The Dark Dragon Blade, a legendary sword that has brought destruction in ancient times have been sealed by the Dragon Lineage long ago. If the seal were ever to be broken from it, the sword would consume all of the evil of the world and give it to whoever possess it, giving them great and destructive power. Now the Hayabusa Ninja Clan, the modern day Dragon Lineage, who protect the sword have been slaughtered, their village destroyed and the Dark Dragon Blade stolen. It's now up to Ryu Hayabusa with his Dragon Sword, also another sword protected by the clan, to retrieve the Dark Dragon Blade and have his revenge for whoever's responsible for the massacre in his village. One things for sure.....Ken Hayabusa's going to be pissed when he gets back from his training.
I have to say, the storytelling has got to be the weakest part in the game, which is surprising since that's one of the series' strongest points. There seemed to be a lot of times where you would go on for a couple of chapters without the story actually advancing, they could of taken this opportunity to show what the other characters in the game were doing while Ryu was going about his business. It's a shame really, the majority of the ''main'' characters seem really underdeveloped and felt like they were thrown into the game just for the hell of it. The instruction manual overplayed some of the characters with the descriptions also, like Kureha, who only appears in the game for about 20 seconds or Gamov who appears briefly throughout the game, yet the manual makes it seem like they play important roles in the story. And Rachel's whole side story felt really weak and unnecessary, if they actually put more effort into it, as well as the main story, the game as a whole would've been a better experience. I'm not saying they should've had a story of epic proportions (like what they did with Rachel's b....anyway...), but they could've done a better job.
Once you start and get past one of the longest loading moments in the game (it never appears again when you start another game), you'll find yourself standing beside a waterfall area all to yourself. Since you won't get attacked here, this is a good place to get to know some of your moves. There's the jump button, you'll be using this a lot, especially when doing wall jumps or Flying Bird flips (similar to jumping on walls in the original NG). Then you have your projectile button for throwing or shooting various weapons like shurikens or arrows from a bow, these moves will come in handy during many times in the game so get used to them. Then there's the block button which you can use to roll around while holding it, these two moves are probably the best in the game when it comes to surviving, so learning to use them effectively is a must. You also have two buttons for the camera, one for looking around your surrounding and another to adjust the camera behind you, the camera problems don't become much of a problem if you use this a lot. The little black button is used to bring up the map of the current location you're in (if you have one), pretty helpful and quicker then having to pause and go to the map section of the menu.
And then you have two buttons for attacking with your main weapon, a normal attack and a stronger attack. You can perform combos with these buttons by inputting certain button combinations of which you'll find a list of in the weapon list menu. Each weapon will have a limited number of moves to use at first, but by upgrading them you'll get new moves for that certain weapon and also make it more stronger. By holding down the strong attack button you can charge up the weapon for a more damaging attack and even a more powerful attack if you charge with essence nearby. By charging the weapon with essence, you'll perform a special move, called Ultimate Techniques, with the weapon (they differ from weapon to weapon), most weapons have two special attacks, a ''weak'' and ''strong'' attack, and which one you'll use will depend on how much essence you've gathered up. Blue and red essence will give you the stronger attack right away while it takes a couple of yellow essences to build up to it. The overall default button layout is pretty good, every button you need to press feels like where it should be. The only time one of your fingers will feel worn out is by constantly holding down the block button. Well now that you're finished getting the hang of the moves, you're ready to charge the enemy and hack them to pieces!! Right?.....well.....
Ryu: It's time for revenge.
Ninja: Lets attack aggressively.
Ninjas: *charges*
Ryu: Oh snap...
This is basically the mind frame of all the enemies in NG, you'll quickly realize this as you go through the first chapter. The enemies in this game are very aggressive when it comes to attacking you, it won't work well if you just run up to an enemy and start mashing the buttons, there has to be some strategy involved in defeating them. Besides, there's never one enemy you can take on yourself, you always have to fight them in groups so senselessly attacking one of them isn't the smartest thing. They always surround you too, so if you're concentrating on one enemy the whole time you will be attack from either the sides or behind, or a mix of both. The key to victory in most cases is blocking, dodging and striking back when the opportunity presents itself, use this in any fight and you're almost guaranteed to win.
You'll have to contend with a variety of enemies throughout the game, almost every chapter has a new type of enemy for you to deal with. At the start you will deal with just Ninjas, but as you progress through the chapters you'll have to put up fights with such dastardly foes as the Soldier Ninja! The bastardly Bazooka Soldiers! The incredible Dragon Fiends! And the uncanny Ghost Piranha!! *gasps* *shock* Each of these enemies have different ways of attacking, so you have to approach each new enemy with a different strategy. You can't just run up to a group of soldiers because they'll just shoot wildly at you, you can't just stand in front of a Dragon Fiend and expect him to do nothing (he'll engulf your whole body and throw you away like your his *****), you can't expect to walk in the middle of a group of piranhas and surv....you get the point already. You have to figure out a way to handle each enemy and how they work or you'll just end up losing a lot of health in the process. Once you defeat an enemy, a glowing ball will float out of their bodies, this is essence. There are three different types of essence, the yellow ones are the currency of NG, the blue ones replenish some of your health and the red ones replenish your Ki power. So basically, you have to fight the enemy if you ever want any money to by useful items.
Most of the bosses in the game provide one hell of a challenge your first time through, get ready to see the Game Over screen a couple of times. The first 2 bosses will almost seem chaotic (took me 3 times until I finally defeated the chapter 2 boss), but they seem to get easier as you go on. I guess it's because you're still getting adjusted to the gameplay and fighting those bosses seem to much too early or maybe it's the lack of items/weapons/strength you have at that point, most likely a mix of both. Some bosses can be incredibly easy, like that multiple eyed tentacle freak or the fire dragon, while some can be frustratingly hard the first time, like Alma who goes crazy on you or the chapter 2 boss with the aid of those floating ninjas(?). These bosses may be hard but they aren't impossible, just like any boss in other games you have to figure out their fighting structure, weak spots and what works best against them. I think what makes them so frustrating to fight sometimes is how much damage one hit from them will take off of your life bar.
You don't just have your Dragon Sword to fight with, there's a couple of other weapons you'll find throughout the game to work with. There's a variety of weapons, each having strengths and weaknesses, light and heavy and most can be very powerful when used against certain enemies. The Dragon Sword and Kitetsu are good if you want a light weapon that attacks quickly and the Dabilahro or Warhammer are heavy when swinging around but can be powerful if used right. You can also use these heavy weapons to break open some objects and certain walls that couldn't have been destroyed before. There's also explosive shurikens and a variety of arrows for your bow that will come in handy a couple of times throughout NG, especially Chapter 9. But there's also a couple of weapons that seemed to have been thrown in just as a novelty. Like the normal shurikens, which never does any serious damage to any enemy except bats and then the nunchaku which seems to be the most useless weapon in the game, especially since you get the Vigoorian Flail a chapter or two later. And then there's the wooden sword, which has to be upgraded several times and seems pretty useless and unnecessary......or is it?
Ninja Gaiden has a total of 16 chapters, a pretty good length and will keep you busy for a while when you play for the first time. Each chapter have a variety of challenges and tasks in them, like in one chapter you have to go into a military base to destroy a tower or making your way through a city to locate a bar. At first the chapters seem like a bunch of running in one path and killing anything that pops out, but later chapters will require you to do a little exploring and puzzles (nothing complicated, press a button or place an object in something), like when you first enter the city of Tairon or when you go down into the complicated sewer system, the Aquaduct. The environments are also always changing as you progress, you start out at a ninja fortress and a few chapters later you're on a airship and even later on you end up deep underground in some ancient Egyptian style labyrinth. Needless to say, there's hardly a time where you'll see a repeat of the same looking environment again, though places like the city of Tairon repeat itself in structure a couple of times as you run through it and the underground cemetery seem rather bland, making everything look about the same.
The graphics are undoubtedly the highlight of NG, you'll realize this has soon as you begin the first chapter. When you start, you'll see Ryu in his classic blue outfit standing in a little water bank as he stares ahead to a waterfall mountain area, with little rays of sunlight peeking it's way through the trees. It gets better from there, like in chapter 3 when you're on an airship, one of the early visually impressive chapters in the game. Almost all of the rooms in that ship look really polished and clean and the small details in each area like the designs on the floor and the structure in some areas look great. There's this one area in that chapter where you have to go outside and move your way to a small section while hanging on a cord and the scenery and angle with which the camera showed it at that point blew me away when I first saw it. A bunch of dark clouds moving along the ship, you see cities below and the way the outside of the ship looked with the rest of the scene looked stunning. While there are some pretty impressive looking locations in the game, there are however some decent looking ones, like the city of Tairon. A lot of it looked rather bland as you run through the city and see the same looking buildings over and over again in most of this area. There's also nice little attention to details that you'll probably miss because they're just that small. Like the Aquaduct for example, after you go through the second door with the steps, if you switch to first person view and look at the sides of the steps you'll notice a little passageway where water flows through it.
The characters themselves are pretty impressive too, starting with Ryu himself. He has alot of detail on him and moves very fluidly whenever he does something, like when he's holding the Dragon Sword, if he's not using it for a couple of seconds he'll put the sword back into it's scabbard. Rachel herself is outfitted with.....um.....certain attention to detail, there are times in the game where she looks almost too realistic, which actually can be kinda freaky. The enemies themselves look pretty good and act rather realistic at times too. Like the cool looking ''ninja'' soldiers or the military soldiers who after shooting at you for a while will stop and actually reload their guns. When you get real close to one of the ''ninja'' soldiers they'll put away their guns and take out their plasma swords and attack you at close range. Another neat thing is how some of the enemies surround and slowly circle you, looking for a way to attack. The CGI cut scenes are just as impressive, everything is very clean looking, probably the best I've ever seen. They look really realistic at times, until you see a monster or when you see some of the over exaggerated special effects, then you come back to your senses that it's not really real.
They did a really good job with the music in the game, it matched the mood of each part and set the tone of the situation you're going through. Like at the beginning of chapter 2 when you make your way to the village and the music got all tense and dramatic, felt like something you would hear in a Jerry Bruckheimer movie. And when you go into Tairon for the first time, the music gives off a ''exploration into unknown territory'' feel as you run around the city. There are also moments in the game where there's complete silent, they did a pretty good with this and knew when to implement this in certain areas, like when you're in an underground cave and you're walking around a corner and not sure what's gonna happen next. That was pretty nice and made the whole situation more tense. The voice acting in the game was pretty good, nothing felt too corny or overacted. You can pick between the American or Japanese voices in the option menu (along with US or JPN subtitles) and in my opinion, like the US voices better. I think the American voices actually fit the characters much better in most cases, Rachel's JPN voice didn't seem to really match and I like hearing Doku's US voice because he sounds and looks like Darth Vader. The sounds of the game are nice, from the weapons clinging as they hit objects, to the sounds of the water as you walk through it, but they didn't seem to grab your attention compared to everything else in the game.
I do have a couple more problems with the game though. One of which is the camera, it's not the most annoying thing in the game but it would of been nice if they worked on it a little bit more. There are a couple of moments where the camera would just work against you, like when you're stuck in a corner and can't see who's attacking you and the camera becomes the most annoying in boss fights. Like the chapter 2 boss fight, you kept having to adjust the camera because the boss would move around so much and there's little area to move around and in the chapter 12 boss fight I kept accidentally doing wall runs because I couldn't tell where the wall is. They could of given you more camera angles to choose from instead of just the behind the character and first person views, like an overhead or a slightly above behind camera views. Another problem is how difficult it was to make Ryu swim in tight areas, there were times where he would control as if I was attempting to wrestle with an alligator, he would just end up bouncing all over the place. Then there were times where I would try to swim down but for some odd reason he would swim up and get stuck to the wall, the swimming segments had to be the most frustrating parts in the game. And finally, another problem I had is that the game just seemed to give up during the last three chapters. Everything about those chapters felt too easy compared to earlier chapters, it's like Team Ninja just got lazy....or rushed, one of the two.
Despite it's flaws, I still managed to enjoy Ninja Gaiden and it has plenty of replay value. There's the Golden Scarabs you can find hidden throughout the game and you can go through the game again to get the ones you missed. Then there's the different difficulty levels in which the enemies become much harder, see if you have the strength to get through the game this time :). And then there's the three Ninja Gaiden games (SNES Trilogy version) ''hidden'' in this game, so even after you've finished the Xbox version, you can still go back to complete the classics. Overall, it's a great challenging game and you shouldn't let the flaws get in your way of enjoying (or being frustrated with) Ninja Gaiden.
Overall Rating: 9/10