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[Snacks the sober sea lion]

Well, it's certainly the most excessive action game ever made in a number of ways.

I played the 360 version on Warrior. Got it months ago and played about 11 chapters, then took a break and came back to it recently. I thought the weapons were great, especially the Tonfa and Vigoorian Flail, but the Dragon Sword was the most reliable for boss fights, and I'm not sure what the Dual Swords are for other than style. However, I ended up finding that the game has the same issue as everyone always points out: It's cheap.

You CAN beat the game taking no damage, but the methods of doing so typically involve skipping all non-essential encounters, and cheesing your way through mandatory battles with Ultimate Technique spam. The game simply throws so many enemies at you that there isn't compelling enough reason to do much except use the Ultimate Technique. It's fun and flashy, but it definitely gets tiresome, and considering how fun the weapons and their combos are, I wanted to be able to actually use them, rather delimbing a couple guys with Flying Swallow, Obliteration, jump away and instantly charge a UT to kill 5+ guys. Alternately, using moves that give you iframes such as Obliteration and Guillotine Throw to avoid the endless projectile spam, because using the actual dodge button simply isn't feasible. The terrible encounter design just gets in the way of what should be a fantastic combat system. The boss fights are also a bit of a mix. Some are straightforward fights, some are really damn awkward. The infamous Water Dragon fight, that fight against the two dragon Fiends where you have to use arrows and Ninpo, the Zedonius rematch. They're all just very awkward and frustrating, especially because the camera isn't very good at following them.

Really great combat brought way down by enemy spam and bad encounter design. It's almost the best character action game, but it's just too messed up to reach that for me.

 

[norm9]

Really enjoyed the first three hours I played of NG2 before I moved on from it to other more pressing games. Hoping for backwards compatibility or a remastered edition so I can give it another go.

I never bothered trying the other weapons other than your regular dragon sword. Worth the different mechanics involved?

 

[Giolon]

RIP pre-patch stairs fight. Also, LOL armadillo boss fight end "fuck you". The water dragon was actually one of my favorite fights in NG2. Running across the water, slashing the shit out of a dragon w/ claws? It was incredibly badass. What they did to it in NG2 Sigma was a travesty "Ok, stand on this platform and fire your rocket bow".

And IMO yes, it's worth learning the other weapons' mechanics and playstyle. They can make some enemies easier (and some bosses!). If you just stick with the Dragon Sword, you can certainly git gud and get by, but I started doing a lot better on these games when I started playing with the different weapons more.

NG2 claws rip some shit apart.

 

[Corpsepyre]

Killer combat with limbs getting chopped off left and right + some of the funniest bosses + swimming in lava.

Nothing beats this game.

 

[Alpha Phoenix]

As someone who loved the original Xbox version, I found NG2 to be mediocre at best. The only thing it had going for it was the improved gameplay. The first game was far more impressive in everything else (story, characters, levels, music, etc).

 

[Neoleo2143]

While Ninja Gaiden 2's campaign is rightly maligned. I found that the DLC survival missions are pretty incredible combined with the amazing combat. As far as I'm concerned it's the true way to play the game.

 

[Snacks the sober sea lion]

I use all the weapons, just that the Dragon Sword's strong attack combo goes right through bosses.

Except the Zedonius and Volf rematches, which I found you can beat by stunning them with Flying Swallow, then switching to Lunar Staff and mashing Y, which prevents them from recovering for some reason.

 

[jelly]

How hard was that guy on the airship with incendiary ninjas. I scraped through that. I too finally beat early this year. The levels weren't as tight as NG as well as the story but it was still fun to play. Totally agree on some bosses, just awkward because the mechanics suck.

 

[Waddle Dee]

Yeah, I'll never understand how anyone can prefer Vanilla NG2 to the Sigma release. I'm not the sort of guy you'd see combo videos of, but I have all the achievements for DMC3 SE on the HD Collection, and I have done almost everything on DMC4SE and I actually 100% The Wonderful 101 and Viewtiful Joe so I think I'm pretty good at character action games but Vanilla NG2 is absolute bullshit.

It's such an awfully designed game that it comes off as a joke at times. The difficulty is all over the place since so much of the game is bullshit (the camera, enemy spawns, enemy AI when off-camera, various bosses, etc) but the game is also really piss-easy at times since it's so easy to exploit the various mechanics. UTs are busted as fuck. Those throws and decaps are stupid-good. It doesn't have the elegance of the best games in the genre.

I'll never forget my first time playing through Chapter 9. The exploding jellyfish that just hang out in the water, sometimes barely visible. The guys with rocket launchers spamming rocket after rocket at you as you run on water. The goddamn cave section with the extremely half-assed Worm boss. Such an awful chapter.

My "favorite" moment of Vanilla NG2, was when you beat the random Fire Armadillo and you had to BLOCK it's explosion when you killed it or else it OHK'd you!

 

[jelly]

My "favorite" moment of Vanilla NG2, was when you beat the random Fire Armadillo and you had to BLOCK it's explosion when you killed it or else it OHK'd you!

That got me. /fuckin hell grr.

 

[brawly]

This isn't on Xbox One BC, right? This isn't on Xbox One BC...why.

 

[dan2026]

This game was the very definition of unfair.
The unstable performance didn't help none though.

 

[Snacks the sober sea lion]

Yeah, I'll never understand how anyone can prefer Vanilla NG2 to the Sigma release. I'm not the sort of guy you'd see combo videos of, but I have all the achievements for DMC3 SE on the HD Collection, and I have done almost everything on DMC4SE and I actually 100% The Wonderful 101 and Viewtiful Joe so I think I'm pretty good at character action games but Vanilla NG2 is absolute bullshit.

It's such an awfully designed game that it comes off as a joke at times. The difficulty is all over the place since so much of the game is bullshit (the camera, enemy spawns, enemy AI when off-camera, various bosses, etc) but the game is also really piss-easy at times since it's so easy to exploit the various mechanics. UTs are busted as fuck. Those throws and decaps are stupid-good. It doesn't have the elegance of the best games in the genre.

I'll never forget my first time playing through Chapter 9. The exploding jellyfish that just hang out in the water, sometimes barely visible. The guys with rocket launchers spamming rocket after rocket at you as you run on water. The goddamn cave section with the extremely half-assed Worm boss. Such an awful chapter.

My "favorite" moment of Vanilla NG2, was when you beat the random Fire Armadillo and you had to BLOCK it's explosion when you killed it or else it OHK'd you!

Also puts exploding jellyfish in the lava right after the second Zedonius fight.

I played some of Sigma 2 and thought while it cut memorable sections, it did let you actually fight more. But I don't have a PS3 and I'm not going to play the entire game with 100ms Playstation Now delay.

 

[Oreoleo]

Irrationally, this beats out NGB, Bayonetta and co. as my favorite "stylish action" game. The only part I find truly unforgivable is that mid-level tunnel worm boss. Everything else I can overlook because the core combat is such a blast to engage with.

As long as you don't go above the 3rd (?) difficulty.

 

[WGMBY]

My "favorite" moment of Vanilla NG2, was when you beat the random Fire Armadillo and you had to BLOCK it's explosion when you killed it or else it OHK'd you!

This was the point when I quit. I had no idea what to do...

 

[eliochip]

My favorite part of that game was the Stairway of 2FPS

 

[AuthenticM]

Is it better than Black?

 

[Shifty]

Is it better than Black?

No.

But it's still a godly character action game.

 

[HeeHo]

I was very impressed with the weapon selection in Ninja Gaiden 2. So many different melee weapons with so many different moves. It was really fun when you're getting your combos off left and right,

It's a lot less fun when you're trying to keep moving every few seconds to avoid a rocket launcher.

The game feels great but man, it was a funky title. I liked it enough to finish it in 3-4 days but I instantly did not like that the game seemed to go for a more mission format like DMC. The game also seemed a lot less polished than the first aside from the combat.

I should've known something was up when the game got announced and released faster than I would've expected. I was thinking we were going to wait a long time for the sequel and it would be some huge deal.

 

[Sub_Level]

You could get through a lot of the original game by just instantly charging UTs as well.

Its such a staple of these character action games. You can beat dmc, bayonetta, and ng by doing just a fraction of the moves.

But unlike the other 2, you have to block and dodge in NG a lot more due to more aggressive enemies. So its more engaging unless you are trying to do combo vids.

 

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

It's a lot less fun when you're trying to keep moving every few seconds to avoid a rocket launcher.

I thought that was pretty cool. Makes combat pretty intense.

Ninja Gaiden II definitely has some balancing issues that I'm sure didn't get ironed out because the game's development was rushed, but for the most part I find it hard to call it cheap or unfair - it's just that the game is difficult on a level even other stylish action games don't breach. Not to say there aren't segments in the game that aren't just kind of bad, though.

 

[To Far Away Times]

NG2 has a great combat system but the game is pretty rough around the edges. Another few months in the oven to add some polish and clean up some bugs and we could have had something truly special.

 

[thepenguin55]

Well, it's certainly the most excessive action game ever made in a number of ways.

I played the 360 version on Warrior. Got it months ago and played about 11 chapters, then took a break and came back to it recently. I thought the weapons were great, especially the Tonfa and Vigoorian Flail, but the Dragon Sword was the most reliable for boss fights, and I'm not sure what the Dual Swords are for other than style. However, I ended up finding that the game has the same issue as everyone always points out: It's cheap.

You CAN beat the game taking no damage, but the methods of doing so typically involve skipping all non-essential encounters, and cheesing your way through mandatory battles with Ultimate Technique spam. The game simply throws so many enemies at you that there isn't compelling enough reason to do much except use the Ultimate Technique. It's fun and flashy, but it definitely gets tiresome, and considering how fun the weapons and their combos are, I wanted to be able to actually use them, rather delimbing a couple guys with Flying Swallow, Obliteration, jump away and instantly charge a UT to kill 5+ guys. Alternately, using moves that give you iframes such as Obliteration and Guillotine Throw to avoid the endless projectile spam, because using the actual dodge button simply isn't feasible. The terrible encounter design just gets in the way of what should be a fantastic combat system. The boss fights are also a bit of a mix. Some are straightforward fights, some are really damn awkward. The infamous Water Dragon fight, that fight against the two dragon Fiends where you have to use arrows and Ninpo, the Zedonius rematch. They're all just very awkward and frustrating, especially because the camera isn't very good at following them.

Really great combat brought way down by enemy spam and bad encounter design. It's almost the best character action game, but it's just too messed up to reach that for me.

I played some of Sigma 2 and thought while it cut memorable sections, it did let you actually fight more. But I don't have a PS3 and I'm not going to play the entire game with 100ms Playstation Now delay.

So discussions about this game are always weird for me because I started by playing through Sigma 2 on every difficulty (including the easiest... Ninja Dog?) and then when my taste for the game still wasn't satiated I bought the original 360 game and essentially treated it as an extension of Sigma 2.
I would never recommend this to anyone but having played through every difficulty for Sigma 2 I wound up being more than prepared to tackle the original 360 version on Warrior (also I knew about the BS Armadillo explosion shit before hand thanks to reading a EGM review years prior as reading about shit like that was why I skipped this game initially). Had I just jumped right into the game I think I would've had the exact same issues as you but because of the approach I took I wound up loving the combo of Sigma 2 and NGII as a complete package.

 

[Draft]

The greatest action game of all time... exists in there somewhere underneath a lot of very questionable encounter designs, levels, and bosses.

Exploding shuriken spam drains the fun out of so many encounters. It's unbelievable that the game shipped with it in like 1/3rd of the ninja fights.

When it's working though, boy. I don't think action game gets more satisfying. Visceral became a bit of a joke last generation, but how else can Ninja Gaiden 2 be described? Dashing through crowds of enemies, beefy attack animations, thudding closeups for killing blows, and the severed limbs of bad guys trailing jets of blood all across the screen. Even in a genre focused on glorying gory combat, Ninja Gaiden 2 stands above the crowd.

It will never be fixed, but it should at least get a port. Not kidding when I say either Ninja Gaiden 2 or Black HD ports would be "killer apps" for me. I would at some point end up with an Xbone.

 

[Snacks the sober sea lion]

You could get through a lot of the original game by just instantly charging UTs as well.

Its such a staple of these character action games. You can beat dmc, bayonetta, and ng by doing just a fraction of the moves.

But unlike the other 2, you have to block and dodge in NG a lot more due to more aggressive enemies. So its more engaging unless you are trying to do combo vids.

Except Ninja Gaiden II punishes dodging because there's simply too much going on and you'll simply be hit during the recovery frames of your dodge. If you jump to cancel the dodge, those aren't iframes, you're going to get hit anyway. Ninja Gaiden is also much more deliberate about when you can dodge. Bayonetta, and to a lesser extent DMC, let you cancel most moves into a dodge at any point in their animation. Attacks in Ninja Gaiden have more commitment, so it simply stops being particularly feasible to use moves that don't give you iframes or segue into something that gives you iframes because you're going to get hit by literally 4 exploding shuriken by attempting to do so.

Which would be fine, Ninja Gaiden isn't a combo-based game like DMC. But II takes it way too far with the amount of attacks enemies are throwing out to the point that regardless of how good you are, certain moves are no longer viable.

 

[Necro900]

I remember feeling slightly uncomfortable the first time I played the game the day it came out, because of all the flying limbs, beheadings, pieces of flesh and whatnot. It was just so over the top! And I've never been sensitive to this kind of stuff in videogames or movies. I got used to it, but it was really weird at first.

Top tier action game though

 

[Shifty]

So discussions about this game are always weird for me because I started by playing through Sigma 2 on every difficulty (including the easiest... Ninja Dog?) and then when my taste for the game still wasn't satiated I bought the original 360 game and essentially treated it as an extension of Sigma 2.
I would never recommend this to anyone but having played through every difficulty for Sigma 2 I wound up being more than prepared to tackle the original 360 version on Warrior (also I knew about the BS Armadillo explosion shit before hand thanks to reading a EGM review years prior as reading about shit like that was why I skipped this game initially). Had I just jumped right into the game I think I would've had the exact same issues as you but because of the approach I took I wound up loving the combo of Sigma 2 and NGII as a complete package.

I sorta had that too. Got NG2 vanilla on 360 when it came out, ended up reaching the giant grabby bone skeleton boss and ragequitting because I thought it was cheap as fuck.
Gave Sigma 2 a chance years later, made it all the way through and was like "hey, that wasn't so bad. Maybe I should give vanilla a chance again."

I did, and as it turns out, getting good at the combat was one of the most satisfying experiences I've had in games. Obliteration techniques are such a good mechanic.

But II takes it way too far with the amount of attacks enemies are throwing out to the point that regardless of how good you are, certain moves are no longer viable.

This is definitely true. Looking back it feels almost Tekken-esque in that you have a massive movelist but only a small fraction of it is actually viable in high-level play.

 

[CouchMaster]

Is it better than Black?

No. But then, nothing is.

 

[HYDE]

No. But then, nothing is.

Have truer words ever been spoken?

 

[Breakage]

Combat engine in this game is savage. I don't think any other game can match it in that regard.

 

[Waddle Dee]

Also puts exploding jellyfish in the lava right after the second Zedonius fight.

I played some of Sigma 2 and thought while it cut memorable sections, it did let you actually fight more. But I don't have a PS3 and I'm not going to play the entire game with 100ms Playstation Now delay.

I thankfully knew about that bullshit before getting to that part. They were right in the way of a save point, correct? Man, fuck that game.

Tomonobu Itagaki leaving Team Ninja was a good thing. There, I said it.

 

[Sub_Level]

Combat engine in this game is savage. I don't think any other game can match it in that regard.

You just kill 1 enemy, jump away, and use their essence to instant charge a UT on the ground upon landing. You can do so many fights in NG2 that way.

 

[Waddle Dee]

You just kill 1 enemy, jump away, and use their essence to instant charge a UT on the ground upon landing. You can do so many fights in NG2 that way.

Even if you decide to get fancy, which unlike the best character action games the NG games discourage you from doing so, your movement options are pretty limited and you can't really combo a lot of your moves into one another. It's not bad, but it feels limiting when compared to DMC3/4, Bayonetta, or W101.

 

[TwiztidElf]

That Chapter 10.....
Temple of Sacrifice.
Staircase. Battle against Elizabet.
Perhaps my favorite level of any game.

 

[Raptor]

Limbs all over the fucking place in buckets of blood everywhere Ryu shakes his sword blood off after all is done.

What a fucking badass, I only needed for him to lick the damn blade.

 

[kyo_strife]

One would think it's a no brainer, but somehow this game is still missing from Xbox One BC. How many times do I have to tweet Phil to make it happen?

 

[m23]

I want to replay it so bad, please make it BC. God tier action game.

 

[KageMaru]

My biggest issue was the exploding kunai spam. Otherwise I loved it. Shame Tecmo never released a bundle package with NG1B and NG2 but with tweaked encounters.

 

[Wagram]

I remember really liking this game.

 

[Waddle Dee]

I remember really liking this game.

I mean, I liked Sonic 06 when it first came out so I can relate.

 

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

Even if you decide to get fancy, which unlike the best character action games the NG games discourage you from doing so, your movement options are pretty limited and you can't really combo a lot of your moves into one another. It's not bad, but it feels limiting when compared to DMC3/4, Bayonetta, or W101.

The Ninja Gaiden games discourage you from "getting fancy" (dicking around in the middle of combat) because the enemies are aggressive. This is a really welcome difference from Devil May Cry 3 or 4's passive enemies, so I'm not sure how you see this as a negative change. (The Bayonetta games strike a better balance, at least, but even they lack Ninja Gaiden's ferocity.) At the same time, movement being somewhat more limited than what you have in DMC or Bayonetta plays into Ninja Gaiden's strength; despite the amount of enemies you fight in NG2, battles are very intimate - the only large movement options available to you in the midst of combat either involve enemies (using wind path to jump onto enemies to move around, or using specific attacks that autotarget enemies like flying swallow) or are situational and force you to make intelligent use of your environment (wall running and wall jumping). (So although you don't have as many movement options as in DMC, it is not as though Ryu is at all wanting for mobility, and the game's level of challenge means that what options you do have are more important and meaningful than what DMC gives you.)

As for the combo comment, the player's ability to chain attacks into each other isn't really indicative of the quality of a game. It can be fun to toy around with that stuff in Bayonetta or DMC, but what actually makes those games fun are the enemies' ability to fight back (that is to say, combat - the interaction of your toolset with the enemies'), and Ninja Gaiden's aggressive, strong enemies create more intense and complex combat situations than Devil May Cry or Wonderful 101 can (although Bayonetta comes close).

(Yes, ultimate techniques are abusable, but Bayonetta has Shuraba PKP spamming and God Hand has sway-cancelled Drunken Twist and Yes Man Kablaam. All of the great 3D action games are complex enough that dumb abilities like those will exist, and I don't think it's unreasonable to say that in this case it's up to the player to discipline themselves a little instead of letting themselves disengage with the game and take the easy way out.)

 

[Snacks the sober sea lion]

Any particularly good videos or content creators for this game? Already seen the (segmented) no hit run and some Master Ninja Madness stuff.

 

[nelo_inc]

Great game, i played it when it came out on Warrior.

The most annoying and unfair are the projectile spammers, but overall was a great experience.
Only after this i bought Ninja Gaiden Black, and to tell you the truth i prefer Ninja Gaiden 2, seemed more hardcore.

I also have Sigma and Sigma +, but the original is a beast.

 

[Sir Ilpalazzo]

Any particularly good videos or content creators for this game? Already seen the (segmented) no hit run and some Master Ninja Madness stuff.

I think this Master Ninja series showcases the game exceptionally well.

 

[AlterOdin]

A f****** classic in my book.

Best combat-engine yet, and the intensity of the fights has not yet, in my humble opinion, been matched.

A "bit" rough around the edges, but knowing the development issues/history it had, I am very happy with the game we got.

But also, that feeling when you get put in a impossible situation, and you just wreck havok, keeping in it by the skin of your teeth, just to come out victorious, is a hell of a drug
(yeah no excuse for "bad" encounter design, Stockholm syndrome I guess

 

[Refreshment.01]

A remaster of both games with rebalancing and polishing the rough edges of part II. Leading upon the release of Ninja Gaiden III made for the ground up for this generation of consoles.

It would sell like 3 copies tops but most of these comapnies are money laundry store fronts so why not use tha money in a noble way?

 

[Snacks the sober sea lion]

A remaster of both games with rebalancing and polishing the rough edges of part II. Leading upon the release of Ninja Gaiden III made for the ground up for this generation of consoles.

It would sell like 3 copies tops but most of these comapnies are money laundry store fronts so why not use tha money in a noble way?

What should be rebalanced in Black? The issues it has are mainly products of its era, like tedious key hunting and lame water sections.

They probably already consider Sigma 2 enough of a rebalance of NGII.
And there already is a Ninja Gaiden 3. Which is terrible. I think Razor's Edge is pretty good though.

 

[a Master Ninja]

I mean, I liked Sonic 06 when it first came out so I can relate.

...

 

[nelo_inc]

A remaster of both games with rebalancing and polishing the rough edges of part II. Leading upon the release of Ninja Gaiden III made for the ground up for this generation of consoles.

It would sell like 3 copies tops but most of these comapnies are money laundry store fronts so why not use tha money in a noble way?

This.I agree, Sigma with the lack of blood and other issues wasn't satisfying.
I would play them again on PS4/XOne.

P.S: 3 is complete garbage, unfortunately i played it.

 

[Naudyboy16]

I miss this series so much. There's no pure action game like Ninja Gaiden. The combat is as intense as any game out there and you as the player has complete control of Ryu. I've always thought they should of added more puzzles and platforming segments to bring in some variety, but who am I kidding, we all come to this series because of the action.

I remember owning 2 but I don't remember if I traded it in or lost it. I know I traded in 3 after I hear it but I don't remember what I did with 2. I still have the original Xbox one.

We need another ninja Gaiden in the vein of black and Ninja Gaiden 2. But this time can we maybe get a good story?