Ninja Gaiden 2 Black

Very fun! Simple but very playable. I enjoyed my time with this a lot! Very cool game!

Gameplay riche ! Caméra à mettre en sensibilité Max sinon c’est une horreur ! Remake OK !

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black es un clásico del hack and slash que marcó una época con su dificultad brutal y su combate rápido. Sin embargo, al revisitarlo en 2025, resulta inevitable cuestionar si su jugabilidad ha envejecido bien o si es simplemente un producto de su tiempo. Desde el inicio, el juego no ofrece muchas facilidades para el jugador moderno. La ausencia de un sistema de "lock-on" hace que los enfrentamientos sean caóticos, ya que los enemigos pueden posicionarse a la espalda sin un sistema intuitivo para marcarlos o redirigir los ataques de manera efectiva. A esto se suma la cámara, que en muchas ocasiones se siente más un obstáculo que una herramienta, dificultando la visibilidad en combates intensos. El combate en Ninja Gaiden 2 Black es rápido y satisfactorio cuando funciona, pero carece de mecánicas modernas que hoy se consideran estándar en el género. No hay parry, bloquear se siente torpe y los shurikens, aunque icónicos, son poco prácticos en combate real. En comparación, juegos como Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice han llevado la dificultad y la acción de espadas a un nivel mucho más refinado y satisfactorio. Para los nostálgicos y fanáticos de la saga, este título puede seguir siendo disfrutable, pero para nuevos jugadores resulta una experiencia frustrante y poco atractiva. Si bien su desafío sigue siendo un punto fuerte, la falta de accesibilidad y mecánicas arcaicas pueden hacer que la paciencia se agote rápido. En definitiva, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black es un juego que sigue teniendo su lugar en la historia de los hack and slash, pero al compararlo con las opciones actuales, se siente limitado y carente de refinamiento. A menos que seas un fan dedicado de la franquicia, hay muchas otras experiencias en el género que ofrecen un mejor balance entre reto y jugabilidad.

Pros: 1) The graphics. 2) weapon variety. 3) Hero mode (without this, the game would have been a slog for all but the most anally retentive of players). Now for the cons: 1) The camera, it is all over the place which means you cannot focus on the battle, plus it cannot always be freely controlled, which means you are fighting against it throughout the game. How in a Remake this was not fixed is baffling, as it makes fights harder than they need to be. 2) Damage sponge enemies, they take so many hit to die, it just drags on battles, and inflates game difficulty, especially as the game throws multiple enemies at you at once along with enemies that are firing explosives at you from a distance. 3) Repetitive, this is one of the most mundane games I have ever played, you do the same thing again and again, and if that's what its audience wanted, then why not just make Bloody Palace mode the game, because the game offers nothing else in the way of story, level design, exploration, or replayability. 4) Story, it was given almost no thought, which again makes me wonder why not just release a game akin to Bloody Palace mode, and charge £10 for it, rather than charge quadruple that, as the audience that like this game don't care for the story, all they seem to want to do is kill enemies in long-winded ways (I mean 'skillful' ways) and newer players won't like the story, so why even bother? 5) Movement, I don't mean the combat but more the movement of the character, there's no finesse to his movement so he will go in directions not intended, he gets stuck in corners, instead of climbing a ladder he will begin jumping around it, etc. When Mario N64 was released the fluidity of his movement was emphasised by the developers, and now we can feel how fluid movement in games has become, so why the developers for this did not bother to better this aspect despite having a plethora of games to drawn inspiration from, is beyond me. 6) No lock-on, this was excruciating as this meant the character would miss at least half of his attacks, coupled with the camera, this made fights a battle against the game's mechanics, not just the ai enemies, which brings me to: 7) No enemy tracking, meaning the character will be attacking in one direction but should the enemies move, the character will not register it, which again means many moves will miss. If there's no lock-on, enemy tracking was a must but such a obvious inclusion isn't there. 8) Level design, levels are bland, you do not interact with them, they look the same, and they are ultimately meaningless because whether you are fighting in a castle, or a ship, or a courtyard, nothing changes in the sense that all the levels are played the same, you don't actually use the environment to your advantage apart from jumping off walls or running along them. It's simply four walls you fight within, that's it. 9) Swimming, this is the worst swimming I have ever experienced in any game, you have to fight against the controls to move in the direction you want. 10) Bosses, the majority of which are utterly pointless and there just for the sake of things. 11) No manual save, and a bad checkpoint system. 12) Gameplay, with the bad camera, no lock-on, no enemy tracking, damage sponge enemies, enemies that fire projectiles at you from a distance where you cannot always see them, the gameplay is about pulling off combos, how fun does that sound for anyone but the most dreary of gamers. 13) Unfair difficulty, meaning that the difficulty is not about enemies blocking and dodging, it's more about health and attack damage, so, enemies are damage sponges, they can take off a chunk of your health with a single basic attack, sometimes your attacks do not break enemy combos or attack chagreups, their grab attacks are not easy to see, combined with no lock-on, the awful camera, and no enemy tracking, the difficulty is due to the game's dumb design decisions rather than skill. 14) Platforming, the wall running and jumping from one place to another is not smooth at all, especially in chapters 3, and 10. Instead of jumping towards what you want (as you can do in nearly every game), the character jumps up spinning (like Sonic) making it difficult to judge the distance for platforming, plus the camera again is a hindrance. Overall, this game is outdated, and is nothing compared to the hack-and-slash games that have come since the original NG2 was released, despite the insistence from its fan-base, and gaming journalists who desperately want to feel validated as 'real gamers'. I guess the reason next to nothing was updated is because either the developers are so arrogant that they think they made something close to perfection or they know its fans have such low standards, that as long as they can kill the same seven or eight enemies again and again in 'stylish' ways, then that's enough for them, so why bother improving the game.

I feel like a crazy person because this game is getting so much love. I truly don't understand. Basic functions like facing the correct enemy and trying to look up are rendered difficult or nearly impossible due to the truly horrific camera. Don't even get me started on platforming - trying to wall run is an exercise in futility. You spend all this money to remake a game, but don't bother to fix the camera issues? It leads to a very strange experience where you're playing what looks like a current gen game, but dealing with 20 year old gameplay. It's a bummer because it looks like it should be super fun. But it isn't.