I finished Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge. Despite everything, I’m very happy to have finished the whole trilogy. I’ve become quite fond of this series, and I’m already very keen on going back and playing NGB and NG2 again sometime soon. Especially curious to compare the Ninja Gaiden 2 White mod with the original NG2 experience.

NG3RE is a bad game. I could rant about it for hours. It has one of the worst stories I’ve ever had the displeasure of experiencing, and in attempting to be a “story focused” game it actively gets in the way of your enjoyment constantly. It’s a QTE-infested fuckfest, its extremely solid combat system isn’t even allowed to shine due to poor gameplay design and it has the worst bosses in the whole series - a series that was already infamous for bad bosses, by the way. That final boss was an absolute shitshow and I can’t believe I made it through. Had I not saved up all the Max HP upgrades in the skill tree to use as health potions in the final fight I wouldn’t have been able to. Also, they actually had the game end on a fucking QTE.

If you must play it to see the whole series, install this mod, set Ninpo generation to 1.5, damage multiplier to 1.35 and enemy block rate reduction to 85. I played around with it a bit and it actually makes the combat feel alright and lets you mostly ignore Steel On Bone QTE instakills and heal with Ninpo instead, as well as actually play around with your combo strings to kill enemies.

To follow, and continuing my Itagaki journey I found out he and some other Ninja Gaiden 2 people in the Soleil studio made the game Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time. So I’ve started playing that now, and you know what? It’s actually kinda good. Feels a bit like a throwback to old school games, and you can even sense some of the Ninja Gaiden lineage in the combat. Much less demanding and intense though - granted I’m only playing on Normal difficulty. It’s not going to be a GOTY contender but I’d say it’s worth your time. I never watched the cartoon but they apparently got both the original creator and show writers as well as voice cast on board. Love the art style too and it’s had some cool levels thus far. Bosses have been decent, not too hard. Recommended if you need a short chill action game, and doubly so if you’re a Samurai Jack fan I assume.