Fucking hell, man.
Maybe this was good at the time, but going back to it now is hell.
The character moves like an old resi character, the platforming sucks and the combat is mostly just non-stop Izuna Drops (This is actually a good thing).

The Rachel bits were dreadful, and this was the point that made me quit for good.
https://twitter.com/ViewtifulGaz/status/1612124904106639361

I've never played Black so maybe this game is actually terrible, but I had a great time playing through it. The enemies aren't designed like DMC or Bayonetta where you're expected to just catch them up in your dance of destruction, but in a way that makes you approach them deliberately. Every strike and parry has to be deliberate. You need to commit to your attacks and dispatch your foes as efficiently as possible or risk being overwhelmed. It makes you approach combat in the way that an actual ninja would. You need to be methodical, calculating, and swift. Sometimes that looks like juggling an enemy into the air and Izuna dropping them back into the concrete, but sometimes it means taking your time and cutting your foe in two when they drop their guard. Ninja Gaidens 2 and 3 go for a style over substance approach to their gameplay, but here it's the exact opposite and I think that's what makes it stand out so much to me.

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.

Um jogo incrível que tem uma história não tão interessante, mas que compensa por MUITO conteúdo, variação de cenários e inimigos e principalmente por sua dificuldade. Esse game no normal pode acabar virando um caos se você não for esperto. O jogo tem uma gameplay um pouco travada e lenta, mas compreensível por causa da época que foi lançado, tem algumas missões com a Rachel, ela parece uma boneca inflável então não gostei nada do Design dela, além de que ela é um pouco lenta nos golpes. Não posso comparar com o original pois não tive a oportunidade de jogá-lo, mas acredito que essa versão seja mais completa. Algumas vezes, por causa da dificuldade, senti que o jogo é um pouco arrastado e que poderia ser mais rápido, também acredito que seja do back tracking já que alguns cenários você tem que acabar visitando pra poder chegar em novas áreas. Eu não curto muito os design de inimigos, mas o bosses são gloriosamente difíceis e belíssimos, divertidíssimos que cobram do jogador esperteza pra poder avançar. É um título praticamente obrigatório pra quem curte Hack'n Slash, não recomendo pra pessoas que não curtem dificuldade elevada ou uma gameplay um pouco complicada de se acostumar.

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.

Yo creo que en su momento este debió ser un juegazo, quizás no envejeció de la mejor forma.

En mi experiencia lo disfrute la gran parte del juego debido a que el combate esta bien implementado. Me gusto la cantidad de jefes que tiene el juego.

Lo más negativo que podría decir seria que la cámara es tediosa en algunas partes, pero todo el resto estuvo bien.

Cheguei perto do final e parei por lá, eu pensei que seria algo mais Devil May Cry mas com certeza não é, eu tentei me forçar a jogar apesar da dificuldade mas quanto mais jogava mais reparava que eu não estava me divertindo, eu achei difícil de um modo bem injusto, não é um difícil Souls like em que você é punido pelos seus erros, é difícil por querer ser difícil, e eu não teria problema nenhum pra zerar, tanto que cheguei bem longe, o problema é que eu não quero, o jogo não me ofereceu nada que me fizesse dizer "ok realmente vale a pena continuar" tirando as missões com a Rachel que eu realmente consegui me divertir um pouco, mas sinceramente, não é pra mim eu acho, nada contra quem curte, mas eu não entendi o status que esse jogo tem tirando a dificuldade injusta.

Its over....

Turns into a bird

This game is sweet, but I think I hate it? Or love it? Or maybe I hate how much the game hates me? Weird Checkpoints, inconsistent boss blocking, BS grabs, awful camera, and Rachel's sections. The list goes on. Yet, the combat and the movement are so freaking good, especially when the game finally clicks. The difficulty, however, is really inconsistent, where I was able to beat the final boss on my 3rd go, but two bosses before that almost made me break my PC.

I never played Black, so I have no grounds to talk on the changes, but aesthetically, Black seems much more interesting. (UI, Combo Counter, etc.) A frustratingly enjoyable game that tends to show its age a little too much, and I think Sigma's more polished look really tries to hide that at its core, this is a Xbox game from 2004...

7/10

Regardless of what people tend to regurgitate, I welcome most of Sigma's changes, making the game flow more seamlessly and putting a focus on the combat itself by streamlining the boring puzzles of the original, it's a better experience through out.

Even then, the game fundamentally has aged and it shows, the camera is really janky and most of the time you'll be looking at Ryu's shiny ass and in tight rooms especially it's super prominent and just adds another hurdle to the already difficult game.
The game also does a poor job at telegraphing some enemy attacks making them feel like cheese because they're just a blatant knowledge check rather than any mechanical skill, but overall it's still a great game, with a super satisfying combat system and it made every weapon feel necessary at some point as they're better at certain types of enemies.

It's the less acknowledged fellow pioneer of the Character Action genre next to DMC but I do think it has aged a tiny bit better in comparison, granted it's also a bit newer.

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

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.