Shadow of the Ninja (1990)

Beat in slow motion mode. This was pretty much Ninja Gaiden with some refined mechanics and no enemy respawning. Instead every enemy had patterns to learn and master as they often took several hits to defeat. Some enemies were placed in such a way as to make taking damage unavoidable. The biggest problem I had was not being able to cycle between weapons. Instead I had either the sword (fast, simple, long range waves with upgrades) or chain (diagonal up attacks, reach, slow without upgrades, and sometimes did not hit close enemies). Shurikens and bombs had limited number and were automatically used until depleted. If only there was a weapon select mechanic to allow tactical use of each. I used the chain for the 1st set of stages, switching to sword after checking a walkthrough to see if there was any way to switch weapons. The diagonal option of the chain was handy but it was noticeably worse at close range. Seemed like the weapon upgrades were lost upon taking damage. Bombs and homing shurikens were the only ways to attack down, which was sorely lacking. Sometimes I simply ignored the enemies and ran on. Bosses were mostly pretty good with patterns to learn. The only boss I did not like was the giant tank because its mortar shots seemed unpredictable. You would think for every auditory boom of it firing, a projectile would land at your current location. But that was not how it worked and I could not figure out how to properly avoid those shots. Final boss had a very predictable pattern, but as his hp went down he entered phase 2 and sped up to a ridiculous level. I could not keep up, but I did figure out a safe spot where all his attacks would miss and I only had to properly time dodging his 1 melee, which gave a split second to hit him once.

Good alternative to Ninja Gaiden that was more forgiving and less obnoxious but it would have been so much better with an inventory.

7.3/10

This is a tricky game to really not have half stars to give. I liked a lot of it: the music is spectacular, the backgrounds are pretty, there's a few great level design choices in here, and the final boss was just about the perfect end cap for this game. The two player option is kind of neat, too, although I didn't get a chance to try it out.

BUT... This game has some horridly cheap enemy and trap placement. Enemies also take too many damn hits to kill. It makes the simple act of moving forward a tedious bore at times, especially with those stupid boomerang throwers. There's no life system; only 5 continues that set you back to the beginning of the stage you're on (thank goodness I'm playing this on the Wii U!). I feel that the market shift towards making American games stupidly hard to counteract the burgeoning rental boom worked against this game (and others), making it far less fun than it really ought to be.

Thus my conundrum. It's not a bad game at all, but there are asinine decisions making it so much worse than it ought to be. If enemies were easier to defeat and a lot of the cheese was trimmed out, this would easily be a four star game. As it is, I'd like to give it two and a half...but I must round upwards. It's flawed, but with save states, it's doable and quite fun in short bursts. But it will throw something terrible at you at some point that mucks it all up. XD In short...worth a try if you liked similar action games on the NES (Ninja Gaiden is the closest parallel. Tecmo's effort controls better in a lot of ways, but has its own difficulties with enemy cheapness and quirky punishments for the player to suffer through)...but be prepared to get a little flustered at at from time to time.