Thats it. Ninja Gaiden is dead to me.

L

LeviathanZERO

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Dec 20, 2003
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I expected this, I really did. Ever since the first sigma game, the franchise was done. Ever since Hayashit took over, it was done. What the hell is this??

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What was one of the greatest games of all time (Ninja Gaiden Black), to this, its clear Tecmo/Team Ninja dont listen to the fans. I was disgusted by the e3 videos, but I figured they actually listened to the criticism, which obviously they didnt care. Who the fuck asked for an easy game littered with QTE's? Either that or they really are nothing without Itagaki. What a shame he couldnt take the franchise with him.

This is sad. One of my favorite franchises is dead.
This sucks. oh well, back to terraria......
 
Yeah its quite disappointing. They f'ed up for trying to screw Itagaki and their employees. Hopefully sales reflect their failure.
 
Its not the copying of other games...... well, yeah it is. and bad qualities of games, like stupid QTE's. I mean, I just dont get it, how do you get someone that obviously hasnt played the previous games to lead the development team for it? (Idk maybe he has played the game alot, and hes just retarded or sucks as a director)

I cant stand it!

I bought a damn Xbox just because of Ninja Gaiden 1.
400 something hours, online and off, I was addicted. It was the only game I owned for months. I loved it. I wanted more of it. Couldn't we get just a little more?

Sigma...... *sigh*

I...I .... Idk....
 
I didn't even know they had Ninja Gaiden on xbox. It's weird to see someone call that Ninja Gaiden 1.
 
I like the GameSpot review "Mash the attack button and watch glorious things happen".
 
piscian18 said:
??? It was the most talked about game for like 2 years. They remade it twice.
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It's a (fantastic) nintendo game to me. It was just strange seeing a version I never heard of and apparently coming years after the series I played mentioned as the first one he played.
 
Sounds like a real shame. If this had been anything like the original Xbox Ninja Gaiden I would have bought a console to play it, that game was awesome and it actually had pretty awesome graphics as well.
 
I laugh at all the apologists who kept on with "Ninja Gaiden III doesn't have QTEs, they're tutorials!!!!!!!" and the actual game is completely infested with them.
 
Why is Black ok but Sigma sucks? I thought they were nearly identical other than obvious improvements in grapics quality.
 
IIRC, I read that you can turn off the QTE's in the options.:confused:
 
I used this as an excuse to pick up NG2 again, since I never played past the third chapter previously. I loved the hell out of Black, but for some reason I just sort of stopped playing 2. On a technical and gameplay level it seemed much better than the original, but I just got bored of pretty quickly. At any rate, I'll be giving it another chance after the atrocity that's NG3.
 
Mozex said:
Why is Black ok but Sigma sucks? I thought they were nearly identical other than obvious improvements in grapics quality.
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Some of the really serious fans prefer one over the other, but they're 90% the same game. Sigma added some levels where you play as Rachel (she can only use the hammer, but is essentially like Ryu), the ability to use the twin swords from Ninja Gaiden 2 (pretty similar to the Dragon Sword), and they added the counter attack back to the game. In the first Ninja Gaiden you could block and then counter attacks by hitting a button right as it makes contact. They removed it in Black, but re-added it for Sigma. Additionally they tweaked the "flying swallow" dash move in each revision since it's arguably the best attack in the game.
I've been through all of the NG revisions, including the new one for the Vita, and they're anywhere from 90-95% the same as one another.

I was thinking of buying 3, but this makes me think that it's more like #2...where hitting strong attack repeatedly is the best strategy.
 
People need to specify that they are talking about Ninja Gaiden for xbox or ps3. I came in here expecting some revelation about an 8-bit favorite. :(
 
At this point you can pretty safely assume any mention of Ninja Gaiden refers to the newer games. Not counting the SNES compilation and a couple ports, NGIII: The Ancient Ship of Doom came out in 1991, a whopping 21 years ago.
There have been 7-8 NG games since Team Ninja took over the franchise in 2004 and they've sold millions of copies, so it's certainly not like they're flying under the radar.

I love those old NES games as much as anyone (especially the first one), but at this point NG refers to what the series is today or at least the first of the new series. 2 and 3 seem like George Lucas gave them some sequel advice.
 
piscian18 said:
so what happened exactly?
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Itagaki left Tecmo. This pretty much proves he was the only talent there.

In addition, this is exactly what happens when a developer attempts to correct the problems of the previous games without understanding what made them great in the first place. They hear complaints that Ninja Gaiden 2 was too hard, so they dumb down everything and the result is a nearly on-rails experience where you can win by just button mashing. Rather than, you know, fix the actual problems which made NG2 a frustrating experience (like getting hit by off-screen ranged attacks and ridiculously cheap bosses).

Also see: Devil May Cry 2.
 
NG2 also threw the atmosphere totally out the window, too. While Vigoor in NG1 was a cross between North Korea and Egypt, NG2 sent you to a bunch of random hallways in weird semi-futuristic real cities. While NG1 had a bunch of inter-connected areas that made up a large world…NG2 had a series of unrelated and totally linear levels. Every single level was made up of straight hallways that reached a “T” junction at their end. On one side was a chest, and the other led to the rest of the level. They added more weapons, but forgot to add valuable techniques for them. Mashing strong attack was better than actually doing a proper combination. Levels were easy and bosses were freakishly hard.
There were good levels in NG2 (the werewolf level was NG1 quality) but many horrible ones, too.
Apparently NG3 is a steaming pile while NG2 was just “meh.” I went through it twice, which says that it wasn’t unplayable…but it just didn’t live up to the first at all.
NG Black and/or Sigma still stand out as all-time classics. Absolutely 100% worthy successors to the old NES NG saga.
With Itagaki, I think he did a great job with NG1, but the Dead or Alive games are a complete joke. Sometimes I wonder if he just got lucky or had a great surrounding team.
 
Did Itagaki work on NG2 as well?

I'm really bummed out about this. Ninja Gaiden 1 (black/sigma) is in my top 5 greatest games of all time, it's among the only games I've ever bothered to do multiple playthroughs on. Normally I beat a game once and that's all she wrote. Ninja Gaiden had probably the best play control of any action game I've ever played (honorable mention to Armored Core For Answer). The difficulty was absolutely perfect, I don't care about all the whiners who died too many times. It was a very long campaign as action games go, had great boss battles, had a currency and upgrade system...you name it, they nailed everything correctly. All the stars aligned to make a perfect game...and now it's all gone. Uggghh...
 
Supposedly he was involved with NG2, but I have no clue how much. He was certainly pretty vocal about how awesome he thought it was back when it came out. Supposedly it was rushed slightly, but I don't really know to what degree.

I agree that the 2004 Ninja Gaiden (+ the many revisions) is in my top 5 of all time, too. There just wasn't much wrong with it, except maybe an uneven difficulty. Not sure if they were trying to weed people out, but the earlier levels were arguably harder than the later ones just because you had no money or health. I just completed Sigma Plus on the Vita the other day and it's still as classic as it ever was.
 
Yeah a lot of people seem to mention those difficulty spikes, but I don't remember having that impression. At that time (2004/2005), I never checked out video game websites nor posted on forums. Never thought to check for reviews either, I just went to Gamestop once every couple weeks and bought whatever game looked cool. It wasn't until a couple years ago I started going to sites like IGN/gamespot and only then did I find out that Ninja Gaiden had this notorious reputation for being a hard game. I was kind of surprised by that because I feel the difficulty was spot on. If you remember, the NES version of NG games were also quite difficult. That's what makes the game fun. Look at Demon's and Dark Souls...if their difficulty was even a little lower, it wouldn't have half the appeal.
 
shantd said:
Yeah a lot of people seem to mention those difficulty spikes, but I don't remember having that impression. At that time (2004/2005), I never checked out video game websites nor posted on forums. Never thought to check for reviews either, I just went to Gamestop once every couple weeks and bought whatever game looked cool. It wasn't until a couple years ago I started going to sites like IGN/gamespot and only then did I find out that Ninja Gaiden had this notorious reputation for being a hard game. I was kind of surprised by that because I feel the difficulty was spot on. If you remember, the NES version of NG games were also quite difficult. That's what makes the game fun. Look at Demon's and Dark Souls...if their difficulty was even a little lower, it wouldn't have half the appeal.
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I agree that Ninja Gaiden 2004 had perfect difficulty on normal mode for a first play through. The main problem was there was no easy option for the people who didn't want to die at all, but normal mode was good for most people IMO. I died a few times each level on my first playthrough and never felt like a particular section was excessively hard or I had to spend excessive time trying to get past it.

I think the people complaining were the types who expected to get through entire levels without ever dying, or the people who couldn't figure out there's a block and dodge button and you HAD to use them.
 
True Ninja Gaiden will always be on NES. All these newer ones are just posers.
 
This thread is making me want to crack out my original Xbox and play through Ninja Gaiden 2004 again :p
 
Tudz said:
This thread is making me want to crack out my original Xbox and play through Ninja Gaiden 2004 again :p
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If you have a 360, I know NG: Black will work fine on it. With native 16x9 support and upscaling it actually looks better than some of the 360 ship-day games. You might be able to get it on Live Arcade, too.
If you have a PS3, Sigma can be had for pretty cheap now. On Amazon it's $8 used.
 
Domingo said:
If you have a 360, I know NG: Black will work fine on it. With native 16x9 support and upscaling it actually looks better than some of the 360 ship-day games. You might be able to get it on Live Arcade, too.
If you have a PS3, Sigma can be had for pretty cheap now. On Amazon it's $8 used.
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Nah I don't unfortunately. Have to hook up the old TV to the original Xbox to play it.
 
Krenum said:
True Ninja Gaiden will always be on NES. All these newer ones are just posers.
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Technically NG on the NES was "posing" as this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuOdN1qzGzs

Back in the day the NES wasn't able to do real ports, so companies tended to re-make arcade games into something graphically inferior, but with more advanced mechanics. Ninja Gaiden, Strider, Bionic Commando, and Rygar are "better" (and much bigger) on the NES, but are graphically a big step down.
 
Just bought NG Black on XBL for only 1200 MS points, can't wait for it to download! this will be my first playthrough,but big fan of NG2 though.
 
Ticker305 said:
Just bought NG Black on XBL for only 1200 MS points, can't wait for it to download! this will be my first playthrough,but big fan of NG2 though.
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*smile*
you guys are awesome. this game is the greatest, top 10, top 5 whatever, game of all time. just play it. it is perfect. brutal and satisfying at all times.
 
I just beat Ninja Gaiden 3 over the weekend. I finished it in maybe 6 hours - it was incredibly short. My thoughts:

I actually didn't find the QTE's to be too bad, but they certainly didn't fit for a NG title. It felt more like I was playing that Ninja Blade game, which I thought was absolutely terrible.

The story was all over the place, but this has been discussed many times. I thought it was disjointed, a little confusing, and at the end, way too cliche. Overall it offered no value for the game.

The bosses in this game were awful. They were unispired, way too easy, and just lacked originality. I was particularly disappointed in the fights with the Regent of the Mask. I thought they would have been much better.

For some reason, I didn't seem to mind the loss of the other weapons too much. I think the simplified mechanics made them less important.

The combat was all button mash with no real effort. I would have been more upset if the game was longer (like one of the previous NG titles). Also, I really really missed Obliteration techniques.

Ryu took is mask off maybe 10 times in this game, after having never done it once. I think it did the character a great disservice.

You fight maybe the same 5-6 enemies throughout the game. I wasn't a fan of the lack of variety at all.

Overall the game is not terrible but its not a great one either. As a standalone game it's just OK...as a Ninja Gaiden game it's awful. It just doesn't fit with the other titles whatsoever.

I really hope Team Ninja goes back to the series roots in the sequel. Hopefully the new DmC reboot won't disappoint me as much.
 
At some point I'll probably break down and buy this. Based upon the reviews it seems destined to be in the $5-10 bin pretty soon, so I'll feel obligated to get it when it does.
 
Ditto, though I'll probably end up just renting it. Even a crap NG game is still a NG game. Maybe if we play it on hard mode, it will give us at least a half decent challenge.
 
shantd said:
Ditto, though I'll probably end up just renting it. Even a crap NG game is still a NG game. Maybe if we play it on hard mode, it will give us at least a half decent challenge.
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Hard mode is a challenge because of the sheer number of enemies the game throws at you. In some cases you are fighting an additional 5-6 (or more) groups of hordes in hard mode. Worse still is the fact that these groups have more enemies and it is not uncommon for the framerate to suffer as a result (I played on 360). The game in general is all about crowd control, button spam, and taking out as many people as once. In hard mode, you'll likely be using the ONE ninpo provided for the entire game a lot more.

I started on hard mode, thinking that it would probably emulate the difficulty or experience of the last NG titles. I quickly grew tired of the game's attempt to add difficulty by spamming more mindless enemies, and I moved back to normal so I could just get through the game.
 
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To some degree Ninja Gaiden 2 was a bit spammy. While the dragon sword retained a lot of the old techniques (like the izuna drop), most of the other weapons seemed to work really well just pressing Y as fast as you could.
In the first game learning to use a new weapon was actually pretty tough. You had to get a feel for what was fast/safe to initiate and from there learn to get a combo streak that would keep foes on the defensive and still cover your flank/sides. There was a huge upside to weapons like the flail and lunar, while you could always just wade in and do damage with the dabilahro.
NG2 pretty much made most of the "keep hitting Y" sequences safe and uber-damaging.
 
J Macker said:
What in the world is a "QTE" ?
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Quick Time Event. Those annoying sequences where the game is essentially making you hit buttons during a cut scene. I freakin' hate those things going back to Resident Evil 4.
 
Oh. I hate those things. They have those in the BF3 campaign. Freaking annoying.
 
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