Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 Demo Impressions: Go Ninja Go

With its September 29th release rapidly approaching, Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 for the PS3 has been kind enough to bless the PSN with a downloadable demo – well, if you live in Japan.  If you’re in the West, you’ll have to wait another week for it to go up.

For those lacking a Japanese PSN account, I’ve played quite a bit of the rather hefty Sigma 2 demo, and with it comes a whole new set of playable impressions.  For those of you who’ve been a bit out of the loop regarding Sigma 2, it’s essentially a full remake of the previously XBOX 360-exclusive Ninja Gaiden 2 with a hefty amount of new content.  The demo of the game, weighing in at just under 700MB, features a number of stages to play through, including the first chapter of returning ninja hero Ryu Hayabusa’s story, a sneak peek at new heroine and Dead or Alive veteran Ayane’s stages, and three playable levels from the game’s cooperative mission mode.

We’ll start off with Ryu’s stage; when you first boot up the demo, it’s all that’s available, with two selectable difficulty levels – Path of the Acolyte (easy) and Path of the Warrior (Normal).  After a short introductory cutscene, you’re launched immediately into combat with a number of Black Spider Ninja – recurring enemies from the Gaiden series known in the original Ninja Gaiden for their penchant to throw exploding shuriken at our intrepid ninja hero – thankfully absent in the early stages of NG2 and NGS2.  Ryu’s demo is quite generous, featuring the entire first level of the game to play through, four fully maxed out weapons to experiment with, and no shortage of enemy ninja to test them out on.  Three of the four weapons in the demo were usable in the original NG2; the series staple Dragon Sword, the chain sickle Kusarigama, and the Wolverine-esque Falcon’s Claws.  The fourth weapon, Enma’s Fang, is new to Sigma 2 and takes the form of a massive, ornate broadsword that Ryu wields with two hands, delivering surprisingly quick, sweeping blows with a wide range and a surprising amount of power; it’s quite similar to the Dabilahro sword from the original Ninja Gaiden and its remakes.

Having played through the introductory stages of Ninja Gaiden 2 on 360 a number of times, I noticed several differences between the two versions.  While the combat system itself remains generally untouched from NG2 (yes, the violent Obliteration Techniques are back), the scope and focus is different.  Ninja Gaiden 2 featured battles against large amounts of enemies at once; there are some scenes in the game where players can find themselves up against upwards of 15 enemies at the same time.  Sigma 2, on the other hand, features less enemies on screen at once (resembling the original Gaiden and Sigma), but compensates by making enemies more difficult to kill.  Encounters in the demo stage usually cap out at about five enemies at once, but in a manner more resembling the original Gaiden than NG2, each individual enemy is a far greater threat than their 360 compatriots, who were weaker and easier to kill but tended to swarm the player.  The amount of projectiles thrown by enemies has also been tweaked to a more reasonable degree, allowing combat to flow better.

Another major change to the demo is the final confrontation; in the XBOX 360 version of the game, the midpoint of the first stage was capped off by a battle with a swarm of ninjas that leads to the player unlocking their first new weapon, the Lunar staff.  In Sigma 2, the ninja fight still occurs, but once you clear out all of your opponents, a massive statue of Buddha himself attacks you.  Despite possessing a wide number of attacks, Buddha is relatively easy to defeat, provided you learn how to dodge his grabs and holy magic.  The demo stage ends with Ryu performing a surprisingly God of War-esque finishing move on the statue, leaving the rest of the stage for the full game.  No matter which difficulty you clear it on, beating Ryu’s demo stage unlocks two things; Path of the Mentor (hard mode) and Ayane’s stage.

Ayane’s stage, by comparison, is a much shorter snippet; clocking in at roughly 20 minutes, it seems to serve only as a means of familiarizing players with Ayane’s considerably different combat style.  While Ryu is equipped with, and can switch between, a large number of weapons and Ninpo magic spells, Ayane is  considerably more limited, preferring to rely on her dual short swords and single Ninpo spell to do the talking.  Compared to Ryu, Ayane’s range is considerably limited; her twin swords don’t lend themselves well to fighting enemies that have a longer reach than she does.  However, where Ayane shines is in the air; many of her combos send her spiraling upwards and delivering a flurry of slashes to helpless airborne enemies.  Her Obliteration Techniques also show off her acrobatics, including one where she leaps onto an enemy’s shoulders and swiftly decapitates them with a slash to the throat.  For ranged attacks, Ayane can throw out kunai daggers that stick into her opponents and explode a few moments later.

Ayane’s demo, set in Venice, features combat with rival ninjas, though near the end of it all some demonic Fiends begin to make appearances, including a horde of angry werewolves.  However, unlike Ryu’s demo, which featured the aforementioned Buddha fight as a closer, Ayane’s demo simply peters out after a seemingly normal conflict with a squad of ninja; there’s no boss, there’s no cutscene, it simply ends.  However, when you return to the title screen after clearing Ayane’s stage, you unlock the demo’s Mission Mode.

Of all the additions to Sigma 2 (and there are a lot), the co-op Mission Mode is perhaps the most anticipated.  While it’s not quite the same thing as a full co-op campaign, the mission mode features a large selection of missions in different difficulties that players can tackle using any combination of the game’s four playable characters.  While the final game features full online support, the co-op missions in the demo can be played only with the computer.  Once you’ve picked the mission you  want to play, you’re given the ability to pick your character and (in Ryu’s case) load them out with one weapon, one Ninpo, and one ranged weapon to use, as well as selecting from any of their unlocked alternate costumes.  You then select your partner and their loadout, before jumping into the mission.

Two of the missions in the demo are essentially enemy gauntlets; large, drawn-out combat sprees where the computer throws enemy after enemy at you, with only a few moments to breathe between waves.  The third one is slightly different, starting off with a considerably difficult group of ninjas before launching into a full-on boss fight with one of the game’s major antagonists.  One thing to keep in mind is that, due to the fact that the co-op mode is designed to be played online, there is no way to pause the action.  In general, the gameplay in the co-op mode isn’t too different from the stuff found in the campaign; the main difference is that there are a lot more enemies on screen at once, but you have a partner around to help you.  The two characters have their own life bars, but both of them must survive in order to pass the stage; if one of the players is taken out, their partner can resurrect them by jamming on the O button near their fallen body.  This brings them back to life and replenishes a chunk of their life bar, but beware; each time a player is resurrected, the amount of life restored by a revival diminishes.  If at any point both players are knocked out at the same time, the mission is over.  While the demo doesn’t allow for online co-op, it certainly presents a good view of what multiplayer in the final game will be like; tense, action-packed Ninja Gaiden combat with a friend.

On the visuals side, the Sigma 2 demo is considerably improved over the 360 version in some ways, but other factors might be a little less appealing.  The game runs in an overall higher resolution than its XBOX 360 counterpart, outputting natively at 720p; this results in a cleaner, more detailed look.  However, the frame rate can, albeit quite rarely, stutter for short periods of time.  It’s not to the same degree as the later stages in Ninja Gaiden 2, but it is there.  This demo is known to be an older build of the game, though, so this might not be an issue in the final version.  The most controversial visual effect, however, is the alteration of the game’s over-the-top violence.  The original Ninja Gaiden 2 featured wildly over-the-top blood effects; whenever an enemy was hit, blood would spray out, and dismemberments and decapitations were greeted with an almost comical amount of blood.  It was one of the game’s original selling points, and is notably absent in Sigma 2.  The wildly violent Obliteration Techniques from NG2 return in Sigma 2, allowing Ryu, Ayane, and their friends to dispatch their opponents in staggeringly violent ways, but instead of the over-the-top blood effects, a purple mist is released when an enemy is dismembered or decapitated.  Take note, there is still blood in the game, but it is rendered to a similar level of that in the original Ninja Gaiden and its Black and Sigma rereleases rather than Ninja Gaiden 2.

All in all, the Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 demo is quite packed with content, featuring a number of playable stages and difficulty levels, along with a glimpse at the game’s co-op mode.  While it’s presently available only on the Japanese PlayStation Store, the demo is fully in English already, so if you have a Japanese account I would absolutely recommend giving it a download; if you don’t have one, however, the demo will be available this coming Thursday on the US Store.  The final game launches on the 29th of September, and looks to be a great way for PS3 owners to get their ninja on; provided, of course, they don’t have a blood fetish, that is.