What is Wrong with Ninja Gaiden Sigma 1 & Sigma 2
It’s a common practice to re-release, port, reinvent, or reimagine video game titles. However, Ninja Gaiden is one of the most primal examples of video games that have been treated poorly. Being Handled by Multiple directors with Different Visions of an Action Game, the Franchise Quickly turned into a mess.
Tomonobu Itagaki and Team Ninja
Tomonobu Itagaki, the famously notorious Game Designer who rescued Tecmo (now, Koei Tecmo) from the brink of bankruptcy by Creating smash hits like Dead or Alive and Ninja Gaiden, has gained a reputation for his Frank Personality and Aggressive Attitude and was called a “Video Game Rockstar”. in the early 2000s When PS2 was an extremely popular console, he Chose the Newly released Microsoft Xbox as his main console for development, when they asked him why, he said that Unlike the underpowered PlayStation 2, The Xbox is a Much more Powerful and much easier to develop for. Itagaki also pointed out that he wants to support those who try to go against the status quo, which goes to show how much he loves to be subversive.
At the time he was working at Tecmo, he established his own Subsidiary Called “Team Ninja”. Team Ninja is the team responsible for franchises like Dead or Alive, Ninja Gaiden, and now Nioh. After His Departure, Hayashi became the leader of the team, starting a new chapter in the history of the Franchises and the team itself. but during the time of Itagaki, Hayashi was a member of the young staff and was given tasks of porting existing Ninja Gaiden games on the PlayStation 3, which Itagaki really Disliked.
Itagaki had high hopes for Hayashi, calling him his Student and believing he can create the Definitive Version of his Art…well, sort of.
If you are new to Ninja Gaiden and recently bought the master collection, you might have heard from ninja Gaiden fans that these are not the best versions and the definitive ones are locked on Xbox. in this article I will explain all the mess.
Ninja Gaiden Black Vs Sigma
The first 3D Ninja Gaiden was released in 2004, exclusively on Xbox and received numerous praise from both players and critics. The semi-open world Design was large and Full of Places to go. The Biggest Innovation was of course the Over the top Gameplay, Remembering that Team Ninja has Experience with fighting games, you can see they used a combo rich Combat system in the game, With Various unique weapons, RPG-like mechanics and Magic.
Next Year, Ninja Gaiden Black was released, also Exclusively on Xbox, it’s the 2004 NG Version, however, it includes Hurricane Pack DLCs, More enemies, Costumes, and also Various fixes. it is also the game that many players consider to be the Superior Version, An Expansion.
Fast-forward to 2007, Ninja Gaiden Sigma was released, a Next-Gen Port of Ninja Gaiden Black Exclusively released on PlayStation 3. Unlike the previous title, this one was directed by a younger member of Team Ninja, Yosuke Hayashi. Unlike His Teacher, Hayashi had different ideas about Game Direction.
Mostly, Ninja Gaiden sigma at its core is faithful to its predecessor but the game mechanics, puzzles, music, and AI tweaks were either completely changed or removed.
The most significant Graphical change is at the start of the game. In NG Black, where there’s a murky and winter-like atmosphere, Sigma looks more colorful and feels like it takes place in autumn. Sigma also added the infamous Bloom effect which was popular at that time. Speaking about weapons, they removed the Nunchuks and placed them in a later chapter, so your only weapon the whole damn chapter is the dragon sword.
The Xbox version had several puzzles that you must solve to progress further but all of them were removed in the Sigma version to make the game more straightforward and action-oriented, most puzzles were replaced with strong enemies.
Some music was changed, and Sigma replaced the original with some Symphonic Rock instrumentals.
The AI also had some significant changes, overall fans agree that Sigma (even though it’s still Brutal) is easier compared to black. Most bosses are less defensive, they block less, one main example is the Doku Fight, even on Master Difficulty, he is easy to defeat as he blocks less frequently.
Sigma introduced Side-character Rachel as a playable character, compared to Ryu she is slower but her Hammer deals much more damage. her Boss’s fight against Gamov is pretty horrible and Overall not a fan favorite.
One Thing that Sigma did wrong was removing New Game Plus for some unknown reason. it’s obvious that Starting a Fresh run on the highest difficulty all the time is pretty frustrating, why did they do this? no answer.
Overall, Ninja Gaiden Sigma is a good game, some fans even think that it’s better than Black, it carries the core concept and Modernizes it. If it only had a New game plus and much harder bosses, it could have been Superior. Speaking about that, Itagaki did give his opinions about Sigma, saying that Ninja Gaiden Sigma was made by Young Members of the Team and he thinks their Version was no good.
Sigma did sell well and was praised by critics and new fans but was criticized by veteran players, which is obvious. The game was an interesting Remix of the source material. in Black, at the end of the 2nd chapter, there’s an awesome cutscene where Doku kills (or seriously injures ? ) Ryu. in the sigma version they replaced the Scene with an Actual fight with Doku, in reality, you do not have to beat him, this Pseudo-Boss fight was made for the veterans, if you manage to defeat him, you will automatically unlock a higher difficulty, since beating him so early in the game means you are an experienced player. this little Awesome feature was added so veteran players don’t have to beat the game on the lower difficulty to unlock higher ones.
However, Real Problems Will Start Later.
Ninja Gaiden 2 Vs Sigma 2 — The Opposite Twins
Once Team Ninja Received an Xbox 360 Devkit, they immediately Started experimenting with new ideas. Itagaki was proud to present the next mainline game in the Dead or Alive franchise and released it as a launch title. 3 Years Later after many rumors and teasers, The Almighty Ninja Gaiden 2 was released, Exclusively for the Xbox 360.
Based on the first game, Ninja Gaiden 2 Let’s you play yet again as our Main Protagonist, Ryu Hayabusa, With a Whole new Level Design, Intensified Combat System with a lot more on-screen Foes, a Better Health system, more costumes, and A LOT more Blood.
Ninja Gaiden 2 Heavily improved the Gameplay side, the first Game was more oriented Toward Defensive gameplay strategy, While NG2 was oriented Toward Attack and max out aggression. Fast, Chaotic, and Brutal Action, Gruesome and Bloody Combat, and enemies who fight like they have only a single purpose, to Slaughter you. this amount of Chaotic Warfare was something the team truly wanted to accomplish. Xbox 360 was enough powerful to fulfill their vision of a True Action Game but it wasn’t all perfect.
Development wasn’t Going Smooth and they just ran out of time development time. Because of that, Ninja Gaiden 2 was released with Framerate issues. it seemed that so many on-screen enemies, movement, speed, effects, incendiary shurikens, multi-rockets, giant mech jetpack flames, etc. all of that running at constant 60fps was too much even for Xbox 360 which was only a few years old. it’s a fact that the game was pushing the system to its absolute limits, so much so that the system would overheat and crash several times. the infamous staircase fight where there’s a max amount of on-screen enemies was patched, later on, some percent of enemies were removed to keep the system stable. also, the game was running at native 585p.
Technically, the game had issues but it was still extremely fun and became a fan favorite. the level of intensity and Brutality is over the top.
Ninja Gaiden 2 was developed exclusively for the Xbox 360 and is specifically designed with its hardware in mind. Basically, it means if they decided to port the game on a totally different system (PlayStation 3) they had to make some big changes. which they did…
Soon after the release of NG2, Itagaki left the company and Hayashi became the head of the studio. a year after, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 was released, Exclusively for the PS3.
Unlike the first sigma which was a Port of a previous-gen title, Ninja Gaiden 2 was a current Gen game that already took the full potential of Xbox 360 and now has to be ported on a Less powerful PlayStation 3 and must run on 60 fps.
Now, there’s a good reason why I’m saying that PS3 is less powerful, especially when it comes to games with a lot of on-screen sprites.
To keep it short, both Xbox 360 and PS3 were two very different kinds of beasts. X360 had a 3 core CPU, a Radeon GPU, and a unified 512MB Memory, PS3, on the other hand, was overly complicated, with a 2 Core CPU with 6 SPEs (Here’s what SPEs are, In case you’re Wondering), Underpowered Nvidia GPU and 512MB of Split Ram (Equally split between CPU/GPU).
You can see that making NG2 run on PS3 is already a huge challenge, so it needs or even has to be changed.
Even with no technical limitations, Hayashi still had to make significant changes in the game. NG2 was great but it had its gameplay flaws. most fans were complaining about the huge amount of shurikens which were not only drastically decreasing your health but were ruining your combo, also the huge amount of rocket launchers was frustrating. Ninja Gaiden 2 felt like an Action game in the middle of a warzone, which is a way to make the player more alert to his surroundings and think as fast as possible. also, the game lacked online features and the framerate was not as good as we already explained.
In the end, Hayashi made a huge amount of drastic changes and presented a whole different variant of the original, something more traditional and stable.
Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 was released in 2009 and was met with good reviews and sold well (not as well as the original but still decent).
Like the Sigma Version, Sigma 2 has the Bloom effect which made the game more colorful, unlike the original which felt more gloomy. Ryus Character design was reworked and looked more excellent, 3 Additional side characters were introduced (Momiji, Rachel, and Ayane), Annoying Bosses were removed and were replaced with better ones, Game got an Online Co-op Mode where u can join with other players in a match full of enemies and the whole game was running at 720p 60fps stable, even with upscale support.
Sounds Great, right? However, it all came with a cost.
Sigma 2 is a controversial title, it significantly reduced the number of on-screen enemies, and to balance it, they increased their defense and attack power. This means that meanwhile, they can easily kill you with 1 or 2 hits, you have to fight them much longer, it takes around 2–3 Izuna drops to kill a claw ninja which is pretty shocking.
This is especially frustrating when u play as the side characters, Ayane is the weakest of the Trio, killing a claw ninja can take a few minutes of unstopping combo attacking and Izuna dropping. her chapter is also the most frustrating, even nightmarish, since her speed is not effective and her movement is not always responsive. i can definitely say that her chapter, Night in the City of Water is the most unbalanced and most hated.
Rachel on the other hand is the strongest but her slow movement and the fact that her level is full of the fastest moving enemies in the game, really tells you how much the Developers wanted you to struggle. Momiji is the most “balanced” one but her chapter has the strongest enemies and the most unfair ones.
Another downside is that the game is now censored, they replaced the gore with a weird-looking purple mist which fits the colorful aesthetics of the game.
Few weapons were added but most of them were removed, the fan Favorite Windmill shuriken was removed (Funny enough, hackers found it to be inside the game asset folder) and the bow was simplified.
Fans understood that PS3 wasn’t powerful enough to handle the huge crowd fighting style of the Xbox version but were very pissed with the censorship.
It’s a fact that Ninja Gaiden 2 is Superior to its Sigma counterpart, I personally call them Red and blue versions because of the menu colors. NG2 has that Crimson aesthetic, meanwhile, Sigma 2 has a minimalistic azure Blue menu.
Meanwhile, Itagaki was working on his new studio and one of the journalists asked him about sigma 2 he didn’t talk much, only saying that they added this purple mist which even for him was weird.
Funny enough, the Vita version of Sigma 2 has removed the purple mist and replaced it with Blood again.
The Master Collection Version of Sigma 2 has all the Extra modes and content from the Vita Version but they still kept the purple mist from the PS3 Version… anyway, this is starting to get messy.
Overall, Sigma 2 is a very controversial title and still gives a bad reputation to Hayashi and the Post-Itagaki Team ninja. a Good Game with a very weird and questionable Design choice.
The Team is aware of this and yet they still included it in the master collection, saying that the original source code is scrapped. not lost, but scrapped up. they have the source code for an early build but were too lazy to rebuild it. overall, the master collection is a very very lazy port.
There are some rumors saying that Team Ninja is working on a new Ninja Gaiden game and it might be announced this year, but it’s just a rumor even if it’s true, we should still be worried about it might not be what we hope…
Ninja Gaiden 4…We are Waiting..desperately waiting for you…
