I think people are more offended by the fact that the reviewer had to go as far as to start licking M$'s butt cheeks. i prefer NG as well. That was the only reason i bought the original xbox but to suggest that the hardcore should worship M$ is just blasphemy! Do these people even know what defines a hardcore gamer?

I wonder why Euphoria14 wasn't on the Ninja Gaiden tournaments. He'd win them with his eyes closed by mashing on the attack button.

The only reason the second has been deemed easier IMO is because of the replenishing health and healing save points. In the first game if you barely made it out of your battle with little health the scarcity of potions and shops made surviving your next battle much harder. This was very evident in the beginning of the game where you fought several boss fights close to one another and is what turned off a lot of people from the game.

The actual enemy encounters in the second game are much harder then the first. I've played every iteration of the game NG/Black/Sigma/NG2.  You're fighting usually double the amount of enemies at a time and they are much deadlier and cheaper.

The only thing they added in Sigma over Black was a easier difficulty (which you may have played on) and a few extra save points. They also added the ability to jump and shoot arrows which helps with some of the gun wielding enemies later in the game especially the Tairon grenadiers and RPG enemies.

I much prefer Ninja Gaiden's combat over both the DMC series and GOW series. There were only 2 problems I had with the game. The terrible camera, which I hear still isn't all that great in Ninja Gaiden 2. And the second problem was that there was occasionally a lot of gameplay between savepoints. But I hear that this HAS been rectified in Ninja Gaiden 2. I mean, seriously, I didn't mind dying a million times in Ninja Gaiden 1 when I was little and had nothing to do, but I have a life now. I don't appreciate having to replay an hours worth of gameplay because I wasn't paying attention to my life for 1 second, and some Ninja offscreen just threw an exploding shuriken at me.

But that comment about how we should thank Microsoft for saving hardcore gaming is bullshit. I don't consider Ninja Gaiden a hardcore game. It's just a hard game. I consider Operation Flashpoint or Falcon 4.0 hardcore games.

That is why I believe I may have worded it wrong in terms of "button mashing" but in terms of hack and slash games, alot of them can be completed with some sort of continous hitting of 1-2 buttons.

As the case with games like DMC/GOW/Heavenly Sword. (HS is a bad example as it was extremely easy)

If I am wrong this weekend I am wrong. No problem.

I'm still going to play it.

Tournies are a bit different. I admit I would get my ass handed to me.

I'll see how much crow I will have to eat I guess in terms of my bad mashing comment. I am putting in Sigma and i'm gonna see how far I get.

Backtracking already?

I'm done here.

I actually thought that Genshin and Zedonius, to name two, were terribly easy compared to, say, Doku. The only bosses that ave me real trouble were the New York boss and the giant skeleton, mostly because they spam unlockable grabs over and over.

Read my following comment.

I could be wrong with the mashing comment yes. As far anything else I mentioned, I stick by it.

FYI, the Ninja Gaiden tournaments I mentioned were single-player. There's no multiplayer mode on this game (although I'm trying to hack it, NGB that is).