Fortunately, the gameplay is even worse, so no one needs to feel bad for skipping this game. The tone is so messed up it would be hard to justify playing this game even when the action was excellent. The Regent of the Mask has to be fought about half a dozen times. Executing them in this state with the now repurposed Obliteration Techniques greatly builds up ki, reducing them to exactly what Hayashi accused Ninja Gaiden II of. Yet with the dismemberment that turns enemies into suicidal fanatics gone, wounded enemies instead become mere victims as they crawl on the floor helplessly. “Once you start lopping off limbs, your enemy goes from being a living thing that you’re killing to just a thing” – such is the disturbing view of Yosuke Hayashi. Whereas Ninja Gaiden 2 explored brutality as a necessity in fantasy combat situations, Ninja Gaiden 3 just revels in human suffering. Enemies are not dismembered any more, but fountains of blood still spill out of them, and the camera frequently zooms to a closeup when Ryu’s sword slices through them. The game may be less brutal than Ninja Gaiden 2, but it is much more cruel. That scene makes even less sense when later enemies try to run away during gameplay, and it is very well possible to spare them – which is still pointless nonetheless, as the player’s actions have no consequences whatsoever. It makes the later scenes, where he bonds with Mizuki and Canna, seem like no more than calculating deceptions of a psychopath, or simply like a completely different character with no continuity to his previous actions. Ryu is not a “Japanese Dark Hero” in these scenes, he is a cold-blooded murderer with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. Yosuke Hayashi frequently talked about how Team Ninja wanted to make Ryu a “Japanese Dark Hero” who “sometimes has to do bad things in order to do good” and to try to teach a moral lesson by “getting blood on the player’s hands,” but it all feels just dishonest and mean-spirited and sick. Then you can either turn off the game or commit cold-blooded murder. Then the player is forced back in control of Ryu, but all that can be done is slowly walking towards the enemy, who continues to advance backwards, pulling off his mask, talking about his family and begging for his life. At one point in the opening mission, a cutscene shows an enemy mercenary surrender. After all, Ryu is a Japanese Dark Hero.Īfter her presence was teased at in Ninja Gaiden Sigma II, Kasumi doesn’t actually appear in the story of Ninja Gaiden 3 (she had a few short, disguised cameo appearances in Sigma 2), but becomes another playable character in multiplayer, effectively replacing Rachel even though her fighting style lies somewhere between Ryu and Ayane’s.Īfter Itagaki’s extremely brutal send-off and the subsequently tame Sigma 2, Ninja Gaiden 3 makes a 1080 on the gore, but follows a very twisted and disturbing concept of violence. Of course that offers just as countless opportunities to hammer down ad nauseum how Ryu is just as bad as his adversary each time the two meet. Well knowing that it has to be a trap, Ryu faces the masked antagonist only known as The Regent of the Mask, who puts an old Eastern European curse on Ryu that causes the Dragon Sword to be absorbed into his right arm, which is then filled with the spite of all the countless people the ninja has killed. They actually demanded Ryu to show up at their location, for nebulous reasons. That’s right, no ancient superhuman demons this time, just terrorists, even though they call themselves the Lords of Alchemy. In his home, Ryu Hayabusa is approached by the members of a military force, who inform him of a terrorist attack. It rather seems that he since graduated from the Hideo Kojima school of writing, so the new game is full of boring exposition, pretentious moralizing and a weird kind of half-realism. Series veteran Masato Kato had been brought back on board to pen the story, but somehow that didn’t translate into a rediscovery of old virtues. Starting with the very premise, Ninja Gaiden 3 oozes the desire to be darker and grittier just for the sake of being dark and gritty, best exemplified by Yosuke Hayashi’s constant insistence that Ryu Hayabusa was a “Japanese Dark Hero” now during presentations of the game. Ninja Gaiden 3 is just a poster example of a horribly misguided sequel, both in terms of tone and game design. Unfortunately, they completely fumbled it. Ninja Gaiden 3 was Team Ninja’s first all-new series entry in their post-Itagaki (and also post Hiroaki Matsui and Katsunori Ehara, which is overlooked too often) world, to prove that they could create a great action game from the ground up on their own. The latter are taken from, ign.com and. Only those showing the on-screen displays are real screenshots. Attention: Many of the screenshots on this page are promotional materials and differ in presentation from the actual game.
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