Dear Gamers

This review is sponsored by Itegaki’s finest cheese 🧀.

To summarize Ninja Gaiden 2, all you have to look at is this clip right here

The Appeal

D-Limb

The game loop of the original NG2 is great, and the dismemberment system really gives the feel that each slash you do has an impact.
Once an enemy is missing an arm and/or leg, you can finish them off by performing an Obliteration Technique

Most Hack and Slash games don’t give that feel. You might as well fight with a stick rather than an actual sword in those games.

Moreover, the feel of quickly killing enemies one after the other is so good.
It’s not boringly easy like in musou games, and the enemies are definitely not too spongy, which is what makes this specific Ninja Gaiden game so unique from other hack & slash games

Aggressive Enemies

This is another great thing about these Ninja Gaiden games (it’s not exclusive to the Vanilla version), which makes it stand out.
Itegaki describes the enemies as “being smart enemies”, as shown in this video clip right here

In all honesty, it’s not that the enemies are smart, because there are obvious loopholes where speedrunners exploit to defeat bosses quickly.
Enemies in Ninja Gaiden 2 and in NG3: Razor’s Edge (both games which I played a lot) are aggressive & don’t stand idle for a second, to be more precise.

Meaning, that the A.I. was built to give no breathing room to reorganize strategy.
And that’s great!
It’s not something you see in games nowadays besides Doom Eternal, which also features aggressive enemies.

However, while Doom Eternal complements the player with fast, agile, and responsive movement and toolkit, Ninja Gaiden 2, on the other hand, doesn’t so much.

Where it all goes wrong

You see, Ryu, in this game, can quickly defeat enemies and use iframe moves to take as little damage as possible.
He also has a weapon with unique abilities that can change the gameplay style, which we’ll discuss later.

But the enemy roster, on the other hand, does to mesh well with Ryu’s moveset.
Here’s what I mean:

Long combos are useless

When I say “combos”, I don’t don’t mean chaining different moves that lock the enemy in place like in Devil May Cry.
When opening the game’s pause menu, you can check each weapon’s pre-defined hit string you can perform like:

❌❌🔼 (🔼🔼🔼🔼 when in lvl3)
❌❌➡🔼 (🔼🔼🔼🔼 when in lvl3)
➡❌❌❌
➡❌❌🔼
❌❌❌❌❌
🔼🔼🔼

The problem is that enemies are so aggressive that you wouldn’t want to perform long ground combos, even if it’s just 3 hits.
The only way to effectively avoid an enemy’s attack is by either:

performing frequent Obliteration Techniques
spamming Flying Swallow (don’t recommended because it a noob style much like Stinger spamming like in DMC)
Spamming Izuna Drops or just air combos in general
Spamming Guillotine Throw (works only on human enemies)
And often use Wind Jump ( A + ❌) to gain a small iframe + jump on enemies

Strategies 2-4 I just described are a cheesy way to play the game, besides the Izuna-drop, which is still awesome to do.
In my case, when I played Mentor on a new game save, I had to spam ➡🔼 with the Claws since their D-Limp rate succusion is 95%, leading to a quick OT (short for “Obliteration Technique”).

Occasionally, I might try to style with some other moves I would like to use, only to be immediately slapped by the enemy’s quick attack.

Umm.. did you try to Shuriken cancel – I hear you ask me across the screen. well..

Shuriken 𒅒 Cancel is not consistent

Shuriken Cancel can only be performed in very specific mid-combo strings.
Here are the following cases (with the Dragon Sword):

❌❌🔼 𒅒 (✅ Can cancel)
❌❌🔼🔼 𒅒 (❎ Cannot cancel )
🔼 𒅒 (✅ Can cancel)
🔼🔼 𒅒 (❎ Cannot cancel)
🔃+🔼 with the Dual Blade (❎ Cannot cancel)

This makes it so that you can’t rely on S.C. (short for “Shuriken Cancel”) as a quick move to transition to an iframe way to escape from enemy attack, or worse, I.S. Ninja explosive shuriken.

This isn’t necessarily a bad design, as I do not believe that Itegaki thought about S.C. being a main mechanic to use in the game.
Later down the review, I’ll point out Itegaki’s bad game design choices.

But I do wish I could cancel out of enemy move by S.C. as it could have improved the meta-game of NG2, which is what I call “The IFrame wars”

IFrame wars – The metagame of NG2

One important move I forgot to mention until now is a charge move called Ultimate Technique, which you can charge up to 2 times.

Ultimate Technique

It’s a slow charge, which you could get quickly slapped out of. However, during battle, while you are killing enemies, dead bodies drop what is called “essence” which can be used either to

Yellow: Get points to spend at the shop
Blue: Get HP back
Red: Get Ninpo slot

All these 3 different essences can be traded for an instant UT (short for Ultimate Technique).

Now, why is UT a key mechanic in this game?
That’s because a UT is an IFrame attack, which lasts for a couple of good seconds and deals massive AOE damage.
You can chain multiple UT attacks as long as one enemy is defeated by the previous UT.

The thing is that it quickly becomes another cheesy way to play the game, as you:

Jump
Hold 🔼 as soon as you land to get an instant UT charge (without the starting animation when standing)
Release the button as soon as you absorb the essence on the battlefield
Deal massive AOE damage
Repeat step 1, rinse and repeat.

Okay then, why not mix between instant UT, OT, and Izuna Drop? – You ask

Well, that’s the thing, in theory, it should be possible, and maybe that was what Itegaki planned for the game in the beginning.
But after completing the game twice, I realized that Itegaki’s direction was more than just creating this awesome game loop.

Because my dear readers, Itegaki was not satisfied with just that… oh no, he wanted to add “a little spice” to make the game even harder…

Before getting into my rant section, I only mention one flaw which should have been addressed in later versions of NG2 like Sigma 2, and the most recent one, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black.

Moves that don’t apply to all suck

This might be a nitpick, but I just can’t get over it.

Kusarigama ⛓🗡 grapples

Kusarigama is a very fun weapon since it provides unique AOE attacks and Iframes grapple moves.
For some reason, the grapple moves only work on human enemies which really sucks.

Like, I get it, grappling a high-rank demon like Elizabeth and Alexi is absurd, but can the grapple at least register as an interesting animation like Nero’s Buster Arm from DMC4?
Don’t allow me to deal damage, let the bosses throw me into a wall for me to bounce into rather than just activating their BS super-armor attacks.

It’s also annoying when non-humanoid enemies can’t be grappled by the Kusarigama.
You wanna tell me Ryu can’t choke grapple a demon dog to kill or throw like Kratos with the chains?
How about catching a Werewolf to follow up with a flying kick, i.e., Ryu gets close to enemies rather than the opposite, just like in IDK, Nero’s Buster Arm? Sheeh 😐 This sucks

Jumping on bosses isn’t possible at all

In NG2 specifically, you can continuously jump on a single enemy to gain iframes.
Now in all fairness, doing that to a boss would be quite cheesy and dull.

So much like the Kusarigama, why not make bosses “react” to these jumps?

But you see, my fellow reader, while I do have issues with limited S.C and half-implemented enemies, it’s Itegaki’s direction that somewhere along development went south.

Where Itegaki vision “shines” 🌟

I.S. 💥 Ninjas

The first thing you fight on Mentor/Master-Ninja difficulty are the Incendiary-Shuriken Ninjas (or just IS Ninjas 🐱‍👤 for short).
They are aggressive as they should be for harder difficulties.

But the thing is in NG2 Vanilla, they f-ing spam you with kunai bombs 💥.
No matter how much you try to jump or move quickly around the arena, somehow, someway, they stick a Kunai up your a$$.

Now, while the I.S. doesn’t explode upon sticking up my butt, it does explode after a few short seconds, meaning I’ll have to use an Iframe move to nullify the blast – which already makes more than 50% of the combos useless.

You can say it’s not a big deal, and I would agree with you…
If the startup moveset in a new game would provide me with fun mechanics to use against the I.S. Ninjas, that is.

Having no Izuna drop and barely any moves forces players to abuse jumping on enemies and spamming Guillotine throws.
It’s not fun and it’s cheesy 🧀.

And it’s especially not fun when…

Retsu Spiders 🕷️ & I.S. 💥 Ninjas ⁉

This is when the game really starts to flip you off, while in Level 2 you can cheese the boss fight with 🔃+🔼 UT charge with the Lunar staff and abuse the effective ariel Izuna Drop you can do with the Claws by Jumping and performing the following hit string for an Izuna Drop (🔼❌🔼) on I.S. Ninjas.

Try to mix your attacks with some cool ones, and you’re basically risking your HP for fun gameplay. 80% of the time, you die because of that, or barely survive with 5% HP left.

While that may be a cake walk for hardcore NG2 fans, the 2nd fight you have is on the same level, but you start backwards.
In level 11, you fight not 1, not 2, but three F-ing Restu Spiders 🕷️ with I.S. Ninjas‼

This was a hard battle because of the amount of pressure you have to endure while managing somehow to abuse all the exploits you know to win the battle.
And don’t you dare tell me otherwise, because I played this $hit for 3 hours across 2 days to clear that battle, and the amount of cheese 🧀🧀 I had to pull with the sheer luck I had – WAS NOT FUN!

Because as much as Ninpo and UT look cool…

Ninpo 🔥 and UT Break the pace of combat

Both NInpo and UT attacks are a long played animation where Ryu either does massive AOE damange, or he instanst-kills most enemies.
During the animation, players have a brief moment to look around the area (since the FOV is so small – don’t worry, I’ll get into that)

The issue with these moves is that the player has zero control over them, some ultimate techniques and some Ninpo have weird issues like:

Level 2 UT with the Dragon Sword is very inconsistent, since:
- The enemy needs to be in range in order to start the whole animation
- Restus can block the first hit, meaning your UT was canceled
- While Ryu teleports to his targets, you can’t pick and choose which target to slash next with the UT
- Sometimes, the teleport doesn’t work because FML
The same goes for the Claws and other weapons
In Fire Ninpo, you can’t exactly choose which enemy to blast if there are tons of enemies on screen, which can become a problem.
Ninpos, in general, break the pace, as you can unleash them immediately after activating them (In NG3:RE, it was addressed)

The only effective Ninpo, BTW, is the wind 🌫 Ninpo on max level, which kills all enemies that circle you around.
And if you’re looking for an effective UT that doesn’t require the 1st hit to connect, just use Lunar Staff’s 🔃+🔼 UT or Kusarigama’s UT.

Anyway, I digressed. I never really felt like Ninpos were intergrated well into the fast pace combat of NG2.
And the UT needs to allow players more control of what they can do while being invincible with IFrame aura.

But you know who has an absurd amount of Iframe attacks?

The F-ing boss fights

All bosses in Ninja Gaiden 2 feel like a complete afterthought.
Their hit strings are blazing fast.
Try to punish them after blocking the attack, and the boss suddenly decides to pop another Iframe move.

On top of that, when they’re accompanied by minions, the game becomes even more cheesy 🧀🍕🧀.

BTW: When I say “cheesy” I mean as in the fact that the game literally cheats your a$$, so you have to cheat him back with moves that magically stun bosses or just outright break the balance of the game.

Those F-ing boss grapple moves!!!

This is the most annoying thing about the NG2.
Sometimes, bosses who decide to not be punished today, will punish you back by initiating a blazingly fast grab that often results in a longggggg a$$$$$$$ animation. And I mean long animation like:

Elizabeth’s quick grab, which can happen at random
Zedonious that can also break out of a punish for a quick BS grab that lasts a whole of 5+ seconds
When you try to quickly attack Lava Armadillo’s face, he quickly resorts to chewing, another 6+ seconds of slow and painful animation to watch while you start to lose your sanity
That F-ing skeleton 💀 monster boss fight, where he moves slowly but for some god forsaken reason, snags you quickly as if you were a cocaine he had to sniff from the floor.
And my god, the animation of his grab is so painstakingly slow and annoying to watch that it takes forever to continue the fight.
At some point, I started to really get mad in Mentor difficulty when fighting him with his minions.

Now, when you play on Easy or normal, it’s more or less “okay”, but on Mentor or, God forbid, Master-Ninja?
One grab results in death!

In Cuphead, I can at least restart the level fast after dying.
In Ninja Gaiden 2? Wait eternity for the game to:

Finish the damn grab animaton
Hear Ryu die miserably
Then press retry to reload the checkpoint
Wait for the F-ing loading screen to load the checkpoint again
And then, and only then, will you continue the fight!

My f-cking god, this is probably what Itegaki meant when saying “I made it more difficult ” in his interview, you can check right here.
It’s frustrating enough that 80% of Ryu’s moveset is useless against the bosses, but those grabs were so annoying that I decided that this game was not worthy of being praised by hack & slash enthusiasts.

I am sorry, this game has a great concept, but it’s overshadowed by so many bad level design and enemy design that I just can’t ignore anymore.
I am planning to make another post about “Top X things that need to be addressed in Ninja Gaiden 4”, and in one of them, there’s got to be better boss fight implementation with the player’s moveset and overwall balance.

Other annoying stuff to mention

Since I didn’t know how to transition to the other issues I have with NG2, I decided to dump them here:

FOV is way too close

Compared to NG3:RE, the FOV across all NG2 games is bad.
It’s bad because often I’ll need to re-adjust the camera to see where enemy projectiles are coming from.
Some enemies also pounce on your a$$, including bosses that fly across the screen like Elizabeth.

In NG3:RE, this was addressed luckily.

Throwing projectiles IS NOT FUN (🏹)

I don’t know why, but when action game like DMC4 thinks that shooting Blitz with Nero’s charge shot is fun, I get the sense that the game developers are running out of ideas.
In Ninja Gaiden 2, however, I think Itegaki fell in love with his projectile tools so much that he decided to make 3 boss fights that are dedicated to the bow.
Now I gotta give credit here to Itegaki, because UT charge with the bow 🏹 feels so satisfying to shoot, unlike in other versions of NG2 and in NG3:RE.

That being said, this isn’t as well established as Tsurihime’s Bow moveset.

In Sengoku Basara, there’s a character that it’s entire moveset is based on a Bow.
Now, I know that Ryu’s main thing is slashing and doing a flying kick because he’s a ninja and all, but…

If you gonna make the Bow heavily usable, at least make it fun.
Don’t pretend that shooting while you can’t move is going to engage players in Bow combat.

Just because I can charge the bow doesn’t mean it’s suddenly game-breaking.

Note: If you don’t know this character, Tsurihime, that’s okay, I’ve got you covered with this awesome video that demonstrates her bow combat 🏹

Other than the bow, you can also throw an I.S. 💥, which is fine.
The only standout weapon was the big shuriken 𒅒 you get later in the game, which is a fun weapon to use in combat with instant UT.
In NG3:RE, they made it weak for Kasumi, which is downright lame… but this is vanilla NG2, so that’s another credit for Itegaki.

There’s only one projectile weapon that is a must to use in order to clear the water sections in the original NG2

Water 🌊 Sections

Water sections are cool in concept. Running on lakes and rivers as a Ninja sounds awesome.
And the fact that you can’t stop or guard or else you dive into the water, provides a unique challenge.

But the implementation of the water combat, however, was not well established enough.
For some reason, if you wanna quickly turn from left to right, you can’t do that as Ryu will slowly turn to the desired direction you want.

Or so it seems… because, you see, the dev team did in fact allow you to turn instantly in any direction with a sprinkle of an Iframe.

I never knew about this ability until I researched a way to complete the swamp section, which heavily features many land mines and enemy rocket launchers 🚀

And I think there’s no guide in the game that explains the technique of “Calm Water Break”.

I might be wrong, but such ability is very crucial to clear those water sections

Here’s a tutorial video provided by a professional NG2 player

Rocket 🚀 Launcher Dudes

These guys are placed very far away from the player in order to suck the fun from the main combat.
They shoot a barrage of rockets at you regardless if their far or close to you, and they can even juggle your butt.

Not fun because Ryu’s moveset does not mesh with these kinds of enemies.

Rant Summary

I am glad that I finally got a chance to beat the original Ninja Gaiden 2. When I was a teen, I didn’t know what I was doing in the 1st level.
I thought the game was too hard for me and that I wasn’t good enough.

Today, I am happy to state that I beat the game on both normal and hard difficulty.
But, that being said, I truly wish NG2 would have been the hidden gem a Hack & Slash enthusiast like myself would appreciate.

But sadly, the replay value is overshadowed by bad level design by an egoist director who didn’t acknowledge the words “fair” and “balance”.
If Itegaki held back his attitude just a little bit while creating this masterpiece, he might have stay to work on NG3 as well.

But alas, this didn’t happen, and what we got is all we have.

Let’s all hope together that Ninja Gaiden 4 will improve upon the Ninja Gaiden formula in ways that don’t make the game 🧀.

One response to “Vanilla Ninja Gaiden 2 – Honest review”

Top 7 things Ninja Gaiden 4 must have – OZcomingFRoo

05/16/2025

[…] You know, playing Vanilla Ninja Gaiden 2 and Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge was an enlightening experience for me.Ninja Gaiden 2 gave me a taste of Itegaki’s vision, before having to swallow the bullshit he added on top of that great thing because of his ego.I made a whole review about his game, which you can check at this link. […]

Vanilla Ninja Gaiden 2 – Honest review