This post was inspired by Pumpy's Ninja Gaiden 2 review.

http://www.destructoid.com/blogs/pumpy/ninja-gaiden-2-review-93000.phtml

Not that I want to call him out, but I have to disagree with his review (though it's a good read). I didn't write a review of the game because I knew it'd just be so filled with some unstoppable level of fanboyish nonsense that the actual substance of the review would be clouded. Besides, if my previous entries are anything to go by, my thoughts on the game are pretty much concrete.

Not so much anymore.

---

Ninja Gaiden 2- a tragedy.

In spite of my rampant fanboyism for all things Ninja Gaiden, I feel as though the game is broken in the higher levels. The automatic health regen and the life restoration at save points were combined with the smaller item stock to make things more challenging and fair, and the camera is not without its fair share of problems, but the real issues lie in the enemies.

In Ninja Gaiden 1, you would face Black Spider ninjas that could throw explosive shurikens and had a grab move that ignored your block and hit you automatically. Fair enough- you could block the shurikens and dodge the grabs. It's also worth noting that only a few of the enemies in NG1 had such grab moves.

In NG2, you'll face a whole horde of Black Spider Ninjas at once. They will not just throw explosive shurikens at you, but they will toss them out like rice at a wedding. Not a problem right? Except for the fact that you can no longer block them if they're not hitting your front side. You take a TON of cheap hits from off-screen enemies across the arena because they simply rain down shurikens on you. Moreover, they're more accurate, so now you're likely to get stuck with them while dodging, doing the flying swallow move, or izuna dropping.

Now, that's pretty annoying, but not unmanagable. What's worse? Now they all have multiple grab moves, many of which stem right off the edge of their combos. This means that if you sit there blocking like you should, you take damage when they decide to simply go past your block. Later in the game you face enemies who will intentionally blow off their own limbs and do 1/4-1/3 of your health with that single move.
Okay, that's all pretty strenuous. How bad could it get?

Combine all of the above with even more enemies, like the giant, transformed spider ninjas. Sometimes 3 at a time. In a fight like this (See Chapter 11 on Mentor mode), it becomes literally impossible to actually fight and do your combos. The giant spiders get between Ryu and the camera, the regular spider ninjas attack too fast and too many at a time (mostly with unblockable grabs), and the rest spam the everloving fuck out of explosives.

This translates to dying pretty much instantly.

I wrote an entry for May's Monthly Musings about the game ("If you love it, Change it"), but I hadn't played 2 yet. I didn't realize that Team Ninja would actually break the fucking game from the perfect balance it had before. NG1 was tough, but it was NEVER cheap. There was always a way through. NG2 fails.

Here's how Team Ninja should fix my goddamn game.

(For reference, I'm currently in Chapter 11 on Mentor mode. Everything I'm about to correct can be blatantly seen in this particular fight, which pits Ryu against 20+ Hell Spider Ninjas [the kind that blow off their own limbs] and 6 giant spider ninjas.)

1. The fucking camera.
Obviously the camera needs work. The issue isn't that they modified it at all, it's that they changed the game itself. Ninja Gaiden 1's levels were often wide open and large, allowing for plenty of room to fight and maneuver. There were some cramped areas, but they were tolerable.
Ninja Gaiden 2 is filled with cramped areas. Worse yet, just about anytime you do anything flashy (OT's, UT's, grabs), the camera zooms way the fuck in to look at Ryu's ass. Then, instead of resetting to where it was, it just stays there until you move it again.
What they should have done is pulled the camera back at least 5 or 10 feet, and lifted it up a little instead of putting it on the ground level. Also, anytime it gets pressed against a wall, the camera should push back through the wall and render it transparent. Yes, this looks a little glitchy, but I can stand to have a few rough graphical edges instead of not being able to see because the camera is a fucking jackass.

2. The enemies, namely the large or flying ones.
I have no problem with tough enemies. If they have a lot of health or whatever- sure, fine, throw 'em in. What separates the large enemies from the small ones is the fact that they don't react when hit. Regular spider nijas flinch, grab their wounds, bleed, lose limbs, get tossed around, etc. But take Rasetsu for example (first large spider ninja). As a boss, he's fine. If you run up and start hacking away, he doesn't really move. He might duck his head every now and then and give the illusion of pain, but on the whole he doesn't seem to mind a sword slicing through him. This means that any time he feels like it, he either smacks the shit out of you or grabs you. Moreover, characters like him will often have guard-breaking moves, which I'll get to in a second. Taken on his own, he's tough, but pretty simple. More than one at a time? Okay, that's a little hectic, but with a fixed camera, they're a non-issue. The problem is that regular combos no longer work. You're forced to hit a few times and dash whenever they make their move, which I think is a little retarded. It becomes a chasing game.
Other problem enemies are those giant robotic flying mutant fiend ninja things with swords for wings and guns for arms. They're faster than you are, and again, they don't react when being hit. That basically just turns every fucking enemy into the lame ones from God of War. None of those fucking things reacted when hit- it was like swinging through sandbags for the entire game.
What about those sections where you find a corpse filled with arrows and have to fight a bunch of flying things that cannot be killed by anything other than ranged attacks? Who the hell thought that was a good idea? "Hey- you know what's fun? Shooting things for about five minutes straight. With a bow. Yeah, let's just make the player press A, then B, then repeat that for about 50 reps."
Between their speed, the black spider clan's ability to throw shurikens faster than Ryu, the soldiers' ability to withstand 100 explosions right next to them (gatling rocket launchers at point-blank? Okay, seriously, fuck you Team Ninja), and combo-ending grabs that break blocks, I vote that no enemy should be able to do something Ryu cannot do, especially when it does not make any fucking sense. Also, as far as bosses go, there should never be a point in any fight where you cannot hit your enemy. That's just stupid. Doing the Zedonius fight on Mentor is an exercise in patience, as he is just as likely to sit in the air and shoot several volleys of fireballs and instantly kill you as he is to actually come down to where you can hit him.

3. Punishing Ryu based on difficulty.
If you're going to make the enemies tougher from difficulty to difficulty, fine. Go for it. Giving me less health? Making me do less damage? Tuning up the enemies' damage? Increasing shop prices? Okay, fine, whatever.
Making blocking less effective? Increasing the delay time between casting Ninpo spells? Causing Ryu to be knocked out of combos and charging by weaker and weaker moves that, on lower difficulties, would hurt him but not phase him?
Okay, cut that shit the fuck out.
My point is exactly what I just said. I was watching my friend play acolyte mode, and he charged an ultimate technique. An enemy threw shurikens at him and then ran up and hit him a few times. Ryu didn't budge. He released the charge and destroyed the guy. On Warrior mode, Ryu might have stood through those shurikens, but the attack would have stopped the charge. On Mentor, anything stops your fucking charge. Trying to charge an ultimate technique against more than a few enemies with no essense availible to guide is futile. A single ranged attack from some fucker across the room will stop you and leave you open.
Well, that's challenging, right? Why is this bad? Because it changes the way the goddamn game is played! If it had been like that on the easiest difficulty, I would not have had a problem with it, but instead the game lies to you about what Ryu can do and you get your shit handed to you.
Well, you can always block attacks, right? Except on higher difficulties. It's reached the point where the block button is only effective for movement. Blocking anything gets you hit. Also, your entire backside is a giant target for explosive shuriken, which on any other difficulty, Ryu would have blocked anyway. Not so here. There have been points in the game where the number of times Ryu exploded actually lagged the framerate significantly. You don't just get hit by one of those things. Most of the fights will leave that sound of the fuse burning away constantly in your ears. You can't block an explosive that's stuck to you.
If you have to change the enemies and tactics between difficulties, fine. Do NOT, under any circumstances, change the fucking rules of the game.

4. Reaction times and controls.
As much as I hate on it, God of War's finishing move/grab system was pretty good. BEat the crap out of a sandbag and then hit O to grab it and rip it in half. NG2's Obliteration Techniques are in the same vein, but what went wrong? Mainly the fact that the Strong Attack button and the OT button are both Y. Whenever I wanted Kratos to go rip something up, he never fucked it up. How could he? It was a different button. I would push the button and the game knew exactly what I wanted to do. NG2 has a difficult choice to make- "Okay, he just hit Y. There's two guys next to him, the closer one is missing a leg. Did he want me to OT him or should I just start the Y combo?" About 60% of the time, it picks the wrong one, and I do some useless attack instead of insta-killing a dangerous enemy, who now will likely just brush my attack aside, grab me, blow himself up, and make me restart at the save point.
I'd rather not have OT's than have it be the same button. It gets in the way far too much.
On top of that, the Wind Run- arguably Ryu's most useful move, is X+A. That's all well and good, except for the fact that the timing of the press needs to be perfect or else he either attacks or jumps straight up in the air (which is probably the most useless thing in the entire game. When the fuck do you EVER need to JUST jump straight up?). It's really easy to screw up that timing, and thus really easy to watch Ryu slash at an enemy that isn't there while the bad guys behind him just impale him with shurikens.
What really kills me though is the pause button. Aside from the fact that it's annoyingly close to the X button (this gave me TONS of trouble when I first got DOA4), it also has a certain Team Ninja feature that's been in effect for ages.
In DOA4, as well as the first Ninja Gaiden, you could not pause the game while taking damage. In DOA4 this was to prevent the player from fucking up somebody else's combo in 2-player mode. In Ninja Gaiden, it was to prevent you from healing while having the shit kicked out of you by a boss.
It's back in NG2. I understand the logic behind it, but this is something where the developer needs to stop trying to be harsh and should just consider that the player might need to pause the game. Yes, even to use one of our 3 health items. Try it. Get grabbed by Rasetsu during his long string where he impales Ryu a whole lot and hit start. The game will buffer the command, making you watch Ryu get torn to pieces and then, while he's being punted away, will pause the game. Sometimes this shit goes on for 10 seconds at a time. If you get impatient and mash start a whole lot, the game will pause and then immediately unpause, which will lead to your death.
All they need to do is loosen the timing on Wind Run, either remove or reassign OT's (X+Y maybe?), and let us pause the fucking game we paid for whenever the hell we want.

---

It's such a shame, really. I love the game to death but jesus fucking christ, it's like they didn't bother to test it. I know there are plenty of players who have beaten the game on Master Ninja, let alone this single level on Mentor. I really get the feeling that th later levels were just sugar-coated with enemies and sprinkles as an afterthought and less as a consideration to what might actually play well.

I know most people will just dismiss this with, "Lol look at the fanboy cry qq lol," or "XFD NG2 SUCKS SHIT," but it still makes a pretty solid point about how not to do a sequel. We'll never see a patch and Itagaki will never do NG again.

Talk about a lose-lose situation.

(For those wondering, I did get past this fight. Once. Beyond it was a shop where I refilled all of my items, and continued on. You go through a point of no return, fight another 30 ninjas, a reach a save point [whereupon you are ambushed before you can actually save, which is completely expected by this point]. In an attempt to OT one of them, Ryu did the wrong move, was grabbed, and was killed before I could save. I put the controller down and said fuck it.)

-Jynx