Recent reviews by Krainz

Crisis averted.

I can't really give any really useful review or suggestion. I bought this purely out of nostalgia.

When I was a wee bee lad, I was given this game as a gift from my moms coworker and it was my first experience with the RTS genre. She was a kind lady and I appreciated her thinking of me. Sadly she passed away a few years ago from a car accident... May she rest in peace.

Played from start to finish using MGSHDFix and an upscaled texture pack. Had a blast, 10/10, loved playing it for the 100th time. The only issue I had was some occasional frame drops but I'm not sure if that's because of the texture pack I installed.

My experience is probably more positive than what the vanilla buy offers. Without any mods its obvious that its the HD Collection from 2011; so that means some of the visual issues and removed content return, that includes max res of 720p if you don't mod it. There's no Snake vs. Money, Secret Theater, "Guy Savage" nightmare, or the Boss Duel mode. The post processing effects like depth of field, rain, and water reflections are still broken and made worse at higher resolutions. Some visual and gameplay related issues still persist because of 60fps.

If you are mental, I can easily recommend getting a PS2, high quality CRT, MGS3: Subsistence, and an original PS2 controller if you want the definitive version in terms of content and game behavior. However playing this version is a great choice. its more accessible, loads the fastest, has more controller options, and its an improvement over the HD Collection with the addition of modding and the patches done by Konami.

For free, these fellas made something really great. Easy recommend.

Combat's way more enjoyable and has a better flow than the base game. Enemies finally get stunned consistently to have more melee fun times.

No new unlocks or achievements, no Wesker or Ada, no costume unlocks, and only 3 maps. It's fun and worth playing, but feels like an afterthought compared to RE5 or RE6's Mercs mode.

Everything you've come to love about FromSoftware is here with great enemy design, boss fights, music, level design, art direction, controller throwing, etc. It has one of the more interesting and enjoyable open world games to come out in years. Exploring is intriguing and rewarding, and you really never know what you are going to find. It also has all the hallmarks by being beyond vague and obtuse in its design, that it sometimes feels like playing with a wiki is the point.

Despite enjoying the game a great deal, seemingly the switch to an open world made for a rather unbalanced game at times. I suppose the designers had a more difficult time tweaking and tuning the enemies and weapons? I always felt the previous games were more consistent in their difficulty curve and weapon balance.

The final hours of the game was some of the most absurd difficulty spikes I can recall from a game. Despite focusing on side content and exploring, it felt like I've avoided it by the end game. Some enemies were stupid easy, and some enemies were so hard that it didn't even feel worth it. Some bosses were self harm worthy, and the Runes earned was practically useless... Some weapons or items you can find randomly and they end up feeling broken beyond belief to use; It can be such an inconsistent experience.

I could excuse a lot of the game honestly if the combat was sublime, but I really don't enjoy essentially Dark Souls combat with a jump button. It still feels kind of sloppy, and It doesn't feel like it has the refinement or responsiveness of Bloodborne or Sekiro, which I enjoyed playing way more.

There's so much more to the game that is certainly positive, but if I enjoyed the combat much more I probably would have been more praiseworthy just from that. Even though I think the game is rather flawed in some ways, Its a very enjoyable breath of fresh air in the AAA space.

I would not recommend this, but since you have to buy it as a collection you might as well play it; maybe you'll end up liking it.

My experience with the game was largely miserable and just frustrating. Razor's Edge has an entertaining combat system with changes for better or worse; however the actual content that surrounds the game ruins otherwise decent/fun combat.

Story is a big focus now, and its one of the most boring and cliche stories I've ever witnessed. Added on you have the typical abundance of Quick Time Events, forced walk and chats, a lot of scripted sequences, and boss fights are more spectacle focused. The level design and enemy patterns make some fights so annoying with disregard to parrying, counters, and sometimes launchers. It feels like the dev team noticed past move sets were good, but instead of balancing around them they just feel useless sometimes.

The most annoying experience was the boss fights; I did not enjoy a single boss fight in this entire game. They all felt like they boiled down to repeating the same attack and dodge combo until you kill them. They removed healing items entirely, but with no reliable way to develop your Ki to heal during a boss fight, you end up just dying and restarting dozens of times until you exploit a specific pattern. It never felt rewarding, and ended up feeling like a chore. The final boss might very well be the worst boss fight I've ever experienced in a game... seriously. Bad design doesn't even describe it.

There are literally no positives to the main story and scenarios that you experience. The only redeeming aspects are the moment to moment fights you have with standard enemies. However even typical encounters are disappointing since a lot of enemies are reused from previous games, and the challenge skulls reuse boss fights from the previous games as well. At least the camera is the least annoying in the series and I enjoyed using normal attacks more often instead of abusing Ultimate Technique charging like NGII/Sigma 2.

Most of this game's issues stem from the original release of Ninja Gaiden 3 being abysmal and a misguided sequel that steered too far into being simplified, mainstream, and story focused. That games enemies, bosses, story, level design, QTE's, scripted sequences, etc. still persist to some extent in this updated version too, and as a result Razor's Edge suffers immensely.

It's similar to NG: Sigma 2, where that game doesn't reach its own potential because its trying to build on top of and change things from an existing game but with a different director. The benefit in that case was that the foundation of NGII is largely solid, but not in the case of the original Ninja Gaiden 3 at all. Looking at it as an updated version of NG3, its actually quite a great improvement in a lot of ways, but its still based off of NG3...

Its a flawed game, built from a very flawed game. The combat is fun enough to maybe play Chapter Challenge and Ninja Trials, but after the main story I lost all interest.

Having recently beaten the original Ninja Gaiden II, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 leaves me feeling conflicted. Most people that don't recommend this game are usually people that find the changes and tweaks to be too egregious to the original release; I can't really blame some of the complaints.

The biggest issue is the huge reduction of enemies that appear on screen, along with the removal of the gore. NGII is a very bloody and gory game, to the point that it becomes hilarious at how absurd the violence is. NGS2 tones this completely down and censors most blood with green/purple mist and body dismemberment being removed in some cases.

NGS2 improves certain fights by toning down the amount of enemies that NGII had, the improved bow controls makes some fights fun now, and the tweaks to some encounters are more balanced. It overall feels less cheap and frustrating, but you can tell that the game wasn't originally designed with some of these changes.

Its apparent that there are two directors, with different visions on how the flow of gameplay/combat should be, and I think this game suffers from that. Some bosses changed/removed, Tests of Valor removed, upgrade system is a downgrade, levels don't accommodate fewer enemies, additional chapters with 3 characters that ruin the pace, etc.

There are legitimate aspects of NGS2 that are better and make for a better game. I can see the team behind NGS2 having good reasons to why some changes happened; however there are certainly aspects of NGII that should have been kept.

Neither game truly reaches its full potential, especially Sigma 2. I would say that I enjoyed NGII more for how good the dopamine hits were and how cathartic every encounter ended up; despite NGII being a rather flawed and sometimes very unbalanced game.

I can tell the director of NGII wanted me to suffer and even punish me, but the director of NGS2 wanted the player to enjoy the game more and make it feel more consistent.

NGS2 is still good fun, and worth playing despite the changes.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma is enjoyable but can sometimes be needlessly frustrating.

The camera is abysmal, movement can feel stiff, some enemy/boss attacks feel cheap, swimming sections stink, and the forced Rachel missions made me wanna vomit. Despite some flaws it was still very entertaining with satisfying fighting and progression, along with some nice music tracks too.

NGS is meant to be beaten more than once, but when I recall Rachel's sections and some of the more annoying parts it made me wanna reconsider playing again.

Worth experiencing.
Can't wait for the sequel.