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.