When you have a game as counterintuitive to the franchise it hails from as Ninja Gaiden 3, a game that, along with the departure of its original director, took away most of the first two games' focus on crushingly difficult battles with multiple weapons, and instead put an emphasis on a melodramatic story, plodding walking segments, quick-time events, and an attempt on getting new players into the door for the third entry of a franchise, there comes a natural desire to want to fix it. Enter, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge. How do you go about correcting the numerous issues of a game that you could essentially describe as "Ninja Gaiden for people who hate Ninja Gaiden"?
Well, because you're Team Ninja, you start by shooting yourself in the foot. For some ungodly reason, Razor's Edge was announced at E3 2011, then-exclusively for the Wii U. For the uninitiated, vanilla Ninja Gaiden 3 released in MARCH OF 2012. Essentially telling the majority of your fanbase that they were getting a shitass doodoo version of the game you were making at launch, while having an enhanced edition getting ready to go, and making sure it was exclusively going to be released on the platform least likely to have people wanting to play these games at all, is a pants-on-head stupid decision that I'm stunned made it as far up the corporate ladder as it did. Maybe NG3RE started out as just a basic bitch Wii U port with a quirky subtitle and small added content, akin to Batman Arkham City and Mass Effect 3, but that sure wasn't the case by the time it finally launched. It also came out a few months later on 360 and PS3, but physical copies were pretty limited, and there was no doubt at least a good chunk of the playerbase that already thought the damage was done. But, coming at this from the perspective of someone who's only playing RE over a decade past its initial release with the rest of the 3D NGs under my belt, where do I stand on it?
Well, it's definitely the best version of Ninja Gaiden 3.
All jokes aside, in a similar vein to DmC Definitive Edition, there's a genuine attempt within NG3RE to fix some of those issues, and that's commendable without a doubt. Off the top of my head, there's the return of Dismemberment from Ninja Gaiden 2 to compliment the Obliteration Techniques , and it's still a satisfying technique to pull off. The weird ass Steel On Bone mechanic is reworked to be a context sensitive counter, and it certainly feels more consistant and satisfying than whatever was going on with it in the original version. Multiple enemy types are added to the game, mostly lifted from Ninja Gaiden 2. A few of that game's weapons also return, as do the series' staple Golden Scarabs. You can tell that both of these inclusions, nice as they are, were kind of shoehorned into the game though, with scarabs just kind of littered throughout the environment, and collecting them being how you unlock the weapons, which is neat. Ultimate techniques are back, too, and Karma's been reworked into a currency you can actually buy upgrades with at the tap of a button, which I'm totally down for! I'll forever miss the essence charge for UTs, but having NG3 allow the player to actually upgrade their moveset and have more than a singular weapon across the whole game unless you bought the later-released DLC is at least a step forward from vanilla NG3 in that regard.
Ninpo's gone from a singular brainless screen-clearing nuke that fully heals you, back to the standard of having multiple "Lock on to an enemy or two and nuke them", which now comes with the bonus of healing if it hits anyone, which is certainly a step up from the original. The terrible curse sections of the original are also changed; from having Ryu effectively limp around and staggeredly swing at enemies, they're now another dedicated combat section to fight a few dozen enemies. I still think making Ryu's curse a Devil Trigger would've been a better way of going about it, but it's better than nothing, I guess. Boss health bars are also included, which is honestly more baffling that such a basic feature wasn't there to begin with, but I guess that's a reinclusion to praise 3RE for, so good job, guys...
There's also been a reduction of QTEs, though I really wish they weren't there at all. While the terrible wallclimbing sections are still around and as unfun as ever, the equally insulting rope climbing QTEs are abolished completely. The game's actually a fair bit harder, even on normal mode. Sadly it's not always for the better, sometimes it felt pretty bullshit. Of particular note is the pair of bonus stages having you fight three suped up enemies at once who will proceed to gangbang you without remorse, the absolute ballache that is the Fiend Ryu battle that's best cheesed with the Eclipse Scythe's 360-heavy and a bit of luck, and the final boss's opening phase is massively extended from the original version of the game. In a fight that was already mostly QTEs and a boring fight against mooks to fill up your Ninpo for a cinematic super, the ninpo meter now fills at the speed of molasses, making for an even worse version of an already lame fight with how much more aggrivating it is now. It singlehandedly turns that scene from a moment I barely remembered at all after turning the game off, into one that had me calling it a night and hitting the hay because I was so annoyed. I mean, maybe you can say it's more engaging than that boring ass shitshow that was the vanilla version, but I'd also not consider being more frustrated with the game an overall win.
In Ninja Gaiden rerelease fashion, there's also playable inclusions of the DOA girls; Ayane, Momiji and Kasumi making up the roster this time, with Ayane getting 2 mandatory stages that serve to similarly break the pace of the original game like the Sigma releases' female stages did unfortunately. Still, in a game like NG3 that already had pacing problems out the ass, it's strangely less of a hinderance than in the Sigma releases of 1 and 2, so make of that what you will. All three females are actually fully playable across every stage in the game, and you have no idea how much that both relieves and upsets me. In a world where Bayonetta 2 had entire characters locked into its baren multiplayer, and Devil May Cry 5 only had a single stage where all 3 main characters were selectible, the fact that Ninja Gaiden 3 is the only major action game I can think of that has a full per-level character select is baffling to me. But hey, that's a great thing to include! It should absolutely be a standard across the entire genre.
To be blunt though, I think most of Ninja Gaiden 3's issues are fundamental due to its core opposition to being what Ninja Gaiden had established itself as, like I elaborated on above. Barring the removal of the terrible scene of Ryu slaughtering a surrendered soldier at the beginning of the game, the focus on a melodramatic story and more cinematic approach remains a 12-tonne weight around the ankles of the game as a whole. It's still a much less fun and memorable game than its predecessors; even with the scant glimer of Ninja Gaiden's usual kinetic and frantic "kill or be killed" combat underneath everything 3 tries to heap onto it, no amount of additions and revisions are going to get rid of shit like the presence of QTEs in a series that never needed them prior, the replay-killing and pace breaking segments littered throughout, or some of those bosses. Seriously, between the dull chopper, the boring giant statue you fight with Momiji, the plane-tank on the airstrip, the aforementioned extended final boss, or that fucking T-Rex, I genuinely don't know what they were thinking. The Regent Of The Mask and Fiend Ryu, horseshit hard as he is, are the only things holding up the worst boss lineup of a series that's already among the weaker lot of the genre in terms of them.
It's commendable and impressive to see an attempt to fix NG3 at all, but it's not just a matter of it being too little, too late. It's also a matter of the only ways Team Ninja tried to fix the game up being to shove a few doodads from Ninja Gaiden 2 in there, putting some plasters of a couple of the game's bullet wounds, and then just kinda kicking it out the door from there. Of course, I get that lower budgets and time constraints probably meant that we couldn't get any sick new weapons, especially given the base game literally only had a single weapon with everything unlocked from the getgo, but the inclusion of all the reused content makes the game feel like little more than a Ninja Gaiden 2 level pack at best. Its highs aren't nearly as high as the badshit insanity that is NG2, and its low points... I mean, the worst bosses in 2 is about on par with the lion's share of 3's, but those high points at least outweigh the lows in the case of 2; 3RE doesn't have quite that much luck.
I guess I can say Razor's Edge is better than Sigma 2? Even if not by much; both games left me feeling bored, but I at least had to engage my fucking brain at points through Razor's Edge. I was annoyed by a ton of shit decisions that carried over or were made worse than in the original, but I wasn't falling asleep like Sigma 2 had me at various point. But that's also not a very high bar to get across, and the last stretch of 3RE hade me genuinely unsure of which game I'd enjoyed less. 3RE isn't as boring as a DMC2 or NGS2, nor as outright dogshit as stuff like Ultra Age, RWBY: Grimm Eclipse, or, well, vanilla Ninja Gaiden 3. It feels like it exists in the same space as the Bayonetta sequels, where there's one step forward and two steps back across the board and sits as a below-average to average at best mush. Who knows, maybe the higher difficulties and Ninja Trials will turn my opinion less sour when the time comes, but then I also think about how much of a drag some of those bosses would be on higher difficulties too. It's an unfortunate case of those lows really sticking out in my mind when NG3 comes up, and god knows I got other games to play, with bosses that probably aren't as bad as that fucker.
No matter how you slice it, Ninja Gaiden 3 is, at its core, a completely forgettable entry in the series at best, and a spit in the face to what the series always represented at worst, and Razor's Edge, valiant an attempt as it is, can only do so much. It really sucks that this is how Team Ninja's time with their signature series would go out on for a decade and counting, but that's just how it is sometimes. A for effort, participation ribbons all around, but you can only polish a turd so much, and Ninja Gaiden 3 is a game with too many underlying core issues for me to be able to sing the praises of RE. I certainly hope Ryu comes back to the spotlight sooner or later; I'm sure the criticism NG3 earned over the years has made Team Ninja aware of what to do and not do for a potential next entry, mostly in regards to the do nots from director Yosuke Hayashi's statement about how NG3 was "a Japanese hamburger for the West". Hell, if the things I've heard about both Nioh games and Stranger In Paradise are anything to go by, they can still make plenty satisfying combat systems, regardless of their slight genre changing from the traditional DMC inspired styles.
Devil May Cry 5 showed that there's still a plenty huge market for technical action titles. Now, in a world near 5 years on from the release of DMC5, where Bayonetta and No More Heroes' third entries were both somewhat disappointing for their own reasons, Platinum Games' future seems somewhat up in the air with Hideki Kamiya's departure, God Of War dug its heels firmly into the "Over-the-shoulder walk-n-talk journalist bait" sandpit, and some of the best entries the genre has seen that don't carry a Capcom logo being made on a much smaller scale like Assault Spy and Hi-Fi Rush, I dare say there's no better time for Ryu to polish off his katana and get back to Izuna Dropping motherfuckers into gorey pavement splats once more like he never even left, in the true sequel Ninja Gaiden Black and 2 deserve. But, the best we can do is wait until... probably a couple years after whenever the hell Rise Of The Ronin comes out.
IDK maybe I'll subject myself to Yaiba: NGZ in the meantime so I can write up a piece about how much I can't believe Keiji "CoNFTMan" Inafune killed Ninja Gaiden after almost doing the same to Devil May Cry. I just think I need a break from below average Ninja Gaiden for a while.
Well, because you're Team Ninja, you start by shooting yourself in the foot. For some ungodly reason, Razor's Edge was announced at E3 2011, then-exclusively for the Wii U. For the uninitiated, vanilla Ninja Gaiden 3 released in MARCH OF 2012. Essentially telling the majority of your fanbase that they were getting a shitass doodoo version of the game you were making at launch, while having an enhanced edition getting ready to go, and making sure it was exclusively going to be released on the platform least likely to have people wanting to play these games at all, is a pants-on-head stupid decision that I'm stunned made it as far up the corporate ladder as it did. Maybe NG3RE started out as just a basic bitch Wii U port with a quirky subtitle and small added content, akin to Batman Arkham City and Mass Effect 3, but that sure wasn't the case by the time it finally launched. It also came out a few months later on 360 and PS3, but physical copies were pretty limited, and there was no doubt at least a good chunk of the playerbase that already thought the damage was done. But, coming at this from the perspective of someone who's only playing RE over a decade past its initial release with the rest of the 3D NGs under my belt, where do I stand on it?
Well, it's definitely the best version of Ninja Gaiden 3.
All jokes aside, in a similar vein to DmC Definitive Edition, there's a genuine attempt within NG3RE to fix some of those issues, and that's commendable without a doubt. Off the top of my head, there's the return of Dismemberment from Ninja Gaiden 2 to compliment the Obliteration Techniques , and it's still a satisfying technique to pull off. The weird ass Steel On Bone mechanic is reworked to be a context sensitive counter, and it certainly feels more consistant and satisfying than whatever was going on with it in the original version. Multiple enemy types are added to the game, mostly lifted from Ninja Gaiden 2. A few of that game's weapons also return, as do the series' staple Golden Scarabs. You can tell that both of these inclusions, nice as they are, were kind of shoehorned into the game though, with scarabs just kind of littered throughout the environment, and collecting them being how you unlock the weapons, which is neat. Ultimate techniques are back, too, and Karma's been reworked into a currency you can actually buy upgrades with at the tap of a button, which I'm totally down for! I'll forever miss the essence charge for UTs, but having NG3 allow the player to actually upgrade their moveset and have more than a singular weapon across the whole game unless you bought the later-released DLC is at least a step forward from vanilla NG3 in that regard.
Ninpo's gone from a singular brainless screen-clearing nuke that fully heals you, back to the standard of having multiple "Lock on to an enemy or two and nuke them", which now comes with the bonus of healing if it hits anyone, which is certainly a step up from the original. The terrible curse sections of the original are also changed; from having Ryu effectively limp around and staggeredly swing at enemies, they're now another dedicated combat section to fight a few dozen enemies. I still think making Ryu's curse a Devil Trigger would've been a better way of going about it, but it's better than nothing, I guess. Boss health bars are also included, which is honestly more baffling that such a basic feature wasn't there to begin with, but I guess that's a reinclusion to praise 3RE for, so good job, guys...
There's also been a reduction of QTEs, though I really wish they weren't there at all. While the terrible wallclimbing sections are still around and as unfun as ever, the equally insulting rope climbing QTEs are abolished completely. The game's actually a fair bit harder, even on normal mode. Sadly it's not always for the better, sometimes it felt pretty bullshit. Of particular note is the pair of bonus stages having you fight three suped up enemies at once who will proceed to gangbang you without remorse, the absolute ballache that is the Fiend Ryu battle that's best cheesed with the Eclipse Scythe's 360-heavy and a bit of luck, and the final boss's opening phase is massively extended from the original version of the game. In a fight that was already mostly QTEs and a boring fight against mooks to fill up your Ninpo for a cinematic super, the ninpo meter now fills at the speed of molasses, making for an even worse version of an already lame fight with how much more aggrivating it is now. It singlehandedly turns that scene from a moment I barely remembered at all after turning the game off, into one that had me calling it a night and hitting the hay because I was so annoyed. I mean, maybe you can say it's more engaging than that boring ass shitshow that was the vanilla version, but I'd also not consider being more frustrated with the game an overall win.
In Ninja Gaiden rerelease fashion, there's also playable inclusions of the DOA girls; Ayane, Momiji and Kasumi making up the roster this time, with Ayane getting 2 mandatory stages that serve to similarly break the pace of the original game like the Sigma releases' female stages did unfortunately. Still, in a game like NG3 that already had pacing problems out the ass, it's strangely less of a hinderance than in the Sigma releases of 1 and 2, so make of that what you will. All three females are actually fully playable across every stage in the game, and you have no idea how much that both relieves and upsets me. In a world where Bayonetta 2 had entire characters locked into its baren multiplayer, and Devil May Cry 5 only had a single stage where all 3 main characters were selectible, the fact that Ninja Gaiden 3 is the only major action game I can think of that has a full per-level character select is baffling to me. But hey, that's a great thing to include! It should absolutely be a standard across the entire genre.
To be blunt though, I think most of Ninja Gaiden 3's issues are fundamental due to its core opposition to being what Ninja Gaiden had established itself as, like I elaborated on above. Barring the removal of the terrible scene of Ryu slaughtering a surrendered soldier at the beginning of the game, the focus on a melodramatic story and more cinematic approach remains a 12-tonne weight around the ankles of the game as a whole. It's still a much less fun and memorable game than its predecessors; even with the scant glimer of Ninja Gaiden's usual kinetic and frantic "kill or be killed" combat underneath everything 3 tries to heap onto it, no amount of additions and revisions are going to get rid of shit like the presence of QTEs in a series that never needed them prior, the replay-killing and pace breaking segments littered throughout, or some of those bosses. Seriously, between the dull chopper, the boring giant statue you fight with Momiji, the plane-tank on the airstrip, the aforementioned extended final boss, or that fucking T-Rex, I genuinely don't know what they were thinking. The Regent Of The Mask and Fiend Ryu, horseshit hard as he is, are the only things holding up the worst boss lineup of a series that's already among the weaker lot of the genre in terms of them.
It's commendable and impressive to see an attempt to fix NG3 at all, but it's not just a matter of it being too little, too late. It's also a matter of the only ways Team Ninja tried to fix the game up being to shove a few doodads from Ninja Gaiden 2 in there, putting some plasters of a couple of the game's bullet wounds, and then just kinda kicking it out the door from there. Of course, I get that lower budgets and time constraints probably meant that we couldn't get any sick new weapons, especially given the base game literally only had a single weapon with everything unlocked from the getgo, but the inclusion of all the reused content makes the game feel like little more than a Ninja Gaiden 2 level pack at best. Its highs aren't nearly as high as the badshit insanity that is NG2, and its low points... I mean, the worst bosses in 2 is about on par with the lion's share of 3's, but those high points at least outweigh the lows in the case of 2; 3RE doesn't have quite that much luck.
I guess I can say Razor's Edge is better than Sigma 2? Even if not by much; both games left me feeling bored, but I at least had to engage my fucking brain at points through Razor's Edge. I was annoyed by a ton of shit decisions that carried over or were made worse than in the original, but I wasn't falling asleep like Sigma 2 had me at various point. But that's also not a very high bar to get across, and the last stretch of 3RE hade me genuinely unsure of which game I'd enjoyed less. 3RE isn't as boring as a DMC2 or NGS2, nor as outright dogshit as stuff like Ultra Age, RWBY: Grimm Eclipse, or, well, vanilla Ninja Gaiden 3. It feels like it exists in the same space as the Bayonetta sequels, where there's one step forward and two steps back across the board and sits as a below-average to average at best mush. Who knows, maybe the higher difficulties and Ninja Trials will turn my opinion less sour when the time comes, but then I also think about how much of a drag some of those bosses would be on higher difficulties too. It's an unfortunate case of those lows really sticking out in my mind when NG3 comes up, and god knows I got other games to play, with bosses that probably aren't as bad as that fucker.
No matter how you slice it, Ninja Gaiden 3 is, at its core, a completely forgettable entry in the series at best, and a spit in the face to what the series always represented at worst, and Razor's Edge, valiant an attempt as it is, can only do so much. It really sucks that this is how Team Ninja's time with their signature series would go out on for a decade and counting, but that's just how it is sometimes. A for effort, participation ribbons all around, but you can only polish a turd so much, and Ninja Gaiden 3 is a game with too many underlying core issues for me to be able to sing the praises of RE. I certainly hope Ryu comes back to the spotlight sooner or later; I'm sure the criticism NG3 earned over the years has made Team Ninja aware of what to do and not do for a potential next entry, mostly in regards to the do nots from director Yosuke Hayashi's statement about how NG3 was "a Japanese hamburger for the West". Hell, if the things I've heard about both Nioh games and Stranger In Paradise are anything to go by, they can still make plenty satisfying combat systems, regardless of their slight genre changing from the traditional DMC inspired styles.
Devil May Cry 5 showed that there's still a plenty huge market for technical action titles. Now, in a world near 5 years on from the release of DMC5, where Bayonetta and No More Heroes' third entries were both somewhat disappointing for their own reasons, Platinum Games' future seems somewhat up in the air with Hideki Kamiya's departure, God Of War dug its heels firmly into the "Over-the-shoulder walk-n-talk journalist bait" sandpit, and some of the best entries the genre has seen that don't carry a Capcom logo being made on a much smaller scale like Assault Spy and Hi-Fi Rush, I dare say there's no better time for Ryu to polish off his katana and get back to Izuna Dropping motherfuckers into gorey pavement splats once more like he never even left, in the true sequel Ninja Gaiden Black and 2 deserve. But, the best we can do is wait until... probably a couple years after whenever the hell Rise Of The Ronin comes out.
IDK maybe I'll subject myself to Yaiba: NGZ in the meantime so I can write up a piece about how much I can't believe Keiji "CoNFTMan" Inafune killed Ninja Gaiden after almost doing the same to Devil May Cry. I just think I need a break from below average Ninja Gaiden for a while.
2 Comments
Yeah, that's a totally respectable take on things! I was admittedly second guessing my own opinion on the statement that I thought 3RE was above S2 a lot while both playing and writing, and I still do now, in fact. Sigma 2's one of those instances of a game where I could probably bump up a point on a good day that I go through a fair bit with a couple games.
For my money, it's ultimately a matter of both games being held back by a lot of different pieces so core to their identities; with Sigma 2 still being Ninja Gaiden 2, but having difficulty and damage sponges so polarly opposed to that of the originals to the point of actively boring me. Conversely, 3RE being a game that's still paired down by the core issues of NG3 and putting a few bandaids on it had me fluctuating from "Oh, this is kind of okay", to "I'm going to put my head through a wall and will see to it that Yosuke Hayashi be held accountable" just about between every few encounters. When I put it like that, it probably does make 3RE worse if you take into account the quality of a game being consistent in any regard, I suppose, especially if you're discussing the game's approaches to just letting you dig into their core combat (Sigma 2's hallways VS 3's constant railroading of the player into QTE climbing) outside of the Ninja Trials.
Regardless, I definitely think it's an interesting topic of debate, and any chance to further express my own conflicting thought process on the matter of one game in a series being better or worse than another, especially in this case, is one I'll take, lol.
For my money, it's ultimately a matter of both games being held back by a lot of different pieces so core to their identities; with Sigma 2 still being Ninja Gaiden 2, but having difficulty and damage sponges so polarly opposed to that of the originals to the point of actively boring me. Conversely, 3RE being a game that's still paired down by the core issues of NG3 and putting a few bandaids on it had me fluctuating from "Oh, this is kind of okay", to "I'm going to put my head through a wall and will see to it that Yosuke Hayashi be held accountable" just about between every few encounters. When I put it like that, it probably does make 3RE worse if you take into account the quality of a game being consistent in any regard, I suppose, especially if you're discussing the game's approaches to just letting you dig into their core combat (Sigma 2's hallways VS 3's constant railroading of the player into QTE climbing) outside of the Ninja Trials.
Regardless, I definitely think it's an interesting topic of debate, and any chance to further express my own conflicting thought process on the matter of one game in a series being better or worse than another, especially in this case, is one I'll take, lol.
Artur
4 months ago
Sigma 2 has some absolutely baffling design decisions for sure (I still can't believe the way that game handles the weapon upgrades), and you are drowning on healing items at all times because the points you get through combat are otherwise worthless. But look, the combat system of these games is so inherently satisfying that it doesn't take much for them to be fun, Sigma 2 just gets out of the way and lets the combat do its thing.
Razor's Edge actively tries to piss you off, with your health bar shrinking, no healing items, a binary magic bar that takes ages to fill, endless waves of enemies, some questionable enemy designs...