Welp, it’s been a long time since I’ve done anything with this blog site.
No matter how much effort I put into it, nothing seems to make this blog site flourish with people who want to read.
It’s not because of the posts being boring, but more of the fact that this generation and even 1 before it, life myself, would prefer to watch a YouTube going into deep analysis, which sadly I don’t have the time of day.
But since it’s my last year where I’ll be gaming, I thought fuck it, let’s kill this hobby along with my favorite genre, which is also dead.
The final nail in the coffin for me was Ninja Gaiden 4.
With the release of NG: RageBound and more importantly,y NG2:Black, I thought Team Ninja would actually have their own redemption arc.
Because the thing is, they really tried to sell NG2: Black as a faith remaster of the original NG2, which Itegaki directed.
Itegaki’s vision for NG2 was a player that quickly killed his targets back and forth while mastering the Iframe wars metagame he set for this game.
Sadly, as I mentioned in my review of the game, Itegaki just couldn’t control his “rock n roll” and “I don’ give a F” attitude towards his play testers and decided to make the game harder than intended.
- Long useless hit strings
- Limited moves that give you Iframes
- Shuriken cancel is limited to certain hit strings
- Along with aggressive enemies
- And horrible bosses that don’t like getting punished for anything
The game quietly flopped, and gamers of that era soon began to abandon ship, much like DMC4, and only a few gamers remain to master the game.
Because if the game is half-baked, then bugs and unfinished/unpolished movesets will be noticed.
So…
What does it mean to release NG2 again?
This meant that Ninja Gaiden 4 will inherit a lot of the formula of NG2.
Sadly, the so-called “definitive” edition of NG2 was just another version of NG Sigma 2, a game that heavily altered the original’s combat loop.
However, Team Ninja did say before that “the original code for NG2 is lost” it gave hope that they might hint for a sequal that will built on top of the unique formula that was not seen in the hack and slash genre, for a long time..
But what we got… was something beyond bad.
NG4: Quick review
Playing NG4 on hard for me felt like… that I wan’t playing a Ninja Gaiden game.
It actually felt like I was playing with Nier Automata’s control scheme, RT being the dodge button again, felt so weird.
Not only that, but the enemies felt tanky as they were in NG3.
How do you make bosses worse than NG2?
But the worst of all insults for a hack-and-slash player was the fact that I was playing a Dark Souls-like boss.
Both Ninja Gaiden 2 and 3 had shitty bosses that just had to have iframes for everything, and only slightly gave the player to punish them.
But NG4, the bosses can never be punished… unless you “pErfEt” parry them.
To which I have to say – F*ck you both PT & TN.
One of the worst things you can do as a video game developer is test players’ timing to press a button in time.
We’re not talking about pressing a button for a reasonable window frame. NO! We’re talking small, 1-2 frames to perfect parry.
I hate this design choice, much like how I hated it with Nero in DMC4.
It’s almost a luck-based system, which just sucks.
Now you might say I can “attack with the RED thingy against their RED attack,” to which I say, yeah, okay, but why does it have to be this stupid?
Where are the days when punishing a boss’s whiff attacks was the norm?
Was (3D) Ninja Gaiden ever good?
Honestly, looking back at the HD collection I played, it’s kinda surprising to say that… it never was.
NG1 felt stiff
OG NG2 was gaslighted by Itegaki’s ego
NG Sigma 2 threw the original design for a mediocre experience
OG NG3 was… just no..
And Razor’s Edge was fast, but still, the combat between the enemies never felt natural.
I don’t know how to explain each point, but I never felt like I was cheesed in any Devil May Cry game as I was cheesed in a Ninja Gaiden game.
For me, at least, every Ninja Gaiden game’s combat felt incomplete and tight.
Some moves & weapons were good, and some very bad.
No bosses ever felt fun to fight
And the enemies never felt like they were integrated into the combat system naturally.
Cheesy 🧀 tactics were the way to go playing those games, and it doesn’t feel good to play cheesy.
Devil May Cry can also allow cheesy play, but playing stylishly was never a fantasy.
In Ninja Gaiden, if you’re trying to use a variety of moves, you will get stunned and die.
This is especially apparent on Harder difficulties that push players to the cheesy tactics and show just how unstable the combat flow really is.
The only saving grace of Ninja Gaiden 4 was the fact that it is very developed as a Video Game, first and foremost, as opposed to…
God of War – Daddy Sim
To this day, I still can’t believe Cory Barlog thought that ditching the hack-and-slash genre was a great idea.
In some way, I’ll never forgive him for popularizing the Open-World-Todo-Checklist genre to such a degree.
God of War was always meant to be a fun, engaging game, rather than being difficult, but the Daddy sim games are obviously not about that.
Instead, they focused on making a story rather than an actual video game, and it’s very apparent.
From the half-baked RPG elements to the boring and slow movement in the open world.
It is factually known that the Daddy Sim games were very lucky to win the love of gamers just for not being F*cking greedy.
But the thing is… it hurt the gaming industry’s standards even more..
Will DMC ever light hope again?
Devil May Cry 5 is the last good HnS game that was released.
It never changed the core combat, and that’s good enough for a game like this.
Sadly, after the release of the parody show of DMC and the mobile game, it seems that even DMC will be buried deep within, while Resident Evil continues to be the golden goose of Capcom
So… there’s no hope left
This is more of a personal message.
And I am pretty sure no one is gonna read this, since this blog site is not visited by anyone.
But if you read this, and you’re roughly my age, I think it’s time to lay down the controller.
The standards have fallen, and the younger generation in the gaming community is heavily manipulated by social media bots and paid influencers.
So they will never know what it is to experience a unique game or experience an entirely new game that features actual cool characters like Ryu & Dante.
Don’t get me or… Yakumo & Seori have their taste, but Platic-Games made the story so bare bones that NG2 feels like reading the bible.
And the bible has some deep lore, but NG4 feels like a fan-made game.
I wish I hadn’t been so mean to Itegaki, who passed away about a week before the release of Ninja Gaiden 4.
But, in my opinion, behind closed doors, the higher-ups at Team Ninja were just upset that he was creating such an unstable game.
I heard that the game was rushed like DMC4, but Itegaki seems to be the type of Japanese developer with an attitude, unlike the director of DMC3, Itsuno.
But, besides that… there’s just nothing else to experience in gaming.
It’s time to find peace in life.
A stable life, that is.
I am, luckily, working and making a good earning.
But something is still missing…