Ninja Gaiden 2

A few notes for Team Ninja and Tomonobu Itagaki:

- More rockets = more annoyance. I was skeptical of people complaining of the rockets in this game, but they are really annoying. Fortunately I got past the last of them last night while I was super drunk (the secret was exploding shurikens).

- The bow is not fun. Ever. Since you have to charge your bow shots to have them do damage, using the bow requires standing about, aiming, waiting and getting hit a lot. Boring and annoying. Whereas the first game balanced it nicely (the tank battles come to mind) all bow sequences suck in this game. Extra bonus: the second to last guy is a bow battle.

- The environments are beatutiful.

- What's with the ninja diaries? Did I miss something interesting? Cos I don't think I did, also, reading blows.

- The lightning guy, with the sword, who looks like Kain from Final Fantasy 4, yeah, I beat him already, him and his "wait for him to do a combo or big move, then attack" pattern, back in the first game, at the end of the first level.

- That said, he's most interesting one to fight, everything else falling victim to a shitty camera and other gimmickry to make the fights hard. Boss of chapter 3 - the camera.

- I like wrecking werewolves

- things without human like shape (the snake bug creatures) aren't as fun cos i never know when I lop dem heads off.

- I'm all about loppin dem heads off.

- Arms too.

- Knock it off with the dick moves. The Landmines after the "Hogan's Alley" sequence, the armadillos that blow up and the lava mines after the 2nd fire fiend battle serve little purpose other than forcing you to redo (ahem, "enjoy again") some of the shittier parts of the game.

- a little less "loading"...."saving"....."Hit A to Proceed"...."loading"....etc... Dying takes like 30 seconds to get back in the action. MAJOR buzkill and probably, other than the magic rocketeers, is the most annoying thing about the game. Put me back in coach!

- Knock it off with the giant waggly tits.




so far (i'm on level 8 of 14) it's a 3 star game. It's more of the first, and that's good, and the carnage is good, the weapons are all tons of fun, but there's just little things that are piling up to a non-4star experience.

I'll re-star it when I beat it. (i'm playing it on the Acolyte mode, which is the easiest mode, cos i'm old and I want to beat it before MGS4 comes out cos we all know i'm not picking it up after that.)

Okay so I beat it (on Acolyte a.k.a "easy") and I think it's still 3 stars, but barely.

The combat is bliss, the boss battles are haphazard, with some feeling real good, some real bad but most feeling exactly the same (lightning fiend, fire fiend, blood lady fiend, lightning sword man and the last boss all play similarly), and the bow is complete crap.

Also the ending is short and stupid. Castlevania 1 has a better ending. NES Ninja Gaiden is in another universe.

While the fighting and melee weapons got improved in the game, nothing else did.

3 stars