Ninja Gaiden (2004)

Ninja Gaiden is a 2004 action-adventure hack-n'-slash video game developed for Xbox by Team Ninja and released by Tecmo. It was released on March 2, 2004, originally for the Xbox. Players control Ryu Hayabusa, a master ninja, in his quest to recover a stolen sword and avenge the slaughter of his clan.

Why It Rocks

 * 1) Amazing graphics for its time that is only rivaled by the likes of Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
 * 2) The game maintains the aesthetic of the NES titles by having a mix of feudal Japan and modern day.
 * 3) Awesome music.
 * 4) Amazing, fast-paced hack-n'-slash gameplay, requiring quick movements from the player and timing their attacks just right.
 * 5) Loads of projectile and melee weapons, each with their own combos.
 * 6) *Melee
 * 7) **Dragon Sword: The most balanced weapon in Ninja Gaiden, making it useful for every situation. However this balance gives it a lack of specialization the other weapons have, such as the Falcon Talon's speed and the Kusari-Gama's range. It is still very fast and it's True Dragon Sword form is able to deal out massive damage.
 * 8) **Wooden Sword: A traditional bokken, a training sword used in Kenjutsu. It shares its move list with the Dragon Sword - though it is greatly limited, and lacking several moves. In addition, it is incapable of performing Essence/Ultimate Techniques, and cannot decapitate enemies; certain armored enemies also won't take damage from the wooden sword.
 * 9) ***When fully upgraded, the Wooden Sword will turn into the Unlabored Flawlessness. This weapon shares some of its moveset with other heavy weapons, such as the War Hammer and the Dabilahro, but it is capable of performing aerial attacks and even the Izuna Drop. It also has a unique ability: its damage increases when the player is below 25% health, dealing 150% increased damage (200% if one has the least amount of health possible without dying); in addition, the characters imprinted on the back of the weapon begin to glow, signifying an increase in the weapon's power. Under these conditions, the weapon deals the most damage of any weapon in the game. If the player recovers health above 25%, however, the effect will cease.
 * 10) **Lunar Staff (Black): It doesn't do a massive amount of damage, but it has a larger range than any other weapon(excluding the Kusarigama) and is perfect for combination attacks. It is particularly effective against groups of Bats, phantom fish, etc. This is particularly useful against groups of ninjas, as it easily leads to numerous instant-kills for large sums of yellow essence.
 * 11) **Dragon's Claw and Tiger's Fang (Sigma): Fast and strong weapons that's great for crowd control, but some attacks have a large amount of recovery frames, leaving Ryu to be attacked.
 * 12) **Nunchaku: This non-upgradable weapon is fast and cool to use, but isn't very practical. It can be considered level 1 version of Vigoorian Flail.
 * 13) **Vigoorian Flail: A pair of sickles tied together by a short rope or chain similar to a nunchaku with a mid sized blades on each handle. It's best for close quarters crowd control. For ground-based enemies that tend to clump together, this is an effective way to mete out mass quantities of destruction with minimal effort.
 * 14) **Kitetsu: A weapon that when equipped will leech off of Ryu's life meter unless the player kills enemies. To stop the vampiric effect completely, the player must equip the Armlet of Tranquility. In Ninja Gaiden Black and Ninja Gaiden Sigma, this vampiric effect is no longer present and Ryu's health will not be drained when using the Kitetsu.
 * 15) Interesting storyline.
 * 16) Good voice acting.
 * 17) Awesome boss fights.
 * 18) The game was re-released via Black, a reworked compilation of Ninja Gaiden and the two Hurricane Packs. It added Mission Mode which sets up various short standalone scenarios for players to overcome, several new in-game cut scenes, and uses Hurricane Pack 1 technique more frequently on Hard difficulty and above, forcing players to find other ways to overcome the foes. A couple of new enemies even possess moves specifically to punish the use of Flying Swallow against them. Team Ninja also increased the enemies' aggression and gave most of them additional attacks which can ignore or break Ryu's defense to discourage players from assuming a very defensive posture (turtling). It also introduced two new weapons: the Lunar staff and Smoke Bombs and added new unlockable costumes.
 * 19) Plenty of extra content throughout.
 * 20) Although not too reliant on it, you can climb and jump walls like a ninja (of course). These segments are awesome.
 * 21) Huge variety of enemies, ranging from common soldiers (who have guns and some skill), to more skilled rival ninjas, and monsters called "fiends".
 * 22) Ninpo moves are awesome.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Plot Hole: At the end of the second chapter, Ryu is clearly killed, but the next scene has him gearing up for battle as if it never happened, and it's never mentioned again (although it's likely he faked it by doing something off-screen).
 * 2) False Advertising: Although marketed as the "more complete" version of Ninja Gaiden, Sigma left out most of the bonus features in the previous two versions. It has fewer unlockable costumes, and has eliminated the old SNES and arcade unlockable games. It also cut out the introductory movie concerning the legend of the Dark Dragon Blade and the Dragon Sword, and the option to play CG cut scenes outside of Story Mode.
 * 3) The Bow and Arrow, unlike many of the other projectile weapons, goes into a first person mode and requires precision aiming, which makes it near impossible to use effectively during close-quarters combat.
 * 4) The camera can be frustrating at times, getting stuck in a precarious position and making it harder to see and fight back against already difficult enemies. This issue is fixed in the Black and Sigma editions.
 * 5) It's painfully obvious that Murai has evil intentions since he's the only one who mentions how much of a shame it was that the powerful Dark Dragon Blade wasn’t being used and sends you letters telling you to kill as many people as possible on your quest for revenge.
 * 6) Some of the aforementioned combos can be pretty difficult to perform due to the confusing patterns.
 * 7) Ryu's childhood friend Kureha gets her own short profile in the manual, indicating she'll have some kind of important role. In reality, she is never introduced and only briefly shows up in one cutscene early on before dying alongside the rest of Ryu's village.
 * 8) The "Path of Zarkhan" chapter. You spend most of the level swimming back and forth to solve a puzzle. Upon solving that, the player must go through a long swimming sequence through areas previously visited but now submerged. Sigma removed the puzzle and made the level more straight-forward.

Reception
Ninja Gaiden received critical acclaim. Critics regarded it to be one of the most difficult games released prior to 2007.

Greg Kasavin of GameSpot called it "one of the best most challenging action adventure games ever made", and his publication named it the best Xbox game of February 2004.

IGN's Erik Brudvig said that it "sets a new standard for third-person action games in terms of length, depth, speed, and gore".

Its enhanced version, Ninja Gaiden Black, also impressed reviewers. GameSpot noted that it had the best visual and audio presentation on the Xbox, and praised its new Mission Mode for "distilling the game down to its purest essentials." IGN called its release "a rare and welcome day", which brought their "excitement levels back to the first time they played the game."

Consumers purchased 1.5 million copies of Ninja Gaiden and Black by August 2007, with the bulk of these sales going to North America and Europe. According to the NPD Group, in its first month Ninja Gaiden sold 362,441 copies in the United States. By August 2006, Ninja Gaiden had sold 550,000 copies and earned $27 million in that country. Between January 2000 and August 2006, it was the 100th highest-selling game launched for the PlayStation 2, Xbox or GameCube consoles in the United States. Combined sales of Ninja Gaiden and Black reached 800,000 units in the United States by August 2006. These sales figures reflect Tecmo's decision to target the non-Japanese market. Japanese gamers were not particularly excited—according to Itagaki, only 60,000 copies of Ninja Gaiden were sold in Japan in the four months following its release. The critical and commercial success of Ninja Gaiden have led CNET and GameSpot Asia to induct the game into their halls of fame

The game received a runner-up position in GameSpot's 2004 "Best Action Adventure Game" category across all platforms.