Final thoughts at the end.

To this day, Ninja Gaiden Black remains my absolute favourite game in the hack n’ slash genre. I spent many fun hours with my friends trying to beat it when we got our hands on it, and the sense of accomplishment experienced when we finally did it is still one of my fondest gaming memories. Camera and some janky platforming aside, I loved every single thing about this game, and have gone back to it from time to time. A couple years ago I also played the original NGII and instantly became a fan despite a couple of niggles.

I decided to give the controversial Master Collection a go mainly because I wanted to see for myself why the Sigma versions of the game have been so looked down on within the NG community. I went into it with an open mind and very little knowledge about what exactly had been changed to give it such a divisive reputation. I’ll be talking about and scoring all 3 games separately and then wrap it up with a final note on the collection as a whole.

These are my thoughts after playing through the entire thing.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma

There’s no two ways about it, Black simply is a better game than Sigma. This port makes changes to music, enemies, missions, UI and aesthetics that, for the most part, don’t translate into an improvement. Some non-exhaustive examples of this: soundtrack changes that remove atmosphere; the ludicrous pseudo-boss battle with the motorcycle dudes at the end of Chapter 3; Rachel’s missions, which feel like a completely unnecessary, out-of-place addition; the absence of the onscreen combo tally, which strips away some of the game’s charm and engagement; the less ominous looking menus; the much less iconic Black Spider Clan outfit. These and more negatively impact the whole jam-packed sandwich of mood that was Black, making Sigma an inferior product. One saving grace of this version is the ability to use potions without having to pause and open the menu. That does make a big and welcome difference. They’ve also brought the cinematic intro back in the Master Collection version, something that was inexplicably missing from the original Sigma. Aside from that, you get the aspects that were already a bit of an issue in Black, mainly problematic camera angles and precise platforming sections. So much so that, at times, if feels you’re not fighting enemies and are fighting mechanics instead.

With all that said however, this is still a great game, which speaks wonders to how good Black really was. Combat is still an absolute joy to experience even in 2023 - it is incredible to me how well it holds up almost 20 years later. Even though level design could at times be a bit clearer, I love how atmospheric the less modern looking hubs are (Tairon’s outskirts, the monastery underground and the caverns are great examples of this). Almost all weapons feel great to use and serve a purpose, and I love how balanced the game is in making you carefully ponder which upgrades to spend essence on. These 3 aspects give robustness to a title that is tough as nails. I played Black close to release and seriously, if Sigma is any easier I honestly didn’t notice. Getting through the final 3 bosses with only 2 Elixirs was a nightmare for me. Maybe - or likely - I’m just a worse player now, but getting through this game made me revise my stance on the Dark Souls trilogy, and believe I do have what it takes to finally tackle it once and for all (something I’ve never even tried because of the series’ reputation).

So while I certainly wouldn’t consider Sigma better than Black, I’d still consider it a damn good game. Silly changes aside, this is still very much worth experiencing if you don’t have access to Black, and the 16 hours I spent with it flew by. Great combat, great levels, great enemies, great fun, difficult AF. 8.5/10

Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2

Things get trickier here. My time with the original Ninja Gaiden II was better than this, and to be honest some of the changes Sigma 2 makes are so impactful that, at times, this feels like a completely different game. If you’re looking for the difficulty that the NG experience is supposed to bring, you likely won’t find it here unless you crank it all the way up. Whether in comparison to Black or NGII, S2 dumbs almost everything down for you: combat, upgrades, essence absorption, achievements, ammo, navigation, etc. This gets added not only on top of things that NGII did that had already made it easier than Black (such as proper tutorials and health recovery on save points), but especially a considerably easier challenge, even compared to the original Sigma. In S1 I had a really hard time at certain points on Normal difficulty. NGII was also really tough for me. Here, however, I must’ve died once on the exact same difficulty mode. And even though you can of course ramp up the challenge, it feels much less like the quintessential NG experience because of that. When it comes to difficulty, S2 is clearly the most accessible game out of all the titles that came before it.

The bad changes don’t end here, however. The other two main ones are the removal of proper gore (you now get a purple myst instead of a juicy severed head every time you decapitate someone, for example) and enemies spawning in fewer numbers (the tradeoff is them having more HP). Something I surprisingly didn’t have as hard a time accepting as I thought I would, since there are still quite a few enemies for the most part. Other aspects are a downgrade as well when comparing it to NGII, like less impressive level design, the removal of any puzzle-like or key finding segments, the absence of tests of valour, an abundance of essence and nothing to spend it on, not being able to manually save, visually worse UI, non-sensical missions with 3 other characters (Rachel, Ayane and Momiji), and some ridiculous boss additions (Ch1 and 4 are particularly egregious on this).

So what I’m about to say might sound surprising, but despite it all, I still had quite a bit of fun with S2. This happened from the moment I stopped looking at it as a masterclass in game difficulty and embraced it as a ninja power fantasy. S2 feels so good to play, not in challenge but in style. Combat is more fluid, a lot faster, and much more spectacular (the fact that it also makes it a lot easier to unleash ultimate techniques greatly contributes to this). All weapons feel better to use - which is impressive considering how good they already felt in the previous entries -, and a few of the new weapons are awesome (looking at you, kurasi-gamma). Despite the lack of proper decapitations, dismemberment still looks great. Precise platforming is clearly better compared to, for example, Black. There are some really welcome of QoL additions, especially when it comes to camera controls, visual tutorials and aiming. Some of the levels, starting from South America onwards, are artistically striking. And in keeping with the original NGII version, but in contrast to Sigma, the combo tally is back on the main screen which is great.

If I pour all of this into a blender, it’s obvious to me that I still really enjoyed my time with S2. Again, it is not quite at the level of its original counterpart, but it’s nonetheless a great hack n’ slash experience in a vacuum, so long as you don't expect your skills to be intensely challenged. 8/10

Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge

Oh boy, where to start with this one. What an absolute train wreck.

This is probably everything bad that people have said it was and more, starting with the difficulty. I cannot believe how all over the place and often unfair it feels. It is by very far the worst and most moronic difficulty implementation of all 5 NG games I've played. To illustrate: while I played through all previous titles on Normal, I couldn’t even get past the first spider bot boss in RE. To make matters worse, reducing the difficulty doesn’t make enemies easier or less spongy, or the player deal more damage in any discernible way, as one would expect. Instead, it gets you to block automatically and - get this - not die. Going from brutally hard (which the game’s mechanics don’t fully accommodate) to a literal ‘no stakes’ approach in one difficulty drop is the most asinine, unbalanced way to handle challenge I’ve ever seen in a game. I just can’t understand what went through their heads to decide to do something like this.

The problems go beyond this, of course. The second worst one is the hideous, hideousboss design. Seriously, what the actual f. The spider bot was terrible, the chopper was worse, the T-Rex was even worse, and the final boss was an utter joke. There is nothing remotely interesting or engaging about these fights, with the icing on the cake being the amount QTEs you have to endure throughout them. Horrendous stuff all around. Then there’s the ‘’’story’’’. They tried to give it a more emotional and realistic tone, which in the NG universe just made it come across as completely absurd, ludicrous and out of sorts. As stereotypically villainy as the stories in 1 and (especially) 2 were, they were still eons better and more fitting than this pile of cutscene-injected garbage RE concocted.

More issues: mediocre level design; poor presentation; essence is gone, and you now heal after every single battle; less clear and pleasant UI design; awful downgrade of ultimate techniques; incredibly repetitive mission structure; stupidly spongy enemies no matter the difficulty mode; Ryu’s constant ‘shit’ swearing in combat; slight input lag; overall zero charisma.

There are only two redeeming qualities RE, the fact that some weapons are still really fun to use, and the fact that the gore is back with a vengeance. Everything else is, at the very best, extremely forgettable. 3.5/10, and in all honesty I think I’m being somewhat generous here.

Final thoughts

After spending about 33 hours with the Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection, I can say this was a very mixed experience. Even as a forever fan of Black, I feel Sigma kicks it off pretty strongly, and Sigma 2, although a fundamentally different experience in some regards, still manages to entertain at a similar level when compared to NGII. Razor’s Edge was just a mess. It’s hard to recommend this trilogy as a package, since the last entry not only adds nothing to the series, it actively harms it. There is definitely fun to be had here if you’re only looking to play the Sigma titles, but if you have a current gen Xbox, playing Black and Ninja Gaiden II on it, with its visual and performance improvements, remains the absolute best way to enjoy this fantastic hack n’ slash series. 7/10