Camera issues aside, was it everything you dreamed of?

For me, Ninja Gaiden was a very solid game, but I personally would have preferred a harder difficulty setting in exchange for NO exploration elements. I' ve never been a fans of mazes or looking for crap. Give me complete arcade styled gameplay everyday of the week please!

A button masher' s friend Ninja Gaiden is NOT. The AI in Ninja Gaiden would eat button mashers alive. Ninja Gaiden had to be a harder fighting game than the entire Dead or Alive series combined.

The soundtrack sucked.. I mean there were some tunes like the one in the Church altar that sounded like they had potential but just never lived up to it. It' s too bad Tecmo didn' t work the same music magic they did on Dead or Alive 2 and Fatal Frame 2. The sound effects were good though.

The graphics were spectacular! With the exception of the water physics, everything looked great to me.

As for the camera issues, I didn' t think they were as bad as many sites are reporting them to be. The fact that the camera could be recentered most of the time with just the click of the trigger made it a non-issue for me.

Hopefully Ninja Gaiden does well enough for Tecmo to start planning a sequel already. If there is one, I' d love for it to be more arcade-like and less Onimusha-like. Make exploration Optional, not mandatory. Meaning that you can explore certain areas of the environments for health items and weapons but NOT for items to solve puzzles.

So I take it you don' t agree with my review...?

Oh but on the contrary, I did agree :D

I agree that the soundtrack wasn' t impressive, but it had its moments. Not enough to be considered " good," but the focal point was mostly around the sound effects anyway, and those were nearly perfect. That' s why I scored the sound lower than most of the other categories, but still close to a 9.

However, I think you were implying that you wanted the game to be HARDER with your first post there...something I so do NOT agree with. What are you, nuts? LOL

I didn' t mean that I wanted the game to be harder in general, I just meant that I would have taken a harder difficulty over the exploration aspects! Make it a total arcade-like experience and I would have been in my glory! :)

Oh see, I' ve always hated arcade games. Even arcade-style games just annoy me. Being primarily an RPG/strategy fan (although I' ll play anything, so long as it' s good), I like exploration and depth. FPS and action would be my next favorites, but I' ll always be an RPG lover at heart. Personally, I wanted Ryu to gain levels.

Oh see, I' ve always hated arcade games. Even arcade-style games just annoy me. Being primarily an RPG/strategy fan (although I' ll play anything, so long as it' s good), I like exploration and depth. FPS and action would be my next favorites, but I' ll always be an RPG lover at heart. Personally, I wanted Ryu to gain levels.

Hehe, we are completely different in that respect :).
My top favorites genres are 2D shooters - horizontal scrollers first and then vertically scrolling shooters. Platformers and also action games.

With the exception of the Ys series I' ve always hated RPGs.
I could never stand FPS games neither. Except for Breakdown, I hate the genre.
I also don' t like sports ALTHOUGH there were a handful of sports games that I found enjoyable. Beach Spikers, Virtua Tennis, boxing games and Track n field style games.

In a nutshell I tend to go for moderate to fast paced games, most of which are 2D.

LOL

Well, we certainly are polar opposites, then. When I was a kid, and all my friends were really into games like Galaga and 1942, I just couldn' t get into it. I HATED them, almost as much as 2D fighters. I still don' t like fighters that much, although I will play DoA 3 every once in a while. But don' t get me wrong; I love 2D games, so long as they' re side-scrolling action/adventures or platformers. I really enjoy a great FPS, which is one of the primary reasons I have my XBox. I like sports every once in a while, but I basically never have more than a couple sports titles in my game collection. I did play Madden 2004 an AWFUL lot last year, and I absolutely adore the Hot Shots series. But RPGs...man, after a bunch between the SNES and Genesis, and then the glory days of the PSone (where I played 30+ RPGs, and own just about all of them)...they are far and away my favorite.

But as I said, I' ll play ANY genre, so long as it' s good. Here' s my current game collection-

PSOne:

Alundra
Twisted Metal 2
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night
Jet Moto
3D Baseball
Mortal Kombat: Trilogy
Lunar: Silver Star Story Complete
Lunar 2: Eternal Blue
Dragon Warrior VII
Final Fantasy VII-IX
Final Fantasy Tactics, Chronicles, Origins, Anthology
Legend of Dragoon
Legend of Legaia
Wild Arms
Wild Arms 2
Suikoden
Suikoden II
Granstream Saga
Star Ocean 2
Parasite Eve
Parasite Eve 2
Saga Frontier
Chrono Cross
Vagrant Story
Legend of Mana
Front Mission 3
Gran Turismo 2
Medal of Honor
Koudelka
Vandal Hearts
Vandal Hearts 2

PS2:

Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance
Beyond Good and Evil
The Bouncer
Champions of Norrath
Devil May Cry
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness
Final Fantasy X
Final Fantasy X-2
Gitaroo-Man
Gran Turismo 3
Grand Theft Auto III
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Hot Shots Golf 3
Kingdom Hearts
Legaia 2: Duel Saga
Madden 2004
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
Onimusha 2
Red Faction
Resident Evil: Code Veronica X
Rygar
Shadow of Destiny
Silent Hill 2
Silent Hill 3
Suikoden III
Super Bust-a-Move 2
Tenchu: Wrath of Heaven
TimeSplitters 2
Twisted Metal: Black
Wild Arms 3
XenoSaga

XBox:

Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance 2
Dead or Alive 3
Dead or Alive: Xtreme Beach Volleyball
Deus Ex: Invisible War
Deathrow
Halo
Max Payne 2
Ninja Gaiden
Prince of Persia
Return to Castle Wolfenstein
Splinter Cell
Unreal Championship

Don' t ask me why I just listed all that. I' m bored.

it didn' t exceed my expectations. But then again i was really into the hype as well. What' s totally new to me about this game however is how exhilarting the fights are. I' ve never felt so... " good at sword fighting" ... than after playing this game. The fighting here really forces you to think.

??? It made you feel good at sword fighting? Oh, THOSE...... the ones between every hour of exploration. LOL. Overall, I give it 8/10, not great, but good.

What in the...?

If you' re encountering battles once every hour, you' re doing a whole lot of standing around. I explore every nook and cranny, and the battles come about every 5 minutes. Then again, 5 minutes of " down time" is like an hour in some gamer' s eyes. Like those people that try to tell me that FF X is just " one big movie," when not a single cut-scene goes longer than 4-5 minutes, and the total number is 103 minutes of non-interactive gameplay. Versus 40-60 hours of interactive gameplay, that' s about a 3% ratio of cut-scenes/FMV. Just thought I' d mention this...

NG plays very quickly, and if you had enemies on you every 10 seconds, you' d be dead before you got out of the first chapter.

anyway, in ninja gaiden there are lots of spots where if you clear the spot of enemies, then need to go back to that spot, the enemies will respawn.

On the other hand there are puzzles that require you to go back to spots where the enemies don' t respawn. And if you have a hard time with the puzzle, you' re katana wielding hands WILL get really itchy to kill.

On the whole though, this pretty much is an action-infested game. Really fast too. In a preview once, they said it was faster than most action games, since it' s speed matched those of one on one fighting games.