I'm a huge fan of Ninja Gaiden. Personally, I place Ninja Gaiden Black up there with Bayonetta and Devil May Cry 3 as the best in the genre, and I even enjoyed Ninja Gaiden 2 (the Sigma version at least). NG2 gets a lot of flak, but I thought it was an awesome game. Lots of weapon variety, each having its own distinct feel, multiple characters with different fighting style, co-op, etc.
Despite enjoying NG:Black and Sigma 2, I wasn't too hyped for Ninja Gaiden 3 because of Itagaki's lack of involvement and reading the developers' interviews. It seemed like the developers didn't know what the hell Ninja Gaiden fans wanted. More focus on the story? Only one weapon? WTF? But because I'm a huge fan of the series, I still decided to give the game a shot and hoped that it wouldn't be as bad is it sound. This little review is for the single player only since I rented the game and will bold the main points for the lazy.
Good:
Some nice cinematic sequences: Ninja Gaiden is yet another series that moved towards the cinematic gaming approach. I was initially disappointed by this move, but there were some nice sequences in NG3. One that stood out for me was in Day 4. You, as Ryu, had to take protect a little girl, and while you were carrying her, a bunch of weird human monsters would come towards and try to attack both of you. You would fight them off (QTEs) while still carrying the girl; thought it was a good way to enforce their relationship. Other cinematic moments that stood out for me were when you were running away from a dinosaur and bombings. Good stuff.
Graphics: It looked way better than Sigma 2. The art-style and Ryu's character model were pretty good, and I liked the details on him like his cursed hand.
Fast and enjoyable combat w/o steel-on-bone: The combat is pretty fun when the steel on bone isn't present. It's just as fast and enjoyable as the previous Ninja Gaiden games, and the inclusion of sliding made it even better. It reminded me a little bit of Vanquish where I would slide all the time. If only the whole game was like this, but the steel on bone occurs a lot...
Bad:
Steel on bone: This alone breaks the whole game. Steel on bone is a new feature to the Ninja Gaiden series where basically Ryu's sword sticks to the enemy, and then a small QTE occurs. This is awful because it ruins the flow of the combat. One minute your kicking ass fast-paced style, and the next, your sword sticks to an enemy while the game slows down and zooms in towards Ryu prompting a one-button QTE. After the bone of steel occurs, you can pretty much one-hit kill the other enemies including the "tougher" enemies.
Ryu can immediately execute another bone on steel technique right after you killed one with the same technique. Then, you can move to the next enemy doing the same technique immediately with a press of a button. It felt like playing Dynasty Warriors. Square, kill, Square, kill, Square, kill. That's what you'll be seeing for the most part. It's saddening because the combat is enjoyable without it, and there doesn't seem a way to turn this feature off.
Mostly every enemy can grab you: Speaking of poor flow of the combat, one thing that greatly contributed it was that mostly every enemy can grab you and throw you down. Imagine fighting in a fast-paced battle until an enemy puts a stop to it by tackling you down to prompting a QTE. Then right after you get up, another enemy tackles you down and yet another QTE occurs. Its highly annoying and ruins the flow of the gameplay.
Terrible boss fights: The boss fights in the Ninja Gaiden series aren't special, imo, but they weren't as awful as the ones here. One battle that really stood for me was the T-Rex battle. It's the dumbest battle ever (literally); here's a gif of it. All you have to do wait 'til he drops to the floor, so that you can hit him. Also, taking a cue from DMC4, you fight the same boss like three times. Another thing I want to note is that the boss have no health bar; it's weird and somewhat annoying not seeing one.
Lack of variety: Weapon, ninpo, enemy. You name it. It felt like a glorified demo. You only have one weapon (three if you download the update), which is still a huge step-down from Ninja Gaiden 2. One of my favorite things from NG2 was the mass variety of weapons and the different style they presented. Not seeing that here is highly disappointing. As for the ninpo, you only have one - another step down from the previous installments. The enemy variety is also lacking here; you pretty much meet all the enemies there is to greet around the half-way mark, and there weren't many to greet to begin with.
Unfocused narrative: The developers made it clear that they wanted to put more focus on the story. Too bad it sucked. The game started off with an interesting concept - Ryu's hand is cursed because of all the people he killed. And aside from a few minutes of enforcing the curse in every chapter, the game ignores this for the most part. Instead, we're rescuing people, chasing the enemy, fighting who knows what, etc. It isn't until the end when we come back to the hand ordeal.
One thing that killed it for me was Ryu was upset that this little girl called him a murderer. A few people try to cheer him up by telling him he's not a murdered, but by the end of the game, my kill count was over 2,000. Half of those were people begging for their life. Not a murderer my ass.
Game slowing down when Ryu's arm glows: Like I mentioned previously, in every chapter, the game somewhat reinforces Ryu's curse. Ryu's hand glows, and the game slows down. While it's an interesting way to remind us of Ryu's curse, it's completely awful gameplay-wise. Everything is slow-paced when this occurs including attacking. The game switches to an over-the-shoulder view when this occurs, and the camera is too awful and difficult to control. On top of that, you can only walk, so it takes a while to defeat the enemies.
Health regeneration: There is no item management present in NG3, so you have to rely on the game to heal you up. After every battle, your health regenerates, but not fully, and this causes a problem. I entered the majority of the boss battles with a small health bar since the game didn't heal me up completely, and there were no items I could use to heal myself up. So sadly, I was at a great disadvantage. I had to fight the boss battles over and over again because of my low health bar, and the fact that the boss have cheap hits that take away half your health away.
QTEs get old fast: NG3 uses the same cinematic QTEs over and over again. Press X to glide, Press triangle to kill an enemy, slide, evade. I think those are all. It's interesting to see at first, but after the first two hours, you've seen them all and starts to show its wear.
Obliteration Technique: My biggest problem with the OE is that you don't have to be near an enemy to perform it. The enemy could be on the other side of the field, but Ryu would somehow perform the OE to that enemy, as well as the others all around the field. So there's no thought on performing the OE. Just do it wherever you like it, and Ryu would still kill those enemies (far and close). Also, once you perform an OE, you sometimes can perform another one immediately, so in other words, you could be spamming the battle with OE.
Low replay value: The game took me 7 hours to complete on Normal, and there was no reason to go back at it again. There were no variety of weapons, no different characters, etc. Besides, I hated my first run.
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Overall, my experience was unpleasant. If they removed the steel on bone technique, it would have been miles enjoyable. Say what you will about Itagaki, but he wouldn't release this piece of shit.
Score: 4.5/10 (BAD)
agree
