Review: Ninja Gaiden 2

By Dimorphic

As you look around the battlefield, limbs and decapitated bodies laying still on the ground, an errie silence washes over you. All the noise of only a few minutes ago has been washed away, cleansed by wind and time. You fling the blood off of your blade, place it back in its holder and continue forward only to hear the all too familiar sound of footsteps rushing toward you. Again you remove your blade.

Legendary ninja Rya Hayabusa is back in Ninja Gaiden 2, the sequal to the fantastic Ninja Gaiden seen on the original Xbox. Ninja Gaiden has always been known for its graphical violence and excruciating, unforgiving difficulty levels and its good to see that both of those aspects have made triuphant returns in the sequal.

Ninja Gaiden 2 begins in a stylised recreation of Tokyo, set in the future. Flying cars and dropships fill the night sky as the camera pans around a very well rendered cityscape. Its here that you get a look at the graphical power behind NG2, everything looks fantastic, and that goes for the character models, fighting animations and levels as well. The story begins with CIA agent Sonia being kidnapped by the Black Spider Ninja Clan while looking to deliver Ryu a message about the Archfiend. Ryu arrives just in time to see her being taken away and the first mission sees you fighting to free her.

The story is one of the strong aspects of this game, incorporating aspects from the series past as well as new narrative to make an intruiging and compelling story. I won’t spoil it here, but suffice to say you’ll be fighting ancient demons in an attempt to save the world from total obliteration, as well as exacting revenge on the Black Spider Ninja Clan, the Hayabusa clan’s most ancient rival.

The gameplay in Ninja Gaiden 2 is very similar to what was found in the original. It’s very fast paced and revolves around blocking, countering and combo moves to defeat vast amounts of eneimes. In fact there are many times in the game that you will be completely surrounded and unless you know the moves for the weapons you have you will be quickly overrun. Button mashing will not get you very far in this game, you have to know what your doing.

The ‘X’ and ‘Y’ buttons control the combat, ‘X’ is used for quick attacks and ‘Y’ for power attacks. Combining these as well as moving in certian directions will unleash many varied and vicious attacks on anyone foolish enough to stand in your way. You block with the left trigger and if timed correctly just after blocking an attack can retaliate with a quick counter move by pressing one of the attack buttons. Blocking becomes a life saver against bosses and later in the game where the amount of enemies your facing increases ten-fold.

Along with these combo moves are two new additions to Ninja Gaiden, the ultimate and obliteration techniques. Obliteration techniques are quite simple to use, simply pree ‘Y’ near and enemy that has lost a limb (or two) and Ryu will perform a punishing finishing move that will put them out of their misery for good. Ultimate techniques require you to hold down the ‘Y’ button to power up an attack, which when released unleashed a powerful automatic combo that blends anything in its path.

As well as physical combat you also have access to various Nimpos, magical energy attacks that Ryu can unleash as long as he has enough magic essence. These Nimpos are great for clearing out small areas or giving yourself some room to move. They start off relativley weak, targetig just one enemy in a group but as you level them up they can hit more and more. The strategic value in using Nimpo attacks is that while you are casting them you are temporarily invicible, so they are great to use in the boss fights.

The boss fights in the game are just as fun and outrageous as they were in the first game. You’ll tackle each boss at least twice as most of the time you will die the first time fighting them. This dosen’t really matter however as eventually you learn a bosses set patterns and weak points and it is very satisfying beating them. These bosses take the form of a number of giant monsters and demons as well as in a large number of locations, such as Alexi, the greater fiend of Lightning who you fight on the top of the Statue of Liberty in New York.

The locations in the game are great. You travel all over the world from Tokyo to New York to Paris to marshlands deep in the unkown forrests of the world. One level even takes place inside and on top of a giant airship flying through the sky. They all look graphically and artistically great though one down point is how you actually arrive in these locations. At the start of every mission is a paragraph of text telling you why your here and what your doing in this level, but it never really explains how you got there. For example, in one mission your in the Hayubasa village in Japan and the next minute in the streets of New York. It kind of breaks the immersion when something like this happens as it feels disjointed and reminds you that you are playing a video game.

Just as varied as the locations are the enemies you face, ranging from ninja assassins to large flying fiends, demons and mech robots. Each has its own strength and weakness and to survive in the later stages of the game you need to know which weapons are best suited for the task at hand, and how to use them.

There are several weapons in the game, each with their own specific uses. The Dragon Blade which you start with is probably the most balanced weapon, equal in terms of strength and speed but isn’t suited to every occasion. The talon blades that you wear on your hands and feet are very fast striking weapons but don’t deal the damage that other weapons do. The Lunar Staff has strong combo moves and inflicts a lot of damage but is slower to use. I find myself mostly using the duel katanas. To me they are the most satisfying to use and equal to most situations in the game though there are still several more weapons tht I have not mentioned here. As well as these primary weapons you also have secondary weapons such as the famous ninja stars, incendiary shuriken blades and the Fiend’s Bane bow. Certian set pieces in the game require you to use these weapons but they are also useful in general combat.

The primary weapons can be upgraded through out the game, opening up new combo’s to use as well as increasing their general power. To do this you have to spend essense you’ve collected through battle at one of the Muramusa stores scattered through out the levels. This essense is collected from the bodies of slain enemies as well as found in chests and other smashable items. However it dosen’t turn into an old school collect-a-thon to find them, they instantly are drawn to you at the end of a fight. They also come in three different types, yellow essense is used as currency at the stores while red essense powers your nimpos and blue returns some lost health. You can also by healing items at these Muramusa stores.

However Ninja Gaiden 2 is not without its faults. The camera has been the focal point of much criticsim in the 3D versions of Ninja Gaiden (NG1, NG Black and NG Sigma) and nothing has been changed in NG2 to fix it. You can center the camera by pulling the right trigger but it does little to help in the heat of battle. There have been many times that I’ve lost track of my enemies because I cannot see them. The camera really does hurt the game, but not enough for to be a game breaker.

Another complaint is that many enemies are cheap. They have attacks that deal out massive damage for the sake of being hard. One boss even detonates in a huge explosion after you kill it without warning, and unless your holding block you die as well. Also, some interactable environments can also be a little figity. Jumping on some ledges is harder than it should be and will often result in you falling off. Never to your death but you have to climb back to where you were, which sometimes is a real pain.

However despite its short comings Ninja Gaiden 2 is one hell of a sequal. It retains the bloodbath filled violence and difficulty of the first game while adding new abilities and techniques of its own. It will be more than a challenge for the most accomplished gamer. Ninja Gaiden 2 is everything a succesful sequal needs to be and while it does have its fair share of issues and isn’t even a real evolution from the original, the good easily outwieghs the bad.

Visuals – 8/10
Sound – 8/10
Gameplay – 8/10
Longevity – 9/10

Overall – 8/10