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Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is the type of game where you’ll destroy a floating air fortress loaded with missile-launching robo-ninjas after sparring with your demonic arch-nemesis, then escape to safety with a scantily dressed rocket launcher-toting femme fatale while piloting a motorcycle onto a snowy tundra where you’ll face off against a gigantic meteor-spewing turtle kaiju. And that’s just halfway through the adventure.
Up until then, our hero, Ryu Hayabusa, the Dragon Ninja himself, had already obliterated hapless ninjas (and knife-wielding ninja dogs), subterranean skeletal giants, Italian werewolves, fought lightning gods on the Statue of Liberty, and so much more. If nothing else the game has spectacle. So much spectacle. There’s an actual story that attempts to tie everything together, even to the original NES trilogy, but Team Ninja’s rebooted trilogy is more concerned with delivering a brutal experience than a coherent narrative, thank goodness.
via YouTubeLike the game’s storyline, the history of its release is also something of a mess. A big, beautiful and extremely bloody mess. Originally an exclusive title for the Xbox 360, it was reworked for rival Sony’s PlayStation 3, now retitled Ninja Gaiden Sigma II, adding new content but removing some as well, streamlining the gameplay, and other changes. Both versions have their dedicated fans – and detractors – though I’m sure which they prefer largely depends on which (Black or Sigma) was their first experience with the game.
This freshly remastered version of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is an amalgamation of both, even adding elements from the first (Xbox) Ninja Gaiden for balance, and is entirely rebuilt using the Unreal Engine 5. A surprise release worthy of ninja sorcery, the game was dropped into storefronts during the announcement of the upcoming Ninja Gaiden 4, no doubt to get fans reaquainted with the franchise but also letting them revisit a classic that lasts a solid 7+ hours, no slouch given it’s a purely action-driven blockbuster.
Ryu has plenty of moves that helped make the rebooted Ninja Gaiden trilogy the definitive hack ‘n slasher. He’ll slice through endless baddies, eviscerating them into chunks and bloody arterial sprays, hacking off limbs and heads before facing off against more hordes. Along the way he’ll get new weapons to keep the chaos going, each with their own special attacks and upgrade paths as well. The variety of killable foes is insanely large, constantly changing to match whatever crazy location you’re fighting through. Ryu is so bad-ass he can even sprint across walls and run across water.
And he’ll need every trick in the book as he works through deserted villages, steamy jungles, clockwork towers, neon cityscapes, all the way into the depths of Hell. There are ranged attacks with ninja stars, bows, and guns, but all are severely limited. Don’t worry; shurikens, arrows and ammo are unlimited, so feel free to chuck, shoot and blast away to your heart’s content. Ninpo (i.e. ninja magic) lets you cast catastrophic magical attacks that help clear out crowds and give you some breathing room.
But Ryu’s not alone! From Sigman 2 come Rachel, Ayane, and Momiji, three barely-dressed (and heavily endowed) heroines armed with their own unique weapons and playstyles, though each is contained to their own level. Sorry, motion-control fans, but their *ahem* jiggle features are absent here.
The OG versions of Ninja Gaiden 2 looked great but NG2B looks greater still, using the Unreal Engine 5 to power nearly two decades old visuals into the modern age. Characters and levels all look amazing with beautiful particle effects and reflections. Did you ever notice the serious cake Ryu is packing? Man butt has never been so shiny. It’s a stunner.
PC ninjas with lesser GPUs can try taking advantage of supersampling to keep things running silky smooth, which you’ll need if you want any chance of surviving the chaos. The same can be said of the triumphant soundtrack, which pulses and pounds throughout and seriously rocks.
As wonderful as the graphical refresh is, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is still (mostly) a port of a 17 year-old game made in a very different time and brings with it a few cobwebs from the era that haven’t been cleared out. Don’t get me wrong, the absolutely bonkers storyline (as it is) is pure candy for the imagination, and there’s something to be said about having a linear action-epic with a straightforward leveling system. But with it comes gameplay that can feel repetitive and a camera system that’s deadlier than any foe.
Controlling Ryu can sometimes make you long for the rigid tanklike controls of older Resident Evil as our hero often feels like piloting a small watercraft with his sluggishly slow turning radius. Lining up exact jumps, even climbing ladders, feels more laborious than necessary, making some of the more precise platforming feel like a grind. Thankfully, this is a small gripe that modern gameplay controls have largely eliminated. But in NG2B, they’re still here.
By far the biggest offender is how you’ll deal with a wonky camera that’s perhaps the most unwieldy ever seen in such an otherwise AAA title. I’m not exaggerating – it can feel like there are multiple camera styles all fighting each other, with the real victim being poor Ryu Hayabusa – and your patience. Most times the camera is semi-fixed, meaning it’ll follow Ryu as he traverses through levels, with the option to tilt slightly in select areas. Other times it’s free roaming, but it can be super hard to keep track of the chaos happening. You can recenter your viewpoint, but this is a poor substitute for an intelligent camera system that helps rather than hurts.
It’s especially bad whenever battling multiple enemies in larger arenas as there’s no simple way to reorient the camera, meaning you’ll be forced to flee from enemies you can’t see and praying you won’t get attacked doing so. The only lock-on mechanic is when using a ranged attack, and even this is only for the arrow or gun. Worse still is close-up fighting, or boss battles, when the camera simply goes to poop and there’s no way to actually tell what’s going on as it spins itself crazy. It’s beyond frustrating and something I wish the developers had cleaned up for this remaster, authenticity be damned.
Another issue is button-mashing entropy, which can set in during extended plays. Despite the sheer variety in weapons, enemies, attacks, etc., a good portion of your time in Ninja Gaiden 2 Black will be rapidly mashing buttons to clear out rooms or picking off enemy stragglers. There’s so many moves and combos to learn and master, but the bonkers number of onscreen enemies attacking you means you’ll settle into a comfortable rhythm lest you wear out your poor fingers mashing those buttons.
Even with its flaws, most of which can be attributed to the game’s age, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is a fantastic reimagining of one of the most hyperkinetic action games ever made. This remains a huge, sprawling action-epic that pushed the genre forward in strange, wonderful ways that felt revolutionary at the time and still get the blood pumping (and spraying) today, despite its wonky controls and camera. The fact it blends elements from both the OG Black and Sigma 2 releases means everyone won’t be happy, but seldom has a classic game cleaned up this nicely. Bring on Ninja Gaiden 4!