It's not perfect but there's a lot of good stuff.

It's weird because in many ways this game could be considered an upgrade to Ninja Gaiden Black:
The combat has been expanded to the max, there's a lot of moves and most of them are extremely deadly and the new weapons can be extremely good
The movement was refined, dodges are faster to accomodate the speed of the gameplay
The water running was also refined and you have more control over it (being stuck in water and having to swim is really slow, but not anymore, you can just get on top of the water and water run from inside the water)
The health system was changed but made way more interesting and makes for a dynamic gameplay loop, risking your life at low health to then get most of it back is definitely satisfying or even saving your health upgrades for a free maximum heal opens up very interesting options
The bosses can be extremely fast and aggressive which makes up for very quick fights on your end or theirs

Now if that was my review of it I wouldn't have rated it a 3. Because there is some bad.
To start the story is just a very simple rehash of NGB's story it doesn't even try to make anything new, you end up going around killing greater fiends that give you a totem (only on the second rematch though, not even on the first time) that you use to access the final boss while a femme fatale is being helpful but also unhelpful at the same time. It is what it is, but you don't play Ninja Gaiden for the story or if you do I guess you're a fan of 3/3RE.
The level design is non existent it may as well be a series of corridors that connect you to other arenas at times which sometimes look pretty interesting and even pretty but sometimes they look so generic I practically forgot I was still playing a Ninja Gaiden game.
The bosses for the most part are actually good, but the moment you get the scythe it's over for them and for you, using anything else is probably an handicap: it's fast, hits all around you with most attacks and does a lot of damage. It also has one of the best Ultimate Techniques this game can offer, and since charging up UTs is so fast you're probably gonna abuse it. There's other good and fun weapons and maybe it is better to switch around every now and then or you'll go mad.
There are two or three bossfights which are totally garbage: Gigadeath, Water Dragon and maybe the Giant Skull Worm but he's quick and easy. The game would be better off without them.
The game would also be better off without all the flying enemies which are painfully and excruciatingly dealt with by aiming your bow and arrow at them and hitting them with a UT while standing still. Thrilling gameplay.
The game, atleast on the Xbox Series S|X BC, seems to be endlessly glitchy, I've softlocked myself at least three times and the enemy AI sometimes just gives up and lets you deal some free damage or they get stuck on some geometry. Clearly this game needed to be polished a little more.

There's much to love but there's also a some bullshit that if you wanna put up with it can leave you with one of the goriest and bloodiest games of all time.

This game hates me more than my ex girlfriend.

I have never played a game so uncompromising in its vision, which is to truly test the player and punish them for letting their guard down for even a second or making a slight mistake and to make them feel like worthless dirt.

It’s maddening but when you’re living up to the game’s expectations, you feel like a cocaine fueled cat in a room full of pigeons.

The best action game ever made and I do not say that lightly.

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.

Itagaki`s final Deathmachine
After TECMO stole his unfinished Dead or Alive 2 prototype and take it to production without him knowing, being acussed of sexual harassment and fall into depression and drink,the Michael Bay movies and Aerosmith songs made him resurge as a Chad-rockstar human-hater (also he began to shout that those who play videogames in easy mode are nothing but dogs xd)
And so Ninja Gaiden 2 was created (actually, Doa 2 Hardcore was created first, but that's not important now) a non-stop action videogame made by insane and horny people, taking the movement and management dilemmas of the reboot and black version and multiplying the pivoted combat while leads the action through relentless pressure due to the insane avant-garde bunch of enemies which any of they can potencially end you.
Nothing impossible tho, there is already a Chinese guy who has completed the game without taking damage ,and how the hell has done it is what I wonder in my lonely nights.
I presume this emphasis in bolt action ,explosions and high numbers beyond human limits of cocaine is the result of the overdose of Bay movies that Itagaki was exposed during his depression.Or maybe not.
I buy it anyway.
With a great sense of energy, complex streets built for bouncing, jumping and acrobatics, the game is an ode to digital topography and stunts.

at one point of the game the classic flamboyant-demon-Boy falls in love with the statue of liberty (yes) and you have to fight both. Yes, you fight the Statue of Liberty with a katana. Allegory.
Maybe videogames are too good for us.

"I admire its purity. A survivor... unclouded by conscience, remorse, or delusions of morality." - Ash, Alien(1979)

Character action games tend to get a lot of mileage from their... well, characters. Dante and Bayonetta are both larger-than life flamboyant quipsters, styling on whatever bizarre monster dares stand in their path. But as for Ninja Gaiden's hero? According to instruction manuals and the occasional cutscene, Ryu Hayabusa is best described as a thoughtful young man, wise beyond his years. Though you'll never see any of that during gameplay.

In-game? He has specific animations for performing executions on people who have already been decapitated. Because this isn't about Ryu, not really. It's about how every single enemy in the game wants you dead more than they want to live. Cut off an arm, they'll stab with the arm they have left. Cut off a leg, they'll crawl your way with a knife between their teeth. Even the game itself will throw enemy after enemy at you until the engine starts to break under the strain. Self-preservation is for the weak.

If this game is about anything, it's about being a ninja, and being a ninja means murdering other ninja until the second you drop dead. It's no wonder that when Yosuke Hayashi took the reigns of the series for the third entry, he admitted to wanting to take a different approach to the violence. To explore the consequences of Ryu's taking of human life. Except, the second you try to step outside Ninja Gaiden's relentless kill-or-be-killed attitude, it falls apart. In a world focused on human consequence, Ryu's a maniac. But for the franchise's take on ninjas? He's the only kind of person who gets to stick around.

One more thing: a story that often gets passed around is how Itagaki got frustrated during development of the first game when he learned that ghost fish were being modeled for use as background decoration. He was quoted as saying "This is an action game. You can't just put something in there for atmosphere that is taking up memory and disc space. You either take it out or make it an enemy and do what I say because this is an action game." And that's Ninja Gaiden's attitude in a nutshell. If it doesn't want to kill you, what's the point?

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.

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 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.