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One thing worth noting is that enemies that have been wounded in such a way, minus severed heads of course, are more dangerous than normal, utilizing special attacks that do a significant amount of damage. I'm extremely surprised that Tecmo let this one out the door without doing more QA. It took some time to unstick the camera and I was still unable to do anything but restart and do that entire section all over again. Very slick, very brutal, yet oh so fun. You can adjust it manually but you will pay the price for doing so. So yeah.
With more polish, this one could've been special. I was very suprised by how much they ramped up the violence between this and the previous installment. It permeates the entire game, even the pause menu is covered in blood splotches. I have lost track of the number of times that the camera has not been where it needs to be when I need it to be there.
It makes certain boss fights excruciatingly frustrating and makes simple tasks harder than they have any right to be. The graphics are nice, the music is forgettable, the sound effects are what you'd expect and the combat is satisfying but.The camera is more of an enemy than any ninja or demon that you'll face in the game. I was fighting the stage 3 boss and one minute I'm dodging spheres of electric energy, the next well.there wasn't anything to dodge because the boss completely disappeared. As is, it's less fun and more frustrating than it should be.
The camera had gotten lodged behind one of the collapsed walls right after the boss disappeared and my screen was completely black. Needless to say if you are offended by graphic violence then you definitely need to stay far away from this one.The story is.well there is a story but it's rather silly and nonsensical window dressing. There was no way to continue, no way to do anything. When you finish off enemies, via the absolutely brutal obliterations, you will sever heads, and/or other limbs and even torsos.
If you've ever played Ninja Gaiden before, you know that you don't have time to fight both the camera and squads of ruthlessly coordinated enemies.I should mention that there are occasional frame rate hiccups and I have experienced one major glitch as well. We're here to decimate Ryu's enemies. Obliterate them or they'll do their best to obliterate you. We all know why we're here right.
I'd rather play somebody in a fighting game who's being abusive of a cheap trick to win.Redundancy - Team ninja recycled 5 of the bosses(the main ones) and one of them you fight 4 times. it does very little damage, but interrupts your charging of your bow shot. Too many game designers feel the need to make the last boss some huge monster that is absurd and most of the time not even fun to fight. most of the enemies in the game are ninja, and most of THEM love abusing their exploding shuriken. it is impossible to dodge these exploding shuriken, and they will throw so many at you, that you are exploding every second or so, unless you break their momentum and get some hits in.the ranged enemies are also abusive - they will stand 50 yards from you and shoot you with exploding arrows, bazooka rounds, or rapid fire-I'm not even sure, but they all cause explosions and blow you backward so you cant advance anywhere near them - frequently from the end of a long hallway so you can't dodge it very effectively.Many of the bosses are extremely easy - once you figure out how to avoid their one ludicrously cheap attack. half the time you sit there whacking at a body part for most of the fight. a lot. You dodge some attacks, shoot him, and he barfs a bunch of rotted gore at you for massive damage unless you dodge or block.
After fighting one boss 4 times already, and the rest of the major bosses twice, do you really want to do it again.Conclusion:I wouldn't buy this game again. then you get to kill them all, all over.last boss - the last boss is incredibly easy and anticlimactic, the second to last boss is way harder, and really, really stupid. No restorative items in between, no shops. the level designers apparently thought it was a good idea to give you a shop to buy healing items at, then once you do, you walk through the next door and find 3 healing items, but are maxed, so just wasted your money.
I died to this explosion several times before I decided it was baloney and looked up a guide to see how to live the explosion. one boss dies in a gigantic explosion - and the only way to survive is to block. you can walk directly at the boss, and you will never be hit with it - so it's intended purpose is incredibly easily discernible. But if you get frustrated at the cheap tactics and quit for awhile, your console crashes, or you have to do something else - back to the save point. And this boss was the most difficult boss in the game for me - and the most irritating and least fun, because it little to do with the rest of the gameplay.Archery: I admit, nobody used the bow much in the first one - but that was choice.
as a side note, this game is shorter than its prequel, but I'm going to evaluate it on it's own merits anyway so that doesn't terribly matter.the gameplay is pretty good - for the most part. If you've got a good reaction time, and the ability to learn your enemie's patterns quickly, this game will go fine, I do however, have some major issues.Pros: good gameplay: its fast, responsive, and interesting.graphics: the graphics look great, and Ryu looks awesome while slicing things to pieces. It just never occurred to me that I would have to block an explosion big enough to take out a city block.with my sword.Another boss you fight in an area filled with lava. because it is by far the best attack in the game, and if you try to use much of any other attack on these particular enemies, you will be taking a lot more damage for the sole purpose of looking cool.this is emphasized at points where you attacked by absurd numbers of ninja - at one point I was fighting upwards of forty ninja at one time(which also caused the framerate to slow drastically).The save points - The save points generally are not that bad - except for the bosses. I would only buy this is you are a hardcore gamer looking for a challenge(for a short time till you figure out the way things run), are really obsessed with Ryu or ninja, or want a new TV - the hard way.
and he will try his best to blast or walk up and THROW you off the platform you are fighting him on, then launch continuous fireballs at you, knocking you into the lava and keeping you there. In this one however, the second-to-last fight is.all archery. Having played Ninja Gaidan and largely enjoying it, I bought this game looking for more of the same gameplay, with a new story. the previous one had many places where you had no clue where to go, had to play games with jumping puzzles, or just ended up wasting time running through tokyo fighting the same ninja over and over for most of the game. you have to be fast or you will hurt.
the first thing to note about gameplay is that it's fast. with your sword. you basically get that. if you get to the last boss(or worse, the second to last boss) and quit in frustration. in this incarnation however, the gameplay is fairly linear - you wont end up lost for more than a minute or two at any point, and the focus is on the fighting rather than puzzles.Cons:Frustrating - If you have a temper at all, you will break your controller - this game is by far the most frustrating game I've played in a long time.
I didn't mind this, because he was my favorite boss, but the others were slightly annoying.Uninteresting bosses - the bosses basically all fight the same way(the major ones at least) 3 of the 5 bosses that are recycled fly, 4 of them have a long range charge attack, and the tactic to beat them 4 of the 5 is identical - and very similar: figure out how long their standard attack combo is(they only have one or two), then every time they do it, dodge the last hit and wail on them.Incredibly cheap enemies - most of the time, you will wtfpwn every enemy you run across. you can do the same with any melee weapon you choose to ignore. But in this game, archery was forced down your throat with a vengeance in the majority of the missions.The ninpo - most of the ninpo are not very good. But I hope you don't have a temper, or you're gonna be buying a new controller/Television. it is a long road to being good in this game, and you will have to walk it all over again every time you stop playing for a few days.Moves - this is kind of petty, but I lost some of my favorite moves from Ninja Gaidan, which annoyed me.Replay - This game has fairly low replay value. now. unless you are charging your bow, it will never, ever hit you.
If you are a casual gamer, you probably will not like the difficulty. the fire wheel was good, because it homes on enemies and does a good job of thinning out the needless and irritating adds that guard some of the bosses, the pheonix fire ninpo I liked as well, because it can, if you are lucky, do fair damage to a boss, and it works well in a crowd.engagement - If you leave the game for even a few days, you will forget how to fight. This wasn't a big deal most of the time, because the enemies aren't that difficult, and it's only a bit of a waste of time, but the end of the game is four bosses in a row. I beat it, it will probably go into a drawer for a long time. events like this are common.further, you frequently run into enemies or groups of enemies that almost force you to use one attack over and over(flying swallow I believe). the action is great, but once you've done it once, there isn't much point to doing it again.
It's not quite realistic as another reviewer commented, but if your into scenery, you will stop a couple times just to take a look around.It's largely fighting focused, which is what most of us want to play it for. he also has an attack that is designed solely to make it harder to shoot him. usually you will get a save point a fair distance back from the boss, which isn't generally a problem because when you die on a boss, you load at the beginning of the fight. and then they will get in a single hit or so.and the 14 others with them will take advantage of the opening to reduce you to 1/2 hp. here is a way around this, but you probably won't figure it out till you die 2 or 3 times.Level design - The item placement is extremely annoying.
good game, except I think I had a faulty disc, because it kept freezing on me at a certain spot in the game and only on the path of the warrior
That's all you need to know about this story: it's frequently stupid, doesn't make sense and is just a placeholder for the sexy violence. However there is one thing they still haven't been able to perfect which is the skin on characters. Quite frankly, they look like shiny mannequins and even with Dead or Alive 4 released several years ago, they still haven't fixed this. Keep it on Japanese with English subtitles since the story and the VA becomes a hell of a lot more tolerable. Enemies with rocket launchers.
Cutscenes look great and certain locales are quite stunning. That's the crux and indeed the proverbial straw that might make you stop playing this. It's really the combat system which is arguably, for me anyway, the funnest and most satisfying of the fighting styles, easily besting those in God of War, Devil May Cry, Heavenly Sword or even something like Prince of Persia games. Also thankfully, Team Ninja toned down the precision-based platforming sections as well as those damned ghost fish though in their place are respawning jelly fish that explode, a boss that explodes and kills you unless you hold block (chapter 7, so I save you the aggravation of replaying him) and an item limit of 3.3.
Well you know what. declares to his minion werewolves that he wants an adversary worthy of him. As I was in the store, mind deadest on buying "Ninja Gaiden II" for the Xbox 360, a question ran through my head: "am I this crazy." I mean after all, Sigma on the Playstation 3 was frequently frustrating but it was one that you got better at over time. Oh and we get it Team Ninja: you love bouncy breasts.Sound/Music: The music's quite dynamic, epic and nicely energetic though not memorable in terms of melodies but it provides an adequate soundtrack at your demon slaying parties while sound effects from roars to swishes of the blade(s) are very good at making the hits and kills that much sweeter. Having played all Devil May Cry games, God of War as well as Ninja Gaiden Sigma, I honestly don't get how they think this game will be easy to Ninja Gaiden newbies or veterans since it frequently adds things detrimental to the enjoyment of it all.
That doesn't excuse the poor cheap hits, odd bits of programming and large amount of enemies and this makes this a game that's incredibly hard to love.Story: There's a cutscene in the game where a werewolf named Volf (Volf the Wolf.lot of thought into that name, no). I find it funny on the back of the game's box is mentions that having the ability for save points to replenish your health or major battles will refill your health bar is helpful to a "casual gamer". I get that the kill animations wouldn't be as impressive if it was like God of War's camera being your eye-in-the-sky but at least then you could figure out what was going on in the battlefield. NGII on the other hand I played previously, found it borderline controller-throwing and figured no game is worth this frustration so why am I in the store buying it.
This camera seems to love the scenery and you more than showing you what you're doing and very frequently I'd have to reposition the camera just to figure out what's going on or who hit me or where that enemy came from. Then we have all 3 at once and yeah, this game can frequently get unfair. Sure it's really just LT to block, X for weak, Y for strong like most games but honestly; being able to go all over the screen tearing enemies apart limb by limb has never felt as rewarding as this. Enemies throw exploding shurikens with reckless abandon. The game was even winning me over with parts that were challenging but not too bad but then boom, one annoyance after another.And all of this is further enhanced by one of the worst cameras you'll ever be in control of.
Like I said, save points can regenerate you to full health while major battles can heal you fully after they're done (provided you don't have any red sections) and the wealth of weapons make it apparently easy to make it through the game. Game's so difficult even the game does stuff that'll make it easier to kill you faster.Now the game as I mentioned way above has probably the most visceral and all-around entertaining fighting combat systems around. You can only carry 3 of each item and yeah, fun fighting, annoying game design.I wish Team Ninja didn't make such frustrating and difficult games since they'd make some of the best action games around but alas, if you're going to get into this, make sure you're not the controlling-throwing kind. Like Tomb Raider games, you'd think with reviews and fans complaining of bad cameras, Team Ninja would go "damn, we should fix that camera problem next game" but apparently not.
But you know what. Giant mechs in addition to enemies with rocket launchers. I don't know why it is but even a flatly-delivered line in Japanese sounds cooler than English.Gameplay: Team Ninja are notoriously in love for difficult games; ones that challenge you and push you to the brink but at a certain point you got to ask yourself: is the game worth it if I'm madder at the game the more and more I play it. There's some kind of baddie who wants to revive a potentially world-destroying Archfiend and yeah, Ryu's the man to stop everybody's plans.Graphics: Team Ninja's animators do really great jobs at delivering not only fast combat but having it be as fluid as possible and seeing Ryu jump, dash and slice his way on screen is quite something to watch.
As for voice acting.
Probably the most prominent of these is the camera; it isn't just not good, it's actively bad. This has kept me from going on to the 3rd difficulty level, not because of the difficulty level inherent to it, but because the challenge is pretty cheap. On one hand, Ninja Gaiden 2 is the most masterful combat game of its style I've ever seen designed from the standpoint of the action itself.
While that's not a complaint of mine in itself, having beaten the first 2 levels of difficulty and having a blast (mostly), it's the way the difficulty is presented that is often aggravating. Melee combat is really the strength of the game and what should have become more difficult as you go.That said, the Acolyte (first) difficulty level doesn't really have this ranged element much and is quite fun for anyone, and is quite doable with some effort, although bosses will be died to quite a bit while you figure out ways to go about fighting each one (when you die to a boss, you start again right at the boss, so this isn't too big a deal). To me, the best part about the game is the sword-on-sword combat, but the parts that typically present challenges are parts where 6 or 7 enemies with bazookas or exploding ninja stars or what have you are placed way out of reach and having to deal with all of them.
This is a tough game to rate. This game is quite difficult compared to nearly any other. The second difficulty level I found fun too, but past that, excessive ranged attackers just struck me as irritating.
The combat sequences are fast, furious, fluid and fun, and the array of weapons offers players a huge selection of methods to their battle styles.On the other hand, there are a few nagging flaws to the game that really stop it from being what it could have been. I've died a lot of times after dodging a boss's attack of death to the next swing because the camera decided that the wall I was next to was the most important thing to focus on as the boss standing two feet away split my body down the middle.
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