Leaving aside the fact that my previous reviews Itagaki's Ninja Gaiden 2 and WET were the result of drunken nights and carousing, I still have a genuine interest in how some video games confidently carry a "Vulgar" aesthetic in times where the masses concentrate on photorealism, pixel art or cutewholesomethang (maybe?)
Let's also leave aside the fact that for video games, exploitation, in every sense of the word, is like a lung.

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Both Itagaki's ninja gaiden and WET have the will to inherit the most vulgar and savage aesthetics of Asian exploitation cinema, and its derivatives, only one does it passively and the other seems to be desperately looking for it, like comparing Chang Cheh vs Tarantino.
God forgive me.

Itagaki's ninja gaiden is at its core, in spirit more like the films it wants to be a playable response to -let's say Chang Cheh's cinema-, Ninja Gaiden is a wild, aggressive product for the player, who doesn't really care in excess for pleasing everyone and that guards its greatness in deep places that not everyone is willing to reach, although visually it is everything that at the beginning of the HD era and the great recession was asked of an AAA; it relies on clean, powerful imagery, a hyper-stylized plastic sense with attention to toned bodies, fluids, fabrics and movement, and had a strong cinematic component.
instead, WET is more like a Tarantino movie. Not like it stays in an egofalocentric pastiche that depends on the ignorance or incuriosity of people like Kill Bill was, but although it hurts me the reality is that WET has a -great- very interesting action premise that is tamed by a worthy planning of an AAA or study budget-at best-where the epidermal is the substance. Littering the already-suffering 30-frame image full of jagged edges and blurriness with burnt filters, stock sounds, and transitions that attempt to emulate a Grindhouse experience is certainly daring for a game whose playable core is efficiency and reflexes. the result pushes the game to exist as a short, cheap and unhygienic party, but very enjoyable, which unlike Tarantino does have a somewhat vulgar rebellious spirit.
Not that good as NGII, but hey.

Pretty sure this game is what cocaine feels like. It just kinda throws shit at you not caring if it actually works or not and I kinda love it for it. When it just lets you fight dudes it’s so much fun, but it gets a little carried away with things you can’t really counter. Anytime I saw the ninjas that throw incendiary shurikens at you I’d just get upset, same with the skull worms. But the combat feels good enough that those annoyances just kinda fade away as soon as you get to start swinging a fucking demon scythe at dudes. Every single boss outside of the final one was kind of a joke, after a certain point I was able to beat them all by just spamming Y with the scythe. The story was basically nothing but I wasn’t expecting different so who really cares tbh. The dismemberment system was actually a really neat addition, seeing fiends throw other fiends’ body parts at me was really cool.

I never beat the first Ninja Gaiden due to its insane difficulty. I wanted to very badly, but no matter how much I tried I failed in the end. Thankfully NG2 is a bit more forgiving on the easy setting, but newcomers will never make it past the first level. The game’s story is nothing special and feels like a rehash at best. You have to save the world from the Arch Fiends taking over the world and destroying so you have to hunt them down one by one. The gameplay is essentially the same as NG1. You have light and heavy attacks along with projectile weapons that you can charge. The game has many more weapons and Ninpo scrolls to use. Weapons range from scythes, tonfas, flails, and even staffs. All the weapons are great and you can upgrade them for up to three levels and after the enemies get too strong for that weapon you’ll never use it again.


The Ninpo magic is useful for enemies, but useless on bosses since it doesn’t do any damage. They can be used to cripple enemies and finish them off with a finishing move. There are a lot of new moves in the game yet they are repeated far too often. You can hack enemies apart into a bunch of pieces and continue to hack them up for overkill bonuses. While you rack up your Karma score you can also buy items from the Masamusa shops which are generously spread throughout the levels and the same goes for save points. I never found the game unfair with checkpoints or saves. Once you die at a boss you start right there in front of the boss again so this makes things less frustrating. Another cool element is being able to run on top of the water. You can fight enemies this way as well and just adds to the awesome ninja feel to the game. I also found the controls less responsive than the first game and also a bit sluggish. You’ll try to hit an enemy, but they’ll back away and hit you but you’re stuck in an animation that you can’t back out of. This isn’t a huge issue but it’s still there. Another problem is the camera which is terrible. Instead of following Ryu it’ll always stay in one spot so enemies are coming at you blindly. While this also isn’t a huge issue it doesn’t make things better.


Throughout each level is a Test of Valor portal which has you killing as many enemies in the room as you can and rewarding you. These get extremely hard then super easy. The game also looks amazing. While it’s not Assassin’s Creed or Gears of War amazing it looks astounding with awesome lighting, high res textures, realistic physics and what have you. Another problem is that the game is insanely linear with literally only one straight path to go on. this makes fighting a bit cramped sometimes but overall isn’t a huge issue. A lot of people will have the biggest problem with the difficulty. While it’s tolerable on easy you’ll never beat normal or, god forbid, hard.


What makes the game so hard are the limited healing items, some cheap enemies, and the sluggish controls. You never really feel powerful enough no matter what weapons you get. I really hated this and is the most disappointing part of the game. There are also times where the frame rate will chug when there are tons of enemies on-screen. This makes those sections even more annoying.

The game has lots of gore, sexy women, cool weapons, and magic, a long campaign, leaderboards, amazing visuals, but it falls down some with sluggish controls, a bad camera, and insane difficulty. If you loved NG1 you’re going to have a blast here, but if the first game made you feel standoffish then pick NG2 up because you’ll be able to at least beat the game.

For better or for worse there is no other game like Ninja Gaiden 2. Tomonobu Itagaki, the game director,is famous for being kinda of a rockstar, doing what he thinks is cool even going against standard convetions to create games that are challenging and are not afraid to punish the player hubris.

This game is Itagaki at its most pure.
Incredibly fast paced with hordes of incredibly aggressive enemies that never give you time to breath.
Section with respawning soldier that shower you with rockets just like in a NES games and arenas full of neverending ninjas.

If you want to survive you'll need to be even more aggressive and master the combat system, knowing when to chain iframes to maintain your offense, when to use special execution, called Obliteration Techniques, to kill your foes fast and efficiently.

Itakagi at its finest is not always a good thing tho. Glitches and input drops are frequent, some section, enemies and bosses are infuriating and the game is not afraid to be a bit unfair at times and push you to your limits. And yet all of this flaws don't manage to bring the fantastic combat down.

Nothing will ever top the level of adrenaline that fighting hordes of Ninja that pelt you with incendiary shuriken all while you are trying to kill Fiend Mages and Archers that try to shoot you down. Dying and trying again until you finally manage to "die slower than you enemies" and survive to be ready to do it all again in the next fight.

I was pretty happy with this sequel to begin with and I thought it was better than sigma for a while. Unfortunately 2 is plagued with some of the worst bosses in an action game, some annoying enemies with random hitstun resistance and high-damage unblockable throws with nonexistant telegraphing, and an overabundance of repetitive combat scenarios with relatively little enemy variety. I was annoyed at the platforming sections in sigma so I was initially pleased that they toned it down and focused more on action but without non-combat sections to keep things varied and with the increased enemy count in every encounter, the constant fighting gets very tiring. To its credit, the fighting is generally more fun than in sigma thanks to the enjoyable new weapons and the UTs so it could've been great. The checkpoints at the start of boss battles and new episodes are also a great addition. The story is also just as weak as sigma's but at least Sonia has some nice bazonkerss.