Part 15: Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 - Chapter 8

Another Sigma 2 exclusive chapter, bringing us back to New York with some familiar faces and a contender for most improved playable character in the series.



Rachel
I'm sure you remember how fed up I was by the end of the Ninja Gaiden Black/Sigma LP with Rachel's content. Her combat was half baked and incredibly limited, with a very small selection of moves being really viable in the three pointless filler chapters that she had. Well, here I only have to play as her once, but I don't even hate it as much because Team Ninja, in one of the few actually smart things they did at this point in time, made her sufficiently more fleshed out. Yes, I like her more than Momiji. But still not as much as the final character. Rachel's still a heavy hitter, but having a proper wall run and projectile, along with less abusable quick kill moves make this a tremendous step up from what she was before.


Inferno Hammer
A fearsomely powerful two-handed warhammer.
It was fashioned by treating the head of an ancient warhammer with a graphene coating and fitting it with a new steel grip.
Though powerful when swung normally, with added centrifugal force it devastates anything unfortunate enough to be in its way. The head is forged from an exotic substance that rivals osmium for sheer density. Legend has it that it was formed when a molten piece of obsidian from a fiery inner circle of Hell plunged into the river Cocytus, quenching and crystallizing it into its current form.

Rachel's old warhammer is replaced with something that actually looks a lot closer to an actual hammer, and is as powerful as you'd expect. You no longer get the overly abusable flip over enemies head into instant decap like in Sigma 1, so this weapon's move set gets more room to flex than before. Not to mention it is the only weapon that allows for gun combo enders, more on that in the next section.


Type 666 Heavy Machine Gun
Rachel's favorite heavy machine gun.
Most would consider it unwieldy, but Rachel's slender arms are more than a match for this monster. Barrel and ammunition are stamped with an anti-demon icon called an "Elder Sign," boosting its power when used against lower-level fiends. Designed for rapid fire, it utilizes a blowback system for low recoil. An elegant, uncompromising, superbly-made firearm.

In a series where the main character uses ninja weaponry of all sorts, it's almost refreshing to play a character who's long range weapon of choice is a fucking gun, with one of the raddest names I could think of for one. It fires in rapid fire bursts, but what sets it apart is how it works in conjunction with the Inferno Hammer. At the end of certain combos pressing Circle will make Rachel perform a contextual gun action that has her doing things like shooting while flipping through the air or keeping an enemy suspended. It's a better projectile than the grappling hook in Sigma 1 by a country mile.


The Magic of Raging Aphrodite
An ancient spell for summoning a rose from the underworld.
The blood-loving roses from the hereafter spawn a whip of thorns that spins at breakneck speed, tearing nearby enemies to shreds.
The demonic roses that dance above the carnage are described as being the crimson tears of the Goddess Aphrodite in tales of old.

A simple AoE blast, and because this is Rachel we're talking about, it's just regular magic and not ninpo. It certainly has a cooler visual effect than the Blades of Ouroboros in Sigma 1. Not much else really to say, it's the only magic she's got so it exists as her only means of getting enemies off her from all angles.


Fiends

Inferno Imp Fiends
These enemies obviously showed up first in Ryu's campaign, but I felt it was fine to mention them here again since this chapter more than anything feels like the biggest attempt at a throw back to Ninja Gaiden 1. The "Inferno" part of their name comes from the fact they have a flame aura around them, but their bodies' textures are much different from anything in the first game. Regardless, they still exhibit the same behaviors in the first game that I mentioned, with the addition of some new moves. Kinda tricky to keep track of with Rachel being relatively slow, but they're still decent enemies to fight.

Bosses

Marbus
Team Ninja couldn't think of a big enough ass pull to bring back someone like Alma or Doku (though the latter had a brief reappearance in the DS game), so they settled with Marbus, who is now missing a horn after Ryu Hayabusa cut it off at the end of their last battle. His attacks have had their animations spruced up, but his overall tactics are not that much different from what they were in the first game that I don't feel like giving a bullet point breakdown of his familiar attacks. But there is one move that deserves special attention.

The most common way of opening up Marbus for damage was to bait him into doing his torpedo dive attack, as he goes through a lengthy recovery phase when it misses. However, imp demons are around and killing them, as usual, releases essence. This is actually very dangerous as Marbus can perform a charged up version of his torpedo dive by absorbing the essence. This changes it from a simple dive into a command grab that is exceptionally hard to dodge outside of doing something like a UT or other moves with heavy iFrames. I like this concept a lot, it plays around with mechanics that are typically exclusive to the player and shows that even enemies or bosses could use those same tactics against you. It's only unfortunate that this gimmick only applies to Marbus, who is a carry over from Ninja Gaiden 1, as I would've liked to see this mechanic thrown into some of the other bosses in the game. Hell, it would've been perfect for Genshin, considering the rival angle and all that.