I had previously gave this game 5 star rating prior to making my Backloggd account. That was a gigantic mistake after playing this and many other games this past weekend. The lack of health items kind of annoyed and I played other Ninja Gaiden games on hard difficulty and this one just kind of had cheap tricks to make it more difficult. I hate how based on the damage you took how little your health would be even after health upgrades.

Ryu seemed like a shadow of his former self and kept thinking if this was actually a prequel, but it was not. A seasoned veteran with dealing with fiends and crazy people taking over the world is nothing new to this man, but he did not act at all like he would in the prior games and had me shaking my head through several cutscenes. Troy Baker, you better watch yourself.

Close to the end you get to fight the unfair harder enemies and are ridiculously spongey unless you spam ultimate techniques if they give you a few seconds to even charge up. Was stuck at one of the later boss fights because I had decided to level up some of the other weapons added in the "Razor's Edge" version, but apparently they made them weaker, atleast in this boss fight. I had to use my underleveled Jiranmaru which ended up doing more damage than my other "stronger" weapons!

I will be playing Yaiba soon to finish off these games and I hope it will be more enjoyable than this was. What was wrong with the younger me?! Wish I could go back in time and slap myself silly! Despite it all I really want a new installment, I have been begging for one for so long that I even had a dream about a new Ninja Gaiden game! I am just gonna pretend this is just a noncanon spinoff to the other two. Loved playing as Ayane and wished they would of added Momiji stages like Sigma 2. It scratches the itch, but does more harm than good.

NG3 RE ended up being way better than I expected, but it's still really mediocre in most areas.

The one area where it definitely isn't mediocre though, is the story, because it's just plain terrible. To start with, Ryu feels like a completely different character here. NG3 is torn between portraying him as this nice guy who is admired by his village and an assassin, slaying any human he meets without any remorse. The problem with this is that it's impossible to get behind the latter portrayal when in the prior games, about 90% of the enemies he killed were demons. It's also said by Muramasa that the Dragon Sword only has the ability to kill evil creatures, so the plot point about Ryu being cursed by all the people he has killed just ends up making no sense. Also, Troy Baker just does not fit the character, he makes Ryu sound like any average guy and for a character that's constantly described as this inhuman badass, it just feels jarring. Then there's Canna, who is a plot device written in the most generic and cringeworthy way possible and I couldn't take any scene with her seriously. The only real highlight of the plot is Regent, I think he's the only character in the series to have some personality, and while he is very entertaining to watch, he's not entertaining enough to justify what a muddled, overly serious mess of a plot this game has.

Atleast the combat is still fun, all the weapons from NG2 make a return here besides the flail and tonfa and this time, they have a ton of moves for you to play around with so it never gets old. The new steel on bone mechanic is pretty cool, in RE, it works as a counter where you press heavy attack as the enemy is glowing red to cut them down. It's more of a reactionary, somewhat defensive tool which is cool to see after how offensive based NG2 was, and the sound design for it is extremely crunchy and satisfying, so it's a welcome addition. My favourite part though, is probably the fact that the bow has infinite arrows and has auto aim so the sections where you have to use it are fun for once. RE brings back purchasable upgrades but since there is no essence in 3, RE instead uses karma as currency which is a neat change since it means how much karma you get will be tied to how good you are performing. It also means that the end of chapter ratings actually serve a purpose now.

So yeah, I like the combat, but the one thing that drags it down for me is the enemy variety, of which there is none. You'll be fighting generic soldier type enemies for most of your adventure, and when you're not, you're usually fighting enemies ripped straight out of the previous games. It gets pretty old. The environments are equally bland, and I'll probably forget every level in a few days. The bosses are pretty hit and miss here, with the worst one either being the Dinosaur who has way too much health or the final boss which is the definition of anticlimactic since you spend half the fight just fighting the same enemies you've been fighting for the last 3 hours as a meter builds up and it just takes forever.

Then there's other stuff that just feels unnecessary, like the occasional walking segment or the climbing QTEs. Also, I wish the curse played a bigger role in the gameplay, in RE, all it does is have Ryu fight enemies in this demon realm. It's not really much of a curse if all it does is have Ryu doing what he's best at is it?

The OST also sucks and I can't recall a single theme from this game besides the menu one.

Overall, I wouldn't call NG3 RE a bad game, and I did enjoy parts of it. However, out of the 3 games, this one has the worst story, soundtrack, level design and enemy variety. Throughout the 7 hours that I spent playing this game, I couldn't stop feeling like I wished I was playing NG2 instead since that game, for all its flaws, atleast knew what it wanted to be.

So this trilogy gets worse with every game, huh

At face value it's more of the same, and the moment to moment combat is still as satisfying and visceral as before, thanks to cool animations and a crunchy sound direction

Then you continue playing and realize: NG3 is a bit too much. You enter an arena, then a wave of enemies spawn out of nowhere. Then another. Then there's a good chance there's another. And enemies are damage sponges that keep blocking and dodging, I don't know why they have so much health, and some enemies are kind of aggravating.

Bosses are either a test of resistance with their enormous health bars, or you just bumble your way to victory through what feels like blind luck. Not a particularly great series for boss fights anyway, but here it feels truly absurd. In other games, you could eventually find a strategy, even a cheesy one. Here, it doesn't feel consistent, ever.

Then the boneheaded decision of removing health items, you can only heal using your magic meter, which replenishes sloooowly... and every time you take damage, you health bar actually shrinks, it fucking shrinks. So what happens is, you begin the level with a big bar, then reach the boss with a tiny one. To add insult to injury, your health bar actually gets pretty damn massive through upgrades, but it doesn't matter because it will shrink.

Did I mention that magic only replenishes by dealing/taking damage, and the bar is a binary thing that only allows casting magic if it's full? Gaming design is my passion.

After a while, I just bumped the game to easy. I did the same with NG1 tbf, but in that game, difficulty felt natural and skill-based, and easy mode just gave me a safety net (more healing items, basically). In NG3, easy mode actually auto-blocks, so it's more of a crutch lol

The story is some nonsensical stupidity that actually takes itself seriously.

I've enjoyed myself mostly on the back of the still immensely satisfying combat system, this series is fantastic as a power fantasy thing, but I'll be honest, I'm not entirely sure if I actually like Ninja Gaiden 3. The thought of replaying this is completely exhausting to me, and by the end of the game, I just wanted to be done already.

Disappointment...
Less chapters
less magic
and worst final boss
Unbalanced difficulty
and the quick-time event is so easy, Literally press any button and you'll success, it doesn't matter what button shown in the screen

and they removed heal items, and changed SP System, I don't have problem with but the items.... WHY?

Unlike Sigma 2, here you need to collect golden scarabs to get weapons and magic... Why? if you don't collect them you will end the game with only Three weapons and two magics.
yeah the gameplay kinda good but still with those things ruin the fun of the game.

Also, they fix the camera which is something good..

favorite of the trilogy. get far more character interaction, gameplay's tilted back towards sigma 1 difficulty with all the style and flow of 2, qte's are surprisingly a nice touch in this game after the reduction from 3 to razor's edge.

main complaints:
- all of the ch7 boss stuff, except for regent. will mention his double/triple projectile grab is kinda bull
- some of ryu's character feels like a different person than we got in 1 and 2. not against him talking more but what he says and does somewhat counteracts the image players have come to know him by

So in the first chapter, there's a spider tank for a midboss. No matter what I do, I can't seem to effectively beat him, or even make a dent. There's too much shit to pay attention to: cannons, rockets, machine guns, flamethrowers, and EMPs. I go online to see if other people had similar problems, and I find someone who has a strategy that feels more like exploiting the game's mechanics, rather than using what you know to come out on top in a satisfying battle. Then, in the next chapter, I get to the first fight with the mages, and let me tell you, I have NO idea how to handle these fuckers. Their Sonic Colors Cube(TM) magic deflects nearly all of my attacks, and their grabs suck both my health and my Ki. Just like last time, I go online and see if other people are experiencing the same frustrations I am. Yup, it's not just me. Everyone hates this shit.

It's just balls-to-the-walls action, constant sensory overload. There's no room to breathe here, just going from one combat arena to the next, fight a wave of 40 enemies only to move on to another wave of 40 enemies in the room next door. Nothing that needs explaining is properly explained, like the "steel-on-bone" system. The tutorials are incessantly telling you to push the "look, go here you dumb fuck" button, but it's not a good idea to turn those tutorials off because it'll hide the QTE prompts as well. Good luck guessing what buttons you're supposed to push in your constant life-or-death scenarios!

Remember the "lasting damage" system from Ninja Gaiden 2? It's still in this game, but somehow worse! The lasting damage portion no longer stays visible. As you progress through the chapter, you'll notice your health bar getting shorter, and shorter, and shorter still. You'll then come to realize another funny quirk about this game: There are no healing items whatsoever. The only way to recharge your health is to meditate, which is basically suicide to do mid-battle, and it spends your Ki. It feels kinda insulting that you unlock the ability to buy health extensions for collecting the golden scarabs in this game. Your health is never going to be full long enough for those to feel meaningful. Speaking of Ki, it's attached to a one-time use meter! If it's not full, you can't use ninpos. No way to extend it either! Does this sound like a well-designed experience to you? (Don't answer that.)

I have no fucking idea what's going on with the story. Why is Ryu working with the government? Why do I have an MGS-esque team of people tuned into my earpiece at all times? The game keeps droning on about Ryu being a killing machine, like it's some profound moral conflict, but are you just expected to not fight back against the thousands of enemies who want you dead? And then the story just starts going off the deep end with shit like mutants and dinosaurs, and it desperately wants you to take it seriously despite that.

It's hard to describe what compelled me to see this game through in the first place. Sometimes I want to know precisely what causes a series' downfall, and experience it firsthand. I don't go into games like this just to hate on them; Usually I try to find the bright side! This shit was just too much for me though. Here's my word of advice to you, if you've made it this far; Just go play Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. Fantastic action game where you play as a cyborg ninja struggling with inner conflict about being a killing machine. The big difference is that MGR is actually fun, and knows not to take itself too seriously.

When you have a game as counterintuitive to the franchise it hails from as Ninja Gaiden 3, a game that, along with the departure of its original director, took away most of the first two games' focus on crushingly difficult battles with multiple weapons, and instead put an emphasis on a melodramatic story, plodding walking segments, quick-time events, and an attempt on getting new players into the door for the third entry of a franchise, there comes a natural desire to want to fix it. Enter, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge. How do you go about correcting the numerous issues of a game that you could essentially describe as "Ninja Gaiden for people who hate Ninja Gaiden"?

Well, because you're Team Ninja, you start by shooting yourself in the foot. For some ungodly reason, Razor's Edge was announced at E3 2011, then-exclusively for the Wii U. For the uninitiated, vanilla Ninja Gaiden 3 released in MARCH OF 2012. Essentially telling the majority of your fanbase that they were getting a shitass doodoo version of the game you were making at launch, while having an enhanced edition getting ready to go, and making sure it was exclusively going to be released on the platform least likely to have people wanting to play these games at all, is a pants-on-head stupid decision that I'm stunned made it as far up the corporate ladder as it did. Maybe NG3RE started out as just a basic bitch Wii U port with a quirky subtitle and small added content, akin to Batman Arkham City and Mass Effect 3, but that sure wasn't the case by the time it finally launched. It also came out a few months later on 360 and PS3, but physical copies were pretty limited, and there was no doubt at least a good chunk of the playerbase that already thought the damage was done. But, coming at this from the perspective of someone who's only playing RE over a decade past its initial release with the rest of the 3D NGs under my belt, where do I stand on it?

Well, it's definitely the best version of Ninja Gaiden 3.

All jokes aside, in a similar vein to DmC Definitive Edition, there's a genuine attempt within NG3RE to fix some of those issues, and that's commendable without a doubt. Off the top of my head, there's the return of Dismemberment from Ninja Gaiden 2 to compliment the Obliteration Techniques , and it's still a satisfying technique to pull off. The weird ass Steel On Bone mechanic is reworked to be a context sensitive counter, and it certainly feels more consistant and satisfying than whatever was going on with it in the original version. Multiple enemy types are added to the game, mostly lifted from Ninja Gaiden 2. A few of that game's weapons also return, as do the series' staple Golden Scarabs. You can tell that both of these inclusions, nice as they are, were kind of shoehorned into the game though, with scarabs just kind of littered throughout the environment, and collecting them being how you unlock the weapons, which is neat. Ultimate techniques are back, too, and Karma's been reworked into a currency you can actually buy upgrades with at the tap of a button, which I'm totally down for! I'll forever miss the essence charge for UTs, but having NG3 allow the player to actually upgrade their moveset and have more than a singular weapon across the whole game unless you bought the later-released DLC is at least a step forward from vanilla NG3 in that regard.

Ninpo's gone from a singular brainless screen-clearing nuke that fully heals you, back to the standard of having multiple "Lock on to an enemy or two and nuke them", which now comes with the bonus of healing if it hits anyone, which is certainly a step up from the original. The terrible curse sections of the original are also changed; from having Ryu effectively limp around and staggeredly swing at enemies, they're now another dedicated combat section to fight a few dozen enemies. I still think making Ryu's curse a Devil Trigger would've been a better way of going about it, but it's better than nothing, I guess. Boss health bars are also included, which is honestly more baffling that such a basic feature wasn't there to begin with, but I guess that's a reinclusion to praise 3RE for, so good job, guys...

There's also been a reduction of QTEs, though I really wish they weren't there at all. While the terrible wallclimbing sections are still around and as unfun as ever, the equally insulting rope climbing QTEs are abolished completely. The game's actually a fair bit harder, even on normal mode. Sadly it's not always for the better, sometimes it felt pretty bullshit. Of particular note is the pair of bonus stages having you fight three suped up enemies at once who will proceed to gangbang you without remorse, the absolute ballache that is the Fiend Ryu battle that's best cheesed with the Eclipse Scythe's 360-heavy and a bit of luck, and the final boss's opening phase is massively extended from the original version of the game. In a fight that was already mostly QTEs and a boring fight against mooks to fill up your Ninpo for a cinematic super, the ninpo meter now fills at the speed of molasses, making for an even worse version of an already lame fight with how much more aggrivating it is now. It singlehandedly turns that scene from a moment I barely remembered at all after turning the game off, into one that had me calling it a night and hitting the hay because I was so annoyed. I mean, maybe you can say it's more engaging than that boring ass shitshow that was the vanilla version, but I'd also not consider being more frustrated with the game an overall win.

In Ninja Gaiden rerelease fashion, there's also playable inclusions of the DOA girls; Ayane, Momiji and Kasumi making up the roster this time, with Ayane getting 2 mandatory stages that serve to similarly break the pace of the original game like the Sigma releases' female stages did unfortunately. Still, in a game like NG3 that already had pacing problems out the ass, it's strangely less of a hinderance than in the Sigma releases of 1 and 2, so make of that what you will. All three females are actually fully playable across every stage in the game, and you have no idea how much that both relieves and upsets me. In a world where Bayonetta 2 had entire characters locked into its baren multiplayer, and Devil May Cry 5 only had a single stage where all 3 main characters were selectible, the fact that Ninja Gaiden 3 is the only major action game I can think of that has a full per-level character select is baffling to me. But hey, that's a great thing to include! It should absolutely be a standard across the entire genre.

To be blunt though, I think most of Ninja Gaiden 3's issues are fundamental due to its core opposition to being what Ninja Gaiden had established itself as, like I elaborated on above. Barring the removal of the terrible scene of Ryu slaughtering a surrendered soldier at the beginning of the game, the focus on a melodramatic story and more cinematic approach remains a 12-tonne weight around the ankles of the game as a whole. It's still a much less fun and memorable game than its predecessors; even with the scant glimer of Ninja Gaiden's usual kinetic and frantic "kill or be killed" combat underneath everything 3 tries to heap onto it, no amount of additions and revisions are going to get rid of shit like the presence of QTEs in a series that never needed them prior, the replay-killing and pace breaking segments littered throughout, or some of those bosses. Seriously, between the dull chopper, the boring giant statue you fight with Momiji, the plane-tank on the airstrip, the aforementioned extended final boss, or that fucking T-Rex, I genuinely don't know what they were thinking. The Regent Of The Mask and Fiend Ryu, horseshit hard as he is, are the only things holding up the worst boss lineup of a series that's already among the weaker lot of the genre in terms of them.

It's commendable and impressive to see an attempt to fix NG3 at all, but it's not just a matter of it being too little, too late. It's also a matter of the only ways Team Ninja tried to fix the game up being to shove a few doodads from Ninja Gaiden 2 in there, putting some plasters of a couple of the game's bullet wounds, and then just kinda kicking it out the door from there. Of course, I get that lower budgets and time constraints probably meant that we couldn't get any sick new weapons, especially given the base game literally only had a single weapon with everything unlocked from the getgo, but the inclusion of all the reused content makes the game feel like little more than a Ninja Gaiden 2 level pack at best. Its highs aren't nearly as high as the badshit insanity that is NG2, and its low points... I mean, the worst bosses in 2 is about on par with the lion's share of 3's, but those high points at least outweigh the lows in the case of 2; 3RE doesn't have quite that much luck.

I guess I can say Razor's Edge is better than Sigma 2? Even if not by much; both games left me feeling bored, but I at least had to engage my fucking brain at points through Razor's Edge. I was annoyed by a ton of shit decisions that carried over or were made worse than in the original, but I wasn't falling asleep like Sigma 2 had me at various point. But that's also not a very high bar to get across, and the last stretch of 3RE hade me genuinely unsure of which game I'd enjoyed less. 3RE isn't as boring as a DMC2 or NGS2, nor as outright dogshit as stuff like Ultra Age, RWBY: Grimm Eclipse, or, well, vanilla Ninja Gaiden 3. It feels like it exists in the same space as the Bayonetta sequels, where there's one step forward and two steps back across the board and sits as a below-average to average at best mush. Who knows, maybe the higher difficulties and Ninja Trials will turn my opinion less sour when the time comes, but then I also think about how much of a drag some of those bosses would be on higher difficulties too. It's an unfortunate case of those lows really sticking out in my mind when NG3 comes up, and god knows I got other games to play, with bosses that probably aren't as bad as that fucker.

No matter how you slice it, Ninja Gaiden 3 is, at its core, a completely forgettable entry in the series at best, and a spit in the face to what the series always represented at worst, and Razor's Edge, valiant an attempt as it is, can only do so much. It really sucks that this is how Team Ninja's time with their signature series would go out on for a decade and counting, but that's just how it is sometimes. A for effort, participation ribbons all around, but you can only polish a turd so much, and Ninja Gaiden 3 is a game with too many underlying core issues for me to be able to sing the praises of RE. I certainly hope Ryu comes back to the spotlight sooner or later; I'm sure the criticism NG3 earned over the years has made Team Ninja aware of what to do and not do for a potential next entry, mostly in regards to the do nots from director Yosuke Hayashi's statement about how NG3 was "a Japanese hamburger for the West". Hell, if the things I've heard about both Nioh games and Stranger In Paradise are anything to go by, they can still make plenty satisfying combat systems, regardless of their slight genre changing from the traditional DMC inspired styles.

Devil May Cry 5 showed that there's still a plenty huge market for technical action titles. Now, in a world near 5 years on from the release of DMC5, where Bayonetta and No More Heroes' third entries were both somewhat disappointing for their own reasons, Platinum Games' future seems somewhat up in the air with Hideki Kamiya's departure, God Of War dug its heels firmly into the "Over-the-shoulder walk-n-talk journalist bait" sandpit, and some of the best entries the genre has seen that don't carry a Capcom logo being made on a much smaller scale like Assault Spy and Hi-Fi Rush, I dare say there's no better time for Ryu to polish off his katana and get back to Izuna Dropping motherfuckers into gorey pavement splats once more like he never even left, in the true sequel Ninja Gaiden Black and 2 deserve. But, the best we can do is wait until... probably a couple years after whenever the hell Rise Of The Ronin comes out.

IDK maybe I'll subject myself to Yaiba: NGZ in the meantime so I can write up a piece about how much I can't believe Keiji "CoNFTMan" Inafune killed Ninja Gaiden after almost doing the same to Devil May Cry. I just think I need a break from below average Ninja Gaiden for a while.

despite the complete overhaul done to right its wrongs, razors edge will forever be overshadowed by the disastrous status of its roots. which, is an absolute shame! because ng3:re is perhaps the most underappreciated action game from a beloved franchise. it is upright insane how only 15% of people owning the game have finished the "normal" difficulty alone, clearly people are extremely intolerant to give this game another chance, or move beyond the stigma that everyone constantly brings about the inferior version. like, okay, its definitely not as eloquent as the previous titles, it definitely plays into a lot of 7th gen tropes, but, it still stands out from the crowd for the way it implements it into the gameplay, especially when the quick time events are incorporated in such a way that it doesnt feel distracting during the combat definitely reminds me of god of war a lot. the steel on bone mechanic is such a satisfying, gnarly move to pull off during combat as the body splices in half really makes you quiver your feet like a little girl! eeeeek!
anyways, from all the pc ports weve got. this is the best one from the bunch, unfortunately we dont have clan battles, 1v1 and co-op arena because they decided to port these games without the multiplayer included. either way, its very much a serviceable effort for an underappreciated classic. by the way, this game is seriously the most ruthless one out of the trilogy when it comes to its combat, ive never struggled this much in my life, ninja gaiden 2 really comes off easier compared to this! and the way enemies constantly block really makes the game a tough nut to crack. . . dont listen to all the blind hate! give this one a go.
mask of the regent is one iconic character too!

Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge delivers brutally fast and bloody hack-and-slash action. Combat is visceral and demanding, requiring precise timing and quick reflexes to conquer unrelenting waves of enemies. Razor's Edge improves on the original release with additional characters, weapons, and a less frustrating difficulty curve. However, the level design remains occasionally linear and the story is unremarkable. If pure, challenging combat is your priority, Razor's Edge delivers a satisfyingly difficult experience.

As always, playing as Ryu Hayabusa is a treat and the combat feels great. I like the new Steel on Bone mechanic too and aside from the final boss the bosses are generally fun to fight and don't feel too unfair. The story's lame but it's not like the stories of the other games were anything to write home about either. The cinematic walking segments could certainly be cut out at no detriment to the game though and there are a bit too many QTEs. Would've been nice to get a new weapon or two to try but I always just end up using the dragon sword anyways so I guess it's okay. Overall though it's probably the most enjoyable NG for me when compared to 1's archaic platforming and puzzles and 2's godawful bosses and general feeling of being unfinished.

The gameplay againts normal enemies is fun. The rest is not.

Level design is boring and the usual scenarios, Paris, a desert, a jungle and such.

ALL bosses are absolute trash, I will not remember then in 2 weeks.

If this is an improvement over the original I don't want to know what's on that game.