Ninja Gaiden: Black

[one-armed dwarf]

Began this right after 2, using Xemu, am on chapter 9 or thereabouts. Progress is a lot quicker than NG2, so playing these back to back shouldn't burn me out I think especially as it's very different in its approach to stuff. 

 

NGB is from that era of action games pre-DMC3 where they were more than rooms connected by corridors with things to kill in them. I consider it to be the most interesting era of 3D action games before they got way less flexible and less imaginative. They could be genre hybrids cause 'character action' wasn't a codified thing yet. So sort of like how DMC1 is Resident Evil with hack and slash juggling combos, NGB is like a single player fighting game with a sprinkle of Prince of Persia/Tomb Raider in it. Combat is heavy on commitment and choosing attacks based on their specific usefulness for a given interaction (aka, don't just spam buttons), and the PoP stuff comes in with lots of puzzles and platforming, not necessarily massively challenging but not trivial either. It's also got a very 'open' structure to its world, with lots of interconnected alleys and paths that are locked early on but can be accessed later, so it's a world you can get lost in, something which is impossible in NG2. It's not quite Metroid but it's something, and it doesn't feel like it's hyperfocused on one thing but tries to execute generally well at multiple things. This is also why I played Black instead of Sigma, as apparently Sigma reduces a lot of these elements (which I forgot, or didn't notice before as I played Sigma 1 first)

 

It makes the world feel a bit more lived, that you aren't just going to each room to diligently kill everything in it and that there might be a platforming or puzzle bit instead. I don't know why exactly that is, but it just does I think. Not all of it is good, some of it is really annoying and the save point placement will do shitty things like put a PoP wall run platforming bit right before a cunt of a dinosaur boss fight, making sure to drive you insane with its repetition. I used a save state for this one area, I just had it and would have izuna dropped my TV if I had to do it again, doing a wall run across a platform with a treasure chest in the way for the fiftieth time was enough. But I think the game is otherwise a more interesting construction than modern types of these games. I was reading a thread somewhere about remaking this game, and someone in there made the point that things we call 'outdated' and 'clunky' are often also just well articulated design decisions, and even some of its flaws are what gives it its flavour and identity and remakes can often smooth out/streamline stuff like that in the name of quality of life. It helps with pacing as well to not just be a constant bloodbath like NG2 is. 

 

My weapon of choice is the flail, found it hard to manage in 2 but here you can easily rack up massive multi-hit combos with XXX->XXXXY. Charge up ults with essence to keep the blood flowing. The lunar is not as good in this as in 2 as you can't as easily scoop enemies up in an Izuna Drop I feel, and the way that enemies are far more defensive in this makes it less friendly to spamming as it is in 2 also. The boss fights still aren't up to much, but they're straightforward to beat. I remembered Alma being harder but I dunno, you just zap across the screen a few times, hit her a few more times, and dodge some obviously bad stuff that's well telegraphed. 

[one-armed dwarf]

Every boss fight in this has me crashing out, with some exceptions. Some are basic enough, but the one where you fight Doku underneath the monastery was so unintuitive to me, cause I kept looking for punish windows and treated it like a fighting game matchup. But a lot of things that seemed punishable were unreliable, there's an element of these fights which feels non-deterministic in that you can hit him and execute a combo and other times he'll punk you out of it and grab you. He had two moves at least that were reliably punishable, but it made the fight boring waiting for those.

 

I was glad to have a platforming puzzle right after it, for all the game's annoyances and idiosyncrasies it tends to pace itself very well and know what to make the player do next, whether it's a combat encounter or a platforming puzzle bit or giving an opportunity to do some backtracking in earlier areas with new enemies and secrets. I can get tilted with a game like this and forgive it if it has good pacing, and this is similar to RE4 in how good it is at that. Like RE4, it uses backtracking really well, there was a bit where I was in a room full of hovering bugs to fight and I went through it and ended up in an room from earlier in the game with those same enemies. Its world design is coherent in a way that reminds me of Dark Souls 1, it has this satisfying interconnectedness. It even has annoying skeletons with bows who make you fall over and over. I'm positive that Miyazaki stole this from Itagaki.

 

It's surprising how much platforming/puzzling is in here though, I've went a full hour in this game with hardly fighting anything, other than my own predilection to wall run into lava over and over. Actually pointing Ryu in the right direction is oddly difficult, you need to use the FPS mode to line him up sometimes. 

 

I've heard that NG's combat is really about fighting enemy groups and essence prioritisation, and so none of the things that the combat is supposed to be good at is going to come across with the boss fights, especially on Normal Mode as they don't have minions to help them out like on harder modes. Here's a vid I watched of some guy recording his CRT and explaining the fundamentals. Some of it is stuff I worked out, other stuff is new to me, NG feels like one of those games where the skill floor is very very high, but the skill ceiling isn't. 

 

 

[one-armed dwarf]

👻 🐠  ⚰️

[one-armed dwarf]

Beat it

 

 

In Sigma back in the day, I got as far as Ghost Doku, so turns out that was right before the final dungeon, which is a big tower full of evil fish. The most evil thing that they do in it isn't that they put a boss rush in the end. I mean, that's pretty standard with these games, I don't have an issue with that. It's that they don't put a Murasama statue at the end to buy stuff, and the way out of the tower is guarded by FUCKING FISH EVERYWHERE

 

I guess on the other hand it forced me to git gud, I got really good at implementing the 360 slash attack, and buffering it during wind paths and dodge rolls. It seems to offer the fastest DPS, especially if you get essence with an on-landing ult. I needed that to quickly kill the first two bosses they make you fight, after seeing them over and over. Then there was a shit bit on a floating rock, called to mind some of those Bayonetta 2 boss fights where you have no depth perception, then the rest turns into a blur. I just can't get over the fish. What's worst of all is that I got a Master Ninja ranking at the end of the boss rush, but I played like crap. Don't get this rating system. 

 

I beat it though, finally defeated Ninja Gaiden 1. I'm going to fuck around with hard mode for a bit but I doubt I'll do too many levels, it's rather exacting. New enemies, new mechanics in boss fights (the first boss is much more aggressive and grabby now), much more important to chain essence attacks and do the on landing ultimate moves, and move around on the walls a lot, which I neglected on normal mode. Interestingly, they give you the Lunar on level 1 instead of 2 on hard, so they probably mean for you to use it.

 

One neat trick I saw on youtube, the guy's name is JayTB123, is that if you don't pick up enemy essence after killing them you can run into the next room with combat and you can still use that essence in the next room to charge an attack. That seems to be the meta in fact, to just leave stuff behind in every room. 

[one-armed dwarf]

omg

 

[Maf]

Ninja dog? Ninja snail. Slow reactions 

 

I’m not sure if it’s been mentioned but to deal with the ghost fish (normally, not in this clip) you’re supposed to use that fire spell that surrounds Ryu. 

[one-armed dwarf]

I do use that along with a couple of short Vigorian Flail strikes, but magic wasn't an option here, and anyway I was looking forward to a nice health potion after fighting two tanks and a helicopter. What kinda guy would just put that there, that's not being ninja that's being a dick

 

I had to beat Alma in the monastery on hard mode without healing, that was rough, especially compared to normal which was strangely easy. They don't always have Muramasa statues available, so if you're doing multi-difficulty playthroughs it's something you have to keep in mind a bit. I think this is something they relaxed a bit in Sigma, from what I've heard

 

In general tho the hard mode experience is easier than normal, cause this is more a knowledge check game than a high execution one I find, so once you know things you just do them. It's about knowing the right action to do with Ryu rather than doing anything remotely considered a difficult combo. They do develop things tho by giving enemies new moves, like the military guys do a thing now where they grab you if you get near them, and they keep you away with gunfire. So it's like fighting a grappler with projectiles, you stun them with throwing stars or move in certain ways. Or just do wall attacks, the AI seems to not have an answer for that one yet.

 

New enemies too, there's an Egyptian cat enemy that flying swallows you on hard mode

[one-armed dwarf]

I can't believe maf called me a ninja snail, I beat both versions of Alma on hard without healing. The first time I had no choice cause I had no heals but the second time it was fucking personal. 

 

 

 

I hate these bosses, the fact that flying swallow is a dice roll makes me feel like I'm getting punked, but you need to use that move to anti air her. 

 

When I fought Ghost Doku afterwards though, I just spammed attacks and heals. cba with that guy, especially as he brought an army of ghost fish for his hard mode version >_<

[Maf]

One thing I like about NG boss fights is you can absolutely melt their health bars. Despite these games being hard, I do think it’s fair in a kind of do unto others way

 

But, reversed and more violent 

[one-armed dwarf]

My issue with them is, to me, they don't feel very interactive. There's a lot of stuff going on in regular encounters around essence and frame advantage, as well as positioning, that injects some thought into the bloodletting, particularly as NGB does not have NG+ so if you spend essence on a powerful attack, that's a calculated risk against potential upgrades or health potions. Every new difficulty you start from scratch, which sounds bad but it also means you are focused on refining fundamentals rather than jumping on their head infinite times with an electric guitar 

 

But I find with its boss fights it gets rather one dimensional. Alma is probably the best fight in the game, but in lots of others I don't feel like boss animations signal as clearly an enemy's state. Like, you can look at certain enemy animations in NGB and deduce that they're in recovery, and you can do the same with Ryu. It's the most fighting game adjacent of the big character action games and why it's so diffficult to improve in, cause you kind of have to supress emotions and play really patiently as it doesnt easily permit mashing, like a fighting game. They also layer new AI behaviours on each mode so you need to learn when certain enemies require more movement, or space, or need stunning by ninja stars, which I really like and find interesting.

 

But a lot of the visual indicators that help understand basic enemies are poorly defined in a boss fight, specifically when to punish or whiff punish. So what I'm ending up doing is finding the one move that punishes another move and repeating that, because it can be very unclear a lot of the time if there's another answer

 

The irony of the increased difficulty is they throw adds at you, but the adds can replenish resources and give you essence for powerful on-landing ultimates, like at 0:35. The fight would be harder if it was just the boss

 

This is a moany post so I'll add that I'm not playing the game out of stubbornness, mostly. A couple of troublesome bosses have revealed their secrets to me now on hard that I can reliably burn them down I think. What I'd like to do is give at least Very Hard mode a solid college try, as I've heard people say this is the best difficulty for balance and challenge, while Master Ninja is asshole mode

[Maf]

1 hour ago, one-armed dwarf said:

and play really patiently as it doesnt easily permit mashing, like a fighting game.

Wrong thread but our Art of War’s on fighting games reads very differently 

[one-armed dwarf]

[Maf]

lol 

 

My new mantra is “Psyops are more dangerous than frame data” 

[one-armed dwarf]

Beat hard mode and did an hour of level 1 on Very Hard mode. I guess when they call it 'very hard' mode, they aren't speaking figuratively, or they wouldn't have the windmill ninjas ready with the backstabbing command grabs as soon as they see a sliver of a recovery frame on Ryu's landing. 

 

 

Shit's getting mad deep all of a sudden, being confronted with the sloppiness of my hard mode gameplay now. Getting to the first save point will be like dropping the ring into Mordor

 

This is what I'm saying about the sort of fighting game nature of the game though, you have to respect the fuckers you're fighting and defeat them with knowledge. I'm just too dumb to know how right now though

 

One thing I see pro players do is cancel combos with shuriken. When you're moving, you have a sort of dodge roll with shurikens which is good for keepaway but doesn't setup anything you can convert from. Standing still though, you have some advantage. So I think I can control the offense a bit with a combination of the wind run enemy step on heads thing to stun them and shuriken canceling. 

 

edit I got through the opening levels, shit was mad hard. But on level 3 it levels out a lot and feels pretty chill. Had to really pay attention to what the enemies were doing in a way that you don't on hard. I'm trying to get into the habit of guard crushing, and using shurikens to pressure enemies. It really does feel like a fighting game, in terms of strategy. 

[one-armed dwarf]

The enemies are so interesting on V. Hard. I've got to chapter 5 and there are these robot soldiers which can't be stunned with shurikens, and are programmed to punish your recovery with grabs, or punish you if you don't hit them with a guard crushing attack, and they are backed up by grenadiers in the back row which will catch you in your recovery if you just spam Izuna Drop, so you want to kill those fuckers first. Everything is so intricate and requires careful attention. When to wind path and jump off enemy heads, when to wall attack, when to use guard crush. When to stun with a ninja star, knowing what enemies are unsafe to just jump in on, being very very careful about the flying swallows, which leave Ryu in a very disadvantaged spot if used in a crowd. That's not even getting into chaining essence. 

 

If you just mash a non-guard crushing move against the black soldiers you're asking for trouble, they'll knee you in the gut for 40 percent of your health. These motherfuckers have studied Ryu's frame data and it shows. I get why NG diehards are so particular about these games now, I don't think a lot of character action games make you pay so much attention to what you fight in them. They aren't about combos and deep tech at all but awareness of everything outside of that. 

[Maf]

It’s always been a crowd control and momentum heavy game, right? Just playing casually you naturally get the feel of never stop moving 

[one-armed dwarf]

I think that might describe NG2 moreso cause that game's design is about aggression, you can't block for more than a second on even base difficulties without getting command grabbed to pieces. NGB feels like your mental stack is firstmost occupied with identifying the first thing you need to kill, and solving this problem, then you chain its essence around the room which is where the crowd control comes in, but you have to know when to be defensive and when to let loose, as it punishes being greedy on these higher difficulties but arguably punishes even harder if you turtle up. The incremental improvements they make to AI is one of those things which has me scratching my head why more games don't do it like this, rather than fighting the exact same enemy on each mode with different damage values. 

 

There's something about fighting a version of an enemy you've seen before, when they do things to you you didn't see them do last time. 

 

I forgot to mention the environment as well, a fight in a corridor or a staircase that goes around a bend is fundamentally different to one in an open area. Yes, the camera can be bad, but it's sort of the compromise to make the wall running and spacing aspect of the game impact on your decisions

[one-armed dwarf]

On 03/11/2025 at 16:06, one-armed dwarf said:

fighting game

and much like a fighting game, there's the dreaded mirror match. But it's actually kind of cool, cause the clone teaches you things. So you get your butt kicked by it, and then try out some of the stuff it did to you. 

 

 

He looks like a pushover here, but he isn't. Just got lucky is all, don't let him catch you in recovery or he'll treat you to the Ryu special

 

 

One thing I learned was how much frame disadvantage Ryu has with flying swallow, but the clone thought me that you can shuriken cancel it at certain angles and combo out of that to make it more safe. Super interesting to have a boss character that's specifically designed to teach you how to play Ryu, they have other versions of it later in the game with other weapons.

 

Playing this game's difficulty levels feels like ranking up in a single player fighting game. This is one thing DMC doesn't have, cause each difficulty in that game has the enemies perform the exact same behaviours, just dealing more damage. Here, the damage changes aren't that significant next to the more dangerous AI and defense/offense strategies you need to learn. An example are the soldiers, which are susceptible to flying swallow on ninja dog, normal and hard, they get an armour upgrade that lets them block and command grab punish flying swallow, so you can't just neutral skip their zoning anymore.