videogameblog

Team Ninja's Ninja Gaiden Sigma is the first game i'm playing for the new 'video game book club' me and my friends are doing (we all play the same video game at the same time and talk about it). We spun a wheel to choose a game and one of my submissions was Ninja Gaiden Black, but Sigma was the more accessible version since it's on gamepass so we played that instead. I originally the only change in Sigma was the graphics and some interlaced DLC missions but it turns out they cut out all of the puzzles? I don't know why they did that. I also don't know why I put this evil ass game on the wheel because it caused me more misery than any game i've played in years. It's probably the most conflicted i've felt about a game in a long time, there's so much good stuff here but also some of the most evil abhorrent stuff you can think of.

The game opens and doesn't tell you any of the controls, doesn't really tell you whats going on, you're just a ninja in the woods. It's an early demonstration of the 'no hand holding' philosophy seen throughout virtually the entire game, which actually gets worse the longer you play. I usually like this kind of thing in games but it gets very annoying here because they'll just abstain from telling you very important information about platforming and combat, even though they have copious means to do so (there's a character that throws pink kunai that act as a tutorial of sorts and 'technique scrolls' which tell you comboes). You're playing as Ryu, a ninja who's boring as fuck. He has no character whatsoever. I like the sequences in the rural area quite a bit. It's probably due to the player's lack of familiarity with the combat system but encounters feel more grounded here. I was definitely carefully considering when to block and attack much more than I was towards the end. Enemy variety is also pretty solid in comparison to the rest of the game - there's the low level grunt ninjas, the ninjas that can throw kunai, the teleporting guys and the samurai. They're all easy to identify provide alot of variety in combat and don't feel unfair. These first few missions feel entirely seperate from the rest - the pacing is slower and you're in completely different setting. The environment, enemies, your outfit and your goals all suddenly change at mission 3. You abruptly put on some freaky ass leather gimp-ninja suit and board a blimp?? Up until this point you're under the impression this is taking place during the Edo period or something so it's a pretty funny tonal shift.

The blimp sequence probably has the best level design excluding the city - you quickly learn the layout and can backtrack for some goodies after you get the keycard if you want. This is the first encounter you have with the black and white soldier enemies, which stick around for virtually the entire game. They're a little too easy and you can block virtually everything they can do to you, except for those instant grab attacks. Virtually every single enemy has a grab attack that does massive damage with no indication they're about to do it (including bosses, which do extremely high damage) and it gets super annoying. I get that it's in there to stop you from continuously blocking but they do it even if you aren't!! Just make it so they only do that if you've been blocking for 5 minutes!! One time I opened the game and an enemy grabbed me and slit my throat 3 times in a row. The blimp sequence ends with you causing it to crash. It lands on the outskirts of your destination, the city where you'll be spending the remainder of the game.

The city is the best level in the game - it's pretty big, and you unlock different areas of it as you progress which is really cool. The first thing you encounter when you arrive is find this statue of two snakes with a slot that needs a plaque. You'd think this would be a quick puzzle that would take maybe two chapters at most to finish, but it actually takes the ENTIRE GAME to finish??? extremely weird choice, I completely forgot why I was collecting fragments of a plaque after like 20 minutes and was confused as to what I was doing the entire game. They also have you collecting random statues for some reason the entire game, it's clear they really did not care about the player tracking what was going on, gameplay was their priority. This is probably for the best, because if this game didn't have an awesome combat system there's no way I would have played it to the end. You spend the rest of the chapter exploring the city, making your way to a bar to gather information. It's really cool to go around the city for the first time, finding secrets and new areas. I think there was a missed opportunity here - they could have had some metroidvania style secrets and areas that you can only reach with abilities you unlock later on scattered around the city, it would encourage and reward exploration and backtracking. Alot of the secrets require you to use the movement systems to reach, which can be pretty hit or miss. You can wallrun sideways, wallrun directly upwards into a ledge grab or a backflip, you can wall jump to other walls; its a pretty expansive system. It's frustratingly janky most of the time, especially if you lose progress when you fail. This is why I think it's application as a kind of optional trial to reach a secret works best, you can retry it as many times as you want and it isn't required. Once you learn how to string a couple moves together it can start to feel pretty fluid. Quickly working a little bit of wallrunning into combat feels extremely rewarding too.

After you reach the bar you're looking for you play the first mission from the DLC, which have been interlaced throughout the story in Sigma. You play as a new character during these missions, Rachel. Her character design is comically oversexualised, she has the most over-the-top jiggle physics i've ever seen. Not surprising in the slighest that Team Ninja also made Dead or Alive. At first I really liked Rachel's moveset, she has a cool dodge ability that allows you to jump over enemies and combo them from behind. I was excited to see what different weapons and techniques I would unlock with her as I progressed, but you literally unlock nothing. She has the same hammer and attacks for every mission you play with her, it gets old fast. These missions are also EXCLUSIVELY reused assets - I don't think they made anything new for these. They should not be mandatory, there's a clear drop in quality from the rest of the game and they fuck up the pacing quite a bit. Without them it would definitely feel like a much more whole experience, travelling through the city as only Ryu. This sequence also has no need to exist at all - it provides the player with no information, its like a shitty version of RE4's Seperate Ways. The difference is that the stuff Ada does in Seperate Ways actually expands the narrative and provides some cool further context to what was going on in other areas of the village as you played; Rachel literally just walks into a reused level and looks at a painting in this segment.

From here the game loses alot of steam; the environments are reused for a LONG time, especially since the player has already seen the monastery during Rachel's segment. As you play as Ryu and make your way to the monastery, you can find a secret weapon called the 'Windmill Shuriken' which is absurdly useful against common enemies. There's quite a bit of downtime during combat, when enemies aren't near you and you're waiting for them to attack. The default shurikens are only really good for cancelling attacks, but the Windmill does tonnes of damage and is great for filling that downtime. It has a pretty fast rate of fire too. It's a very missable weapon, but I couldn't imagine playing without it. There's quite a wide range of weapon variety and most of the ones you can come across are completely missable. I think I only missed two, but there's probably alot more. I made use of most of them, switching between the double swords, the Kiketsu, the Vigoorian Flail and the True Dragon Sword. Some weapons like the Lunar Staff and the Nunchucks are literally useless, I can't see why anyone would ever use them. There's an overpowered move called Flying Swallow that you can only do with swords and the Vigoorian Flail; anything that doesn't have it is pretty much useless. I think it's cool that different weapons are good against different enemy types - the flails are great against flying enemies and low-health ones. It encourages you to vary your gameplay. You also have a tonne of different projectiles at your disposal, which are mostly useless. There's smoke bombs which i'm pretty sure do nothing? and a bunch of different arrow types. Other than sequences where the game forces you to switch projectiles, I would exclusively stick to the Windmill Shuriken. There's a bow that they make you use alot, and for some ungodly reason they took the aiming controls from OCARINA OF TIME?? that game has the WORST aiming controls ever. They are evil for putting those in here. You also have access to powers called Ninpo, which is just a rip-off of devil trigger. You expend a charge to do a big damage move of your choice, but the only one that's worth doing is the fireball. You can usually get all the bosses to half-health by just spamming it. There's an Ice Storm move that's pretty good for killing alot of enemies fast. Overall I felt Ninpo was a pretty underutilised system, and with a little more balance it could have provided more depth to boss fights. You eventually reach the monastery as Ryu, navigate through some tunnels and reemerge to fight one of the best bosses in the game, Alma. At first she feels unconquerable, like you'll never be able to beat her. You eventually figure out her vulnerabilites, and after a while you can breeze through most of her moves. I wish more of the bosses in the game were like this; it feels like a challenge that I overcame. If i had to pinpoint my least favorite thing about Ninja Gaiden Sigma, it would easily be the boss designs. Almost every single boss is not fun at all, and they all have annoying, extremely hard to dodge attacks. They're also way too punishing, doing massive damage with virtually every move. The only way to beat most of them is to chip away at their health bar while they beat your ass and you spam health potions. It never feels rewarding or satisfying. If I was making a boss tier list for this game they would all be in D and F except for both times you encounter Alma and the 3 times you fight Doku. Alot of the bosses could probably be improved significantly if it wasn't for this game's shitty ass camera, which is pretty much a boss in itself. You're always wrangling the camera to try and get it in a position where you can see what's going on, half the time it'll be in the wall or facing the wrong way entirely.

After you beat Alma there's another Rachel sequence, which ends with the worst boss in the game by far. It's just some dude with guns who shoots at you and stunlocks you over and over again. It's painfully annoying and made me want to quit the game forever. There's a feeling of malice towards the player present here. Before you can even start this annoying ass boss fight, you have to beat 3 waves of some of the most annoying enemies in the game, the black spider ninjas. They can stick you with these little explosives from anywhere which will explode and stun you unless you roll on the exact frames the explosion triggers. If you can somehow get through these without using all of your health potions, you need to get lucky and hope that the boss doesnt open with his no-warning throat slit move that does massive damage. Other than that, he has one other move, the guns that he relentlessly shoots you with. You can't block his bullets, and they do massive damage. This is the only time in the game I actually made use of the countering system, which is literally useless during the rest of the game. The countering window is very small, and most attacks are uncounterable, but they don't tell you which ones. It's an extremely convoluted system. It's a shame they didn't flesh out countering more, because it would definitely provide more depth to moment-to-moment combat. The only reason I was able to do it during this boss is because he only has 3 moves. I could tell which one was the counterable one because of how bare-bones his design is. Pair this horrible boss fight with Rachel's boring ass moveset and it's a recipe for one of the worst bosses I've ever played. It's a truly miserable experience. The feeling of malice that I mentioned earlier is present throughout virtually the entire game, with copious backtracking and waves of enemies you need to beat before you can trigger a boss. I get that this is done in order to 'punish' the player for failing, but it's present in other areas of gameplay too. There's enemies with RPGs that will spawn on the other side of combat arenas. Their rockets are unblockable and too fast to dodge. The only way to get up to these guys is to spam jump towards them and hope they'll miss. Most of the time this just results in the player getting hit multiple times, being forced to use health potions. At one point they put you in a thin corridor with three RPG enemies at the other side, you're literally guaranteed to get hit. I think it's messed up how much of this game virtually cannot be played hitless. I want to feel like a cool ninja, why are you forcing me to get shot with rockets? There's absolutely nothing you can do, especially in that corridor sequence, to dodge the rockets. Sure, the three corridor enemies all give you health but it's still intentionally frustrating. It almost feels like the devs are trolling the player too, trying to get a rise out of them. Every 3 times you die the 'continue' button is swapped for a message that says 'do you want to abandon the way of the ninja?' which switches you to easy mode. This gets annoying really fast. This game has been manufactured in some ways to be unavoidably annoying for some reason.

When you switch back to Ryu you navigate through a military base, fight some tanks and get on a train that you immediately crash, ending up back in the damn city again. At this point the lack of cohesive narrative becomes an actual problem for gameplay. You stop really knowing where you're supposed to go because you have no idea what's going on. I had to pull up a guide a couple times because it felt like Ryu was just walking around aimlessly. If there was more of a cohesive but simple narrative like the one in Resident Evil, I think I'd have less trouble knowing what is going on. I think the level design and progression is pretty similar to Resident Evil in some regard; there's a main area that you're always in some offshoot of, and you explore different offshoots of the main area in order to go and explore other ones. The city streets are the Spencer Mansion of Ninja Gaiden. After the crash you need to navigate through some sewers which takes FOREVER, you fight some shitty bosses down there and eventually emerge into a water level. There's some really expansive enemy variety in this game, and the water level has a unique roster of enemies for you to fight. It's one of the cooler features, and constantly forces you to learn and adapt to new enemies. The designs of the enemies are nothing memorable, but wide variety over cool designs was definitely the move here, it compliments the great combat system well. The combat system is by far the best thing about this game. It's super satisfying to block, hit and decapitate enemies. It feels alot more grounded than other hack n' slash games, with less emphasis on in-air combat. You also feel like you're fighting enemies equal to you most of the time, they always feel formidable. The blocking, attacking, dodging and rolling systems all compliment eachother flawlessly. If the combat didn't feel as smooth and rewarding as it does, this game would be irredeemable. It's literally the only great thing about it. The next great boss fight is the second encounter with Doku. He feels like a scary but conquerable opponent, and I beat him in one go. He has a readable grab attack for once, which I was able to dodge each time. It felt great to beat him.

Another shitty pointless meaningless Rachel mission follows, which yet again adds nothing to the story. When you switch back to Ryu you're in the endgame, and the game introduces these evil evil evil fish enemies which latch onto you and drain your health. You'll likely spend a tonne of time fighting them too, since the game pretty much encourages you to grind them for infinite yellow. If you don't grind out these fish and fill your inventory with every possible health potion, the endgame will be virtually impossible. At this point the game should be over. It runs way too long. I did alot of alt+f4ing if I took too much damage during a boss at this point since theres an extremely long period where you cannot access any store. Health potions are only obtainable from statues scattered throughout the game that act as stores for the player, and they're vital to stay alive. Having to conserve them in the endgame is unbelievably evil and made me backtrack at least 2 times to grind out those dumb ass fish. For some reason Ryu turns blue too. At this point in the story I had no idea what was going on, where I was or what my goals where. Truly an incomprehensible game. There's a massive onslaught of bosses at the end, you have to fight like 6 in a row. 2 of them are repeats, and the last 4 are cool except for one. One of them is a demon, who has a pretty easy to read moveset. He spawns in enemies as you fight him which I despise in video games. The next one mixes up the formula a bit which is pretty cool, having you float around on a platform hitting a boss that's firing lasers at you. It was fun to learn a new system, and the coolest cutscene in the game plays out before you fight this one (screenshot above). The cutscenes throughout the game have alot of charm, they're at their best when they're being extremely over the top and goofy. My favorite one is probably the blimp crash, which immediately cuts to Ryu menacingly standing on top of a telephone pole for literally no reason other than to look cool. The boss with the cool cutscene is followed up by another shitty boss which forces you to use the bow yet again. After that, you face the final boss of the game. Plot twist!! The main villain is the tutorial boss for some reason? Okay I guess. He takes a shit tonne of damage from ninpo so he's comically easy. After you beat him, Ryu destroys the evil sword hes been looking for or something and then says 'I must go..' and TRANSFORMS INTO A BIRD AND FLYS AWAY???????? I hate this game so much.

I didn't really mess with it too much but there's some time trials and stuff like that available too which seemed like they'd be pretty fun since they're just pure combat; no bosses or annoying RPG enemies to weight it down. There also looks like there's new game+ content? I don't know what sick fuck would ever play this game twice but if you like cock and ball torture you'd probably love playing this multiple times.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma has a fantastic combat system. Unfortunately. it's quality is dragged down a tonne by shitty enemy attacks, unfair bosses, a confusing narrative, shitty level design, the devs trolling you for some reason?, boring and misogynistic character designs, the worst camera in a video game, a forgettable main character and a runtime that overstays its welcome by hours. I really wanted to like this game, but it caused me so much anguish that i'm probably gonna die 3 years sooner. I formally apologise for putting this on the wheel