Joyfully tasteless like a massive fart that begins with an explosion of pure chaos, gradually receding as it fills the room with its stench, petering out into nothing but laughter and disgust. I know people get angry hairs on the backs of their necks when others compare video games to movies and use words like “auteur”, but I think it’s fair to say that Tomonobu Itagaki filled a role in the 2000s Gamerworld that was similar to that of Michael Bay’s in the the 2000s Movieworld: all stops pulled out at expense of any pretentious good taste, maximising the potential of computers to delight insane teenage boys worldwide. The inclusion of Playable Rachel in Sigma somehow finds a way to crank the dial on what was already there, allowing you to control a bikini sexbot of the classic Dead or Alive inflatable mold, strutting around The Vigoorian Empire with an iron thong up your arse that makes your walk cycle look like you shat yourself, balloon boobs flailing in wildly different directions every time you land a mechanically-sound-and-tactile Square, Square, Square, Triangle ground combo. This shit is practically gift-wrapped for a painfully horny kid on their 14th birthday, lol. Painfully, painfully awkward to be seen playing this edition, a mortifying ordeal of being known. Imagine showing the tentacle boss to your grandmother! It would fucking kill her on the spot, right? Big jets of polygonal blood spraying all over your shame. Game Over.

Still absolute mad fun to play, though. Don’t get me wrong.

sigma ma balls HAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHAH
crowd laughing
gun shot
body falls to the ground
crowd laughing harder

What if ninja gaiden was vivisected and remade into a lame port?

Ninja gaiden sigma is everything i despise in a port it understands very little about what makes the original a concise challenging experience but what's make it bad compared to the original? well its quite simple.
sigma instead of choosing to elevate the already excellent and tight foundation of ninja gaiden black instead goes back on its design choices and throws it in the fucking dumpster the game destroys 90% of the bosses alma awakend literally lacks her back hitbox and spirit doku's AI was completely butchered he seems to spasm out whenever he gets close.

The art direction and OST have taken a massive hit as well. tairon went from looking like a vaguely middle eastern village to looking like fucking london lmao the first chapter level is now set in autumn for some strange reason they also removed the waterfall in that area because ?? Tairon under alert also suffers a strange art direction choice as the skybox is bright as hell for some reason in black it was a nice early sunrise look showing the passage of time in a authentic way, and it seems they knew this as the very next chapter has the correct skybox albeit a lot darker.

They somehow managed to fuck up the excellent pacing of black as well for some reason they decided to throw in random Rachel chapters during the game in an extremely awkward manner I'll be brief on Rachel as there's not a ton to say about her (and it seems the developers thought this as they gave her half a move set) but frankly her inclusion here fucking blows Rachel in the story is a joke character one who jobs endlessly to basic bitch enemies and just sort of exists the new chapters don't help with this as the story placement of them is extremely boring and brief much like her character.

The pacing in the ryu levels is also butchered quite a bit in a very strange decision the entire game just lacks puzzles for some unknown reason the only puzzle I noticed left was the monk safe and that was a simple counting puzzle there's no pyramid puzzle nothing its gone for absolutely no reason other then they thought casuals would get filtered by them (they're right).

Now you would think that at the very least the new additions would be very welcome to ninja gaiden right? wrong. The new weapon the dragon claw and tiger fang is an absolute joke of a weapon the recovery on it is extremely poor and it seems like the game doesn't know how to handle it because you end up whiffing a ton of hits for absolutely no reason now this might be a master collection issue (as that port alone has thousands of them) but it seems like it's also in sigma as they fixed nothing about the game in the master collection.

One of the new additions/QOL is also quick heals now you would probably think that this is a welcome change? absolutely not quick heals undermines the entire point of potions and elixirs, They could turn the entire tide of a fight in a single move and you were encouraged to consume them in small amounts as the game barely gave you any and if you consumed them foolheartedly you would have to restock and that would cut into your essence supply that you would be better off spending on weapon upgrades it was a very well designed system and it was a good balancing act but now because the game also gives you an abundance of elixirs (gates of hell literally has a elixir after every room) you end up with more then enough essence to spend on upgrades and occasionally restocking this undermines the entire balancing act.

Also shout out to the composer completely butchering his tracks here they sound way too quiet and lack any punch the original OST had oh and they didn't bother changing the FMV music so you can hear the original alma awakened track before it transitions to that absolute dumpster fire of a remix.

It is absolutely incredible that team ninja even considers this version a replacement for the original two due in no part to them completely losing the masters for black and vanilla and its frankly an insult that this version was even considered acceptable by anyone could itagaki have saved this port? maybe but lets not deal in hypotheticals in the end sigma is an absolute mess and a extreme downgrade from the classic title.

Having been trying out the higher difficulties on this version I have to lower by half a star. If you can beat Master Ninja on the PS3 with THAT controller you are a gaming god. That shit is just not made for Ninja Gaiden. The PS3 controller was already a big piece of crap on release but rotate-Y is going to shred your analog stick.

Also it's interesting how almost every new addition to Sigma is terrible on the enemy front. There's a second, terrible Dynamo fight, a Gamov fight that sucks, motorcycle guys, and fucking mermen. It's no wonder that the director of Sigma would direct NG3 because he is bereft of any good ideas.

A sidestep rather than the step backwards Sigma 2 is to NG2. Most changes are admissible. Not necessary but not unwelcome either. Some arenas are different, there's some extra fiend challenges, some areas & encounters have new formations & enemies... A few puzzles get simplified and a mini boss or two is added or reworked. But Rachel missions honestly suck, it's not even half has fun as Ryu with the war hammer, only upside is some aren't too long. Mission mode is also switched up a bit.

Given that NGB is a great game to replay on higher difficulties to see new types of enemies, attacks, changes in exploration... it's not the worst to play like a remixed version of it. And includes some nice additions like dual katanas but overall so much is passable or unwanted that it ends up not as good. Worse, while it's presented nowadays as the definitive edition of NG, it doesn't fix some problems NGB had but instead creates new ones of its own.

But it still has the core gameplay and feels at least like 75% of the main game; it's not a terrible thing to start with or even try out despite having played black.

É desafiador na medida certa e os combos são bem satisfatórios de se fazer, sem contar o parkour que é bem legal.

Mas sem dúvidas é o jogo que tem os pior controle de câmera que existe. Ela se embanana toda durante os combates, parece que você tá lutando bêbado. As mecânicas embaixo d'água são travadas e o controle do arco e flecha no modo mira é tenebroso.

O enredo é bem legal e entrega o mínimo que se espera de um hack n' slash.

Pretty good fun that is bogged down by some annoying bullshit enemies and fairly frustrating camera control. Yet somehow despite my issues I still finished the game with a Head Ninja rank. I rather enjoyed the music and visual flair, as well as the openness of Tairon and how almost Metroidvania-y it could be at times. I found the boss fights particularly to be really fun too, but most of them were too easy (I HATED those worm fights though, especially Magma Worm).

I also enjoyed Rachel's missions. Her playstyle was fun and distinct enough from Ryu's to be a nice break, but I wish they a bit longer and that she had more to do plot-wise.

Overall, I had a pretty nice time. I want to try playing NGB sometime in the future though to see if I end up enjoying that more.

(Played the PC version that isn’t exactly the same as Sigma as far as I know)

The first time you take control you are already in a battle. No button prompts, no combos explained, just smash the controller, play, discover, have fun. If somebody told me they did the Mario 64 thing of not developing a proper game until the main character felt amazing to play in an empty box I would believe it. This is so playful that, despite feeling designed to be able to go through with your first weapon only, they throw like a dozen of them more, why not, more toys.

There is no good action game with a moveset only, and the first 3 chapters of the game make sure to demonstrate how to make a top action game. The first common enemies are ninjas resembling Ryu, and will hunt his ass at every chance, actively and reactively. Not only will the enemies keep retaliating, but the surroundings will raise the tension too. In here constrained spaces have a special meaning, since yes, you are surrounded with deadly ninjas, but you are a ninja yourself, use that wall on your back and jump on it, run on it, redefine 3D action. And it doesn’t stop there, enemies won’t be waiting sitting, turning a corner could be a potential trap with a guy backflipping his sword towards your neck. The game even manages to play with your expectations, there is a section in chapter 3 where after killing some dudes from a distance you have to go where they were totally defenseless, with a single potential hit sending you to the void.

What is in chapter 4 and beyond then? The game losing inspiration. As new enemies are needed to keep the action fresh, ideas struggle. The most conventional enemies that supposed a big threat not long ago begin to be dispatched easily as a routine, expected after fighting the same guys a hundred times and with less challenging environments in every iteration. Worse than that, some demons seem to be incapable of holding up with Ryu’s incredible speed.

But when the game totally runs out of gas is at the middle of chapter 7. In here there is a scene where Ryu accidentally activates a curse. We see the dead rising, really big zombies accompanied by really big weapons. So, what is the defining characteristic of these guys that want to kill our lightspeed moving character so bad? That they move slowly. Like really slow, the slowest enemy that I can think of in any action game ever. It would pose some threat if you had to fight like surrounded by 10 of them I guess, but since this is the only time in the game where you can relax and prepare as many fully charged attacks as you want, Ryu’s deadliest technique, they just walk very slowly towards their death. Fortunately, after many endless fights with those guys, they stop appearing, but it has been made evident that inspiration is totally gone.

For the remaining 12 chapters, apart from bosses that already ranged from bad to very bad, the game introduces: bad first person shooting sections, bad water sections and even a bad 3D Zelda inspired dungeon gets its place too. Meanwhile some of the best new enemies are, new versions of old enemies but weaker? The best thing that can be said about the new things that keep being added desperately is that they don’t last too long, but a continuous sequence of the same lack of inspiration ends up tiring the same way.

I like how the game moves, a lot. I'm even thinking right now of playing again when I know that I will be let down after a few minutes. I just wish that the game constructed around such a character was just as good.