Was the OG THAT good?

[Arbor]

It’s wild to me that people are still hung up on a game that’s almost 2 decades old at this point. I’ve only played sigma 2 which was a great game in its own right at the time of its release (looks like crap now tho imo). Was the OG really that good?

[Cynical]

There's really nothing like the OG. It's the most intense 3D third-person action game ever made; the closest thing to it in that regard is Vanquish on God Hard, but OG NG2 is another step above that. It's not a perfect game (it's got a few *really* bad boss fights, and the jungle level is really terrible), but it hits peaks higher than any other character action game ever.

[Arbor]

Originally posted by Cynical:

There's really nothing like the OG. It's the most intense 3D third-person action game ever made; the closest thing to it in that regard is Vanquish on God Hard, but OG NG2 is another step above that. It's not a perfect game (it's got a few *really* bad boss fights, and the jungle level is really terrible), but it hits peaks higher than any other character action game ever.

I feel like I missed out because the way people talk about the game now is the same way they talked about it back then.

[SavageHeigou]

I could go on and rag on Sigma 2. But this is about how Sigma 2/the collection exist. This was like a port/remaster of the older game from the trailers. Some people like insane enemy counts/"unfair" difficulty. Although most fights were very zero rng and even with tons of explosive boys not close to impossible. I wanted that again in better graphics and got insanely low enemy counts even on mentor and some fights just being gone combined with evidence with the bow/lack of rod of valors this is just Sigma 2 in a new paint job with some delimb parameters changed.

[Cynical]

Originally posted by Arbor:

Originally posted by Cynical:

There's really nothing like the OG. It's the most intense 3D third-person action game ever made; the closest thing to it in that regard is Vanquish on God Hard, but OG NG2 is another step above that. It's not a perfect game (it's got a few *really* bad boss fights, and the jungle level is really terrible), but it hits peaks higher than any other character action game ever.

I feel like I missed out because the way people talk about the game now is the same way they talked about it back then.

Xenia Canary emulates it well. Here's directions for configuring the emulator: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgXrTTpSPJw

[Ackranome]

Original Ninja Gaiden was so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hard and the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ birds hit you off screen.

[Ludus Aurea]

"Good" isn't really a measurable concept.

It was hard, that's about it.

Anyone acting like "it was he best ever" has never actually played . I have it. I can play it right now if I want and vividly relive how it's good, but it's not this amazing thing that's so much better than this release.

The only thing that made NG2 "hard" was that literally every level after a certain point was chock full of dudes with 80's GI Joe missile launchers spamming the ever living bejesus out of you with missiles.

[Necho]

This one is also good, but people just loved their childhood games. All NG are amazing tbh.

[William Shakesman]

Yeah it's worth trying on Xenia if you can. There really is nothing like NG2 and there never will be.

That having been said, Sigma 2 and Black 2 are going to still be great, top shelf action games purely by virtue of how strong the NG core is. So it's not like you're being handed a bad product here, just one that doesn't quite reach the stars.

[Shem]

It's not really that it was so damn good (I definitely hold that Ninja Gaiden Black is the best entry in the series, with Sigma 1 near the same level), but that Sigma 2 was such a huge departure from what it offered as an experience.

Ninja Gaiden 2 had large enemy encounters with high lethality. You couldn't take a lot of punishment, but neither could your enemies, and so combat was a constant flow between offense and defense. It honestly combined the kind of satisfaction you got out of the original, and its highly technical combat, with the persistent dopamine thrum of a musou game.

It was also patently unfair, and often a frustrating experience.

So, no, it wasn't that damn good, but it was a unique experience that's stuck in the Xbox ecosystem, and Sigma 2 and now 2 Black are fundamentally different games in mostly the same environments.

[Bagg Boy (formerly Smoke)]

It was good, but ultimately inferior to Black (but every NG game is inferior to it, soooo)

[Gemsmith]

Nah, I replayed it a month ago and like 20 % is pretty good and unique but 80% are abyssmal ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. people never mention underwater combat/ bug combat / chasing rocket launcher dudes / abyssmal bosses / glitches / slow downs/ camera / target lock / insanely lazy enemy placement ( half the game is 1 enemy copied and pasted over and over) etc.

[William Shakesman]

Originally posted by Shem:

It's not really that it was so damn good (I definitely hold that Ninja Gaiden Black is the best entry in the series, with Sigma 1 near the same level), but that Sigma 2 was such a huge departure from what it offered as an experience.

Ninja Gaiden 2 had large enemy encounters with high lethality. You couldn't take a lot of punishment, but neither could your enemies, and so combat was a constant flow between offense and defense. It honestly combined the kind of satisfaction you got out of the original, and its highly technical combat, with the persistent dopamine thrum of a musou game.

It was also patently unfair, and often a frustrating experience.

So, no, it wasn't that damn good, but it was a unique experience that's stuck in the Xbox ecosystem, and Sigma 2 and now 2 Black are fundamentally different games in mostly the same environments.

These differences are important. A lot of Sigma 2's encounters felt weird and balanced in a very silly manner because Ryu still played with a lot of NG2's power but Sigma 2 doesn't demand it. For instance, the block is way too strong in Sigma 2 because it kept most of its properties from the musou tier enemy spam of NG2. If you had no familiarity with NG2 and only played Sigma 2, you might not even notice, but the losses are glaring when you are aware of them.

[Comkill117]

I think a big part of it is just there really isn't any game like OG Ninja Gaiden 2. This is really good so far, a definite step up from Sigma imo, but it's missing the insane enemy count and general higher difficulty the original had. OG 2 was a game where your only moment of rest was if you back tracked to a save or just didn't go forward for a bit after a fight, but if you kept going the game never let up on the challenge.

Hopefully they can update this to bring the enemy count back up to par with it but even if Team Ninja doesn't I'm sure modders will.

[Shem]

Originally posted by William Shakesman:

Originally posted by Shem:

It's not really that it was so damn good (I definitely hold that Ninja Gaiden Black is the best entry in the series, with Sigma 1 near the same level), but that Sigma 2 was such a huge departure from what it offered as an experience.

Ninja Gaiden 2 had large enemy encounters with high lethality. You couldn't take a lot of punishment, but neither could your enemies, and so combat was a constant flow between offense and defense. It honestly combined the kind of satisfaction you got out of the original, and its highly technical combat, with the persistent dopamine thrum of a musou game.

It was also patently unfair, and often a frustrating experience.

So, no, it wasn't that damn good, but it was a unique experience that's stuck in the Xbox ecosystem, and Sigma 2 and now 2 Black are fundamentally different games in mostly the same environments.

These differences are important. A lot of Sigma 2's encounters felt weird and balanced in a very silly manner because Ryu still played with a lot of NG2's power but Sigma 2 doesn't demand it. For instance, the block is way too strong in Sigma 2 because it kept most of its properties from the musou tier enemy spam of NG2. If you had no familiarity with NG2 and only played Sigma 2, you might not even notice, but the losses are glaring when you are aware of them.

The part that really irks me is the increased enemy HP. On Very Hard, in Sigma 2 and now 2 Black, I’ve landed a lv 1 UT with the Dragon Sword on a dismembered claw ninja and not had it kill.

I’ve landed a full combo and a lv2 UT with the level 2 Dragon Sword on the same enemy type and they got back up.

I’ve Izuna dropped them and had them get back up.

None of this is game breaking, but it all feels VERY different than in the vanilla game, where these same situations were certain kills.

[masterninjah]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujkB_DkAgL0
this video is hilarious and also sums up perfectly why the og is better