YMMV / Ninja Gaiden II: The Dark Sword of Chaos

• Accidental Innuendo: During the cut-scene of Irene Lew getting struck down by Ashtar, she slumps onto Ryu, but the way the animation does it makes it look like she's descending onto his crotch. Even the The Angry Video Game Nerd in his review of Ninja Gaiden Discussed how unusual it looked.
• Cliché Storm: Let's see: an Evil Sorceror with an equally Evil Laugh, who is the Big Bad, is trying to Take Over the World, and kidnaps the girlfriend of the hero as a betting chip for the hero to come and face him in an alternate horror dimension in order to destroy the MacGuffin, the only thing that can destroy the Evil Scheme of the main villain? Cheesier than a deepdish pizza, and just as delicious.
• Complete Monster: (The) Jaquio returns. See this page for details.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Robert T. Sturgeon is a Mysterious Informant/Protector with an agenda of his own, wears Cool Shades and able to take down demonic horrors with a single gunshot, who turns out to be a top United States Army operative and an extremely loyal ally to Ryu that he makes a Last Stand to guard his back in the very bowels of Hell. This is especially notable considering how well Ryu gets along with covert government agencies in other installments.
• Memetic Badass: Robert, unsurprisingly.
• Nintendo Hard: The trilogy as a whole is regarded as one of the most punishing and unforgiving series of games for the NES, right up there with Castlevania. Of course, this makes that awesome ending all the more satisfying.
• That One Level: Although there are several, one that really takes the cake is Stage 3-1, where the periodic lightning reveals the stage before you while all enemies and items are otherwise visible. You basically need to exploit the lightning still going while the game is paused to be able to reasonably platform it, because the game swarms you with fireballs that will likely send you into a pit or mob you to death, and some of these jumps are tight. And just for an extra kick in the nads, the last part of the stage is a large number of one-tile wide platforms with almost pixel-perfect precision needed. You fall, back to the beginning of the stage.