izigame.me

Gonna recommend, but just barely. Like an actual 5.5/10 sort of situation.

I was a huge fan of the arcade original with the slick designs, animation, and that slamming soundtrack. I never had the chance to try this sequel on the SNES, but I was pretty hyped to see it here with extra characters.

So, what you get is fairly straight forward. A minimal nihilistic storyline, some bad ass ninja androids kicking the crap out of an entire army and some creative design decisions that make all of them play a bit differently. No real bells or whistles beyond unlocking the original soundtrack after a playthrough and the new characters Yaksha and Raiden.

This isn't a long game, but the stages can feel dragged out and monotonous, don't expect too much variation or surprises. Your general gameplay goal is crowd controlling swarms of enemies through stages with your slow-as-hell ninja. They have some slight maneuvarability in their skill sets, but most of them are annoyingly sluggish. Enemies range from one hit wimps to being pain sponges, but this also depends somewhat on which ninja you play as. Bosses are pretty challenging, but sometimes it feels like it's for all the wrong reasons.

Which brings me to my rating. Hit detection is pretty jank both for and against. There just doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason half the time with how and when strikes connect. There are moves that have invincibility frames but others are more questionably. You'll eat hits that don't really make sense, like getting knocked out of the air by an enemy's crouching attack. You can block, but it's clumsily implemented as 'hold attack after attacking' and slows you even further. Really, offense is the best and often only defense here.

Bosses are particularly weird with their hit boxes, making some fights more challenging than they should be, but again, this also depends on what ninja you're using... some just aren't suited to fighting certain bosses.

The difficulty is on the high side, in my opinion. You can get better at this with practice, certainly. But there's going to be that inconsistency factor over your play throughs creeping in. There's also a strange design choice of being forced to replay through a hall of enemies before retrying certain bosses, but not others. This gets irritating and more than a little boring when you're stuck on a boss fight and need to practice it further.

The final boss just... sucks. It's a tight room with auto lasers going off, unending swarms, and your only way to win is to throw enemies past the glass where the boss is hiding, despite that you can visibly reach him. So, it's the Def Jam Vendetta final boss all over again for those who know. It's doable, but very tedious and aggravating since you have a slow ninja and roughly only one, maybe two of your throwing attacks will have any chance to work. And of course, a hallway of enemies awaits you if you want to rechallenge. Bleh. I know it's supposed to be a final boss challenge, but it's not much fun to keep doing when half the character roster can't throw enemies effectively.

But hey, I'm expecting too much here. This is a very old fashioned style SNES era title and the dry challenge shows under what is otherwise a very cool aesthetic of android ninjas. It's a remaster with some modestly nice additions and I'll admit I wish there was more meat on the bone, because I do like it. Gameplay issues and erratic hit boxes, however, prevent me from loving this old school game.