I  don't care what you think about the game, I am only correcting you where necessary.

You claimed the weapons are interchangeable; that's verifiably false.

At this point you no longer  attempt to qualify your dislike outside of unspecific condemnation, so there's nothing to argue with.

I have fully completed all three console God of Wars; they are not part of this topic.

The only weapon that seemed at all any different was the sickle.  Everything had the exact same effect on enemies.  The only real difference was in execution animations.  But, since you want "specified dislike," I here's the (negative only) part of my review:

I consider myself pretty knowledgeable on video games. I’ve been at this hobby almost non-stop for 20 years. So you could, at any time, ask me to list video game clichés and I would happily hold a conversation with you on the subject (hey it’s fun). Now, thanks to Ninja Gaiden II, I don’t need to list off video game clichés. I can just point to this game. It has pretty much all of ‘em. In spades.

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.

I could go on like this. It’s pathetic. It’s sad. Man, had I finished this before I played Metroid: Other M, I probably wouldn’t have been surprised how badly that game turned out. I guess it’s just Team Ninja’s way to craft half-assed games riddled with time-worn gaming clichés. There really is no part of this game that isn’t this way. 

It’s hard to pinpoint these issues, and listing them all would be just… exhausting. All those clichés are in fact in this game. The story is next to impossible to follow, and near as I can figure, it’s mostly about Ryu taking down… some demonic force that’s trying to take over the world or something or other. Eventually, I stopped caring. I gotta be honest, I didn’t care why anything was happening. For some reason, the evil force/nation/thing Ryu Hyabusa is fighting has an interest by the CIA (then again, what evil force isn’t the CIA interested in?) and occasionally a “partner” of sorts shows up routinely to add… little… to the story. Basically, she shows up in scripted cinematics to lend a hand to various situations. She’s, of course, dressed like a stripper—but one with no real self-respect. Huge boobs, all jiggle, patently absurd. No wonder Samus didn’t get any respect as a woman in Other M, having a mature view on women clearly isn’t part of the Team Ninja game design philosophy. Of course, I’m sure we could have all suspected that given the nature of the Dead or Alive games. Oh, by the way, the damsel in distress? As the only female protagonist in the game, I’m sure we all see where this is going… There are a couple moments where it would make sense to have her participate in the gameplay activities (such as a boss battle), mainly because she starts out shooting at the boss, then is mysteriously absent during the actual battle. Continuity much?

Anyway… I found the bulk of this game to be a mish-mash of stuff that did and didn’t work. The clichéd stuff ruins any possible respect this game could have. The gameplay, while occasionally fun during the hacking and slashing, winds down to often being dull and repetitive. Mash the X button over and over and over again. Occasionally mash Y. Most bosses are faced just mashing the Y button. Well, that’s only half of it. An unimaginable amount of the gameplay is based around blind luck. Hack, slash, hack, slash—sometimes you live. Hack, slash, hack, slash—sometimes you die. Believe it or not, there’s an Achievement in this game for continuing 100 times. As I learned, that’s 100 times in one sitting, possibly one level. Because I know I continued the game well more than that. At least 10 times per level, at least 10 per many of the bosses. So not only is the gameplay shallow and repetitive, it’s also insanely difficult. 

I’m well aware that the Ninja Gaiden games have a penchant for challenging gameplay. The problem here is that it doesn’t feel like challenging gameplay as much as it is challenging on the patience of the player. The game simply throws around so many enemies and attacks and crap all at once so to overwhelm the player. And there are, what, two difficulties higher than the normal setting that I used? This game can actually be harder?? It’s already pretty brutal. 

Let me give you some examples of how insane this game can be. One stage opens with several enemies armed with infinite-capacity rocket launchers that fire off batteries of about 10 rockets—with pinpoint accuracy—from a city block away. Cliché exploding barrels reside near some of these guys, but good luck getting an arrow to find these marks before a dozen rockets hit you in the face. It was at this point that I stopped and stared at the screen and muttered aloud “this crap isn’t even fun.” At one point (at least), there were three of these guys in the area at once which created an uninterrupted volley of constant rocket attacks and explosions bouncing off my ass. I did eventually get through this, but I couldn’t tell if I used skills or just got plain lucky. It’s not uncommon in this game for a regular run-of-the-mill enemy to drive down Ryu’s health bar almost completely with a single combo attack.

Boss encounters are among the worst I’ve seen this side of the Conan game. Whereas in that title, the bosses were overly complicated, over-long, bogged down with quicktime events, and generally breaking standard gameplay rules (beginning attacks in the middle of a combo, attacking through blocking), this one is all about bosses the size of skyscrapers moving as fast as mosquitos. I was literally killed by several bosses in less time than the game took to load the stage. Most of them were fought the exact same way: Constant dodging, mashing the Y button, and in the end, I usually had used up all my health regenerative items. Since that’s how most bosses are fought, imagine the confusion when I faced one that required me to tap the B button to fire arrows (aimed automatically, not manually) to the boss’s miniscule weak spot. Yeah, I broke down and referenced an online guide for that. How anyone figured that out on their own is beyond me. 

This game uses the old “reuse the bosses” technique several times. One is fought, I kid you not, four times. I’ll hand it to Team Ninja, they came up with some massive, unique, and often creative boss designs. So why they still felt the need to reuse roughly half of them is beyond me. Two of the bosses have two Achievements each attributed to defeating them. The final stage is little more than a protracted series of near endless boss battles. I normally love boss battles. I hated almost all of these. Here’s the other reason I didn’t think of the auto-aim shot with the bow against one of the bosses: Most are not fought in such manners. As I said, dodge, mash Y, heal, heal, heal. One gigantic turtle-like boss (shoots lava, of course) was attacked mostly by me swinging the sickle at one of its hind feet. So… anywhere was vulnerable. Either every boss should be button-mashed, or every boss should require some tact. Making most of them button-mash battles and a couple requiring tact and weak spots? Ugh. 

Boss battles and combat take another dark turn with the often cumbersome camera. I spent ample time thumbing the right stick attempting right the camera at key moments in the game. And while Ryu may control fairly smoothly on land, he's an absolute nightmare to control in water. Sure, you can run across the top of it like some Ninja-Jesus, but that doesn't always control all that well either. Regular swimming underwater is nightmarish, and it took me forever before I realized I could invert some of the controls so swimming felt somewhat more "natural." Underwater combat is just a headache. By the way--there is a boss battle done while having to fight this crappy underwater control. 

While there are several weapons, and all are upgradeable, they’re also largely interchangeable. I felt as though the sickle was the best overall weapon, and I used it for practically everything once I picked it up. But here’s the thing: There are Achievements for completing the game—start to finish apparently—using only one weapon the entire time. This means all the weapons are, essentially, the same thing. Why have different weapons if there’s no real variety to their use? But yeah, if you read that carefully—this game pretty much demands that you play through it at least six times to pick up all the Achievements. Who the hell has the time or patience to play this game that much?

I'm sure you'll have another post simply dismissing this as well, with no details other than "you're objectively wrong and stuff, and I love Ninja Gaiden so much, I don't understand how anyone can view such a half-assed game differently."  Keep in mind, I did have nice things to say about the game, just not very  many.

If y ou think that the only different weapon was the sickle, you're wrong; again, no two weapons have the same reach, speed, combo ability, or damage. You can keep repeating that all you like (though I guess it's sort of encouraging that you backed off on this point, sort of) but you're still going to be wrong. All it does is betray the fact that you never bothered to familiarize yourself withh the weapons.

I'm not going to bother replying to the entire excerpt of your review; I am not in the habit of acknowledge arguments that weren't tailor-made for me, but I'll do it a little here.

Nothing in Ninja Gaiden Black or Ninja Gaiden II is luck-based. If you die, it's your fault. There are people who can get through the game on any difficuty without dying. I can't do it, but those people do exist.

If you fight enemies using only X and bosses primarily using Y, you are bad at the game.

I don't care what you thought about the game. I am replying only where you are incorrect - and yes, that includes correcting you in cases where your dissatisfaction comes at least partially down to your inability to adapt to the game's system.

Still odd that they haven't announced platform(s)... given how close Nintendo and Team Ninja have been getting, makes me wonder if it may be a Wii 2 launch title?  I mean, if it was just PS360, why not say so?

Thats because after the integration of Koei and Tecmo there were rumors stating the DOA5 and NG3 were  both shown behind close doors both on PS3 nothing about a 360 version

Its because its Xxclusive to a console..and they arnt ready to say which.

I tried all the weapons, and they all are the same.  Mash X.  It's not like Ninja Gaiden has the large expansive combo or move systems of games like God of War or Castlevania: Lords of Shadow, or for that matter, even the Conan game.  I stood still once, just to show another person in the room, and tapped Y twice and Ryu did what appeared to be a 5-hit combo all by himself.  

The only thing you've got left that you're trying to disprove is my feeling that all the weapons are relatively identical and what little differences they do have is largely negligible to the overall gameplay experience.  Even if the weapons were the marvels of programming depth you imagine they are, the game still sucks on practically every other level.  Ninja Gaiden II is a flawed experience through and through.  Metroid: Other M is a flawed experience through and through.  Ninja Gaiden III will also be a flawed experience.  

I don't doubt that there is a teeny-tiny minority of players out there that like Ninja Gaiden II enough to have mastered it through and through--the same can be said of pretty much every game out there, regardless of it's suckiness.  For instance, I was quite the master of Simpsons: Bartman meets Radioactive Man on the NES when I was a kid.  That didn't make the game good--and I never knew anyone else who had enough patience to deal with it's often fundamentally broken gameplay and awkward pacing.  

Ninja Gaiden II does require a lot of luck whether you realize it or not.  That dreadful stage that opened with infinite-capacity rocket launcher assholes aided me in this belief, as did several boss battles.  When I died, I often tried the same tactics as those that failed me before, and lo and behold, sometimes luck would allow me to succeed, and other times it would kill me faster.  Bosses would sometimes use devasting attacks, and other times linger and let me kill them with ease.  This game simply requires more dedication than I or, I suspect, most average hardcore gamers have to put into it.  

If you have the time and patience to play a game designed to be enjoyable by almost nobody, congratulations.  Me on the other hand?  I have more important things to tend to than a game so broken that it requires saintly patience and the ability to accept cheap programming for "good" programming.  I'm still working my way through half a dozen other, good games.  I finished Bulletstorm, almost done with Castlevania, and then might finally get around to Fable III.  This doesn't include the Wii, DS, and PSP games I'm still trying to finish.

Those rumors (complete with fake "scans") were eventually proven bogus.  They were also from a year ago.

So... Xxclusive to Wii 2?

You are still wrong about the weapons, and no amount of repeating yourself in five-paragraph chunks is going to change that.

But ah! Careful about appealing to a majority that doesn't exist.

(FYI: what you are describing is the process of becoming better at the game, though only marginally)

I thought there was no Wii 2? We been trollin patcher on that for years...completely out of the equation.

You're thinking Wii HD.  Not the same thing.