Ninja Gaiden 3

Have you ever heard the tale of Ninja Gaiden? It’s a super hard video game franchise that is well known for devastating the players. It is arguably on par with the Dark Souls games with the Nioh veneer, so you know that you’re in for a treat. Join Ryu, the Dragon Ninja, through his third adventure in the modern-day world. Unsheathe that sword and prepare yourself for combat in Ninja Gaiden 3 by Team Ninja.

Gameplay

Right out of the gate I ill admit to you here and now that this game is not as hard as its predecessors. Some consider that to be a shame but to be honest its better to consider it as ‘more accessible.’ There was a change from this title compared to others in regards to its mechanics and difficulty, moves are easier to identify, enemies can be stealth assassinated and special abilities that can kill many enemies at once have become more prominent.

The standard combat is basic hack and slash with a lot of high pace frenetic movement. There are a lot less deliberate paced strikes and instead a lot gorier visual cinematics and multi wave-based combat where you chip away at things.

Story

The story in this title follows Ryu, as they always do. Everything kicks off as you’d expect with Ryu blasting through the enemies and absolutely wrecking shop, but this only happens for a little while as Ryu is infected with a curse early on. This curse is composed of the blood of the many people Ryu has killed and it begins to take an effect on him. The story could have been a powerful tale about regret and redemption but it mostly just falls to moving from A to B to kill more people with your cursed arm that you got from killing too many people. For all intents and purposes, the developers took every chance they could to switch things up after the director left but the direction, they went in took a lot away from what the game was and turned it into something a little more generic.

The Look

The art style is quite good for this title and for its day, they went for a slightly different and ultimately, less visceral feeling. There are no decapitations or dismemberment in this game and everything feels as though it has been designed on a bigger scale. It’s less intimate but it does make the tale look a bit more impressive, if a little ‘Hollywood blockbuster’ in comparison to its ‘old Indie masterpiece’ feel.

It has the tell-tale art style of the Dead or Alive games, so there’s a little sex appeal thrown in here for good measure. If that wasn’t clear enough by Ryu looking like a body builder in a tight Ninja outfit.

Pros:

• New updated art style
• Greater accessibility

Cons:

• Story was a missed opportunity
• Gameplay was not what fans of the series wanted