Still on the ninja grind, at this point I’m hopefully done with Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge relatively soon. Not yet, though.

I really wish this solid fundamental combat system wasn’t trapped inside a godawful game. I really truly hate everything the story and presentation is doing. The setting is shit, the narrative is shit, the QTE gameplay is shit. The levels are boring. The voice acting is bad, but not even in a fun and campy way anymore but just bad. And worst of all - unlike the previous games this attempts to be “story focused”. So instead of just getting a cutscene at the start and end of a chapter and then action in between you are non-stop engaging with the terrible garbage they’re serving.

And they even managed to fuck up executing the combat even though they have the most solid fundamentals in place of the entire series. I hate the Steel On Bone counters, and the combat is designed around spamming them all the time. It’s boring. QTE-ing a single SOB counter into multiple instant kills feels unearned, and so much less satisfying than deliberately delimbing enemies with specific combos in NG2 to set them up for instant execution.

Plus the bosses are actually even worse here. Some are okay, I know it’s infamous but the T-rex actually felt fine to me but stuff like the tank and helicopter bosses are just pure trash. I’ve also heard the final boss is a world record holder in unfair bullshit so you know, I have that to look forward to too, I guess.