What would happen if ‘God of War’ and ‘Ninja Gaiden’ had an illegitimate child? Software has blessed the world with only an average child of the family.
Anyone looking at ‘Ninja Blade’ would assume that it is a rip off of ‘God of War,’ ‘Ninja Gaiden’ or, to an extent, ‘Devil May Cry.’
By all accounts, you couldn’t tell the person they were neither wrong nor right. ‘Ninja Blade’ takes many components from acclaimed action-adventure titles and puts its own spin on the genre– one I did not expect to see.
The combat is fun, for the most part. The main character has three swords to select from, all of which have their own unique property.
There is the default blade (which will work for most situations), the twin blades which allow the character to attack faster and the big block-like blade that will smash enemy shields.
Then there are three styles of ninjustu: wind, fire and thunder. If you played any other type of action-adventure games, the style of ‘Ninja Blade’ will be familiar, but the combat works quite well, where many in the genre had been broken.
The biggest surprise that comes along with ‘Ninja Blade’ that makes it different from rest of the genre is the amount of quick-time events.
You can expect to be in a sequence of quick-time events for about half of the time. Where many games have failed to implement these quick-time events, ‘Ninja Blade’ has succeeded.
‘Ninja Blade’ consists of a 50:50 ratio of generic random enemies and terrifically made bosses. The boss looks almost as great as the design that would be in ‘Resident Evil.’
From Software certainly took the time to make great looking bosses, which are quite fun to fight, with amazing over-the-top finishing moves to end it all. The enjoyment is limited when not fighting the bosses, and it is simply not as fun when you’re fighting an epic demon.
‘Ninja Blade’ is following a trend that was established back in the late 90s; that is a horrid save-point system that the game follows. There’s a problem when giving out a ton of checkpoints during a mission.
None of them will keep your data until you finish the mission. Each mission, with the exception of one, will take around 45 minutes to complete.
The story in ‘Ninja Blade’ is serviceable.
You play as Ken Ogawa, who is part of a team to rid Tokyo of a parasite infection that’s taking over the city.
Technically speaking, ‘Ninja Blade’ is a mess. The art style chosen for it is simply ugly and generic. The game looks decent, nothing awe-inspiring, and barely pressing into the ‘good’ area.
Frame rate is another issue the game has.
Another problem with the game design is how generic the design level can be. None of the them were terribly interesting, and one of the missions will repeat a level. The game actually had the audacity to pretend this repitition is a good thing by awarding an achievement. No, that is a horribly bad idea.
For no reason at all, some characters go from speaking English to Japanese. What’s even worse about the situation is that the Japanese and English voice actors sound so different. It is simply moronic.
The musical score is good for the setting of the game, while it won’t remain in your head after you finish playing; it is nice to say you will enjoy the music while playing through the game.
Pending on the skill level of the player, it will take around seven to ten hours to finish the campaign of the game. It is a decent length for an action-adventure game. There is hardly a reason to go back and play through it a second time, though.
The game offers some costumes to find (which are hideous to look at). Furthermore, there are several collectibles to pick up to increase health and chakra along the way.
Basically, after finishing the game, it will be either collecting dust or heading back to its nearest retailer in exchange for cash.
‘Ninja Blade’ does do enough not to be called a pure rip-off of ‘Ninja Gaiden’ or ‘God of War.’ While it is obvious that the developers took some components from them, they work for the game.
‘Ninja Blade’ is a fun enjoyable game when fighting bosses, while it is tedious when fighting the waves of generic enemies.
Given more time in development, this could have been the next ‘God of War’ Microsoft has been trying to get exclusively on Xbox, but it did not reach its potential. Hopefully the next child ‘Ninja Gaiden’ and ‘God of War’ have will be a talented child as opposed to an average one.
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