonia or Muramasa.
* Lots of dumb unrealistic mechanics like the ability to swim in lava! WTH??.. Invisible barriers everywhere, limiting your interaction with the environment and keeping you several feet away from touching what looks like accessible scenery. Another is the lava filled armadillo boss that comes out of the crashed air fortress.. this thing was the machine's power core??? Back to the cheapness of the design: this boss exploded after you beat it, causing instant death if you don't know what to do before hand. This boss is tough enough if you are playing it the first few times through and to have it explode and kill you is a cheap trick.
* Some bosses are VERY easy to kill with a fully upgraded Scythe
* Much uglier, sloppier items interface w/ blood splatter motif.
The predecessors Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden Sigma were much better in terms of gameplay balance.
Rent this first if you are a casual fan. Having owned and beaten all the variations of the first NG, I am highly disappointed by this game, especially the lack of extras. After seeing how many features Sigma packed onto the PS3 version, I expected those to carry over to NG 2. No chance. No way to view beaten cut scenes, no photo gallery, concept art, rotatable models, nothing!! It feels like a rushed product. No replay value at all. Perhaps they're going to double dip and release NG 2 Omega. Still a very good game, mind you, but just feels half-done.
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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not a classic but still great, June 6, 2008
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
After putting in over 400 hrs. on the original Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden Black I was looking forward to 2 and now my fix is here. Well I was initially a little disappointed and felt that they released the game too early but once I got to tweaking the camera, cinema playback and controller options it solved or eased alot of the problems I was encountering.
I'll keep this short by giveing the good points and bad.
Bad points first. There are frame rate issues if you have the auto cinema feature turned on they can get really bad when a lot of people are on the screen attacking you at one time. If you turn it off you probably won't see a problem with frame rates again.
Second problem is the camera, this can be a problem but you can manually adjust or speed up the auto adjust rate in the options menu and this helps a lot.
Graphically speaking it's a little inconsistent. The particle effects are great but at the same time some of the backgrounds are pretty bland. It's kind of a mixed bag but due to some of the things they've done regarding retaining chopped body parts long after you've left a room in the game it takes a toll on memory usage and thus taxes the 360 quite a bit. Add that to the size of the environments, the number of characters on screen at once and this game pushes the 360 pretty hard.
The other problem though not really a problem, but more of an annoyance is that the enemies are a little on the cheap side this time so you are forced to be a little more creative.
Now for the good:
Believe it or not they have actually improved the gameplay. You start off now with a long list of moves as opposed to hardly any in the original. Countering has been refinded so that you can properly time it. Weapons are now very varied and don't overlap in terms of usage. Enemy AI is incredible you can actually notice the enemies adjusting to your attack patterns. Granted this makes things more difficult but ultimately more satisfying when you win. The level design has gotten rid of a lot of the platforming and focuses much more on the fighting aspect of the game. Secondary weapons are chargable and are actually useful, can anyone actually admit that they used the bow much in the first one?
The story is actually a little more coherent now and makes a bit of sense, though not much. Last but not least It's a great game but a new Missions mode and a little more refinement of the default settings would have made this a classic.
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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fun Fast Furious, October 21, 2008
Fun:5.0 out of 5 stars
The successor to the Ninja Gaiden game for the Xbox, Ninja Gaiden 2 is one of those rare sequels that seems to improve on everything done by the first game while adding worthwhile new features, enemies, and levels.
The basic gameplay is the same as the first Ninja Gaiden game, featuring fast-and-frantic swordplay and various ninja abilities to supplement it. You play as Ryu Hayabusa, last ninja of the Dragon Clan lineage, and your mission is to seal the ancient Arch-Fiends away before they destroy the world. The action is almost non-stop in NG2; Ryu has a wide array of acrobatic actions at his disposal to aid in his swordplay. There are fast and slow attacks that can be linked as a combo for different effects, and there's a lot of leaping and diving to throw into the mix as well. In addition to melee weapons like a sword, a staff, claws, and a scythe, Ryu also has a few ranged weapons as well - shurikens (regular and exploding) and a bow. Finally, Ryu has certain magical abilities like fireballs and cutting winds to attack his enemies with, though their use is limited. His enemies range from ninjas - armed with equipment similar to Ryu's - to demons, large and small.
The gameplay is smooth, but fast and unforgiving. Your enemies attack ferociously and without mercy - no fair-play "one on one" duels here, your enemies will be doing their absolute utmost to make Ryu die. Human enemies (the ninja) have a wide variety of "abilities", for lack of a better word, that differentiate them from other random grunts in other games. The ninjas in Ninja Gaiden can lose limbs (arms or legs) and keep fighting - and this will happen a lot, be assured. Heavily injured enemies will try to grab on to Ryu and detonate their bomb as a last-ditch suicide attempt. Ninja types range from melee combatants with swords and claws to ranged types with bows and magic spells. Even without these skills, it's hard to keep up with their attacks, which require dodging, guarding, evading, and counterattacking to deal with - you can't just wade in and mash the attack buttons and expect to survive. The demons are even harder, being less predictable, depending on their type. Some are small, bat-like creatures that swarm Ryu faster than he can swing his sword, while others are hulking colossi that can grab Ryu and squeeze the life out of his body. There are bosses on every level as well - these enemies are generally much larger than any regular enemy, and their strength makes guarding useless, forcing Ryu to jump and dive for his life. Furthermore, they're not fazed by your attacks, requiring you to time your attacks so that you'll have time to escape before they counterattack. Overall, Ninja Gaiden is a relatively simple game in that it keeps the same basic premise for combat; there aren't really any segments that deviate from the established gameplay.
As a whole, the controls are good and also notably responsive. In some other games, you have to adjust your timing to the game and pause between pressing buttons so that the moves you've inputted can be executed. In NG2, the game moves roughly about as fast as you push buttons - if you're smashing the buttons really quickly, then the moves will get executed really quickly. To give an example, Ryu has the ability to walljump between two adjacent parallel walls. At first I thought I had to adjust my timing to wait for when he landed; I quickly realized that I could just mash the A button and ascend as quickly as I tapped. The game really rewards you for having good reflexes, and tries not to hinder you as best it can. The only really annoying parts about the controls are the camera (which is kind of unresponsive at times) and sensitivity with regards to hanging on pipes and running on walls, both of which have to do with the camera (since running on a wall is "running forward", if the camera changes it can mess you up mid-run).
The graphics in the game are really good looking, though "realistic" isn't quite the word that I'd use to describe them. They're clearly fake, but it's on purpose, so even though the characters have flawless, one-tone skin with no wrinkles or anything, it looks good and like it was done on purpose. The in-game graphics are really good, too. Combat is quick and highly cinematic without distracting or detracting from the gameplay experience. The most notable detail is the bodies, which are persistent - kill a bunch of ninjas, and their bodies don't fade (not while onscreen, at least). Furthermore, I never thought I'd think of blood and severed limbs as being "artistic", but this game really has the prettiest blood sprays and dead bodies that I can think of. Blood splatters on walls depending on the angle that you cut, and you really get the feeling with this game that you're an absolute ninja murder-machine. One of the more impressive details is the blood that accumulates on your blade - when a fight is over and Ryu stands idle for a few seconds, he whips the blood off the blade (throwing an extra splatter onto the floor) and re-sheathes it.
The sound in the game isn't particularly notable, except that the sounds of combat are really well shown - the clangs and screams, in addition with the music, create a mood-setting level of background noises that keep you in the action. The music in general doesn't have any tracks that are particularly good, though.
As a whole, Ninja Gaiden 2 is a really fun game to play - one of the first games in a while that really feels like a game and not just an interactive story. Flimsy demon-based story aside, Ninja Gaiden 2 is really just an excuse to kill a bunch of ninjas and demons with fancy moves and look really awesome while doing it. The only real problem is that the game is so hard that it might be intimidating to casual players, but for players with good reflexes and a strong will Ninja Gaiden 2 offers nothing but good, fun gameplay.
9/10
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