Have you ever wanted to read a meandering rant about Ninja Gaiden? Well, you clicked this so I suppose you do; welcome to the article, enjoy the Octopus Rant. This won't be the same length as my other ‘main’ articles, which definitely never have to be routinely trimmed down to clear the character limit because I can't contain myself writing wise. This will be a quick little shotgun blast of my thoughts and maybe obsessive idiosyncrasies about a game series very close to my gamer heart, and explain the differences between the now 3, technically 4, versions of Ninja Gaiden 2.
One of my definitive gaming experiences was the first Ninja Gaiden, and by the ‘first’ Ninja Gaiden I of course mean the 3D reboot for the original Xbox. It's funny how often people overlook that the game series started on the NES, has always been known for brutally punishing difficulty, and that the newer games are actually prequels to the NES titles in the totally serious and deep Ninja Gaiden lore. I was super into ninjas and action games like any youth of my day, and I also definitely never swung around a stick in my backyard pretending it was a bo staff.
Here's me, just casually hanging out in my skin tight leather ninja outfit. You know how it is.
Buster sword? Get out of here. That’s child's play for Ryu Hayabusa.
I always attempted the ‘no item’ run, but that one I never succeeded at. The game’s hard as hell, after all; you’re going to need to use your elixirs of spiritual life. Despite how long and deep (heh) I got into the game I only managed to beat Mentor difficulty, being the second highest; Master Ninja is the hardest, and I was never able to clear it. I would usually get up to about the second Alma boss fight before getting hard stuck on her for a few days then giving up. If you’ve played the game, you know what I’m talking about. **** the second Alma fight.
The game series is commonly grouped into the ‘character action genre’, a pretty loose term that also includes other series like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta. What does the term ‘character action’ game entail? I’ve never been entirely sure. Ninja Gaiden set itself apart from others in its genre through one readily apparent fact; it's hard as hell. This is an integral part of its game design, and informs the entirety of the game around it. It forces you to engage with it, or die quickly and frequently.
The enemies in Ninja Gaiden are lethal. Even the lowliest enemy ninja can hand your ass to you if you’re not careful. Enemies frequently have grab attacks that deal high damage, are capable of blocking attacks or dodging them, or just have straight up I-frames themselves. To counteract this, Ryu Hyabausa, befitting a super ninja extraordinaire, is also lethal. You can instantly decapitate some enemies with the ‘Flying Swallow’ aerial dash move on some weapons, and of course have a variety of combo strings and invincibility to abuse. It’s this back and forth that is what makes the series so great; once you get a handle on the game you can feel like a ninja force of nature, but it’s always tempered by the lethal enemies. One slip up and suddenly the tables have turned on your vacuum sealed leather butt. It’s this constant feeling of pressure that you both deal and receive from enemies that is what makes it so exhilarating.
If this image doesn't trigger PTSD flashbacks in you from the first time you encountered them, you're a stronger person than I. These godamn ghost fish, man.
Comparing this to others in its genre, the game plays as a more ‘survival’ focused brawler in a way as you desperately throw out your overpowered moves to avoid the overpowered oncoming attacks. It's give and take, and yes out of context if you just look at videos of people spamming the Ultimate Technique maneuver it may seem silly or like I'm making this stuff up, but there's a few things to take into account there.
One, is that those videos are all generally speedrunners or people playing the game as efficiently as possible; you can still play the game without relying entirely on Ultimate Techniques, despite what people will say. And two is that the game is designed around you having that tool; it's not like it's some ‘forbidden’ oversight or something the developers made a mistake putting in. And lastly, I invite people who think the game is ‘solved’ just because of Ultimate Techniques to play above Hard and see if it still works.
Sorry, mini rant-in-a-rant there.
It's hectic and frantic in all the best ways. Its combo strings are substantially smaller and more efficient and brutal than something like Devil May Cry or very much so Bayonetta. Those games focus more on the ‘style’ aspect of the action, making the game into a ‘sandbox’ of player expression. They revolve more around the comboing and juggling of enemies through a combination of real-time weapon swapping and various combo strings. There’s a little bit of juggling you can do in Ninja Gaiden, but not to the same degree and is usually reserved to animation cancelling a launcher attack with some shurikens to keep an opponent in the air for a follow-up Flying Swallow.
The greatest example of what I mean when I say there’s an overwhelming amount of enemies is the now famous staircase fight towards the end of the game. Just look at the amount of ninja on screen; it’s beautiful.
Speaking of slicing heads off, the greatest and most important addition to Ninja Gaiden 2, and what carries the entire game almost, is the fundamentally important dismemberment system. Your attacks all have a chance to cut limbs off of the humanoid enemies, with some moves having a higher chance depending on the weapon and the health of the enemy. When you take an enemy's limb off, they're not defeated; no, instead they get more motivated. They are so dead set on taking you down that they will become more focused with each limb lost; that's a commendable amount of loyalty, man. Once an enemy has lost a limb, you can instantly kill them with a canned animation at any time by pressing Y/Triangle next to them. It's a little reminiscent of the glory kills in the modern Doom games, and is just as integral to the experience. If you don't finish off a dismembered enemy, they gain a highly damaging grab attack and will run and/or crawl after you to initiate said grab attack; some enemies even commit very dramatic suicide attacks with this. Like I said, some serious loyalty. It creates this even more frantic energy in combat, and just feels fantastic. You’re slicing around, unleashing some ninja badassery while constantly dodging other enemies until you manage to slice someone's arm off- suddenly, it's a mad dash to execute the guy so he doesn't grab you, and more importantly to get some much needed invincibility while you're doing the animation. It's some action game gold.
Sigma 2 was a 2009 re-release of two, obviously, that brought some new things into the game. It added in some more boss fights, including both a giant Buddha statue and even the Statue of Liberty that I'm not even sure are connected to whatever the plot is, like they may just be entirely unrelated bosses that you happen to stumble onto.
Lady Liberty? More like ‘Lady Get Wrecked’. Got ‘er.
There was also a boss or two that was removed, weapons are now free to upgrade instead of costing essence (money) at the classic Muramasa shops, they added in a giant sword that's sadly not as cool as the dabilahro and removed the secret survival missions. There were some actually good changes too, such as the basic but essential shurikens having their own dedicated button, meaning you can have them equipped in addition to another ranged weapon. They also added in a giant blunderbuss cannon for some reason that I've never found a real use for, and you can shoot your bow in the air giving you some significantly improved mobility and air options. There was also an online co-op mode included too where you get to murder waves of enemies in little arenas with another player that I spent far too much time on.
The biggest and most controversial change that instigated this whole unhinged rant? The enemies, in various ways which change the feeling of the whole game.
There are less enemies than in the original version in most encounters and the majority of enemies now have more health to try and compensate for this while leaving the damage they deal largely unaffected. It’s a little baffling why this was changed to begin with, as it fundamentally alters what was a winning formula in the original version. With more health comes enemies being delimbed slower, and while it’s not ‘entirely removed’ like people exaggerate about Sigma 2, it is a noticeable change that once again changes the whole vibe. It gets a little comical sometimes when you’re fighting some of the now tankier enemies and they just keep getting back up, specifically the claw ninjas and the winged Fiends (the series version of demons essentially) from the Italy levels, specifically when their outgoing damage is unaffected. It didn’t feel as overwhelming and hectic anymore, which to be fair was the intended effect; but it made the game lose what I think was a defining part of it, and altered the vibe. You may be thinking “wouldn’t tankier enemies make the game harder? Isn’t that what you want?” It’s true in that more health means a harder time, but the health of the enemies in the series was never really the defining feature; it was the number of them, and the challenging wall of attacks coming at you at all times. The vibe of Ninja Gaiden 2 was that you were constantly nearly overwhelmed by the numbers game and is what, once again, made it so satisfying to progress in.
There was also technically an early re-release of Sigma 2 called fittingly Sigma 2 Plus that was released for the Vita in 2013, but there were no changes to that game save for the inclusion of ‘Hero’ difficulty which is essentially an assisted easy mode where Ryu blocks attacks automatically; this is also included in Black 2. There was also a ‘Ninja Race’ mode which is essentially a time attack, and a ‘Turbo’ mode where you can play the games story at souped up speeds, should you want to do that for whatever reason.
Is Black 2 or by extension Sigma 2 a horrible abomination that needs to be exterminated with cleansing flame or decapitated with the lunar staff's X-X-Y string? No, but they do not hit the lofty heights of Ninja Gaiden 2, at least in the opinion of this particular cephalopod. They are still playable games if that's your jam though, as any version of Ninja Gaiden 2 is still better than 90% of it's competition. Shots fired.
Between them, Black 2 is now the definitive version I'd say of the Sigma 2 bloodline. The only thing you're missing out on over Sigma 2 is the statue boss fights so if you're someone who's really into fighting a giant Buddha statue, then your experience will be impacted.
If it helps sell the series, there's some very purposeful design decisions in some of the characters that is sure to 'draw' the 'attention' of certain demographics.
There you have it, a meandering Ninja Gaiden rant. We talked a little bit about why the games’ vibe felt so nice, went through the semi-confusing versions of Ninja Gaiden 2, and hopefully you learned something that’s not just “wow, Octopus can talk about Ninja Gaiden for a long time.” Will this format return in the future? Eh, maybe. Maybe at some point I’ll do an actual review on Ninja Gaiden Black; the only thing holding me back is a lack of ways to capture images from it. I could get the Steam version of the Master Collection and play Sigma 1 which luckily is a perfectly fine version of the game save for losing the amazing costumes from the original release and do it that way. We’ll see.
Hopefully this has inspired you to check out the series, and started you on your journey of Izuna Dropping enemy ninjas into bloody pulps. Until next time.
One of my definitive gaming experiences was the first Ninja Gaiden, and by the ‘first’ Ninja Gaiden I of course mean the 3D reboot for the original Xbox. It's funny how often people overlook that the game series started on the NES, has always been known for brutally punishing difficulty, and that the newer games are actually prequels to the NES titles in the totally serious and deep Ninja Gaiden lore. I was super into ninjas and action games like any youth of my day, and I also definitely never swung around a stick in my backyard pretending it was a bo staff.
Here's me, just casually hanging out in my skin tight leather ninja outfit. You know how it is.
Ninja Gaiden Black; A First Love
I can't remember exactly how I found out about 2004’s Ninja Gaiden. Maybe it was reviewed or mentioned on G4TV and I saw it there? I can't recall, but I do recall that I was obsessed with it. It was the first time I encountered a game that forced me to, as the kids say nowadays, ‘get good’. I played the **** out of Ninja Gaiden, and a year later when they released the expansion Ninja Gaiden Black, I played the **** out of it even more. Black was I think the first game that I would do challenge runs of, imposing rules on myself while playing. I cleared the game using only specific weapons multiple times; the lunar staff and the flails were the easiest time I think, but the dabilahro was a particularly fun and challenging run. Love that giant sword, man.
Buster sword? Get out of here. That’s child's play for Ryu Hayabusa.
I always attempted the ‘no item’ run, but that one I never succeeded at. The game’s hard as hell, after all; you’re going to need to use your elixirs of spiritual life. Despite how long and deep (heh) I got into the game I only managed to beat Mentor difficulty, being the second highest; Master Ninja is the hardest, and I was never able to clear it. I would usually get up to about the second Alma boss fight before getting hard stuck on her for a few days then giving up. If you’ve played the game, you know what I’m talking about. **** the second Alma fight.
Ninja Game Design; An Unhinged Rant
This leads into the main point (I think?) of this article; ranting about the near perfect action game design of the first two Ninja Gaiden's, and how it evolved over the series. I started thinking about this after the recent shadow-release of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, a UE5 remake of the second game that I’ll get to. It’s technically a remake of a re-release, given that it’s DNA is comprised of 90% Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, an earlier re-release of the second game that made some…controversial changes to the original’s gameplay. I’m not going to fill this rant with overly negative attacks on Sigma 2, or now 2 Black, you can find plenty of that all over the internet; but thinking about why the changes were so ill received by the majority of the fanbase had me thinking of why the original’s worked so well.The game series is commonly grouped into the ‘character action genre’, a pretty loose term that also includes other series like Devil May Cry and Bayonetta. What does the term ‘character action’ game entail? I’ve never been entirely sure. Ninja Gaiden set itself apart from others in its genre through one readily apparent fact; it's hard as hell. This is an integral part of its game design, and informs the entirety of the game around it. It forces you to engage with it, or die quickly and frequently.
The enemies in Ninja Gaiden are lethal. Even the lowliest enemy ninja can hand your ass to you if you’re not careful. Enemies frequently have grab attacks that deal high damage, are capable of blocking attacks or dodging them, or just have straight up I-frames themselves. To counteract this, Ryu Hyabausa, befitting a super ninja extraordinaire, is also lethal. You can instantly decapitate some enemies with the ‘Flying Swallow’ aerial dash move on some weapons, and of course have a variety of combo strings and invincibility to abuse. It’s this back and forth that is what makes the series so great; once you get a handle on the game you can feel like a ninja force of nature, but it’s always tempered by the lethal enemies. One slip up and suddenly the tables have turned on your vacuum sealed leather butt. It’s this constant feeling of pressure that you both deal and receive from enemies that is what makes it so exhilarating.
If this image doesn't trigger PTSD flashbacks in you from the first time you encountered them, you're a stronger person than I. These godamn ghost fish, man.
Comparing this to others in its genre, the game plays as a more ‘survival’ focused brawler in a way as you desperately throw out your overpowered moves to avoid the overpowered oncoming attacks. It's give and take, and yes out of context if you just look at videos of people spamming the Ultimate Technique maneuver it may seem silly or like I'm making this stuff up, but there's a few things to take into account there.
One, is that those videos are all generally speedrunners or people playing the game as efficiently as possible; you can still play the game without relying entirely on Ultimate Techniques, despite what people will say. And two is that the game is designed around you having that tool; it's not like it's some ‘forbidden’ oversight or something the developers made a mistake putting in. And lastly, I invite people who think the game is ‘solved’ just because of Ultimate Techniques to play above Hard and see if it still works.
Sorry, mini rant-in-a-rant there.
It's hectic and frantic in all the best ways. Its combo strings are substantially smaller and more efficient and brutal than something like Devil May Cry or very much so Bayonetta. Those games focus more on the ‘style’ aspect of the action, making the game into a ‘sandbox’ of player expression. They revolve more around the comboing and juggling of enemies through a combination of real-time weapon swapping and various combo strings. There’s a little bit of juggling you can do in Ninja Gaiden, but not to the same degree and is usually reserved to animation cancelling a launcher attack with some shurikens to keep an opponent in the air for a follow-up Flying Swallow.
Ninja Gaiden 2; Jesus ****ing Christ, There’s So Many Enemies
Ninja Gaiden Black was my jam as I said, but it’s not my favourite of the series. Well, it’s really depending on the day of the week you ask me as it flip flops a lot. But for the purpose of this article, we’ll say it's the original OG Ninja Gaiden 2. Ninja Gaiden 2 took the first game's gameplay and pushed it even more over the edge in terms of mania. The sheer amount of enemies you fight at a given time is sometimes absurdly overwhelming to the point that the game can barely hold itself together on a technical level. It is also, more so than the original game, deserving of the title ‘complete bull****’. Enemies almost all uniformly have rapidly spammable ranged attacks, and like to hang out just outside of camera range while you fight their friends to spam said ranged attacks at you. The amount of pressure you feel is insane, frankly, but if you accept it and learn from it it's one hell of a time, and makes finally slicing the last rocket pod firing tactical ninjas head off that much more satisfying.
The greatest example of what I mean when I say there’s an overwhelming amount of enemies is the now famous staircase fight towards the end of the game. Just look at the amount of ninja on screen; it’s beautiful.
Speaking of slicing heads off, the greatest and most important addition to Ninja Gaiden 2, and what carries the entire game almost, is the fundamentally important dismemberment system. Your attacks all have a chance to cut limbs off of the humanoid enemies, with some moves having a higher chance depending on the weapon and the health of the enemy. When you take an enemy's limb off, they're not defeated; no, instead they get more motivated. They are so dead set on taking you down that they will become more focused with each limb lost; that's a commendable amount of loyalty, man. Once an enemy has lost a limb, you can instantly kill them with a canned animation at any time by pressing Y/Triangle next to them. It's a little reminiscent of the glory kills in the modern Doom games, and is just as integral to the experience. If you don't finish off a dismembered enemy, they gain a highly damaging grab attack and will run and/or crawl after you to initiate said grab attack; some enemies even commit very dramatic suicide attacks with this. Like I said, some serious loyalty. It creates this even more frantic energy in combat, and just feels fantastic. You’re slicing around, unleashing some ninja badassery while constantly dodging other enemies until you manage to slice someone's arm off- suddenly, it's a mad dash to execute the guy so he doesn't grab you, and more importantly to get some much needed invincibility while you're doing the animation. It's some action game gold.
Re-Release Confusion; Sigma Balls 2
Let's get to it: why was Sigma 2 and now Black 2 so dividing? I’m not going to be needlessly dragging them or claiming they're the worst things ever and that Team Ninja personally insulted me by creating them or anything like some weirdos on Reddit likely have, but I will talk about the changes that occurred in them.Sigma 2 was a 2009 re-release of two, obviously, that brought some new things into the game. It added in some more boss fights, including both a giant Buddha statue and even the Statue of Liberty that I'm not even sure are connected to whatever the plot is, like they may just be entirely unrelated bosses that you happen to stumble onto.
Lady Liberty? More like ‘Lady Get Wrecked’. Got ‘er.
There was also a boss or two that was removed, weapons are now free to upgrade instead of costing essence (money) at the classic Muramasa shops, they added in a giant sword that's sadly not as cool as the dabilahro and removed the secret survival missions. There were some actually good changes too, such as the basic but essential shurikens having their own dedicated button, meaning you can have them equipped in addition to another ranged weapon. They also added in a giant blunderbuss cannon for some reason that I've never found a real use for, and you can shoot your bow in the air giving you some significantly improved mobility and air options. There was also an online co-op mode included too where you get to murder waves of enemies in little arenas with another player that I spent far too much time on.
The biggest and most controversial change that instigated this whole unhinged rant? The enemies, in various ways which change the feeling of the whole game.
There are less enemies than in the original version in most encounters and the majority of enemies now have more health to try and compensate for this while leaving the damage they deal largely unaffected. It’s a little baffling why this was changed to begin with, as it fundamentally alters what was a winning formula in the original version. With more health comes enemies being delimbed slower, and while it’s not ‘entirely removed’ like people exaggerate about Sigma 2, it is a noticeable change that once again changes the whole vibe. It gets a little comical sometimes when you’re fighting some of the now tankier enemies and they just keep getting back up, specifically the claw ninjas and the winged Fiends (the series version of demons essentially) from the Italy levels, specifically when their outgoing damage is unaffected. It didn’t feel as overwhelming and hectic anymore, which to be fair was the intended effect; but it made the game lose what I think was a defining part of it, and altered the vibe. You may be thinking “wouldn’t tankier enemies make the game harder? Isn’t that what you want?” It’s true in that more health means a harder time, but the health of the enemies in the series was never really the defining feature; it was the number of them, and the challenging wall of attacks coming at you at all times. The vibe of Ninja Gaiden 2 was that you were constantly nearly overwhelmed by the numbers game and is what, once again, made it so satisfying to progress in.
Black 2; A Remix?
Black 2 isn’t quite a remake of the Sigma 2 re-release, but like I said earlier it’s like 90% of its DNA. What Black 2 has done is take essentially the reduced enemy encounters and spawns from Sigma 2 and reduced their health close to the old OG levels. It’s an improvement, for sure, but not quite what was expected. Otherwise it features the same content as Sigma 2, minus the two previously mentioned statue bosses for some reason. It’s sort of a blending of the two games, but is very clearly more Sigma 2 than OG. It’s all rather unfortunate because the sad thing is that access to the OG Ninja Gaiden 2 is incredibly hard to get, being limited to really only the physical disk copy on either the original 360 or one of the Xbox’s since through backwards compatibility.There was also technically an early re-release of Sigma 2 called fittingly Sigma 2 Plus that was released for the Vita in 2013, but there were no changes to that game save for the inclusion of ‘Hero’ difficulty which is essentially an assisted easy mode where Ryu blocks attacks automatically; this is also included in Black 2. There was also a ‘Ninja Race’ mode which is essentially a time attack, and a ‘Turbo’ mode where you can play the games story at souped up speeds, should you want to do that for whatever reason.
Is Black 2 or by extension Sigma 2 a horrible abomination that needs to be exterminated with cleansing flame or decapitated with the lunar staff's X-X-Y string? No, but they do not hit the lofty heights of Ninja Gaiden 2, at least in the opinion of this particular cephalopod. They are still playable games if that's your jam though, as any version of Ninja Gaiden 2 is still better than 90% of it's competition. Shots fired.
Between them, Black 2 is now the definitive version I'd say of the Sigma 2 bloodline. The only thing you're missing out on over Sigma 2 is the statue boss fights so if you're someone who's really into fighting a giant Buddha statue, then your experience will be impacted.
If it helps sell the series, there's some very purposeful design decisions in some of the characters that is sure to 'draw' the 'attention' of certain demographics.
There you have it, a meandering Ninja Gaiden rant. We talked a little bit about why the games’ vibe felt so nice, went through the semi-confusing versions of Ninja Gaiden 2, and hopefully you learned something that’s not just “wow, Octopus can talk about Ninja Gaiden for a long time.” Will this format return in the future? Eh, maybe. Maybe at some point I’ll do an actual review on Ninja Gaiden Black; the only thing holding me back is a lack of ways to capture images from it. I could get the Steam version of the Master Collection and play Sigma 1 which luckily is a perfectly fine version of the game save for losing the amazing costumes from the original release and do it that way. We’ll see.
Hopefully this has inspired you to check out the series, and started you on your journey of Izuna Dropping enemy ninjas into bloody pulps. Until next time.
Last edited:
(basically more than 10)
