Game is very good for the most part with a simple but satisfying combat system making it easy to pick up and play, showing that you don't need a bunch of flashy moves and combos to make a fun and engaging gameplay loop in a character action game, unfortunately it's let down by lacklustre level design with chunks of level literally being copy-pasted several times within the same stage, long levels towards the end of that are full of insta-death bottomless pits (no checkpoints btw) and the boss fights generally suck, especially the final boss which after about an hour of struggling through I gave up on, sure being able to one-shot bosses feels incredible but it just ends up with you waiting around until enemies spawn and then you fighting with the janky lock-on, hoping it doesn't lock onto the boss before hitting the boss once.

I really wish this game would get a remaster or something that addresses these issues because I genuinely think with some tweaks this could be a top tier action game.

The pitch here only gets more novel in the era of damage spongey bosses and slow, meticulous movement: Kill every enemy as fast as possible, with the quirk that every defeat in an encounter powers up your sword. Use your extreme mobility to dart around the battlefield, killing smaller enemies so you can fell the larger ones in a single strike. Bosses that would take 15 minutes in this game's peers have the potential to take 15 seconds here with the right approach. It's a uniquely sega approach to 3D action games and while it's not a perfect translation of the Ninja-flavored 2D shoot-em-up the OGs were, it's repsectable in it's own right and that's more important. The demon sword feasting on the blood of enemies and eating away at the player's own health if they're too passive is both the perfect modernization and contextualization of a classic arcade timer, incentivizing active play in all the same ways with a sinister edge that fits the new tone like a glove.

The gameplay loop on paper is perfect, but the developers were averse to fleshing out anything outside of it. Shinobi isn't a 2D action game where you retain perfect control of your character, it's in 3D which requires the game to step in to make up the difference in precision possible with the extra dimension with a lock on system. It's shockingly unreliable for a game who's entire strategy revolves about picking out specific targets. If there's a horde of enemies on screen and you want to start with the small target in the back to build up cursed energy and stay on the move, good luck making sure the camera doesn't snap to any of the enemies in-between. Sometimes it doesn't even snap to enemies at all, with the camera staying stationary when you press the lock on with enemies behind you. That's the time you'd most need the game to snap to attention. It's the most imprecise tool possible in a game trying to encourage precise play. That's a long enough scarf for the game to trip over.

The core premise of your clan being possessed and you being forced to pick them off one by one is a good enough hook, but the story overall isn't fleshed out enough to work any meaningful drama from it. The boss squad makes for some entertaining fights and diverse personalities, but the first time the player meets most of them will be in these battles even as Hotsuma recalls cherished histories for them all.

Level design is of questionable importance when given a well fleshed out, varied combat system but for something this simple and to-the-point it was an opportunity to add some much needed variety. They only manage it some of the time though, with battles over bottomless pits or in narrow hallways that leave little room to skirt around enemy fire the best the game can come up with. Repeated level chunks in the same area don't help. Sometimes it feels like you've replayed a level a few times by the time you've gotten through it once.

Varied enemy design tries to pick up the slack here but despite there being some decent variety on the art side there's not a ton separating them all mechanically. You have smaller, floating turret enemies meant to be fodder, more standard types on the ground meant to gang up on the player and corrall them in with defensive play, and larger varieties of each that take a fully charged sword to take down effectively Even in the most varied cases you'd ideally be killing the enemies before they can get their gameplan going anyway so they all start to blend together.

Bosses usually are a highlight though. The lack of a tutorial is baffling at first but you'll quickly realize that the strict damage thresholds of the bosses are the method the game chose for teaching players about the Tate system. You simple won't make any meaningful gains on without understanding it. I'm not sure if the boss in the third level is even beatable without taking it in consideration. It's easy to see how this game got it's reputation, but the bosses flip on their head in a really cathartic way once you "get it". This might be the only action game that I've ever gotten an S rank on a late game boss on my first try. The way this game's systems flip from obtuse and frustrating to simplistic and empowering once the gap in understanding is crossed is the most extreme I've ever seen.

Once you "get it" it's a hard game to hate. It fufills the ninja fantasy well enough with it's focus on speed and precision and there's enough depth here to make for some pretty decent score attack fun here too, but a lack of polish and variety hold it back from it's true potential. It's got me interested in checking out nightshade, since I feel like it could really succeed with a second pass.

If you try and play Shinobi like a traditional hack-and-slash combo-heavy character action game, you'll probably find yourself getting frustrated within minutes. You can't dash or jump cancel sword swing animations, nor can you rotate your character's swings during the animation, so button mashing is discouraged and every attack matters that much more. Instead, the goal is to wrap up enemy encounters as quickly as possible, diving and dashing between foes to chain them together in a manner akin to abusing Sonic's homing attack (albeit with tougher execution). This is encouraged two-fold: firstly, Hotsuma's cursed sword requires sacrifices in the form of enemy blood (and running out of souls will cause the sword to sap his health instead), so slaying foes is in succession the most effective way to farm souls and satiate the sword's hunger. Just as importantly however, successfully chaining enemies builds up Hotsuma's damage output, so it becomes integral to prioritize weaker and clustered enemies so later hits can deal massive damage to bulkier foes; it's a great way to both highlight Shinobi's arcade puzzle-like qualities of efficiently navigating a room as well as giving the player a viable and clean strategy to quickly dispose of spongier enemies. This also applies towards boss fights, and there's nothing more satisfying than biding your time, waiting for the boss's goons to stack up, and then tearing your way through to finally slice the boss in one fell swoop.

To be fair, while a lot of Shinobi's criticism comes in the form of not understanding the above Tate system, there are other factors at play. I can admit that Shinobi doesn't feel very beginner friendly despite the seeming simplicity of its core concepts; there's no tutorial or in-game explanation of the game's mechanics, and if you don't understand basics like wall-running or stealth dashing behind foes to get around enemy stances (since side and back attacks deal more damage and some foes can block frontal strikes), you'll find yourself getting walled and wombo comboed by foes rather quickly due to what appears to be a lack of both invincibility frames and the game's inclination towards stun-heavy enemy attacks. Moreover, the game is definitely quite punishing: health drops can feel a bit scarce at times, jumps feel quite committal since you can't alter your aerial drift mid-jump and must rely on expending your double jump or dash, and falling off the stage will result in instant death with no midway checkpoints attached to any stage. That said, the biggest challenge for me was the rudimentary camera. It's fairly static, and as a result, it becomes a bit of a chore having to constantly rotate the camera mid-combat to spot all appearing foes so you don't have to attack while they're off-screen. The lock-on system makes it easier to target singular enemies at a time (and is often essential because there's no way to dash upwards/downwards towards foes without it), but it does present the additional issue of constantly needing to tilt the camera up and down afterwards: if the camera is pointed downwards, aerial enemies and floating collectibles are tough to spot, but if the camera is pointed upwards, then blind platforming becomes a nightmare. The other prevalent critique that comes to mind are the level designs themselves: while I don't have complaints towards enemy placements, I find that the level design motifs tend to bleed into one another within individual stages (i.e. specific platform and wall placements are repeated verbatim within the span of a few minutes), which can make the stages feel like they drag on too long, especially when no midway checkpoints exist. I also wish that there weren't so many straight corridors/tunnels present throughout the game, and could have done with more open room environments with wall-running opportunities. Finally, the final boss was unfortunately a miserable experience due to wonky mob hurtboxes (my sword kept phasing through and missing the spawned small-fry), the multitude of stun-heavy attacks from foes, and the element of luck involved (since the final boss loved to turn temporarily invulnerable or teleport away many instances after I had successfully chained the weaker minions for damage).

Even despite my criticisms however, I don't think Shinobi is anywhere as hard as a lot of players have made it out to be, and it is exactly what I had envisioned a ninja game to be: swift and efficient bread & butter combat that emphasized quick thinking and efficient traversal just as much as steady reflexes. It really never gets old slashing and dashing between scores of foes, and then cutting straight away to a cinematic of Hotsuma dramatically turning his blade while his prey is simultaneously sliced to shreds behind him. In conjunction, I certainly enjoyed the campy narrative regarding themes of light vs dark and revenge and honor between a bunch of folks who studied the blade. Lastly, the varied and fantastic soundtrack alongside the sleek visuals was the cherry on top to elevate those vibes. If you're willing to meet this game halfway despite all the classic 2000s PS2 jank and the intimidating learning curve, then I think you'll find a truly exhilarating experience that was ahead of its time in many ways despite the lack of polish, and a title that I think modern developers could learn a lot from.

Shinobi is a very conflicting game for me. As I said in my Nightshade review, I find it far too hostile and unwelcoming for me to truly love it, and at some points I really hate playing it. But sometimes it all clicks and the concept on hand shines through.

It never manages to with the aerial combat though, which despite hours testing it out and figuring out how Hotsuma can reset jumps, nothing ever felt consistent or good to do. While Nightshade had very clear rules on how Hibana could deal with enemies in air, Hotsuma feels more rigid and inflexible in this regard, making stages like 6-A absolute nightmares whereas in Nightshade they would have been highlights. Having the kick be a directional move also is a massive pain-in-the-ass as the camera can often make inputs like that difficult to pull-off in the moment. While I think Shinobi tests the player on different skill-sets than Nightshade does, i felt like Nightshade better gave me the means to pass the test.

The level design in general is nothing special, the bosses are middling and the controls feel really stiff, with a lock-on that is just never on the same page as you. What is there to like about this game?

Style, really. The TATE sequences, Hotsuma's incredibly long scarf, the brooding and dramatic narrative, and the brilliant music are what kept me motivated to play this to the end. The design of Hotsuma is fantastic, and maneuvering through dudes to drum'n'bass is always a hook I'll fall right into. Hotsuma looks impossibley cool all of the time and animates stunningly, as I could watch him just stand there with his arms folded for hours.

While Nightshade is a game I adore and love, Shinobi is only a game I can like strongly. It's worth playing on an emulator with save states; I could not in a million years recommend you try something this punitive with its checkpoints on original hardware. Also note the American release excises Easy mode entirely, which is very odd as I think this game needs a mode just for on-boarding as the actual game is not interested in teaching you shit like that. The downside of THAT though is that the whole appeal of Shinobi is the difficulty, so stripping that from it renders the game rather non-descript. So, what the fuck.

I will warn you though, that if you aren't very fond of dogs, the dog enemies in chapter 3 that can block your attacks might make you apply at your local kill shelter. They are some of the most annoying fucking enemies in a game, ever. Miyazaki only wishes his games could have dog enemies this irritating.

That's all I 've got. it's a very simple game, and I love it for that! No extraneous bells and whilstles, just Shinobi brilliance.

Really cool character action game!

Coming from the DMC series, I can appreciate how the game emphasizes movement and positioning over having a diverse moveset. Combat is mostly about dashing into an enemy, attacking and killing it, then dashing over to the next one, while making sure not to have your attack blocked. It leads to snappy and addictive gameplay, where you're rewarded for being quick.

Not gonna lie though, the bosses are VERY easy to cheese. Once you understand the game mechanics, and get comfortable with stringing attacks and dashes together, you'll be racking up a high amount of kills to power you up, and then taking out like, half the boss's health bar in one hit. It's not bad... Just funny after watching a cutscene build them up.

I think the game is at its best in regular stages and encounters, where you pick out which order to kill enemies in, and weave through the mob to do so without getting hit.

Not surprising, but the story and voice acting is pretty poor IMO.

Game's peak, play it!