Brutal satisfying combat? Check! Epic boss battles? Check! Great visuals? Check! Almost broken difficulty? Check!!!!
+ Looks great
+ Tight controls
+ Sound effects are good
+ It is a lot of fun
+ Lots of great bosses, and i mean a lot
+ Platforming is satisfying and very enjoyable to behold
+ Lots of variety in weapons, enemies and locations
+ It is just so awesome and cool to play as a Ninja
Cons:
- Inexcusably bad camera
- Not balanced very well
- Puzzels are far to hard
- Rachels appearance
- Cheap difficulty
- Almost broken difficulty when it is not cheap
This review is written from the perspective of somebody who never played Ninja Gaiden on the XBox. If you're looking for a comparison of the two games and an analysis of whether the new features are sufficient enough to compensate owning both, you're reading the wrong review. If you never played Ninja Gaiden on the XBox, read on.
Ninja Gaiden Sigma is a remake of Ninja Gaiden Black, which was a remake of the Ninja Gaiden game on XBOX, which, in turn, was a sort of "rebirth" of a classic NES trilogy.
The setting of this tale takes place in a world both familiar to our world and different at the same time. While this game offers an extremely rich setting, even having a mythology for the world itself, the story takes a backseat to the rest of the game. The plotline, while not necessarily confusing, is very vague with details. There are some scenes involving a short amount of dialog between the characters, you never really get immersed into the world. I, for one, wished they really put forward more effort into fleshing out the story, because what you do get to see is quite interesting, even if it leaves you with the impression that it was tacked on for motivation's sake.
Whilst not fantastic by any stretch of the imagination, it is solid. You play Ryu Hayabusa, a ninja who belongs to a clan that possesses a possessed sword. One day Ryu leaves the village temporarily to visit a friend of his, whilst he is gone, the sacred blade is stolen, Ryu's home destroyed and left in ruins, with the story revolving around him getting it back. Although there is an interesting twist, its pretty easy to see, but all together the slow developing, shallow story pretty much unravels in the background and isn't really noticeable.
I do not however understand the reason why the first mission is there at all... Ryu is supposed to be training with his friend Murai, but to get there you have to kill all of Murai's Ninja soldiers while they try to kill you, and when you fight with Murai, he tries to kill you. That's not training, damnit.
The quality of the voice-acting leaves room for more to be desired, as well. And the interaction between characters are very weak.
None of the characters in this game are interesting or likeable. That's right. Not even Mr. Hayabusa himself. He is generic, the generic hero, also known as Homo Genericus, who attempts to be badass by hardly speaking, not showing any emotion, and has no personality what so ever. He does not even try to do anything. And when he occasionally does mutter something, it is usually something uninteresting.
You then have Rachel, who serves as the heroine. She apparently is a fiend hunter (Fiend is their term for demon), and is out to kill her sister who was also turned into a fiend, and get revenge on one of the main bad guys in the game. Before I get into her character flaws, let me address her attire. She wears a black leather, very similar to some sort of stripper garb. I highly doubt it comes in handy when fighting fiends. Furthermore, her breasts are absurdly huge, perhaps even bigger than her head, but for certain bigger than her brain. which just makes things more pathetic because even if her character was remotely interesting, you can not take her seriously.
Anyway, she is your generic heroine who is out to avenge her family. She acts tough, and tries to be cool, but in reality she is worthless, and gets injured/kidnapped more times than you could count, and really does not do much to advance the story, nor does she do anything to help Ryu.
The graphics however are a very strong point of the game, cutscenes look amazing, characters are rendered very well and all look very genuine. However, some of the backgrounds, whilst still looking good, are a bit bland and repetitive. However, all of the ingame action, from Ryu majestically striking with his swords to the multiple enemy kicks and flips are all done very accurately, with very few movements looking out of place. Lightning are very impressive and the postprocess effects never stop to amaze you through the game. All while running at a solid 60FPS.
The only real criticism I have with the games physics is the fact that any time Rachel moves, her breasts bounce in various absurd ways that suck any drama there might be out of the scene. Furthermore, even when she is standing still, her breasts continue bouncing for some time afterwards. They also bounce in odd, unrealistic directions. Not only that but each breast tend to bounce in a weird direction meaning you will all the time see two oddly placed breast very far away from eachother. I guess if you are REALLY into this sort of thing, you might find some enjoyment out of unrealistically sized breasts bouncing in ways you never dreamed of, but I do not enjoy this sort of thing. It was a stupid addition.
The biggest detriment to the gameplay has to be loading screens, slowdowns, and glitches.
Sounds are another highlight of the game, all attacks sound realistic and ryu feels really human when he moves around, jumps, or otherwise do something acrobatic. Enemies all have a unique set of sounds, and the weapons have enough variety in the sounds to make it a pleasure just to swing your weapon.
The music are very good as well, it sets the mood for the setting you are in perfectly and helps to add some adrenaline to boss battles.
Next, allow me to elaborate on the gameplay, in my opinion a very double edged sword (mind the pun). To begin with, your given an array of weapons, which you must collect to use on your quest, these range from dual sword to nunchucks to many others, however, some of them behave and perform very similarly to say the least, with similar combos and effects. Your also given a series of magical attacks called ninpo, however, these series of attacks count for little and are rarely used in actual gameplay.
As a ninja, its mandatory, or so it would seem, to walk on walls, run on water, or jump insanely long distances. This part of the game is very enjoyable and adds to the awesome feeling of being a Ninja. Maybe the platform elements in the game requires you to run along walls to jump from there to a ledge, or just jumping back and forth on walls to gain higher grounds. Most of this can be annoyingly hard, but still very satifying to perform. The game also has a lot of puzzles, that most likely share the games overall hard difficulty. It can take you longer to figure out a single puzzle in a level, than the rest of the time you spent in that level.
Now onto the actual fighting. As said before, this has a series of good and very bad points. I will start with the bad points. First of all allow me to say that some elements of this game are extremely broken.
Ryu takes an insane amount damage when attacked while enemies seem invincible at times, it is also hard to block, while enemies master this perfectly. You will also encounter a lot of projectile spamming, which really do not fit a close combat action game. You save your game at certain save points in the game, not only is this a bad mechanic, but these are placed so far between eachother you might have to replay half an hour, many times in a row. There are also rarely any save points after boss battles, so if you die from being weakened after a strong boss, you have to replay the whole major fight, only to fear having to do it again. A good example is the last level, it consists of 20 minutes of platforming where you die instantly if you make a single wrong move. After beating this, you have to fight the final boss which, if he kills you, sends you back to the beginning of the level having to replay all the risky platforming for another 20 minutes, assuming you will not fall to your death which gives you another 20 minutes.
Enemies don't let up during gameplay, even on the lowest difficulties, and with a myriad of unlockable difficulty modes - from the easiest to the most insane: Ninja Dog, Normal, Hard, Very Hard, and Master Ninja - you're sure to be challenged often as time progresses.
Combos are a huge part of this game. Melee weapons have different combos that you can access from the menu screen. As you level your weapons up, you gain more combos that become available. You will come to find that mastering different combos make life as Ryu much easier. Different enemies are more susceptible to different weapons and combos alike. You can also level up Ryu's heath by finding hidden items throughout the game.
One of the best aspects of the game are the enemies. They are detailed, aggressive and challenging. You can not go though levels pressing one button over and over again and expect to win. You have to actually think, and react like you would in a real sword fight. The bosses are some of the most challenging and fun to play as I have ever seen. You will feel a rush of endorphin when you beat a tough boss, you feel like you just did something monumental.
As you walk through the levels, you will come across the dead bodies of some random ninjas. These guys have some helpful items on them, sometimes unlimited supply of arrows, but other times they have these really long notes on them that are somewhat fun to read.
The second part that made me clearing this game so difficult was a series of little bombs which were thrown onto me. Here I am whipping some guys ass with my cool looking dual swords and I suddenly see a little glowing arrow fired into me, 3 seconds later I blow up and my guard is broken, leaving me open to a severe beating and with little to no health left. I asked myself, can I get these bombs off? And if I can, how? Do I press buttons randomly? Whats the deal? The morale is the game should tell you, but it doesnt. Also, HOW do I know when a bomb is going to be fired at me? Especially from behind, I don't have eyes in the back of my head, and I can't keep moving cause I need to attack sooner or later. However, I did get through it eventually, how? Luck, I was just lucky enough that the ninjas facing me didn't feel like throwing bombs or doing cheap grabs. And thats the problem with Ninja Gaiden, more importance goes to luck than it should, and thats not fair.
And all this came after defeating the previous levels boss, a fat guy with a huge gun. This is another problem with Ninja Gaiden, in good action games there is a strategy that works, i.e, do this and you will win, or hit that and you will win. And that strategy comes to you after evaluating the enemies moves. None of this in Ninja Gaiden, you just get your ass kicked and try to smile and have fun doing it. Not only is the games damage system unfair, but the camera is just beyond mortal comprehension.
Now picture all that difficulty, but now picture it with a horribly broken camera. Its so bad in fact you will think Team Ninja invested serious time and effort into making it as ineffectual as possible. Add onto that the camera whipping around aimlessly with it trailing so closely behind Ryu you can't see a single thing. During combat, the camera will swivel around into various stupid positions, allowing you to get the best view of a chest/wall/statue/whatever, thus not allowing you to see what you are doing. This adds to the cheapness of the game, and adds to you dying a lot more frequently than you should be. Because of this, you have to adjust the camera in mid combat, which isn't necessarily the thing you want to be doing when you have five ninjas trying to tear you a new one. And in many instances, the camera swivels into areas that make it so you can not see if there are any other enemies in the area, or into areas where you can not see who is going to throw the next projectile at you.
Furthermore, swimming is terrible.
Also, you can play as Rachel. She plays a small role in the story and these levels with her basically just adds a bit of variety. What is sad is that there are very few times you get to play as her, since she is a lot more fun to play. She also has alot of cool combat skills that makes the combat much more satisfying than when you play as Ryu. She also has one of the most impressive boss battles in th game. After finishing it i just wanted to replay it at once. It was just so damn cool to watch.
Basically, she's like a tank. Slow and clunky compared to Ryu, maybe it's the huge breasts, or her weapon of choice. Her missions are short as well.
For some strange reasons, and despite all of these absurd and stupid shortcomings, the game can be pretty fun. Even though there are not too many reasons to replay the game if you are already bored with it, the game itself is probably one of the most complete single-player action/platformer experiences out there, especially if you're a competitive gamer. An in-depth battle system, coupled with the fact that being a brutal ninja is just plain cool, this game is a must-buy for any fan of action gaming.