Bear in mind, if comparing any ninja gaiden 2 version, it should be compared to black. The other versions were all inferior from a balance and gameplay perspective in some sense of the word. Even if sigma introduced new weapons (the dual katanas are just a slower, crappier dragon sword that does more damage and contributes some aoe for players new to the game, they don’t have a learning curve like all the other weapons), and prettied up the graphics, it suffered on the actual enemy balance and number of enemies game, while introducing content so bad that it actively detracted from black. (No, Rachel is not legit content; dodging is now an attack and mashing light is always superior to actually using heavy, with no option to projectile cancel? Why is she in a game with such a deep combo system?)

2 did some things well. The way that the moveset was refined and made prettier than 1 was in my personal ‘good’ list. The way that weapons levelled up with use added to the achievement feel (although black rewarded good play since the same xp bars were effectively just filled up by essence instead), and the storyline could borrow from the hayabusa village in the first game quite effectively. But that’s kinda where it ends.

As for the bad — all of the enemies are completely generic. Completely. You don’t use special tactics, there is so much offscreen spam at any given moment that you don’t even react to any of it as it happens, and while there may be more enemies to target at once and huge juggling opportunities, you just kill them all with obliteration techniques anyway to save yourself from being whittled down by the projectile spam. To phrase it another way — more enemies, but they die quicker with less player attention and little in the way of ai challenge or some of the absolutely brutal tagteam ai that spider ninjas could, for example, set up in the previous title. And the boss fights? I don’t understand how a team that creates so many varied fights in the first title, each better than the best action game boss fight you’ve ever fought before, can fail so epically in the second.

In order to be even handed, I should admit that the radio tower in NG1 was notoriously bad. And maybe some of the back and forth platforming and puzzling. That’s about it for valid criticisms I could level at it, though. (And the latter actually served as differentiating factors in some of the tournaments that were played on 1 just to cull the herd, so it’s not like they were completely useless…)

Regardless, 3 *was* an action game with no action and an emphasis on poor story. If it has gone back to its roots as an action game (as all the Wii-U reviews suggest), this demo seems to be feature-rich enough to decide whether to purchase or not. So I applaud Team Ninja for that much, since I can now make an informed decision for free.

I really enjoyed NG2, admittedly I haven’t played the first one though.