Ninja Gaiden 2 Black Review - Ninja Storm, Ranger Form!
Gratuitous violence, scantily-clad women, and enough ninjas and monsters to dismember to your hearts content. Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is a 2008-era game in every possible sense. But is that enough to garner your interest?
One of the many reasons I am happy to have started reviewing games is that it gives me a chance to play games or series I’ve never played before. I’m also challenging myself to break the mould and play games I probably wouldn’t normally consider. And the shadow drop of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is one game that thankfully blurs that line for me, making it a perfect game to review early on in my time.
During the Xbox Developer Direct, we took a virtual trip over to Team Ninja to see what they were working on. Though the main showing was Ninja Gaiden 4 - a joint collaboration with PlatinumGames - we did get another announcement, that of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black. A remaster of the 2008 original, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black was built using Unreal Engine 5 to enhance its graphics. From what I can see, the levels, effects, lighting, and characters have all been redesigned while still keeping the original aesthetics. To make things easier for newer players (myself included!), Ninja Gaiden 2 Black has brought in several quality-of-life improvements from other spin-off games within the series. There are also a number of additional modes and difficulty options for players to dive into.
Ninjas and Assassin’s share a lot in common, it seems
If you’re struggling to make progress through the story and some of the harder boss fights, the game also includes a “HERO PLAY STYLE” mode that will give players a helping hand during some of the more challenging situations you come across. While some fans of the series will most likely balk at the idea of getting help, others are just happy to welcome newer fans to the series alongside a remaster and the announcement of Ninja Gaiden 4.
Updating the game with Unreal Engine 5 is an interesting choice, to be sure. On the one hand, the new graphics bump provided by the engine helps the characters and environments to really pop. On the other hand, games developed with UE5 have been a lot more buggy than most newer titles on the market. Gamers are generally divided on playing a game running on UE5, at least until developers build more experience with it. But a new coat of paint on the skeleton of a 2008 game is noticeable.
All things considered so far, is Ninja Gaiden 2 Black worth your time if you’re new to the franchise? Read on to see what I think. Minor spoilers, if any, to follow. Reader beware!
Fast-paced dismemberment among the cherry blossoms is bliss
GAMEPLAY
I’m going to start off by saying how much I really enjoy the core gameplay and combat loop in Ninja Gaiden 2 Black. Most gamers love a power trip. The one versus one hundred mentality where you can fight your way through a large opposition that is intent on introducing your face to the dirt and are all too eager to make that attempt. This is one of the areas that Ninja Gaiden 2 Black does really well, for an Xbox 360 game. Most of the time I wasn’t facing off against more than a dozen enemies at a time, but that doesn’t mean the fights weren’t keeping me on my toes. A few times I was forced onto the back foot as multiple enemies came at me at once, leaving me to block and dodge more attacks than I was able to give out.
The action is fast-paced and satisfyingly brutal, and often all I needed to turn the tide of a fight was to dodge out of a circle of rival ninjas and start a combo or buy myself enough breathing room to launch a Kinpo and thin the crowd. The Kinpo magic takes a few seconds to build up, but once you get them off, you’re wiping out a few enemies or at least dismembering limbs to start performing insta-kills. But I found out the hard way that I have to give dismembered enemies as much focus as their fully-limbed friends. If left unchecked for too long, they will grab you, pin you down, and detonate an explosive knife to take off a chunk of health.
The gore in Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is fantastic, albeit gloriously over the top as any good Japanese ninja game should be. The first glimpse of the game’s bloody innards is in the opening cutscene as main player character Ryu Hyabusa cuts his way through enemy ninjas, starting trouble in his part of Future Tokyotown. And it only gets better as the game kicks off. I was quickly surrounded and passed around like a bottle of beer taken off a wall. Once I got to grips with the controls and was able to break free, I was quickly cutting - quite literally - through the enemies. Limbs went flying, and blood quickly filled the screen as I started practicing combos. In traditional video game hero fantasy, more grunts joined the fray, thinking they could cut down a main character. And they did. More than once. But that’s part of the gameplay difficulty of a Ninja Gaiden game, as I found out.
Environments were beautiful and varied, but some of the battle spaces were inconsistent. In the second level, I was fighting up a burning temple against an army of ninjas. Once I hit one of the first roof areas, I was ambushed. After some fighting back and forth, I was knocked off the edge of the roof to a set of stairs I fought up minutes earlier. After clearing the way, I moved through the temple and back onto another part of the roof. I tried to jump to a slightly higher ledge and hit an invisible wall, having to go around instead. More enemies showed up, but this time there was another invisible wall around the edge of the roof above an area that could easily be accessed again. It wasn’t the only instance of invisible walls popping up in places I didn’t expect.
Furthermore, I was surprised at the lack of lock-on targeting. Granted this is a reimagining of an older game, I was surprised that a simple targeting system was missing. Usually when an older game is remastered, or in this case remade, quality of life features are usually included. Other improvements were added, including the aforementioned difficulty options, so the developers did want to modernize the game for players, new and old. I would have guessed they wanted to keep the gameplay difficult and faithful to the original, but in that case, they wouldn’t have added in easier difficulties.
Unlike the aforementioned Assassin’s, Ninjas are experts at gratuitous violence
STORY
Overall, I felt the story of Ninja Gaiden Black 2 was not good. The overarching narrative did not feel consistent. While the opening text for each chapter’s loading screen recapped the previous level and laid the foundation for what the goal was of the next chapter, it was not conveyed in a meaningful or congruous way. At some points it felt like I was taken from Point A to Point B through sheer teleportation just for the story to progress. In a couple of instances I didn’t naturally end up in certain environments as a result of my gameplay.
One prime example is about two-thirds of the way through Chapter One, I was fighting along metal walkways beneath a building, before dropping to a pathway that seemed to take me to my objective. Once I cleared the enemies, a cutscene played out that showed Rye atop a skyscraper before ninja-visioning target building and sky diving off, essentially using unexplained ninja powers to fly directly to that building and into a window. The game is hardly realistic, but up until that point, Ryu is merely depicted as an exceptional fighter. Such an unexplained transition felt jarring.
There were many instances where the voice acting felt flat and lifeless. Throughout many important story cutscenes, the voice line delivery left much to be desired. A dramatic action scene would be progressing, only for the characters to pause and utter lines that didn’t fit the scene. Story scenes that were building up character arcs or plot points were as casual as general dialogue. There was no sense of urgency to match the events unfolding around them.
That alone would have been manageable if it was not for the shaky cam that plagued some cutscenes. And it wasn’t fight scenes or cutscenes with explosions and rumbles, this shaky cam was popping up in less intense scenes. I did eventually get used to it or it became less prevalent as the game went on, but it was enough to be an annoyance.
The main bad guy was absent from the first part of the story before he was finally shown doing anything meaningful. His design and abilities reminded me an awful lot of Grigori Rasputin from Shadow Hearts: Covenant (that’s a deep cut for you) and Emperor Palpatine. But despite being the one of the final bosses, he didn’t really do much except resurrect an ancient Archfiend to be the final boss. The story felt rushed in the last few missions and it never really felt memorable or like I was taken on a worthy journey.
Ninja-gliding, a lesser spoken of ninja ability
PERFORMANCE
Unlike most recent games, Ninja Gaiden Black 2 performs surprisingly well. But it’s not without its faults. During some graphical or effects-heavy cutscenes, the scene would stutter and slow down at times, which would further detract my interest in what was going on before me. Thankfully, this issue was few and far between, but it was noticeable when it did happen. This problem could have been caused by the use of Unreal Engine 5, but overall, the game performed well.
I didn’t experience any drops in frame rate during my playthrough, no matter how fast-paced the action got or how many effects were going off on-screen. The game didn’t slow down or suffer any ill effects from multiple enemies on-screen at once. And that was put to the test in a later level as I was fighting up and down a staircase that would make John Wick wince. Dozens, possibly even over a hundred enemies, spawned in waves, forcing me to fight my way up the staircase bit by bit. At times, I was turned around, fighting down upon enemies that had flanked around me. Limbs flying, blood spurting, magic, and other effects constantly going off. And not a single stutter or frame rate over the course of around 30 minutes of non-stop action! Though at one point heading up the stairs, I thought
Short of a few minor graphical issues, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black performed exceptionally well for me. Most modern games are laden with bugs or other hiccups, so playing a game that performs relatively well is a breath of fresh air. The downside to reviewing new games is that the risk of encountering buggy games at launch will be high, but it’s worth the risk. The lack of issues in Ninja Gaiden 2 Black could be attributed to it being an older game, but it is also essentially rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5, so it’s likely the game received a high level of polish from Team Ninja.
Lady Liberty stares on indifferent to the act of Unlimited Power before her
BOSS FIGHTS
As can be expected from a Ninja action epic, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is laden with boss fights, the majority of which take place at the end of levels. There’s a healthy variety of bosses throughout Ninja Gaiden 2 Black’s campaign, some of which become somewhat familiar in terms of how their battles play out. Bosses range from the above lightning angel demon thingy to what I can only describe as a giant silver train fish with a face. To match the variety in bosses I encountered, the difficulty of these boss fights could be attributed to a scale. Some bosses were obnoxiously fast, forcing me onto the defensive far more than usual, leaving me with only split second opportunity to break free and do some damage. Other fights would end incredibly quickly until I was able to learn patterns, as the amount of damage some bosses would deal to me would floor me, even with an increased health bar.
There were times I felt I was charging headfirst into a brick wall, so difficult were some of the bosses. But being able to finally prevail after many repeated attempts was one of the more satisfying aspects of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black. And for one or two particular boss fights, I was happy to cheese out a victory however I could. The boss fights may not be as intense as a Souls-like, but they definitely get the adrenaline pumping and the palms sweaty. Finishing a challenging fight with only a sliver of health left is something any gamer can recognize as a peak gameplay moment, and Ninja Gaiden 2 Black deals that euphoria out in almost every boss fight.
True heroes don’t look at explosions they create
OVERALL
Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is a product of its time, even with the enhanced visuals. The foundation is a solid 2008 action title, with improved graphics and some interesting new mechanics added in for this remaster. It’s a 2008 game in every sense. Fans of older seventh-generation style gameplay will find plenty to enjoy here. However, the opposite is true for the gamer used to more modernized games, seeking more in-depth gameplay and story elements. Here’s hoping the next mainline entry, Ninja Gaiden 4, can fulfil that role for new and old players alike.
While I enjoyed the core combat loop, the beautiful locations and map variety, and some of the boss designs, the story bogged down my enjoyment of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black. The cutscenes and the lore picked up in the levels felt disjointed, and hard to understand the motives or choices made by characters. Certain moments would crop up throughout cutscenes, and characters would just be there for unclear reasons. As a result, the stakes never really felt like they mattered until near the end of the game’s final few chapters. The last 3 or 4 chapters were some of the game’s absolute best. It’s just a shame I didn’t feel that level of consistency until the game’s final hours.
Though the game had additional modes, I didn’t feel compelled to try them out. Once I completed the story, I wrapped up my playthrough and started on this walkthrough. I played Ninja Gaiden 2 Black on Xbox Series X through Xbox Game Pass. I finished the campaign in just over 13 hours, unlocking 24 of the game’s 38 achievements, for a total of 490/1000 GamerScore.
Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is worth recommending for fans interested in trying out the franchise or those looking for something new to play. Though not without its flaws, I think there’s a lot of fun to be had here.
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