NINJA GAIDEN 2 Reviews
So how do you top the greatest action game of the past generation? Itagaki's answer was "just add more". More blood, more weapons, more blood, more enimies, more blood... are you seeing the trend? While adding more certainly doesn't hurt things (in most cases), a better game they do not make, which is clearly evident in the case of this game.
Ninja Gaiden II isn't a bad game by any means, it just fails to live up to the high expectations established by the first game (on the Xbox, that is). While the core gameplay of the series has improved a bit... the same cannot be said for the rest of the game.
Taking down bad guys is more fun than ever thanks to the new execution move that is activated by simply using the heavy attack on an enemy who's missing a limb (also a new feature). To balance out this feature, enemy ninja will also kamikaze if you give them a chance to grab you while dragging their limbless bodies around.
I was having a lot of fun playing this game all the way up to the 8th level, where things take a drastic turn for the worse. This is where you start fighting ninjas with rocket launchers who love to shoot you while they're off screen and you don't know where the hell they're coming from, usually while fighting several other enimies. There are also projectile shooting dragoons, and robots that explode after you defeat them, none of which are much fun to fight because many of their tactics are just plain cheap.
Not that's the key word people, cheap. I don't have a problem with a challenge, in fact, I'm one of the few people that didn't think the original Ninja gaiden was as hard as so many peopel made it out to be. However, Ninja Gaiden II definately is harder thanks to the sheer number of enimies that inhabit the screen at any given time (which also leads to slow down ins ome cases, espeically at a specific part near the end of the game), and to the whole cheapness of the enimies with projectile weapons.
The camera, while not perfect, was not my biggest compliant with the game (though it did lead to frustration on a few occasions. While performing an execution move the camera zoom in on you to get all the gritty detail. This leaves you vulnerable to all the enimies you can't see as soon as you finish the move though, which is not cool. In fact you will often depend on these execution moves, not just to take down the enemy, but to shield you from the hordes of attacks who mobb you and shoot projectiles at you while you're trying to focus on another group of enimies.
As far as the graphics are concerned, while the game certainly doesn't look bad, it also doesn't look worlds better then the first game either. The reason for this could simply be because the original was such a great looking game, even by todays stnadards (same goes with the lsat gen Dead or Alive games). What is obviously though is that Team Ninja's art direction needs work, far too many enimies and bosses just look generic and uninspired.
The music is not memorable at all (at least I liked some of the tunes from the first game), and I didn't even bother trying to make sense out of the story. Many of the cutscenes just weren't that impressive, and you are forced to watch them the first time too. I didn't even bother reading any of the ninja logs, because I came into the game knowing that the story takes a back seat (or rather, the trunk) after the gameplay.
The game was recently patched for the new mission pack, however this patch atually breaks the game if you haven't already beat it, causing it to freeze up during cutscenes (which happened to be on level 12). You can fix this by clearing the cache on your hard drive, but it's very disappointing that they would even release something that would cause such a big problem with the game.
So, in the end, is Ninja Gaiden II worth playing? If you were a fan of the first game and can stomach the difficulty and cheapness of the game, then I would say yes, because the core elements that made the first game great are still there. Still, in the end I can't help but feel a bit disappointed because I know this game could have been better, maybe if Tecmo hadn't pissed off Itagaki... but who knows?
