Before Ninja Gaiden would go on it's over a decade long hiatus I decided to play vanilla Ninja Gaiden 3 and Yaiba before NG4 and to say they terrible games would be an understatement. It's fascinating how every 3D Ninja Gaiden past the 2nd game are not even at the very least mediocre but just bad. What I'm shocked by is that NG4 wasn't at the very least a "terrible story, good gameplay" like the first two titles. Every time I played the former, I kept asking myself, "who is this game even for?" It's really a Metal Gear Rising sequel in disguise but it often conflicts with so many other aspects of the game.
This leads to story and yes, NG isn't a story driven franchise or has a high storytelling prowess. This was something the older games were also bad at since there is far too much effort put into a story that is incoherently presented nor are they exceptional at giving context for the gameplay. Somehow, the story in NG4 could be the worst in the series.
For a series that have characters that don't age and a continuity that isn't even worth trying to follow or piece together especially with the whole bizarre crossover with Dead or Alive. For some reason we need to have NG do what Devil May Cry did and have the series' long time protagonist Ryu replaced with a new character. Ryu wasn't that interesting to begin with if you ignore his character design but the thing is Yakumo is even more uninteresting than Ryu is. At best, he's a combination of Devil May Cry 2 Dante and Raiden from the aforemention MGR.
NG4's story is just an extremely long and bloated escort mission where Yakumo spends most of it killing monsters and obtaining macguffins. Yakumo and Seori's relationship at the start isn't really that different by the end. The story wants you to feel like Yakumo cares for her during the adventure but most of it is unearned due to their interactions consisting of voice calls where Yakumo doesn't really care and not a whole lot of on screen interactions of anything interesting. Misaki is a villain than dies when the reveal happens.
To top off all of this, you could've just had Ryu do this whole escort mission with Seori and Misaki and the story would be the same since Ryu is just as stoic and disinterested in what he does as much as Yakumo is. The parts as where Ryu is playable already had him act like how Yakumo was towards her. The part where the game ends with Yakumo doing a "final swing" inspired scene like in a live action Spider-Man movie made me chuckle for how unearned it was.
The gameplay is basically Metal Gear Rising frankensteined with the mechanics and systems from past NG games. This might not sound bad on paper. MGRR's gameplay was mainly just reliably using the contextual blocking and timing it do parries, comboing enemies to weaken them to do a "scripted" takedown animation to refill health and that's pretty much it.
NG4's combat has more moving parts by comparison. You got the dismemberment system, obliteration and ultimate techniques. Instead of essence, it's now health pick ups which gives combat a game of, "absorb health or use it for an ultimate attack?" Enemies also block attacks and are armored so you need to use blood raven attacks to break it and attack. You also have on the fly weapon switching to consider with a simple touch of the d pad. There is also dodges and parries being rewarde
On paper, this is the part where I say, everything comes together and I love this combat but there is just one major problem: the over reliance on using the parry. You also have to first contend with the terrible on boarding of all the mechanics I mentioned with it being dumped to you through textboxes in the first 30 minutes.
The series' infamously terrible camera is still here and that means lots of you getting hit by off screen projectiles and enemy attacks.
NG4 may seem like a game where don't need to be great with the parry to be competent at combat but that's not true. There's also not one parry but 3. You got the MGRR contextual blocking parry, the parry with the actual block button parry AND the bloodraven form parry, the "super" parry. If you aren't good with these 3 different styles, mobs by Chapter 6 will steamroll through you on normal. Games like Doom the Dark Ages, Insomniac Spider-Man 2, and Warhammer Space Marine 2 features parrying but it's just part of the player's moveset and to do get major damage on tougher enemies.
You could chock this up to me being "bad" but NG4 is marketed as a game for newcomers. It already has wealth of accessblity options and rewards you with items upon dying multiple times. Easy mode which you can switch to at any time gives you auto dodge and parry. So why can't I customize the parry window? It seems out of place considering everything I mentioned so now. It's ultimately Platinum just using NG as an excuse to make MGR2 since the latter's skeleton is still there and Konami won't let them make it.
Overall, my mild expectations were not met and I'm surprised. NG4 was going to be a monkey's paw but it could've been a fun game but no.
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