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  Back to not Russia, where we discuss the subject of demons vs humans as portrayed in classic media like Devilman and My Balls. Also we play more Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, 'cause that's what we're actually here for.  The multi missile enemies from the base games have their firing rate and number of missiles per salvo toned down quite a bit here, which is a change I can confidently call a positive in a list of overwhelming negative changes. Aside from that, the Godomus fight ends as soon as you finish the boss as opposed to finishing off the lackeys, since this is Sigma 2 and that cutscene of a tac ninja being cut down the middle by Ryu's sword could never be shown here. What a shame.
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Jul 1, 2018 00:09
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There is a story about demons getting surprised/worried about humans having guns, it's called Doom rip and tear
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Jul 2, 2018 11:36
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  Just another break from Ninja Gaiden II to focus on another series and character that is relevant to Ninja Gaiden. Enjoy some Dead or Alive footage and Aerosmith. You can probably guess what's gonna be after this update.
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Jul 4, 2018 02:22
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ArclightBorealis posted:You can probably guess what's gonna be after this update. Ninja Gaiden Sigma II: Electric Boogaloo? Why was I hearing Snake Eater during that last Ayane cutscene? I think I'm losing it...
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Jul 5, 2018 04:27
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Ayane was my favorite Sigma 2 character. Her longer combos are full of suitable crazy ninja poo poo.
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Jul 5, 2018 06:52
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KieranWalker posted:Why was I hearing Snake Eater during that last Ayane cutscene? I think I'm losing it... Hell, DOA 4's endings on the whole are weird, running the gambit of serious, cool, cheesy, and just plain zany. Like Zack.
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Jul 5, 2018 08:01
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 The final Sigma 2 exclusive chapter is here, and the third playable character is everyone's favorite purple haired ninja. Also my favorite of the three extra characters by far.   Ayane Ayane, hands down, is the best of the three female playable characters in Sigma 2. Not only is her moveset very faithful to the form and style of how she fights in her own series, but her gameplay in Sigma 2 is the closest any character gets to feeling like how Ryu did in vanilla NG II. Specifically, the fact that she has her own version of incendiary shuriken, and her rate of delimbing with the Fuma Kodachi feels somewhat faster, likely due to the already increase attack speed that she weilds. She's a fun character that makes it even more unfortunate that you can only play as her in this chapter and in the Team Mission mode. Being able to go through Ryu's game with her would've been appreciated.  Fuma Kodachi A pair of short blades handed down within the Tenjin school. "Kodachi" is a catch-all term for any Japanese sword. Easy to manipulate, they are ideal weapons for rapid slashing attacks to take the initiative and keep an enemy on his toes. They are practicularly suitable as complements to physical attacks, allowing one to weave kicks and slices into a combo offensive that denies an enemy the chance to counterattack. Forged with blades as thin as possible for lightness, what they lack in reach they make up for with damage in close-range attacks. The name comes from the legendary Fuma clan, a famed group of medieval ninja that favored these weapons. Take the dual swords, but make them shorter and thus swing even faster. They have a level of precision that the original dual swords did not have (a design that made sense for the wide range of attack and delimb rate), and in Ayane's hand it turns her into another murder blender.  Flash Kunai Throwing knives that explode upon penetrating a target. When thrown, the iris flower spins and ignites a fuse, which upon impact is brought into contact with explosive material mounted on the grip, detonating it. The tip features reversed spikes designed to make the kunai difficult to remove quickly after impact, enhancing its effectiveness. This is a weapon of both beauty and brutality. Next to the Fuma Kodachi, the Flash Kunai is an equally important weapon for Ayane as it takes a tool that used to belong to Ryu and for arbitrary dumb reasons it is now her's. It may not be an instant delimb guarantee like it's NGII counterpart, but the damage is much appreciated.  Art of the Raging Mountain God The Art of the Raging Mountain God is a secret Tenjin technique. Chanting the words and performing the gestures imbues one's fists with the aura of all nature and creation, allowing them to release an earthquake-like shockwave that pummels opponents. The actual amount of aura generated is directly preportional to the psychic energy of the user; a powerfully-focused individual can use it to move heaven and earth, while a less spiritually advanced individual may find themselves sucked into the raging vortex of pure energy generated by their own spell. A standard AoE Ninpo blast that is as rote as most other Ninpo in the series. It's only interesting detail is that if you remember your DOA story moments, this ninpo is Ayane's signature, with the initial chant and symbols and everything. Really only an easter egg those players would get, otherwise it's a pretty typical "get off me" move.  Bosses  Obaba While I generally am positive on Ayane's chapter, this boss fight brings it down quite a notch. One because Obaba is a character that even back in Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword I felt did not deserve to come back, and you delt with her pretty swiftly in that game. The second is because her fiend form, moves, and variety in which they're used is just uninteresting as hell. A multi hit melee combo, a 360 sweep, an overhead stomp, a command grab, it reminds you very clearly that these extra chapters and content for Sigma 2, at the end of the day, are very cheap and quickly made. The exception of course being the actual gameplay systems for these playable characters, but for any character action game when isn't that the case?
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Jul 7, 2018 03:17
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I don't understand what's happening; I keep mashing the "Purchase full game" button on XBox Live's NG2 listing, but it just keeps redirecting me to the demo. Don't make me troll Gamestop, Microsoft. You don't want that. I don't want that. But I will if I have to.
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Jul 12, 2018 02:11
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 Welcome to the jungle, Ryu Hayabusa. You're entering the absolute worst section of Ninja Gaiden II with this chapter. Listen to us talk about why it's poo poo as well as ruminate on what completely new weapons Ryu could possibly use in the future.   Vigoorian Flail A vicious flail made during the Middle Ages in the Vigoor Empire. An old favorite from Ninja Gaiden 1, the Vigoorian Flails are the final weapon in our arsenal (or 4th if you're going by Sigma 2 and its hosed up ordering). Like with the Lunar and Dragon Sword, the Flails perform the same functions you'd expect them to, although as the early game has shown we don't need to depend on these as much for those pesky ghost fish. In fact, the faster combat engine of this game makes these the definitive weapon for generating high hit combos, staggering humanoid enemies, and getting lots of essence as the result.  Fiends  Sentry Hover versions of the Executors made specifically for this chapter, as they hover over the water and cannot be destroyed by Obliteration Technique. Fighting them is as shallow as the water combat itself, as you just home in with your fastest weapon's attacks (the Falcon's Talons in my case), and tear them to shreds  Death Worm A very annoying enemy type, these worms burrow out of the ground, swing their bodies around at you, and will even use their giant proboscus to impale you for lots of damage. The thing that makes them not fun to deal with though is that there's no visual hint or indicator of where they're going to pop up. The assumption is that they'll always try to appear right underneath Ryu, but it's not always exact, and trying to stay on the move too much means putting yourself at a greater distance, thus prolonging the battle.  Blood Eel An aquatic enemy designed to be the successors to the Fiend Sharks in Ninja Gaiden 1. They can swim towards you and bite, but this time their bite is more aggravating as they'll flying out in a random direction afterwards. Thankfully, Gatling Spear Gun makes quick work of them, but only in the first area you encounter them. There's a later section where they return where that's simply not viable, and the alternative approach as you'll find is to abuse the Eclipse Scythe's UT.  Spriggan A fairly cool enemy type as it's one of the few non humanoid enemies that demonstrate the game's delimb system. Spriggans are the successor to the Ghuls from the first game, which even back then you could say where the predecessor to this game's delimb system as they could lose an arm or head and still fight. Here their behavior changes quite a bit due to have a massive cannon on one arm and a chainsaw on the other. Both are important to deal with, and depending on which arm gets taken will change their strategy. Same for legs. And of course they'll keep going without a head. They're undead technically. Bosses  Giant Death Worm A boss fight in Ninja Gaiden II that is so poo poo that Sigma 2 does away with it entirely. The entire set up for this fight is just not fun, with the ugly green tunnel restricting your ability to move, and this boss having a command grab that has its length and damage change depending on which end of the tunnel it starts at, which means on higher difficulties that move is an instant death. Trust me when I say be glad I didn't show the fight as it's normally seen by other players. It's not worth it. This boss is poo poo, and is unexciting in concept. Quetzacoatl Giant dragon like creatures that as I was looking up the name made me realize we technically had faced juvenile versions of these things in the game already. But these are boss versions, and frankly they aren't that much better to fight. They fly around the arena, hang back and shoot projectiles, and are highly susceptible to the Art of the Piercing Void if you manage to land it. Not as aggravating as the Giant Death Worm, but this is an equally pointless fight that Sigma 2 also saw fit to remove. Good riddance I say.
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Jul 28, 2018 07:35
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Has there ever been a jungle level in a game that doesn't suck? Excepting MGS 3 of course.
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Jul 28, 2018 16:22
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Was that Death & Republic from Guilty Gear? Man, that section with the rocket guys looks like rear end. I'm glad that's the low point of the game. I mean, it could be a lot worse. So, I picked up both NGB and NGII, and fired up NGII first on a whim; I'm definitely a lot better at NGII's combat than NGB's. That said, I wanna beat them in order, as soon as I can figure out/remember how to beat Murai in the first level...
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Jul 29, 2018 13:14
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 Back to the jungle in a slightly less lovely form. But in the end, it matters little in regards to improving Sigma 2 as a whole. So, where to start? Obviously this was evident during the previous chapter, but Sigma 2's made adjustments to enemies that use projectile attacks, by reducing their frequency considerably. For the first major battle amid the spot lights and water running all over the place, this section gets a major improvement. Some of the other minor but still bullshit moments in the chapter also got nixed, but there's of course two very big changes that I consider positives here. Firstly, this game has one example I can think of where simply removing a bad element and replacing it with nothing was worth it, and that is the removal of the Giga Death Worm. The horrid boss you fight in the long, cramped, luminescent green tunnel. Going through that area, with or without the worm was like a trip through Itagaki's colon, and I'm glad this version spares everyone from that. Secondly, the inclusion of another good boss to replace the two Quetzacoatls. The Black Dragon (not official name as far as I can tell, can't find anything else on what it's called) is a very solid if still somewhat basic boss fight. Compared to what the Greater Fiends and Murai are capable of, Black Dragon's a few steps behind that in originality of attacks and variety. But it's a solid way to end the chapter, as it is the only boss in the game to have a mid battle Obliteration Technique the player can trigger, changing its behavior to be more aggressive and add more fire to its moves. It's very cool. Good job, Sigma 2. ArclightBorealis fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Aug 1, 2018 |
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Aug 1, 2018 04:59
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Are you sure that's the right video? I mean, putting up one of the old Bayonetta singles can be good for a laugh but it's not the most applicable thing to discussing the merits and flaws of Ninja Gaiden.
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Aug 1, 2018 07:38
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Ah poo poo. Fixed it. No idea how that link got posted in there.
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Aug 1, 2018 18:03
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This has to be the only chapter for which you can say with a straight face, "Sigma 2 improved this immensely." Edit: In all fairness, the motorcycle section was not my least favorite part of Bayonetta. Having witnessed most of this and played through DMC4 and both Bayonetta games, I think I would definitely prefer Ninja Gaiden 2 if someone asked me to pick one of the three. Jury's still out on NGB for me, pending getting past those motherfuckers on horseback in the Hayabusa Village. 
KeiraWalker fucked around with this message at 13:30 on Aug 2, 2018 |
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Aug 2, 2018 13:16
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 Get ready for a lot more blood than you usually get in Ninja Gaiden II, along with some titties. Bloody titties, in fact. Probably closest you could say a video in this LP isn't safe for work, but why the gently caress would you be watching a gorey game like this anywhere but at home? Bosses  Elizabet The final of the four Greater Fiends, the ruler of Blood, Elizabet is basically Alma 2.0. She's a boss that loves to hover around just out of reach of anything save for a flying swallow, and she even responds to that in a lot of the same way. While she's not a pushover like Volf is, I personally find her to be my least favorite of the Greater Fiends to fight, mainly because while it tries to evolve the framework established by Alma it just doesn't nail it as well for me. Those moments where you can actually get a full combo in after successfully knocking her down is way too few and far between.
  quote:Denji's Notebook  quote:The Prayer of the Necromantale
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Aug 5, 2018 22:37
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Another Pro Strat for The Staircase is to make liberal use of the Wind Blades ninpo. It's not really the best strategy for getting through the area but you can fill up the whole screen with limbs, and, y'know, we have our priorities straight. I am certain I saw a film once, like, in a cinema and everything, that had a lot of ninja in it, and had a guy who used a kusarigama. I remember it because it wasn't especially long after Ninja Gaiden II came out and I told my friend who I saw the film with that that baller-rear end chain sickle thing was called a kusarigama and you can totally use one of them in Ninja Gaiden II. I can't remember the name of the film. It was a very generic name, I think. E: It was Ninja Assassin and apparently the fuckin' Wachowskis were behind it? Fedule fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Aug 6, 2018 |
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Aug 6, 2018 00:09
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 An uneventful retread through the Temple of Sacrifice, where I decide to take the time to expouse on the reason behind Ninja Gaiden II original ending up the way it did, among other topics. So we all know how Sigma 2's biggest overarching problems is the reduction of enemy group encounters and making them more comparable to something like Ninja Gaiden 1. The Staircase is one of the bigger examples of this change negatively impacting what should have been an awesome moment. You get no slowdown, which from an outsiders perspective would seem perfectly acceptable, but it misses a lot of the charm behind that moment being so memorable. Yet on the flip side, you look earlier in the chapter as well as other points in the game, but there are some encounters that despite being huge are actually incredibly monotonous. Which leads to the giant rock bridge area where you originally fought eight Rasetsus being replaced with a more diverse enemy line up and pacing between waves. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Ultimately this game still finds ways until the very end to neuter the truly amazing and over the top fights it has to offer, but I still think about how there could've been an actual middle ground struck between the two games' design somewhere. But maybe that would've only worked had there been more time for other things. But alas, we'll never really know what this game could've been like had it gotten all the time and money in the world to become the best thing ever.
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Aug 8, 2018 03:02
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 This is the real moment I've been waiting for this whole LP. This loving chapter is single handedly the best thing in Ninja Gaiden II and I hope you'll see why. Also while being the worst chapter on Master Ninja difficulty because god drat loving explosions.  True Dragon Sword The true form of the Dragon Sword, brimming with sacred power. It wouldn't be a proper Ninja Gaiden game if Ryu didn't get the True Dragon Sword just in time for the end game. The base combos are more powerful, you get new ones introduced, and returning combos from Ninja Gaiden 1 get major upgrades as well. A single katana weapon in any game has never felt as good as this sword does in this game.  Windmill Shuriken A large, unique Shuriken that has been handed down within the Hayabusa Clan for generations. Due to its large mass, the Windmill Shuriken is able to strike multiple enemies without losing momentum and return to the thrower like a boomerang. Its four blades can be folded on top of one another by rotating them on the central axis. It is carried in this folded state, attached to the wielder's forearm guard. Some say that a similar weapon carried by the legendary Ninja Fuma Kotaro was inspired by this Hayabusa Clan original. The final projectile weapon, and a personal favorite of mine from the first Ninja Gaiden. It's as useful as you'd expect it to be, but with this game's addition of charging projectile attacks, the Windmill Shuriken's benefits from this mechanic come in the form of severing body parts off of multiple enemies. Along with the True Dragon Sword, getting this weapon again near the end game is so exciting, and you'll honestly wonder how you got through the rest of the game without having it beforehand.  quote:Hachijuro's Notebook  quote:Koshimaru's Notebook (2)  quote:History of the Castle of the Dragon
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Aug 30, 2018 05:57
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loving ghost fish! I didn't actually recognize the music in the Test of Valor this time. What was it?
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Sep 1, 2018 02:10
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KieranWalker posted:loving ghost fish!
Next Sigma 2 update will be later this evening. and hopefully the schedule won't get sidetracked too hard by games like Spider-Man unlocking in just hours.
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Sep 6, 2018 22:12
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ArclightBorealis posted:The song was an arrangement of Fallen White Angel from Super Robot Wars Impact. And since that was the last of the Tests of Valor in the game, I can give the full list of tracks I pulled for each fight (wanted to see how many would recognize the different tracks before posting this). Yeah, I recognized SSH's style, but I couldn't place a number of the songs. Says something about the man that I can hear one of his arrangements and immediately think "yeah, that's by SSH" even if I have no freaking clue what the actual melody is.
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Sep 7, 2018 04:57
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 The best chapter of Ninja Gaiden II Vanilla is now made into the most disappointing, uneventful chapter in Sigma 2. At least I made sure to end the boss fight with a well deserved Izuna Drop. Genshin-a Go Go, Baby! So this chapter is the biggest example of Sigma 2's general changes impacting it the hardest. Because the game can't put out the same number of enemies as before, they don't throw anything at you except some demon wolves right before the first stage statue. And making sure that we don't get to use any actually good projectile weapons, we don't get the Windmill Shuriken or any excuse really to revisit Kureha's Grave. The most positive note that can be said, as shown in the video, is that the biggest bullshit enemy encounter near the graveyard is considerably less bullshit, instead throwing a few Rasetsus at you with no incendiary shurikens interrupting matters. But the biggest underlying feeling from this chapter is that, more than the reduced numbers, is the feeling that the team really just stopped giving any thought to actual enemy placement and how to ramp it up in intensity. You need to give the player SOME sense of escalation in challenge, which the vanilla game does a good job of even if the encounter design has problems of its own in that. At least you'll get a glimpse of the underworld for the final few chapters and hopefully appreciate the crazy vistas. Even if it's a short trip.
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Sep 8, 2018 00:16
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At it best, Ninja Gaiden 2 feels like you're in the craziest kung fu movie of all time, flying all over the place dodging explosions and cutting through overwhelming numbers of ninjas. Sigma 2 just ruins that feeling entirely.
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Sep 9, 2018 19:41
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On the other hand, you get to Izuna drop Genshin. So it's not all bad.
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Sep 10, 2018 14:14
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 Ryu Hayabusa descends into the Underworld, where we have rematches with old bosses while spending way too much time talking about how loving wack the 1986 Transformers movie actually was. Fiends  Red Dragon Spawn A successor to the Red Dinos from the first Ninja Gaiden, these things now have wings instead of arms, and despite them trying to be menacing I can't help but find them to be somewhat doofy looking. They still hit as hard as their predecessors though, not really staggering for anything when they wind up for an attack, and the wings give them the ability to hover just out of reach much like the Winged Vangelfs. Though the most disappointing aspect of this enemy, more than anything, is that the first encounter you face them in is their last. Something about them that they weren't given much of a priority when the game was clearly being rushed in its final stages, and even the Sigma version axes these things entirely. Such a shame.  Marionnette Cyborg These mechanical fiends are quite cool, and are not called Widows as I somehow believed they were called when recording the commentary for this update (sometimes it's hard to find anything regarding official names for enemies in this series). With 3 arachnid like legs and two hits attached to the same body, it's an odd design to say the least. But that oddness lends itself to many of its attack animations, and it follows a similar rule to the enemies we encountered in Chapter 7, where they will explode upon death and it will hurt you if you don't block it.
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Sep 13, 2018 06:15
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I have the DVD of the Transformers movie. One of the chapter titles is labeled simply, "Swear Word." Also, say what you will about the Michael Bay movies--I know at least one huge Transformers nerd who actually liked them--they DID make the robots relatively realistic, in that they aren't magically changing size all the time and hiding most of their mass in hammerspace, that kind of thing. Oh, and I guess Ryu Hayabusa goes to Hell and kicks the crap out of some fiends. Something something, Doom and/or God of War reference. KeiraWalker fucked around with this message at 14:07 on Sep 13, 2018 |
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Sep 13, 2018 13:57
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 No Transformers talk this video, but instead we focus on a couple of noticeable improvements to this section of the game and not much else, 'cause Team Ninja still had no money to spare on expanding these already short late game chapters. So first things first, the excessive bloom from the 360 version of this chapter is toned way the hell down. No one likes it, and it's one of those things that devs were addicted to using early in the 360 and PS3 days. Secondly, not just having a rematch with Marbus but also having it preceded by a cutscene goes a long way and straight up addresses a problem I had with the Tengu brothers fight in the previous chapter. Because of the lack of introduction from Ryu's perspective, they come off as just nobodies. At least with Marbus, and him being the last of the Vigoorian Greater Fiends to survive the end of Ninja Gaiden 1, it makes sense to have a scene acknowledging that both characters recognize each other, and that Ryu has no time for his poo poo. And the fight is still fun. Outside of that, there's some minor, additional changes like the lava lake in the Zedonius fight, shortening the dead woods section right after, and reworking the Volf rematch in a way that feels pretty lame. But this chapter is still about as short as it was in the base game, mainly because we're all done with Tests of Valor so there's no more of that type of content to pad things out (of course Sigma 2 nixed it completely, so this is more a general observation). But this and the next chapter, if you were to look at them side by side, could easily have been combined into one because how quick and dirty the end game chapters feel. You'd think there'd be some more meaningful expansion done to this area or something, right? It's not often you get to go into hell in a video game and you wanna see just how crazy and out there the level designers make it. Quite a missed opportunity, in all honesty.
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Sep 16, 2018 03:51
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I definitely agree that reusing a boss from the original game in an instance like that would have been a good thing for NG2 vanilla to do. Sometimes a returning antagonist can actually add a lot to a story, even if it's brief like this was. That is one point where I'd say Sigma 2 has a major advantage over its predecessor.
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Sep 18, 2018 02:47
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 Preface for this update, the source video of this chapter did not want to agree with Sony Vegas during editing so I had to improvise. Alas, the framerate and bitrate took a hit, but I was not willing to play all the way back through the game just to rerecord this footage from literally a year ago. Enjoy this otherwise filler chapter. They really should've combined this with Chapter 12 in all honesty.
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Oct 1, 2018 19:59
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Yeah, why have two short chapters when you can just combine them into a longer one that's more in line with the rest of the game? Weird choice. I guess it's not a Japanese game without some damsel in distress bullshit. Makes me think of Tetra from Wind Waker, kinda.
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Oct 2, 2018 04:11
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KieranWalker posted:Yeah, why have two short chapters when you can just combine them into a longer one that's more in line with the rest of the game? Weird choice. And if it's any consolation for Sonia's situation, I guess she only get kidnapped once and near the end as opposed to Rachel getting MIA'd twice in a row during Ninja Gaiden 1. By the same fiend no less. Still poo poo that it even happens.
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Oct 2, 2018 19:58
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 The filler chapter returns, but with the usual enemy layout remixes and another blatant example of removing poo poo while not putting something else meaningful in its place. No one likes empty Gore Pinatas. This is one of those few chapters in the game where it gates your progress at nearly every step with different enemy encounters in both versions, so there's not really anything that makes this chapter feel drawn out or bloated compared to its vanilla version. There's no real way to speed through or skip sections even if you wanted to. The Tengu Brothers return for one final showdown, but as usual they are given no introduction or fanfare from Ryu's perspective. Centaurs are removed completely from the location they actually show up in, and the worst offense is the tunnel of gore pinatas. In the vanilla game, there was always at least one enemy inside each one you burst open, but here you go about 4-5 gore pinatas at a time with nothing until you finally get one that has enemies. And it actually holds more in a single one than in the base game. NGII on the 360 you would get about 3 ninjas on average for each one of those sacs, but in Sigma 2, when you do get enemies it's usually about double that. It's ultimately still less enemies in this section than you would've fought in the vanilla game, but I can see the reasoning behind this decision, sort of. The last thing Team Ninja wanted to happen was have the player overload the game's memory with enemy spawns, so they spaced them all out to make sure it was as controlled as possible. Controlled, yes, but still boring. Oh, and the devs forgot to fix the visual inconsistency that is Sonia's missing neck tattoo while in that dumb dress, so I'm going to assume the theory of it being one of those fake sticker tattoos is correct.
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Oct 5, 2018 17:46
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 The end is upon us. Chapter 14 is one hell of a boss rush, with both old and new foes being vanquished for good. All in all, a solid end to this extremely fun yet flawed action game. Good poo poo, Itagaki.  Blade of the Archfiend The True Dragon Sword and Blade of the Archfiend, wielded together. Yep, the Dragon Sword isn't the only weapon in the game to go up to level 4. By combining the True Dragon Sword with Genshin's Blade of the Archfiend, these two become the new dual sword weapon, and it's quite possibly the best out of every tool in the game. All the same moves, extra power, and a couple new combos that are so awesome that I can't actually show them off in this particular video. Mainly because it requires a humanoid enemy to use it on, and there aren't any to be had in the entire chapter. Whoops. Bosses  Dagra Dai After all the build up about Dagra Dai, we finally get a boss fight with the man himself. And it is terrible. For real, this is a fight that I wish got the same treatment that the Tunnel Worm got in Sigma 2 by being removed entirely, but unfortunately there's too much story significance to ignore him. Really, the major problem is that he hovers out of reach a lot of the time, but while we've had bosses that like to fly around (Zedonius, Elizabet), he's just high enough that not even the scythe's air combo can hit him reliable half the time. And this is made worse by the AI not really following a consistent pattern with which order of moves it goes with, as he could stay in the air for a long time either using an electric strike attack, or summoning a serious of energy pillars before finishing with a hard to dodge beam. When he's on the ground, hits still aren't free as he's prone to teleport around, go into a command grab without warning, and use his tentacles to slap you at very far ranges. Also he can summon Vangelfs to get in your way, but there's actually an exploit where you avoid killing the enemies in the tunnel leading to the fight, and when the battle starts all the Vangelfs will be stuck behind the door. It plays havoc with the camera somewhat, but it negates one of his moves entirely. Still, for a Greater Fiend type boss, this one is still a colossal let down.   Archfiend Vazdah The final boss of the game is actually a two phase fight like the Vigoor Emperor was in Ninja Gaiden 1, though its phases are much different. The first fight is against Vazdah in its larval form as it tries to climb to the top of Mt. Fuji. Instead of having a clunky floating platform fight like with Vigoor, this one is all about using the bow and arrow to fire charge shots at its head and abdomen, the two major weakpoints...and that's it. Seriously, you just fire at the head and then the jewel in its abdomen when you can, and repeat until it moves up a level. And as it moves up each level, it does not change in difficulty or strategy. And incredibly boring fight, but thankfully there's another phase after it that is much, much better. The second phase has Vazdah in his complete form, and it feels extremely appropriate as final boss material. He flies andteleports around a lot, but after each teleport there's some action you need to watch out for. He can summon flaming meteors from the depths, a strike of lightning, dash across the arena from one far end to another, and even will divekick onto the platform to walk around a bit. That said, the best chance you have to deal damage against him is when he positions himself by hanging off of the platform. But even with him being in easy reach to hit, there's plenty of danger to watch out for. His three major attacks when hanging off the ledge is to pound the ground with his fists (they produce VERY large hit boxes), summong a giant head laser that can be avoided by dodging into a blind spot, and lastly a grab attack which usually finishes with him teleporting away. So in short, the best way to get damage in is to absolutely dodge the grab attempts as much as possible so that he stays in place. And when he's down to his last bit of health, the Archfiend can be eliminated with a spectacular Obliteration Technique, a fitting end for the final combat encounter of this game.
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Nov 11, 2018 03:09
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Dagra Dai certainly looks like a pain in the dick, all right. I suppose you take the good with the bad. Would you say that's the worst boss fight in the game, or would that "honor" go to one of the other stinkers we've seen?
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Nov 12, 2018 14:47
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I can't say the "Irene = Sonia" thing sits well with me: Irene was a pretty normal person, a government agent who dressed the part, if not exactly much of a character in the original NES trilogy because who was; meanwhile, Sonya is pretty fetishy and also still not much of a character when they could do much more. But then fetishy pretty much describes 90% of Ninja Theory's output.
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Nov 12, 2018 14:56
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 The end of the game again, this time in Sigma 2. The journey through this relatively mediocre update on a flawed gem is done, but stay tuned for the post game material later on. The most significant changes that are chapter specific in my eyes are the ones that take place in between the Elizabet and Dagra Dai fights. In the original, after beating Elizabet you went to the door in the abyss, opened it, fought through a bunch of Vangelfs in a green tunnel, then you were onto the next boss. Here, the green tunnel is removed, and instead you get to fight the last batch of Black Spider Ninja in the entire game with the chance to finally use a brand new move with the Blade of the Archfiend: Genshin's signature Underworld Drop. I do feel this inclusion was made because the devs understood how unique that move is in Ryu's arsenal that to not have a chance to use it before the campaign's over was odd. Thanks for that. Other than that, all the fights are what you'd expect, especially the final three. By the end, despite the heavy remixing of certain enemy encounters, you do start to notice that the severity of game changes starts to drop off drastically past the halfway point, not unlike the Sigma version of Ninja Gaiden 1. It's just too bad that, when you look back at everything that's been changed, the bad nevertheless outweighs the good.
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Nov 17, 2018 03:58
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oh poo poo, I didn't realize this was posted and was going. I need to get caught up. You ever thought about making some playlists? I'm kinda stuck to the thread and I loved your NGB/NGS1 playthrough!!!
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Nov 19, 2018 23:35
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Good to know they kept up their 70/30 ratio of bad changes to good changes through to the very end, at least. Ghost fish would've been the ultimate gently caress you at the end, and I actually kind of wish they had done that. KeiraWalker fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Nov 28, 2018 |
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Nov 28, 2018 14:29
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 We've now made it to the post game of Ninja Gaiden II. There may not be much in terms of quantity and variety as Ninja Gaiden Black, but there's still enough to demonstrate and talk about for almost an hour. Let's dig in.  Extra costumes return for Ninja Gaiden II, but the context is somewhat different. You see, as this was on the 360, DLC had become a common thing on consoles and Team Ninja released 3 costume packs on Xbox Live that could be purchased for a few bucks each. Well, each pack is more like a costume with multiple color variants. See, before the costume packs came out (which didn't take long to begin with), all the player had was Ryu's Legendary Black Falcon outfit, and for each difficulty they completed an alternate color would be unlocked. So there is essentially five variations on the same costume. This same rule applies to the downloadable outfits, so if you bought them after finishing the game on Master Ninja you'd have access to all the different color variants of those costumes as well. That said, the costumes may technically be more plentiful than what was in Ninja Gaiden Black, but I don't think I'd rate these as being as memorable as the ones in that game. Especially when it had stuff like Ryu's DOA2 outfit, or the Red Muffler. But, if you like to replay games like these, it's nice to have a different outfit every now and then. You can see screenshots of all the different outfits in game by clicking on the icons below. Gives you a better look than just watching them slashing and flying all over the place in video.                          A major addition to the game that, like the costumes, was released as DLC about a month after the original release. There are some changes to how it's set up and arranged compared to its Ninja Gaiden Black counterpart, but it's largely the same at its core. For start, unlike the 46 missions of the original (45 regular + Eternal Legend), NGII's Mission Mode only features 24 (16 regular + 8 survival). Not surprising as this was very quickly put together in the wake of Itagaki preparing to leave Team Ninja, but at the very least less missions means it'll take less time to get through and see everything, as opposed to Black where getting through and just surviving a mission on its default level could be an ordeal at times. That's one thing Mission Mode in Ninja Gaiden II preserves for better or worse, and that is despite each mission having multiple difficulties like the main game, the difficulty balancing here is way different compared to main game. You do get rewarded with a medal to signifies you completed the mission, but if you want that mission screen to be filled with gold medals you gotta go the extra mile and beat them all on Master Ninja. Naturally, I haven't done so yet. Master Ninja in the campaign was already hell enough. So what the mission mode does do differently compared to last game is a couple things. For start, there is a new Essence type that gets introduced, Green Essence. The purpose of this essence is to provide a score multiplier to your karma score. Called Karma Burst, the multiplier can go up to 5 and you must periodically keep collecting green essence to preserve the multiplier or else it drops back to 1. As you'd expect, it follows the same rules as generating essence where UTs, OTs, or any combo that's above 20 hits will override it with yellow essence, so you must learn to drop your combos or hold back if you want a chance at a green essence drop. The high karma score at the end of a mission is nice, but it doesn't change the medal you get based on difficulty. Except for one mission type at the end. The final 8 missions in this mode are known as Survival Missions, a returning feature from DLC that was released for Ninja Gaiden Sigma, though a bit more refined. You are restricted to only one weapon for each mission (hence why there's 8, 'cause 8 weapon types), and you must survive as long as you can while killing everything the game throws at you in a circular arena. It's tough and unrelenting, providing no breaks inbetween the action to refill grey health because there is no grey health. But it's incredibly fun. And this is where getting the highest karma score possible is important and requires understanding how to manipulate green essence drops to keep the Karma Burst up. Getting the gold is no easy task though, as it requires something like 2 million karma score total to get for each mission, which I have not been able to consistently do. And then there's the fact that after going through a bunch of enemy waves, the survival missions will mix things up with a boss fight against Genshin. Defeating him repeats all the enemy waves you faced prior, and it will continue to do so till you run out of health. In a way, these missions are a better distillation of the core of Ninja Gaiden II than the regular missions are. The weapons are the star here. Taking on dozens of ninjas and fiends at once while feeling like a fragile, yet destructive god is a fantastic feeling. The mission mode DLC is worth it for these survival challenges at the very least.
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Dec 12, 2018 21:12
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