Is Ninja Gaiden cheap or just unforgiving?

[Erik_Twice]

Beucase I'm watching good people play and it looks like an accelerated Castlevania. There are obvious patterns in the level dsign and I don't see any enemies placed at random, they all appear to make sense.

Thing is, it looks painfully unforgiving. If you screw up the sequence, you will die because the game is not designed around screwing up. Half of the stuff people seem to complain about are not really about fairness but about unforgivenness. Yes, enemies respawn but you don't see them do so if you follow the supposed pattern.

Thoughts?

[J T]

Mostly, it's unforgiving, but it does have quite a lot of cheap points where you just have to have memorized the enemy spawn points and patterns and know what's coming next. It becomes more and more cheap in the later levels of the game when there are birds flying everywhere, spastic jumping guys, and people flying around with jetpacks. You pretty much have to know where they are and where they spawn or else you will be knocked off a cliff to your death. Some jumps even require you to take a hit while you are in mid air. I have no idea how anyone can beat Bloody Malth unless you know the game well enough to reach him with almost full health and then just stab away faster than he can deplete your health bar. And the second incarnation of the Jaquio is almost impossible if you haven't stock-piled the upward angle ninja stars throughout the level.

Most of the game does have challenge that you can adapt to with the right skill, which is fair though difficult, but the last two stages really feel like you have to memorize and exploit the game's weaknesses, which feels cheap.

You can kind of spot the differences by watching The Retro Game Master play through Ninja Gaiden. The spots where he gets really stuck are the same spots where most people get stuck:

http://kotaku.com/5814938/episode-1-ninja-gaiden

[TornadoCreator]

Beucase I'm watching good people play and it looks like an accelerated Castlevania. There are obvious patterns in the level dsign and I don't see any enemies placed at random, they all appear to make sense.

Thing is, it looks painfully unforgiving. If you screw up the sequence, you will die because the game is not designed around screwing up. Half of the stuff people seem to complain about are not really about fairness but about unforgivenness. Yes, enemies respawn but you don't see them do so if you follow the supposed pattern.

Thoughts?

I've never been a fan of Ninja Gaiden on the NES, it's not hard, it's just that there's only a single line to follow in order to complete each level and if you mess up once you die. There's no skill involved, there's no tactics, it's just level memorisation and that's not fun. There are better difficult platforms like Kid Chameleon or Super Metroid but Ninja Gaiden goes too far.

Oddly enough the newer Ninja Gaiden series on the Xbox is given a lot less attention and it's a much better game I feel.

[D.D.D.]

Both. The respawning is brutal too. It's not that hard but it is hard. My memory is kinda fuzzy on it but, I do recall my friend and I putting in a lot of time trying to finish that game.

[jfe2]

I think the cheapness is what pushes it into nightmare level difficulty. Instantly respawning enemies drive me nuts in this game. I could deal with falling back after getting hit, but it sucks to kill a guy, jump for it, and get hit because he spawned again cause the screen scrolled a bit. Blah!

[Siren]

It's not cheap at all. It is tough as nails, though. That's the whole point. Could you even imagine how much worse the game would be had it been childishly easy? All of those sword techniques would be less cool, and ninpo would lose it's desperation and meaning. That game forces you to think, plan, and strategize in order to progress. I don't know about Alma, but it is totally possible to not get hit once during many of the boss battles.

Plus, the game is very forgiving with health vials that can be purchased on many occasions throughout the player's journey.

The word "cheap" seems to imply low blows and insurmountable odds for the insufficient tools that the player is given, which is completely false. Practice, practice, practice, and you'll be surprised at how skilled you can get. Then all illusions of "impossibility" will dissipate, and you'll have a lot more fun. But if you never bother to improve, and expect the health and ninpo power ups to be your saving grace, then it doesn't matter how far you get, your skill level will be about the same as when you started. It's like credit feeding. You won't have fun.

[alienjesus]

I've never been able to beat level 6-2. Up 'til there, I thought it was unforgiving. Once I reached that level, my opinion changed to cheap.

[KillerJuan77]

Ninja Gaiden Sigma and Black are more or less fair, Ninja Gaiden II however is so cheap it's unbelievable (Those fucking projectiles) plus unlike Sigma and Black it suffers from some major framerate issues and an abysmal camera.

[J T]

General_Norris, did you mean the NES or Xbox version? I'm not so clear now with all the responses. I was speaking of the NES version in my response.

[deathsled]

you guys suck I had beaten all 3 NES ninja gaidens by age 10-11 lol