Here we are finally the long awaited that no one was actually waiting for, me finishing this trilogy of games. Can you believe it was 2020 when I played the first game in the series? Like many series on the Famicom, this one came to an end in 1991. This may be a controversial take but I found this to be the best one of the trilogy.
Ninja Ryukenden III plays pretty similar to the other games. In fact the only thing they've really changed was some new weapons though those cool shadow clones are gone now. Though you can now get an item that gives you more range on your blade. Honestly if you had this item in the first game, I'd probably find the game more manageable to beat. You can also now hang under certain platforms but keep in mind that like with walls you can only attack with sub weapons when hanging off them.
Level design in this game can be pretty enjoyable. There's still a lot of platforming challenges you'll have to overcome even if they aren't too challenging this time. This is still Tecmo though and by this point they knew how to polish things up and this makes the game the least frustrating of the trilogy.
Surprisingly this is not a very challenging game at least for the most part. It's kind of weird because they did for sure tone down the difficulty from II which was actually harder on the Famicom I think. I'd say this game's biggest hurdle for difficulty has to be it's enemies. Sometimes they just throw a bunch at you with not much time to think about the situation and they also just like to put an enemy on a tiny platform. Still for the most part it's pretty manageable. I think they also changed the controls a bit? I can't really confirm that though. The controls on the ice stage however was not fun like it's so bad!
Even the bosses aren't too challenging for Ryu in this game though I guess that's been the case for a lot of bosses in this trilogy. Sure you do have the chance to die on a few of them on your first playthrough but after one or two more tries they should be easy to take down. Even the final boss isn't hard despite it being 3 forms with no health refills. I should say this now, this was only for the Famicom version.
This is common knowledge now but when this game was brought over here to the States, it was made a lot harder. There's a lot of things they changed like harder enemy placement, enemies do more damage, checkpoints are harsher along with game overs. Hell you don't even have unlimited continues anymore, you only have 5! Though you can have 99 with a very obtuse way of getting it. I'm not really sure why they did this. Maybe it was due to the rental market?? This sadly makes the game a lot worse which is unfortunate, not saying it's impossible to beat but it always kind of sucks looking back at stuff like this.
The game presentation wise however is amazing. This game has the usual cutscenes as we seen before which still look good but the game itself looks magnificent and I can't get enough of it. Though when I see the final location they do for the usual awesome shot of Ryu approaching it, I can't unsee the thing giving me the middle finger (shoutouts to BlazingWaters for making me unable to unsee it lol). The music is also pretty good though I don't know if it's my favorite of the trilogy. There's also now voice samples for Ryu now which is neat I guess.
The game despite not being a favorite of many has to be my favorite of the three easily. While I don't love it or anything, I did have fun and I wasn't getting mad at all. Maybe I'm just not good at games but I'd rather take an easier game to beat then one that infuriates me. Just don't play the US version. Sadly this version was never rereleased again which is a shame considering it's better. Ninja Ryukenden despite having a good trilogy really didn't go on to do much for the next decade. For Japan all they got was like a mediocre GG game, a Super Famicom remake of the trilogy, and a PC Engine port of the first game. Otherwise the series was pretty much over until 2004's Xbox title Ninja Gaiden which yes was even given that name in Japan. It's crazy to me he just was gone for so long, always wondered why. Still, give this one a go if you're curious as it's one of the better games on the Famicom even if it isn't perfect. Now did I forget anything?...oh right! Did you know this is a prequel to II? Yeah if you wait 18 minutes on the end screen then it'll tell you "TO BE CONTINUED NINJA RYUKENDEN II" which is interesting though why is this an easter egg? Anything else...nope ok bye for now.
Ninja Ryukenden III plays pretty similar to the other games. In fact the only thing they've really changed was some new weapons though those cool shadow clones are gone now. Though you can now get an item that gives you more range on your blade. Honestly if you had this item in the first game, I'd probably find the game more manageable to beat. You can also now hang under certain platforms but keep in mind that like with walls you can only attack with sub weapons when hanging off them.
Level design in this game can be pretty enjoyable. There's still a lot of platforming challenges you'll have to overcome even if they aren't too challenging this time. This is still Tecmo though and by this point they knew how to polish things up and this makes the game the least frustrating of the trilogy.
Surprisingly this is not a very challenging game at least for the most part. It's kind of weird because they did for sure tone down the difficulty from II which was actually harder on the Famicom I think. I'd say this game's biggest hurdle for difficulty has to be it's enemies. Sometimes they just throw a bunch at you with not much time to think about the situation and they also just like to put an enemy on a tiny platform. Still for the most part it's pretty manageable. I think they also changed the controls a bit? I can't really confirm that though. The controls on the ice stage however was not fun like it's so bad!
Even the bosses aren't too challenging for Ryu in this game though I guess that's been the case for a lot of bosses in this trilogy. Sure you do have the chance to die on a few of them on your first playthrough but after one or two more tries they should be easy to take down. Even the final boss isn't hard despite it being 3 forms with no health refills. I should say this now, this was only for the Famicom version.
This is common knowledge now but when this game was brought over here to the States, it was made a lot harder. There's a lot of things they changed like harder enemy placement, enemies do more damage, checkpoints are harsher along with game overs. Hell you don't even have unlimited continues anymore, you only have 5! Though you can have 99 with a very obtuse way of getting it. I'm not really sure why they did this. Maybe it was due to the rental market?? This sadly makes the game a lot worse which is unfortunate, not saying it's impossible to beat but it always kind of sucks looking back at stuff like this.
The game presentation wise however is amazing. This game has the usual cutscenes as we seen before which still look good but the game itself looks magnificent and I can't get enough of it. Though when I see the final location they do for the usual awesome shot of Ryu approaching it, I can't unsee the thing giving me the middle finger (shoutouts to BlazingWaters for making me unable to unsee it lol). The music is also pretty good though I don't know if it's my favorite of the trilogy. There's also now voice samples for Ryu now which is neat I guess.
The game despite not being a favorite of many has to be my favorite of the three easily. While I don't love it or anything, I did have fun and I wasn't getting mad at all. Maybe I'm just not good at games but I'd rather take an easier game to beat then one that infuriates me. Just don't play the US version. Sadly this version was never rereleased again which is a shame considering it's better. Ninja Ryukenden despite having a good trilogy really didn't go on to do much for the next decade. For Japan all they got was like a mediocre GG game, a Super Famicom remake of the trilogy, and a PC Engine port of the first game. Otherwise the series was pretty much over until 2004's Xbox title Ninja Gaiden which yes was even given that name in Japan. It's crazy to me he just was gone for so long, always wondered why. Still, give this one a go if you're curious as it's one of the better games on the Famicom even if it isn't perfect. Now did I forget anything?...oh right! Did you know this is a prequel to II? Yeah if you wait 18 minutes on the end screen then it'll tell you "TO BE CONTINUED NINJA RYUKENDEN II" which is interesting though why is this an easter egg? Anything else...nope ok bye for now.