Why Ninja Gaiden 2 Black Is Still a Must-Play
Ninja Gaiden is a series that I have been playing since I was a child. We used to know the NES & Game Boy games as ‘Shadow Warriors’ here in the UK and the difficulty was frankly brutal, especially for a 8-year-old. In 2004 Ninja Theory reimagined the series as a 3D hack and Slash and the formula translated really well.
Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is an updated version of the reboot’s sequel Ninja Gaiden 2 and requires no previous knowledge of the series to have an enjoyable time. Lovingly remastered in Unreal Engine 5, the game plays just like its previous iterations but looks a lot prettier while bringing the blood and gore across from the original Ninja Gaiden 2 from the Xbox 360 which was absent in the Ninja Gaiden Master Collection.
While there is a decent story in Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, it does essentially boil down to Dragon Ninja Ryu must rescue the girl while putting a stop to the Archfiend. It’s a tale as old as time.
While simple, this story does facilitate a globe-trotting adventure across many different environments from New York to a vague European-style city and even a Volcano.
Gameplay
Ninja Gaiden 2 Black brings challenging hack and slash action into the modern era while retaining the feeling of its original Xbox 360 version. The game overall is very of its time in terms of level design with levels being mainly linear with some optional backtracking. To some, this may sound a little lacklustre, but it is a breath of fresh air in the current landscape of sparse, yet soulless open word games. It’s nice to have something that feels a little more intentional with its design and I really like that about Ninja Gaiden II Black. It’s like a time capsule of a bygone era brought back to life and given a new coat of paint.
Ninja Gaiden 2 Black feels very good to play, the combat and movement of your characters are very fluid and each attack feels weighty, although parrying always leaves me feeling a little stumped, sometimes it works fine and other times, I just can seem to pull it off. I am fully aware this is a ‘Me’ problem and I’m sure others will fare much better.
Across Ninja Gaiden 2 Black’s 17 chapters, you are constantly upgrading your arsenal of weapons as well as finding life-bar extending items which I am guessing will be pretty much mandatory if you are playing on the higher difficulty settings. You’ll be finding new weapons even in some of the final chapters of the game and they all play quite differently with their own move sets, range and use cases.
To help Ryu and Co. along the way, you find statues that allow you to access Muramasa’s shop. The shop sells items to replenish your health along with comprehensive blacksmithing for upgrading your weapons. His prices become increasingly discounted after finding any of Crystal Skulls hidden across the game, usually off the beaten path so be sure to grab them when you can!
Sadly, a couple of bosses added for the PS3 release, The Giant Buddha Statue and The Statue of Liberty are absent. You do still take on the Dark Dragon. Another missing feature is the speed running mode Ninja Race which was included in Vita version Ninja Gaiden Σ2 PLUS.
The most difficult part of the game is the camera. It will often get stuck in odd positions and with the lack of a lock-on function, you’ll often find yourself trying to attack enemies off-screen. Luckily, with the tap of a shoulder button, the camera will snap behind the player allowing you to get a better feel for what’s happening. I would also highly recommend turning up the sensitivity of the camera movement as it found the default speed painfully slow, especially when there are multiple enemies on the screen which is almost all the time.
Difficulty
The Ninja Gaiden series is known for being brutally difficult, both the original 2D iterations and 3D offerings put up quite the challenge and Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is no exception. There are a total of 4 starting difficulty levels with an additional Path of the Master Ninja difficulty which unlocks are completing the game once. I played through the game on the Path of the Acolyte difficulty (Normal Mode) and found the game rather straightforward, only getting a game over once during a boss fight. If you are looking for a challenging playthrough, I would recommend starting the game on Path of the Warrior difficulty at least.
Performance
Overall, the game ran great. I did notice a few hitches here and there but they may have just been my hardware. Ninja Gaiden II Black runs great, even at 120fps and feels great to play at such high framerates.
The new coat of paint hasn’t slowed down the action one bit and I found it runs incredibly smooth for something that looks as good as it does.
Steam Deck performance is also surprisingly excellent. With the default settings, I was hitting 40 – 50fps with dips into the 30s, which is perfectly playable.
I settled for the ‘Standard’ preset for graphical settings and used XeSS in balanced mode. I locked the frame rate to 30fps and the game rarely dropped below it besides the occasional hitch when switching from cutscene to gameplay.
Overall, it’s very impressive stuff, especially considering the game is running in the taxing Unreal Engine 5 which I find usually tanks performance.
In terms of length, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black took me around 10 hours to complete a playthrough on Normal difficulty. At the end of my playthrough, I had found 22 of the 30 crystal Skulls and only had around 4 weapons maxed out so there was still a few bits to go back and attempt or to playthrough again at a higher difficulty setting.
Conclusion
Ninja Gaiden 2 Black was a surprise release and is now the best way to experience Ninja Gaiden 2. The upgrade to UE5 has done wonders for the game’s visuals while being light enough to have excellent performance. While I do wish the wall running mechanics weren’t as unintuitive and the camera was a little better behaved, I think the gameplay holds up very well and it’s a very satisfying play.
I’m very much looking forward to seeing what Platinum Games comes up with for the upcoming Ninja Gaiden 4 and I’m glad to see the series getting the attention it deserves.
8
PS. Ninja Theory’s love for jiggle physics is in full effect!
Nintendo Switch review code kindly provided by Koei Tecmo Europe