Part 2: Ninja Gaiden SIgma 2 - Chapter 1
Sky City Tokyo gets a touch up in the visual department, and we get to have a very stark contrast between the core gameplay of NG II and the creative liberties taken with Sigma 2. Also a motion comic prologue that played when you installed the game data from the disc. Remember when devs used to have their own unique install screens for PS3 games? Before Sony made it standardized with the PS4 and losing some of that personalized charm? I do.
Bosses
Buddha Statue
As I grow older I come to dislike more and more the concept of boss fights that are just giant figures that stand in the background, and you have to bait their attacks so you can attack their appendages. This dumb statue unfortunately falls into that category, and is the first of many ill advised decisions in this version. I had no need to do a move demo in video because of how absolutely dumb this fight is, but the only redeeming feature that can be said about it is that it fits with the speed of Ninja Gaiden II. Meaning if you keep the pressure up on its arms when present, the fight can be over quickly. Relatively speaking. Except it regains back almost half it's health when you nearly kill it the second time. Yeah. I fucking hate this piece of shit. And this isn't even the dumbest boss yet in this game.
Okay, so...Sigma 2 changes a lot. Compared to Sigma 1, where the most drastic changes were at the start and the latter half of the game was barely touched at all, this game is much more aggressive in its attempt to "improve" the diamond in the rough that is Ninja Gaiden II. Before even getting into the changes specific to the first chapter, some general game things need to be covered.
- The game runs at a native 720p resolution, in comparison to NGII's 585p which upscaled to 720. This sub-HD resolution was something you'd end up seeing during the early days of the 360, with big titles like Modern Warfare 1 and Halo 3 actually being upscaled. Sigma 2 makes the push to native HD resolution, no doubt possible to the PS3 having more powerful hardware, and this jump in resolution is complimented by redone visuals, which replaces Sigma 1's excess bloom with darker blacks and more saturated colors. Between the two games, I could go either way.
- NGII had the option of playing the game with auto or manual saves, which could be switched at any time, and this would change how the save statues function. In Sigma 2, the game is always in auto save mode, and the only time you get to make a manual save slot is upon chapter completion or when exiting the game. Reloading save data will take you back to the last save statue you checked at.
- Karma score and end of chapter results are removed entirely in the main game. The hit combo counter is there at least, but the game isn't gonna give you the option of playing for score except in the designated mode unlocked after finishing the game.
- The UI is totally changed from the original, blood red aesthetic to a more sleek, dark blue design. The health bar's visual design is toned down, and all menus are blue instead of red. Even the title screen is a complete color inverse to the 360 game.
- The game has an attract video that is more in line with NG Black and Sigma's, being a demonstration of actual gameplay, and if you're playing on disc you can install the game watch a motion comic of a side story that takes place just prior to the beginning of NGII. This comic is still viewable even after install.
- The game removes all blood and gore, at least from human enemies, largely so that Team Ninja could push the game more in Japan without issues regarding the liberal severing of limbs from human beings. However, these censorship changes are present in all region versions of the game, and now enemies will bleed purple mist when losing a limb. The cutscenes unfortunately don't have this, the characters don't get ripped apart the same way they do in NGII.
The first major change that should be noted is how the battles are set up. The Black Spider Ninja are still there, but the mages are not yet introduced. Instead, it's the sword and claw ninjas, and not only are their numbers reduced, but the latter represent the first sign of what has been horribly screwed up in this version. You see, when fighting the sword ninjas, they delimb and go down at a pretty acceptable rate, almost comparable to the 360 version. But the claw ninjas have a much larger health pool, higher tendency to dodge attacks, and do not delimb quite as easily. This would be fine if it was just one of these mixed in with a dozen or so weaker ones to compensate, but because of the extra resources used in rendering this game in 720 with improved visuals, you're stuck with battles that have you fighting just barely more than the average amount that was in Ninja Gaiden 1. And the only way to kill these things in any conceivably quick manner is to initiate an Izuna Drop ASAP. And it does what you'd expect it to do to enemies, but only really at this juncture in the game. As enemies get tougher, so does their defense, and then that technique doesn't become as a definitive of a kill as you'd want it to be.
Hell, you can even see it during the video, not even the Lunar's regular UT at full charge could finish off a group of claw ninjas. This is the start of what I would call Ninja Gaiden's identity crisis ever since Hayashi assumed control of Team Ninja. Ninja Gaiden II was designed to be an evolution of the predecessor's gameplay systems, in the same way that DMC3 was a major evolution of DMC1, and with that leap forward meant leaving behind the old way of thinking in designing encounters and their AI. Sigma 2 tries instead to take a much different combat system and shoehorn it into fights reminiscent of Ninja Gaiden 1, a game that received critical acclaim right off the bat. Which would be fine, if the speed and overall combo potential was scaled back to make that concept work, but it's not. So it's especially jarring in the first mission where the sword ninjas are the one enemy that feels exactly like they were in the original game, but the claw ninjas represent one of the core problems of Sigma 2.
The other major change in Sigma 2 is progression through the chapters themselves. The geometry and design of Sky City Tokyo is largely unchanged, with only one or two spots that have anything noticeablly different but it's subtle. Besides that and the reworked graphics, Sigma 2 tries to automate as much of the game outside of its combat with the assumption that pressing a button to open a door in half a second is too much of a bother for action game fans. In NGII, you could run through the game and skip most battles as you were not gated by some invisible force. Here the doors only open once the enemies are defeated, and even for ones that requried a key item (like the Cracked Card Key), those don't require you to hunt down the item. Getting those items were never much of a problem to begin with, the levels were already quite linear as they were, so this just makes your place and involvement in the world feel...I don't know, empty. I get people like myself that play character action games care most about the combat mechanics, but even someone that devoted to those systems needs at least some sort of reprieve, something to mix it up so that the repetition doesn't set in.
The other remaining changes obviously include the fact that Muramasa's shop doesn't let you upgrade weapons yet, the Dragon Sword and Lunar at Level 1 both get Izuna Drops, and of course the dumb as hell Buddha Statue that you have to fight fucking twice. There are other major changes and critiques that will come up in later chapters, so for now this is all that needed to be covered.