NINJA GAIDEN 2 Black Playlist: • NINJA GAIDEN 2 Black
Team Ninja just dropped a surprise "remake" of Ninja Gaiden II a few days ago, shortly after announcing Ninja Gaiden 4. For many years, I would have said Ninja Gaiden II was my favorite game of all time. That only changed once I got very deep into Dodonpachi Daioujou, but still, it's at least #2. So needless to say, I was pumped to get home from work and play this after watching the trailer. And I've spent almost all of my free time playing it ever since.
They advertised this as the definitive edition of Ninja Gaiden II - which may be a mistake, because that can get people's hopes up, making them go in expecting a new revision of the classic game. In reality, this is essentially a graphics update of Sigma 2, with some small (good) game design changes along the way. Sigma 2 is a very different game than the original Ninja Gaiden II, with far too many changes to go into in a YouTube video description, but generally speaking, they greatly reduced the enemy counts, replaced some of the bad content with new stuff, added a weapon (Enma's Fang), took away some weapons (RIP Windmill Shuriken), added three new characters to play as and an extra chapter for each of them, and just generally reduced the difficulty.
There are diehard fans of the original game that do not like Sigma 2 at all, and I was in that camp for a long time. But that changed around the time they "remastered" NG2 on the Series X, making it playable in 4K with a much smoother framerate. Nowadays, the fans of the original can play it in as good of a state as you'll ever need to, so why not just enjoy Sigma 2 for what it is? Taken on its own, it's an excellent game, after all.
In Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, they remade all of the graphics in Unreal Engine 5, and I think they did a fantastic job overall. They respected the art style of the original and brought it up to modern standards, rather than attempting to reimagine anything. There have been some remakes that really miss the mark in that regard, and thankfully this isn't one of them. A lot of areas will look different due to the modern lightning techniques or whatever they chose to add, but I think they followed the original artists' intent very well. They have also made some gameplay changes, although it's still Sigma 2 at its core. First and foremost, they got rid of Sigma 2's horrible weapon upgrading system and brought back the classic essence as currency from previous games. The downside to this is that it does encourage you to play in a very boring and simplistic way to maximize the amount of essence you get from each fight, but that's a design flaw in the original games as well, so it just is what it is. Ultimately it's not a big deal, and you'll be able to steadily upgrade all of your weapons even if you're leaving tons of essence on the table (just be a little careful about what you pick). Secondly, they've also removed the giant boss fights against the Buddha statue and the Statue of Liberty. They were lame, so this is certainly an improvement. I also feel like enemies are more susceptible to delimbing in this, but I can't say for sure. I haven't played Sigma 2 in well over a decade, lol.
With all that said, I'll be uploading a full playthrough of Master Ninja mode. I have no special restrictions in mind here, my plan is to just play in a fun way (not spamming UTs), swap out weapons fairly often (it gets boring to play and watch if you use the same things repeatedly), and not use any recovery items. And of course, no running back to save statues. Just do every battle in one segment in between each statue.
I wasn't sure how to create videos for this game - do I play story, or chapter challenge (with all weapons upgraded for more enjoyable gameplay), do I post one video at a time, mash a couple chapters together, or put them all in one huge video, etc. Ultimately, I figured I'd do one "regular" playthrough of the game in story mode, with all of the cutscenes included for people who want to see how they look with the new graphics, and then just do another run through chapter challenge some time after I finish this one. Why not both? I've been meaning to play more Ninja Gaiden in general, and this game was the perfect opportunity to start going HAM on one of my favorite series. 2025 is the year of the Dragon Ninja.
I'll be playing as much as I can, so I'm hoping to upload at least one or two videos per day. Can't guarantee that, but I'll do my best!
Chapters
0:00 Intro
2:39 Gameplay
3:03 Cutscene
3:51 Gameplay
5:45 Lives of the Thousand Gods #1
9:20 Life of the Gods #1
11:29 Life of the Gods #2
20:53 Cutscene
21:49 Gameplay
25:47 Cutscene
26:39 Shadow Ninja Rasetsu
-----
Beat 'em Ups: • Beat 'em Ups
STG/Shmups: • STG Replays
iconoclast
コメント