Beat a bunch of games while stuck in quarantine. Don't have the energy to review all of them, maybe I will eventually, but I'll just focus on one of them...
Ninja Gaiden
Year: 1989
System: NES, has a bunch of re-releases (I played it on Switch Online's NES collection)
Completion Notes: Beat it normally (no save states and no rewinding obviously)
Let's burn some bridges shall we? Or not, I don't think as many people here are big into retro games or this game in particular. Which is good, because while I did enjoy Link to the Past despite not thinking it's all that great, I don't know if I can say the same about Ninja Gaiden.
Ninja Gaiden is known for a few things: It's one of the only well-known NES games to have a meaningful story (told through cutscenes no less), it has fast and tight acrobatic gameplay, and, most importantly, it's infamously difficult. Let's tackle the story first. It's...not good. It's really not. I can give Tecmo credit for making nice-looking cutscenes in between levels, decent story-gameplay integration (i.e. a lot of level environments are based on the events of cutscenes), and even daring to attempt all that in a mere 256 KB NES action game, but the story itself is just not what makes the game worthwhile. The premise is decent enough, our hero Ryu gets a note from his dad that he just fought in a duel, and that if he doesn't come home, Ryu's to go out to America to find his father's friend. The problem mainly lies with the story progression being way too fast and shallow for its own good. None of the characters are interesting, the writing and worldbuilding are nothing special, and the romance between Ryu and Irene is
horribly shoehorned right at the end, considering Irene is a non-factor for half the game. It also doesn't help that this
stupid ass sound effect plays literally any time anything "important" happens in the story, be it something getting stolen, a character getting killed, or Ryu making a quick discovery; it gets old, super unfitting, and just plain silly. While I can kinda entertain the argument of "this game's story was pretty good given its tech", and I can't think of any games before Ninja Gaiden that had so many dynamic cutscenes, fact is it's not a good story. In fact, I can't even call Ninja Gaiden's story ground-breaking; Snatcher (A Hideo Kojima Game™) released about 2 weeks before Ninja Gaiden in Japan, and not only is its narrative LEAGUES better, but it even holds up okay by modern VN/Adventure game standards if I'm being honest (if you need a reference point, I'd rate it higher than Ace Attorney Investigations but under Ghost Trick and PW:AA). You can't even dare call Ninja Gaiden the best story on the NES when Metal Slader Glory exists.
Graphically, Ninja Gaiden is pretty solid for an NES game, but does nothing particularly stand-out; the aforementioned environments and cutscenes are definitely the best aspects. Musically, however, the game fares a little better. Out of all of those "iconic" NES tunes (Vampire Killer, Wily Stage 1/2, Ducktales Moon, etc.), I think
Act 4-2 (Unbreakable Determination) is not only my favorite of that bunch but straight-up a contender for my favorite song on the NES. It does a fantastic job pumping you up between the iconic melody, the perfectly complementing harmony, and the driving percussion (those sampled drum hits are so good!). And I LOOOOVE that drop around the 15 second mark. It's a bit of shame, albeit not too surprising, that no other song can even come close to matching it, but at least the rest of the OST is good, with
Act 1-1,
Act 2-2, and most notably
Act 5-3 being some of the better tracks.
As for the actual gameplay, I can start by saying the game controls really tightly; moving feels smooth, as does your jumping, and your sword comes out fast. You can also cling to walls and jump off them, which can add a little more variety to the platforming. This all sounds good on paper...but as you progress further into the game, the issues with Ninja Gaiden's gameplay become more and more apparent. See, the one thing everyone knows Ninja Gaiden for is it being really hard; I can attest to that to some extent, it's probably the hardest game I've beaten so far. But would I call it one of the hardest games on the NES or of all-time? I don't think so to be honest; like pretty much any aspect of a game, difficulty is subjective, and especially considering that Ninja Gaiden has infinite continues and (usually) reasonable checkpoints among other things I'll discuss, I think it's surprisingly more manageable than you would think. It's certainly nowhere near as ruthless as Ghosts n Goblins or Contra, or even "beautifully impossible" like Recca, in fact the first few stages are honestly not hard at all by NES standards. It's around Stage 3-2 where Ninja Gaiden becomes more annoying than challenging.
Playing Ninja Gaiden is kinda like Eric Andre's Ninja Rap Warrior, or Filthy Frank's Gentleman's Guide, or any other similar video where people trying to get from Point A to Point B but they're getting random shit hurled at them the whole time. Enemies in Ninja Gaiden sometimes feel like they're placed haphazardly solely to screw you over, occasionally spawning as you're trying to jump over a pit. The thing is though, killing enemies is also really annoying; because your sword range is a little short and only moves forwards rather than having a sweeping hitbox like most video game swords, you'll often find yourself whiffing against enemies when using it (There are subweapons, but they're not always that helpful, and that's assuming you have one with ammo to begin with). On top of that, enemies often respawn if you move the screen even slightly, which is especially annoying when dealing with enemies huddling on small platforms. Thus, you'll often find yourself just saying "fuck it" and brute forcing your way through enemies simply because a lot of them only deal 1-2 damage on contact (you have 16 health), so what's even the point in fighting half of them if you can just tank the hits and get to the next checkpoint? This strategy can
also be annoying, because of Ninja Gaiden's infamous knockback, which activates any time you get hit and sends you flying off the screen, which is further topped with a
very short amount of invincibility frames after getting hit, so you'll probably get hit multiple times in a row trying to get past an annoying crowd of enemies, and making it all the more likely that you'll get hurled into a pit at any time. All of these factors combined make Ninja Gaiden a pretty frustrating game already.
But it doesn't end there. You know that wall-jumping mechanic? It kinda sucks actually. How the wall-jumping works is that you automatically cling to a wall upon jumping towards it. However, once you're on a wall, the only way you're getting off the wall is by wall-jumping off it, and your jump is always in an opposite direction to the wall; unlike Ninja Gaiden II and III, you cannot move up or down a wall and you cannot jump up if you're on the very top of a wall, so if you mess up a jump over a pit and cling to the wall, you're still dead even though you'd hope you were saved because there's no way you're getting up to the ground. The level design of Ninja Gaiden is kinda bland actually, it's just a lot of long hallways filled with enemies and fairly basic platforming over pits (no memorable set-pieces) with very occasional platforming sections in-between that use walljumping. Because of a lack of verticality in level design, walljumping within stages is not as cleverly integrated as you would hope, the wall-jumping mechanic often ends up
getting in the way; like any platformer, Ninja Gaiden has a lot of walls in it simply by design, and you'll end up clinging to them should you accidentally jump towards them (either from messing a jump or because you didn't notice them during the heated gameplay, see the above picture). Not only does this waste time getting to where you want to be, but you're also a sitting duck to enemies while clinging on to the wall.
I know I'm ragging on this game a bunch, and it wasn't a total failure; when I was in a groove, Ninja Gaiden was fun simply because of how satisfying its movement is, and the quick sword movement added to that flow (when it worked). However, there are way too many times where the game is just obnoxious, and when I get down to it, it's not an interestingly-designed game either. Even the bosses are pretty boring overall, with almost all of them either being a boringly easy war of attrition or plain awful to fight against without subweapons. To top it all off, the developers made the dickish decision to boot you several stages back if you lose to the final boss, meaning most of your playtime will be spent repeatedly going through the final stages of the game in order to slowly figure out the final bosses; at a point it's not even that hard it's just groan-inducing. One of those stages however, 6-2, has a particularly asinine jump in it (see above) that is pretty much impossible without deloading an enemy or using the Jump Slash powerup you get earlier in the stage (it's not too bad with Jump Slash, the problem is keeping it that far into the stage). The non-gameplay aspects have a lot of effort clearly put into them, but they're nowhere near enough to make up for the iffy gameplay.
When I sat down to evaluate this game, I basically asked myself:
1. Is Ninja Gaiden a bad game?
2. Is Ninja Gaiden a game I can recommend?
Question 1 is definitely no, Ninja Gaiden isn't completely incompetent, there are a lot of things going for it. But Question 2 is also no...it's not a game I'd be willing to recommend. If you want a beloved NES game that's a good challenge but has stood the test of time, I'd suggest Castlevania I or III (or the Mega Man games if you want something a smidge easier). If you're seeking some
insane retro video game challenge to try and conquer, I don't think Ninja Gaiden can satisfy that either, there's plenty of other games for that, like any of the NES/SNES/Genesis Contra or Ghosts n Goblins games. More importantly though, I'd implore you all to check out the Japanese version of Ninja Gaiden III instead of this game. Not only does it solve most of the original's problems (levels and platforming are wayyy better, knockback is non-existent on the ground, enemies don't respawn, there's a way to increase your sword range, bosses are more fun), but it's also MUCH easier overall (and has password saves :p) while still offering a decent challenge in the late-game; it's probably a contender for the best NES game and a game I would highly recommend to anyone trying to get into retro games or if you were somehow still interested in the original's gameplay (don't play the US version of the game though
). As it stands, Ninja Gaiden ain't bad, but I don't think it's a good game either.
High 4 to
Low 5 / 10 (Okay)
