[ Originally posted here ]

I haven’t played a Ninja Gaiden game since the Sega Genesis, and I see not much has changed since then. The nonsensical plot, which is thrown at you in eye-raping red-backed embossed text that might have looked cool ten years ago and sounds like something a 15 year old weeaboo might pen, almost makes me nostalgic for the horrendously bad video game plots of the early to mid 90’s. Even the atmosphere is the same as it always was, in the first level you’re running about in some futuristic TMNT-esque version of Tokyo where cherry blossom trees grow everywhere and provide a constant stream of petals to the wind. Before meeting Ryu Hayabusa and his tiny Asian package, which is quite distractingly visible through his tight spandex onesie, we’re introduced to a female CIA agent who resembles a slightly more realistic Ivy from Soul Caliber and dresses in some elaborate leather straps and miniskirt combo which would be impossible to wear without careful taping in several places. Despite her established status as a trained special agent she’s of course completely helpless, easily chained up and kidnapped by evil ninjas in the first scene. And you rush off to help her despite not knowing or caring who she is because the game gives no indication if Ryu knows this chick from previous titles or not. All this just further confirms my suspicions that Team Ninja hasn’t altered their game-making methods since about 1992. But how does it play?

Pretty well, anyway. The controls are solid if at times weirdly unresponsive (when you tell me to hit “Y” next to a wounded enemy to trigger an obliteration move I expect it to, you know, work) but the camera is a bewildering creature. It follows you everywhere, but never seems to want to look in the same direction as your character, only allowing you the option to hit a button to quickly see what’s immediately in front of you during boss battles. Since it takes precious long seconds to rotate the camera about with the right joystick I’ve spent alot of my time blindly slashing at and throwing exploding shuriken in the vague direction of where I saw the baddie disappear to off-screen. However Ryu fights at the command of just two buttons, and has a different move set for each weapon you obtain so it is kind of nice to so easily send him spinning gracefully through the air lopping off limbs and stealing souls to heal, enhance his energy or later barter for goods. I’m not making that last part up.

The baddies are, naturally, demons. I say “naturally” because for some reason ninja always seem to fight demons (rather than pirates, as you might assume.) Laughably poorly designed Western-style demons known as “Fiends” are doing… something. Taking over the world I guess. The CIA knows about it and so did what they would normally do when faced with the seemingly insurmountable supernatural armies of hades: go to Japan and hire a ninja. Oh also the evil ninja clan is the rival of your good ninja clan or whatever, and they all live in giant castles for some reason. Anyway, Ryu travels all over the world (I currently appear to be in Venice battling werewolves) to deal with the Fiends. The 2nd chapter abruptly switched locale from Tokyo to New York which made me feel like I was playing Alone in the Dark again, except I was a ninja, which honestly would have improved that game immensely. Demons appearing in a given city also seem to cause all of the people mysteriously vanish, invisible walls to be erected, and easily scalable gates to be conveniently closed thwarting our brave ninja hero. However one thing I will say for the game is that it’s never unclear where to go next even though path is quite seamlessly integrated with the aesthetic surroundings.

Another thing irritating me about this game, and it may be just because I’ve only been playing it while cooking dinner lately, is save points. They really just add to the old school flavor but you know what, Team Ninja? I don’t have all the time in the world. Just let me save where I want so I don’t have to run around for 10 or 15 minutes longer than I feel like looking for a save point. Or barring that you could have at least made the save points more frequent. Furthermore the spawning mechanics of the baddies seem to be event triggered, so if I die I’d like to just start back at the group of baddies I had just been fighting rather than the last save point I found. Especially when it’s those goddamn little jellyfish looking exploding things that you had to provide me with a special weapon just to be able to fight that spawn right behind you and you can’t hit them with aforementioned special weapon and if you move even the littlest bit they blow you to kingdom come. Upgrades and items are also sparse and hard to come buy, and they throw so many different weapons at you it’s hard to decide how much soul essence to save up for what. Enemies don’t respawn either which would have given you a chance to gather essence to upgrade your weapons if you, say, get stuck on a boss battle.

But all and all, Ninja Gaiden 2 is a largely fun, mindless sort of game, even if it still reeks an outdated and out of touch stank in spite of the shiny next-gen graphics. The voice acting isn’t bad, even if the plot and the dialog are, and you’re not going to care about the story anyway as you’re slicing your way through legions of ninja and demons.