I've seen bloodier games.  I've played Ninja Gaiden Black, played through NG: Dragon Sword, and recently finished Ninja Gaiden II.  And what was that other one... It was a Ninja Gaiden game, but without the right title... OH RIGHT.  Metroid Other M.  

Let's not forget the Dead or Alive fighting and "extreme beach volleyball" games.  

As far as I'm concerned, Team Ninja is one of the worst developers in the industry as they cling desperately to time-worn cliches from 20 years ago and their storytelling is among the most childish this side of pornographic anime fan fiction written by a lonely 15-year-old virgin.  The story is utter anime nonsense in Ninja Gaiden games and the titles are so bogged down in cliches and flat ideas it's pathetic.  

This industry has had some real growth where characters and narrative are concerned, and finally treats women with some respect.  Granted, I like sexy women and all, but I also like femal characters to be portrayed with some class and maturity.  For Team Ninja, it's just another stripper to use as plot fodder.  Hell, the CIA broad in NG2 ended up in damsel-in-distress subplots at least twice in that trainwreck.  Why Nintendo ever thought this company would be good hands in which to place the once strongest and most respectable female protagonist is beyond any logical comprehension.  No wonder Samus was turned into a preening, scared shitless little girl constantly dependent on tough-guy male stereotypes.  Team Ninja really doesn't know how to deal with female characters outside of making them victims and dressing them in shoelaces.  

As for the gameplay?  I have never seen such absent-minded button-mashing nonsense in my entire life.  Talk about a fucking mess.  It was nothing but mashing the X button the entire time, and all the weapons were interchangeable, making having more than one weapon type essentially meaningless.  Boss battles were just obnoxious, and if it weren't for that broken Conan game, I'd say they were the worst I'd ever experienced.  (Okay, to be fair, Onechanbara on the Xbox360 manages to be slightly worse than Ninja Gaiden II on almost every level, but NG2 was intended as a AAA-style release, and Onechanbara has always expectedly been crap.)  

Here, let me just copy and paste from my review at MobyGames a partial list of cliches found in Ninja Gaiden II:

Ninjas fighting robots? Check.

Ninjas fighting outdoors in daylight? Check.

Unbelievable levels of violence? Check.

Women dressed illogically, or inappropriately? Check.

Undead creatures? Check.

Illogical boss battles? Check.

Red exploding barrels? Check.

Reused boss characters? Check.

Nonsensical plotline? Check.

Ninja characters fighting high-tech futuristic enemies with ancient, inappropriate weapons? Check.

Hammy acting and storytelling? Check.

Damsel-in-distress plotline? Check.

Ninjas running across the surface of water? Check.

Game features every possible environmental setting imaginable? Check.

So, yes.  I've played Ninja Gaiden II.  And, by the way, it sucks.  You want good hack-n-slash gameplay? Seek God of War.  You wand decent hack-n-slash gameplay?  Castlevania: Lords of Shadow isn't bad.  You want totally shallow tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-tap-die-by-the-seat-of-your-pants gameplay?  Then by all means, play a modern Ninja Gaiden game.  

Ladies and gentlemen, we found it:

The wrongest post.

The game has Achievements for playing through it entirely using each of the weapons, which means that there is no weapon that is effectively better for any single situation in the game, thus, they are interchangable in strength and use.  Which they were.  

To be fair, I did use more than the X button, but in these contexts:

Boss battles:  Mashed Y button, a few times, got killed faster than the scene took to load.
That one (final) boss battle that, for no reason whatsoever, suddenly required strategy when I had to hold B to fire an arrow at the boss's tiny weakspot.  Since this didn't fit the flow of the rest of the game, I had to resort to IGN's walkthrough to figure out how to fight this guy.  
And those moments when I was pressing A & X at the same time trying to be fancy.

Other than that, the game is mostly spent just hammering away at the X button.  Which means that Ninja Gaiden II is pretty much played the exact same way as Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad, which I have also played through.

Sorry that my accurate description of Ninja Gaiden II upsets you, but if you had actually played that monstrosity, you'd know what I'm saying is true.  Frankly, I'm surprised I didn't wear out the X button.

Ladies and gentlemen, we found it:

The wrongest logic.

The whole point of those achievements is to force people to adapt to different styles that each of the weapons necessitate using. If you think that the Dragon Sword requires the same style as the Sickle, you are wrong; if you think it requires the same style as the Lunar, you are still wrong; if you think it requires the same style as the Claws, you are a liar.

They are not interchangeable in strength and use; no two w eapons share identical speed, combos, reach, power, or stunning abilities.

I am sorry for pointing out that you are wrong, but there it is.  You are literally and quantifiably wrong.

Also you may just be terrible at the game.

(I did beat Ninja Gaiden II, but it was a rental; Ninja  Gaiden Black I beat on Master Ninja Mode)

Sounds like you were playing on easy.  I'd be upset too if I didn't have the balls to play on a real difficulty level.

I'm sorry, that's just too perfect in this context

I played on Normal difficulty, as I do with every game (except maybe some Treasure titles).  I'm sorry you don't have the balls to take criticism of a crappy game like a man.

No, um.... Wrong would be to call someone a liar when he told no lies.  Hell, you might as well have just called me racist since busy labeling me with random ill-fitting words.

And congratulations for throwing in the "you're just terrible at the game" line.  Like that isn't scraping the bottom of the barrel for comebacks.  That's like politicians comparing their opponents to Hitler.  *yawn* Real original, genius.  That's the insult cry of a fan___ who's got his panties in a bind because someone said something bad about his baby.  I heard the same nonsensical insult a couple times when I pointed out why Metroid Other M sucked (hmmm, now there's a coincidence).  

Possibly, the reason you're over-reacting to my analysis of Ninja Gaiden II is because you realize what I'm saying makes sense, and you simply can't deal with it.  It's okay, you're not the first person to be hurt when the thing you loved turned out to betray you.  After all, sexually abused Altar Boys have had their beliefs shaken by awfulness as well.  

I'm pretty big on hack-n-slash games and beat-em-ups, as these are genres I've always enjoyed.  And in the world of hack-n-slash gaming, Ninja Gaiden II belongs in the same stinkpile as Onechanbara: Bikini Samurai Squad, as it's pretty much equally mindless in both gameplay and narrative--and the sadly sexually explicit and demeaning way women are represented in each.  

If you want to experience good hack-n-slash gameplay, you need only look to God of War.  

You are quantifiably and objectively wrong in the only points you've brought up (interchangeability of weapons, ability to effectively move through titles using only X); your argument has no basis.

No, it has a basis, otherwise I wouldn't have made it.  It's based on cheap repetitive, and shallow gameplay (for another thing, the first stage spent ample time teaching how to use Ryu's various Ninja acrobatics, only to largely drop them for the bulk of the game), cheap, repetitive bosses--hell the one guy was used four times--and and grueling moments where the game was simply no fun.  

I haven't had so little fun with a video game in a long time.  Team Ninja clearly doesn't know how to make a game challenging in any reasonable way, so they just made their enemies, and especially the bosses, move ridiculously quickly, and piled on the enemies.  They did the same thing with Metroid.  About half the boss encounters in that game were decent, but they moved at ridiculous speeds that would've been laughable if it weren't so annoying.  

You're dismissing me because I believe Ninja Gaiden II sucks, and you're obviously clouded by happy memories of a game that I felt wasn't fun the majority of the time.  Besides being awash in every single possible cliche imaginable, it featured some of the least enjoyable hack-n-slash gameplay I've ever experienced.  This has nothing to do with hard games or my view on hard games.  I read that a game is challenge, I tend to be interested in it.  I'm a huge fan of Treasure's games, and they're punishing.  I spent my first half an hour repeatedly failiing at Bangai-O Spirits, but I stuck with it.  And I'm a huge fan of Contra games.  

Ninja Gaiden II feels cheap because it is cheap.  Cheap story, cheap gameplay, cheap characters, cheap writing.  The only thing it does right is character graphics, but then, for the bulk of the game, environmental graphics are very general and pretty bland.  This certainly isn't good storytelling, and I hardly think it's good game design.  

I accept that you like this trite for whatever reason (perhaps you haven't played God of War to see a proper way to make a modern hack-n-slash game), you should accept that I think it's pure adolescent crap.