YMMV / Ninja Gaiden II (2008)

• Complete Monster:
  • Elizébet, the Queen of Blood and leader of the Four Fiends, is one who made a pact to assist Murai in his ambitions. Upon Murai's death, Elizébet corrupts the honorable Genshin and uses his Black Spider Clan to massacre the Hayabusa village, sacrificing many innocent victims for the sake of Vazdah. Turning Genshin into an agonized Fiend and mocking his honor, Elizébet intends to unleash Vazdah to rule the world via the deaths of most of humankind.
  • Infernal High Priest Dagra Dai, Elizébet's superior, is the head of the Order of the Necromantale, a sect which worships the Archfiend Vazdah. Once a human philosopher, once he stared into the evil eye of Vazdah, he later gained control over the Four Greater Fiends, thus making him responsible for all the evil faced by Ryu in the game. Dagra Dai is behind the ritual to resurrect Vazdah and all the deaths that result. Once defeated by Ryu, Dagra Dai willingly allows Vazdah to Devour the Dragon so that he may awaken at last, thus leaving Ryu as the only obstacle preventing untold death and destruction.
• Contested Sequel: Most players can agree that the game has some very notable flaws due to its turbulent development cycle, such as areas that feel rough and unfinished, cheap enemy design (such as the rocket launcher enemies who will pelt you with missiles from off-screen) and poor bosses. What's debated is how the game stacks up to the first (specifically the Black version) in spite of these flaws. Many players who liked the more action-adventure feel of NGI cite the far more streamlined area design, lesser focus on exploration and puzzle-solving in favor of linear combat sections as a detriment, while others feel this plays more to the strengths of the game and enjoy its more chaotic, fast-paced gameplay over the slower, heavier and more defensive gameplay of NGI.
  • Sigma II - some consider it inferior to Ninja Gaiden II because of the lack of gore, easier difficulty and the removal of certain puzzles, bosses, and weapons, but others consider it superior thanks to more balanced stage designs, less cheap AI, frame-rate fixes and the removal/revision of the most tedious passages of the original, as well as additional content of playable characters and game modes. The drastically reduced number of enemies and the introduction of a semi-automatic aim for the bow can be seen as a good or bad thing depending on who is asked.
• Crosses the Line Twice: Ninja Gaiden II is so ridiculously gory it practically skips the offensive and goes straight to hilarious. May or may not double as Narm Charm.
• Demonic Spiders:
  • The "ghost piranhas" infesting the labyrinth in Zarkhan for the modern Ninja Gaiden due to pack-like tendencies, respawning capabilities and sheer, unimaginable attack speed and tenacity. Hilariously, they were originally decorative in the environment until director Tomonobu Itagaki found out about them and told the development team to make them enemies. By contrast, their difficulty is slightly toned down in the Sequel, with the exception of that one chapter where players must deal with them alongside the Water Dragon boss. However, this becomes noticeably easier in Sigma II.
  • Ninja Gaiden II has a literal kind with Black Spider Ninja "Rasetsu": while he certainly doesn't count in his first appearance as a boss for the first level of the game, his derivatives turn into common enemies later on, which do apply.
  • Liked the Goddamned Bats in the first modern release? In Ninja Gaiden II, meet giant bats! Thrice as big, deal thrice as much damage, are thrice as tough and are still unblockable. More often than not, players will take damage while trying to kill them.
  • The infamous Incendiary Kunai Black Spider Ninjas from Ninja Gaiden II are usually this when fighting them in large groups; take a guess why by looking at their name. Strangely, Sigma II kept them as this despite fewer on-screen enemies at a time, but for a different reason: though they use their explosives less often, they turn more resilient to attacks (an "Izuna Drop" won't be enough to kill them at higher difficulties) and are much more competent at close combat instead. This turns especially jarring at higher difficulties where their claw attacks take off chunks of Hit Points compared to the average Black Spider Ninja Mook.
• Goddamned Bats:
  • The "jellyfish" in the Amazon level for Ninja Gaiden II: sure, they don't move and are easy to eliminate with ranged weapons, but they get in the way and never stop spawning. Of course, the alternative is simply to swim through them, but that's at the player's own risk.
  • Appearing first in the same level are the large killer fish: similar to the jellyfish, players wil need to use the speargun, but unlike the former, these creatures are more durable and aggressive. In the Amazon level, there is a small section where players can hang back where they can't reach out Ryu so potshots can be taken against them instead; unfortunately, when they reappear in the final level of the game, players are likely out of luck since there's no avoiding them.
• Goddamned Boss: Two examples from Ninja Gaiden II
  • The infamous giant worm boss at the end of the Amazon level: by no means is it difficult - it's simply horribly ill-designed, as 90% of the fight ensures players are unable to see it, even when they're hitting it, due to the boss tunneling itself and popping out from any direction without a sign for players to know where. Sigma II didn't even try to make it better when Team Ninja mercifully removed it from the level, along with the entire "green tunnel" section leading up to the boss and after defeating it. Those who haven't played Ninja Gaiden II and only Sigma II wouldn't even notice its absence.
  • The two "armadillo" bosses in the first underworld level: the words "Camera Screw" will mean something until players have gone through this fight, which stands in contrast to the first armadillo boss at the end of the aircraft level. Like the above, Sigma II removed it, replacing it with a fight against Marbus instead.
• Moment of Awesome: Pulling off Ryu's Izuna Drop is already awesome by itself, but in one stage there is a spot where if you can pull it off results in a massive drop straight off a cliff right into the street below. The satisfaction of pulling it off is probably only beaten by watching as Ryu drops several stories with whatever soon to be dead sob in tow.
• Narm: ​When you beat Elizabét the first time in II, she falls into her blood pool and is sucked down into the Underworld. Unfortunately, it looks more like she fell victim to a cartoonish drain being unplugged.
• Porting Disaster: For some unexplainable reason, the Vita version of Sigma II was ported to the Master Collection, and as a result there are random frame rate drops (mostly in the Hayabusa Village area of the game) and pixelation errors.
• That One Achievement: It's literally impossible to obtain the platinum trophy for the Sony PlayStation Vita version of Sigma II Plus, as "Tag Mode" forces players to partner with the AI since Cooperative Multiplayer was removed. At least three missions demand two human players work in concert, which cannot happen if one of them is an AI-controlled character.
• That One Attack: Two examples from Ninja Gaiden II
  • Zedonius' flame wall is unblockable and cannot be avoided at close range; even some moves with invulnerability frames cannot provide protection. The only thing players can do against it is casting ninpo spells, but if ninpo stocks are out, pray he doesn't use it. The only reasonable way to truly evade it otherwise is to stay the hell away from Zedonius as much as possible.
  • Elizabét's "blood orbs" are similarly hard to dodge, unblockable, deals the largest damage from her arsenal of attacks, can place players into a Stunlock such that they'll be hit by the next orb AND heals Elizabét the more the attack deals damage.
• That One Boss: Ninja Gaiden II has pretty brutal bosses, but Zedonius takes the cake, especially the rematch against him in the underworld. While the other three Greater Fiend bosses should have the same difficulty, and are fought in similar arenas to the original duels, Zedonius takes players on a series of rather small rock out-croppings floating in a big lake of magma. As the "Ruler of Flame", he's fireproof; Ryu's not, and since the previous boss fight with him forced Zedonius to use primarily-ranged attacks in a relatively-confined space of a clock tower, unwary players will quickly learn this is no longer the case when he starts teleporting miles away to open up with his flames, particularly That One Attack.
• That One Level:
  • The Elevator Action Sequence in Sigma II for Rachel's chapter, mainly because of Camera Screw issues and also because of Rachel's hammer not being very adaptable to fight in narrow spaces. Savvy players will stand in the corner to charge up the Ultimate Technique over and over again between waves to cheese their way past the lower difficulties, but it gets complicated at higher difficulties where the upgraded flare-based Fiends are Demonic Spiders and deal a lot of damage - often One Hit Kills in Master Ninja. Furthermore, a fully-charged Ultimate Technique is no longer a guaranteed One-Hit Kill on Master Ninja difficulty.
  • Ayane's chapter in Sigma II is the hardest one to beat, particularly at higher difficulties, since she's the "fast, but weak" character of the playable girls and the chapter sends a grab-bag of every enemy type in the game, even those which seem better-designed for heavier, more-powerful weapons. Prepare to see the "Game Over" screen a lot with her.