The INSANE Sequel: Ninja Gaiden II vs. Sigma 2 

That's the game in a nutshell, yeah. Very flawed, but also very enjoyable. It's an odd ball, to say the least.

I can’t play Sigma 2 due to regular one existing.

I love NG2, first Xbox 360 game I bought and I played it for like 5 months straight before I felt the need to buy game #2

@@paulmajano same. Seems like a version for kids compared to the original. Can't enjoy the game without that gory madness lol

What issues? Name one.

you could call it a Musou game where the mooks actually attack. don't die in one hit, and can kill you in a few hits themselves.

@@Neko_Medic Well, Musou enemies pack quite the punch on higher difficulties.

I heard that sigma 2 is inferior to the original Xbox version

@@fizzy360wolf 100%

@@harlannguyen4048 nah they dont come close to ng 2 lmao

The games look great in 4K! Ninja Gaiden II in particular. Also nice that all the slowdown is fixed on One and Series X.

It's the definitive way of playing them. I've beaten both on hard thus far and haven't had a single drop from 60fps.

It most likely was intentional, yeah. I just said that in case.

Oh definitely, why else would they place mines after the second zedonius Boss fight (of you played it, you know what I mean). Some developers can be cruel assholes.

Nothing like beating a hard boss easily somehow and then spawning with no HP and getting grabbed by ghost fish immediately 😅

@@TylerSmith-sd2oc lemme guess, spirit doku in NG black?

@@Al_musawi14 I'm on ps5 SL no NGB for me. I can't remember which boss it was even when posting this tbh 😅

Since, like, 2017, I think this is indeed a record between two long videos, but in 2016 I would typically get a new one out every month.

its more complicated then that. right off the Bat ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Runs natively at a higher resolution then the 360. the 360 version ran at 1024x576 then stretch to 720p. PS3 Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 ran at a native 720p. sadly the PS3 Cell Processor and RSX was so complicated they couldn't figure out how to port the game so many if not all of the gameplay and graphics had to be redone on the PS3 which is why the games look so drastically different with effects on the PS3 not appearing on the 360 version and vise versa. also they wanted to include the same amount of enemies as the 360 but since they couldn't optimize the game for the Cell Processor they opted for a lower NPC count but gave them more health.

It was for Europe I'm pretty sure actually.

@@fizzy360wolf The PS3 version didn't have effects. I suggest playing Sigma 2. What you're saying is right but Sigma 2 on PS3 is an absolute joke.

@@LudusAurea Nah, Europe allows the gore. Though Germany at times can be strict. The original Ninja Gaiden had no decaps in the European and Japanese versions. I think Europe did get them in the Black version, not sure about Japan. The Sigma version of 1 also had no decaps in the European and Japanese versions.

@@thenonexistinghero US version of Sigma 1 on PS3 and Vita has decaps...

I’ve player NG2 on my Xbox One X. It actually lagged sometimes. But not 100-1000 times as on the 360 😅 It’s one of the best things with newer consoles = games aren’t played as originally ”meant”. But it sure improves pretty much any game 👏🏻

The slowdown wasn't an issue in NG2 to begin with. NG1 on Xbox on the other hand had massive frame drops into the single digits, often.

@@LudusAurea I got Ninja Gaiden II on the release date (as with Ninja Gaiden and Ninja Gaiden Black) and Ninja Gaiden II is by FAR the most laggy of them all in my experience. To my knowledge it's only the Series S and X which takes away all the leg entirely. Which parts of NG1 lagged for you? (I can't remember any specific places or it wasn't as noticable as in NG2. I probably learned to play around it mostly. But I guess some of Dooku's attacks were strange)

@@LudusAurea check out the epic stairfight. It was in slow motion on 360. It's fixed on current xbox's though.

@@Ezol1 As far as I know, NG1's and NGB's performance were nearly flawless. I know because I played them A LOT. A near-constant 60 fps. NG2 vanilla has the most slowdown/drops during gameplay, but... if you try to push Sigma 2 to have as much enemies on-screen, the performance is actually worse than vanilla NG2. Basically the only reason it runs better is because of the significantly reduced enemy count and reduced gore so no blood & limbs will stay around.

They are. I loved Nioh but the gameplay is Soulslike

Does this mean there is a new game plus in sigma 1 for master collection?

You can switch characters in sigma 2+ btw

I’m pretty sure sigma 2 you can also run on the water for the dragon fight. I remember doing it

@@nathanfortun5768 You're incorrect. I remember this being discussed in many different NG2 videos.

Thanks, man! I appreciate good comments. :)

Thank you I felt the same way till this day I hold my head high like ya I beat NG2 on MN mode

Doom Eternal Ultra Nightmare Master Levels exist

Try beating the nes Ninja Gaiden trilogy. They're incredible if you like a rewarding challenge

I was gone try it but seems like a guillotine throw cheese fest sadly combined with at least bosses being unique w movesets yk and having to utilize I frames

​@@frankelkjr8041as someone who has also beat MNM on both NGB and NG2... I would love to know how many of us there are.

Hell good games in general not getting modern rereleases is more than enough reason for emulation. Kinda disgusting something even popular and groundbreaking like MGS1 and Silent Hill are basically unplayable on most platforms today.

OG Ninja Gaiden 2 is backwards compatible on Xbox One X and Series X and plays at a gorgeous 4k @ 60fps!

NG2 is on One and Series X and S2 is on every platform

Awesome! I'm glad to hear that. :)

UT chaining is the one thing I think Razors Edge has over the first two games. UT chaining was just way too good in 1 and 2

lol pc all the way

The fact that UT/OT/Izuna Drop/Ninpo spam is intentional kind of speaks volumes about how bad the enemy, encounter and level design is, honestly. Why not just lay off the enemy spam and actually structure your encounters and levels so that way abusing intrinsically overpowered mechanics isn't the only viable way to play the game without getting constantly fucked over by things that are entirely outside of your control? Even in Sigma 1 I think the enemy spam is too much and the level design is atrocious, and that game is regarded as having the tighter difficulty design between it and the second game in the trilogy. I've had many deaths playing through that game fully on Hard difficulty (NG rather than NG+), and virtually all of them were unfair and brought out the worst in the camera, level design, combat system and the controls. This was especially apparent when doing one of the earlier missions in Mission Mode on any difficulty, where your only options are Nunchuks, a Wooden Sword, a few bad Ninpos, the Art of Inazuma and a few items to restore health and the Ninpo meter. I only beat that fight by abusing UTs where possible for the earlier parts and then resorting to a walljump Nunchuk heavy strike spam + Art of Inazuma strat for the completely bullshit enemies that don't give you any openings in the back half. As far as I'm concerned, from what I've played and seen of them, NG is a cheap sugar rush of an action game. It has some really high highs when it isn't being total garbage, but the lows of the trilogy are rock-bottom, and when those lows are present you'll see the games for what they really are: poorly designed. Ninja Gaiden is basically the Dragon Ball Super of the character action genre. It's very stylish and has lots of cool things in it, but it lacks the quality game design that is necessary to make it actually good, similar to how Dragon Ball Super has a lot of great ideas but those ideas are tremendously weighed down by the horrible writing. A good game has more than just good ideas and some mechanics that are great in a vacuum. It's about the cohesion of the design throughout the entire game, and Ninja Gaiden's design is intrinsically a total mess.

@@boyishdude1234 sounds like skill issues galore, let's see how you do in a karma run

bro that's crazy, i'm happy for u tho, or sorry that happened

Thank you! If you're into action games at all, Ninja Gaiden is certainly worth trying out.

I appreciate that a lot! I always do my best to keep improving. :)

Hope you enjoyed the video!

Good to see this video is finding some Ninja Gaiden fans here and there! And glad you enjoyed the video!

Can you elaborate why the flying dragon is such BS to you? The void ball ninpo(forgot its name) fully upgraded shreds about 75 percent of it's health in a single hit, so with the right timing you kill it almost instantly.

@@stefan020290 On MN you have to fight 2 dragons at the same time while small dragons keep spawning around the arena. Vanilla 2 has no auto aim so you have to waste time aiming with the bow while the dragons attack you from off screen. It's terrible. Yes, using the piercing void ninpo makes it easier but I still think it's the worst boss in the game. Not the hardest, that would be Dagra Dai, but the most frustrating and the least fun to fight.

@@n3croticism annoying definitely. Dagra dai can be cheesed quite easily with the spinning scythe attack(jumping up and just tapping y) you gain invincibility frames during that and the attack has quite a lot of reach. Not the most stylish way of beating him, but on master ninja the game throws so much straight up unfair shit at you, best way ls to sometimes resort to cheap tactics.

Never seen someone complain about those dragons before. Pretty sure you can IS the small fries, then arrow the big two if you're bad at getting them with void

Thank you! That means a lot!

Master Ninja has other issues to be honest. What he already mentioned, the claw ninjas with explosive shurikens are awful enemies to fight because you rely mostly on tactics which grant invincibility frames. Trying regular combos you get peppered with shurikens and while you can avoid the damage with ninpo or said invincibility frames, it kinda destroys the flow of combat. Tastes may very, but I resorted to some pretty cheap tactics to cheese through certain parts just to finish that difficulty once. As he said in the vid, blazing through the game on warrior and new game plus fulfils a little power fantasy but still feels rewarding to a degree.

@@stefan020290 And even then, if you have the DLC, Master Ninja in mission mode feels more like the appropriate difficulty spike since it doesn’t affect enemy type spawns. But the main story, yeah it really throws everything and the kitchen sink at the player. I did it once for the story mode and that was plenty. But I had a lot more fun with the difficulty completing all the missions in Mission Mode.

@@stefan020290 it's more about mastery. Your first time through Master Ninja is super rough, second time is a bit more fluid and third time onwards it becomes crack. The beauty is that you can't really master NGII since it's so brutal, but you always feel like you're improving. At first you're barely fighting, more cheesing, while on subsequent runs you're way more in controle, like against those clawninjas.

@@RaengStinger yeah maybe. Still, I feel Master Ninja in the OG Ninja Garden (didn't play black) was a lot more manageable (tho NG I was a lot slower regarding the pace of its combat). I like challenge, but as I said, Master Ninja NG 2 feels too much like a grind and as I get older, I lack the patience to deal with this tbh.

@@stefan020290 Wasn't master Ninja exclusive to Black? Could have sworn the 04 orginal had hard and very hard.

Yeah NG 2 legit made me want to beat up the programmers. Its hard for the dumbest reasons. On hard mode tje issues you mention is extra annoying cause dang near everything is a exploding shiryuken

Thank you so much! And yeah, absolutely, I am doing NG3 + NG3:RE next.

Thanks for the comment! That memory limitation makes sense, actually. Especially since there are already so many enemies present in this game at once.

I can also confirm in works really well on xbox series s as well. I encountered no slow down.

The 360 had 512mb and it also had vram which is the reason of the amount of enemies in comparison with ps3 . Also another factor which was also important in my opinion is that sony never gave full access to the developers over the console to take full advantage of the hardware ( at least those years). So it was very difficult to programme in that console in comparison to 360 that was somehow compatible with direct x and gave full access to the developers. When the ps3 hardware was fully unlocked we saw games like uncharted and the last of us taking full advantage of the console's power!

I don't think that's true tbh, DMC4 had dante switch between his 3 main weapons,3 guns and 5 styles, by that point i think it was more than feasable for them to have done on the fly weapon switching.

@@stacetheface47 hey man , i have an xbox series s , would u recommend the ng2 or master collection? Am afraid the ng2 will look bad on my 4k tv …what would u recommend ?

This, black is just a different style of game from 2 and some people prefer one over the other

Nah, I’ll nitpick it since black is more polished

​@@dc7981True, but vanilla NG2 is way more fun.

They had development issues. I wish they did a Black upgrade to 2, Sigma is cool but still

What does that mean?

@@JonathanPaspula kami = god kusoge = shit game

The collection should have had an option to switch between the orginal versions and the Sigma/Razors edge versions.

I agree with you played it today a visual and gameplay is not on par with the vanilla version on my Series x

Thanks for the encouraging comment! I was pretty frustrated when this video just released, but I'm feeling a bit better now and do want to continue making videos. Just gotta get back a decent amount of consistency and hopefully that will get things back on track somewhat. :)

Except the bosses, the core combat is still fun

Koei Tecmo despise him and vice versa so it's really not surprising that they do everything in their power to make as many alterations as possible, some of them being changes just to make changes to distance themselves from his work. Regarding the blood and gore, Sigma 2 was censored so it could be sold in more countries. I'm not sure if you are aware, but the original Ninja Gaiden 2 was banned for sale in Germany because of the blood and gore, and if you know Koei Tecmo like I do, they value profit above EVERYTHING, they are the Activision of Japan.

actually, you do gain money from charging from a yellow essence, just to a very reduced amount, around 10%-20% of what it would give you. the real risk is you take double damage while charging and the damage can stack up real fast and you can just find yourself dead from one regular grab

The Genshin fight is amazing but Elizabet right afterwards is a train wreck lmao. The best fight in the game right next to one of the worst lol

@@dc7981 Yeah man. She would tackle, you dodge, immediately go for a punish, attack whiffs. NG3RE version had i-frames while standing still after tackle lol. Team Ninja trolled us hard.

The countering was a bit easier in 1 because it was a little slower and felt easier to get off, but NG2 everything is so damn fast and the timing has to be perfect or you get fucked

Gay

Which is why the best version is still the Xbox version. People these days need to be reminded who Ryu is

Yeah I do recommend buying and playing NG Black, NG2, and razors edge on the Xbox one or series X since it's backwards compatible.