Part 12: Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 - Chapter 6

Back through the Aqua Capital, where the water ways are conspicuously devoid of anything threatening or interesting, and everywhere else is what you continue to expect from Sigma 2.


Chapter 5 in NGII was very focused on the fact that Ryu could water run and do combat on the water's surface, so there were plenty of encounters here where you faced off against enemies and could either fight with water specific melee attacks, or just hang back and mow everything down with the Gatling Spear gun. This chapter gives none of that. In fact, the rest of the game actively tries to avoid doing any of that.

The reason is one that is understandable back when the 360 game came out, because the water running combat was panned by both new and experienced players. It was shallow, the moves you had on hand were very limited, and you had no standing block that you could rely on as you had to be constantly on the move to stay on the water's surface. And despite that, I still appreciated the attempt to add something like that in to mix up the player's progression through the levels and relieve any repetition, even though it was unsuccessful. With Itagaki and many others having left Team Ninja at this point, the Sigma 2 team pretty much did the one thing they felt was easiest to do: have the water running sequences be filled with nothing. They couldn't change up the level design to remove the areas with water entirely, so they simply opted to make it a very barren run through with no threats. This however meant getting rid of the Gatling Spear Gun, which was already an easier to use means of attacking enemies on water, and the Water Dragon fight as you've seen is just standing on a platform firing Sigma 2's only new projectile weapon at its face repeatedly. And outside of that fight, the cannon is completely worthless.

I always have issues with this approach to fixing a problem with a game's design. The water combat may not have been on the same level as the regular ground combat, but its purpose for being there was very clear. No game like this can consist entirely of combat rooms with nothing in between, no matter how much people like me value combat mechanics in these action games above all else. Due to lack of time, budget, or just wanting to address fan complaints as quickly as possible, the devs basically chose to gut those parts of the game and try to pretend it doesn't exist, even though it is forever part of the original game's design. There are ways water combat could've been improved, and some parts of it better explained (like the fact that holding block while water running lets you cut sharp corners that also double as dodging an attack). But the water running sections being so barren, combined with the removal of other projectile weapons and mechanics associated with them, really serves to highlight how much this approach to "fixing" a game's problems doesn't do more than putting a tiny bandage on a massive flesh wound and thinking it'll be okay.