YMMV / Shinobi (2002)

• Awesome Music:
  • The PS2 Shinobi has "Call," one of the best final boss themes ever compossed. Same for the Oboro clan boss theme, "Waiting Place".
  • Any of the stage music in the PS2 Shinobi could qualify for this, especially "Transfiguration" and "Cool Shrine".
• Complete Monster: Hiruko is an Evil Sorcerer awakened from a long slumber in Tokyo and sets about trying to Take Over the World. He wipes out the Oboro ninja clan, and revives them into twisted, undead parodies of themselves to force their surviving leader Hotsuma to fight them while also unleashing hellspawn onto Tokyo to turn it into an inferno. He betrays his ostensible master to allow Hotsuma to defeat all in his way so Hiruko can absorb their power and restore his youth while gaining ultimate power. It is revealed that the one who broke Hiruko's seal was the Oboro ninja Ageha, in return for Hiruko reviving Moritsune, her dead lover and Hotsuma's elder brother. Hiruko keeps his end, but makes Moritsune a host for the demon lord Aomizuchi and has him kill Ageha while gloating her reward is to die at the hands of the man she loves. He reveals his true plan was to force Hotsuma to kill everyone in his way, his cursed sword Akujiki devouring their souls. Hiruko plans to force the combined souls to himself, giving him a "pure, perfect soul" so he may become the most powerful being alive.
• Goddamned Bats: Many of the "minienemies" that appears in the PS2 game have shades of this. Also, in earlier games, the ninja who were airborne had a rather nasty ability to wreck your jumps with very well placed shuriken.
• Iron Woobie: Hotsuma has it pretty rough. At the beginning of the story, he forced to take the role of the Oboro clan leader and Akujiki's new wielder after killing his brother, Moritsune. As the story progresses, his clan members have been killed and brought back to life as Hellspawn for him to kill and feed Akujiki. By the end of the game, his only option to seal away Akujiki is by killing Hiruko with it before allowing himself to die as the Golden Palace collapses.
• It's Hard, So It Sucks!: As cool as the game mechanics are, and as fast-paced and awesome as the combat can be in the hands of skilled players, Shinobi was critically panned for being too Nintendo Hard even at release. Nowadays it's specifically sought by people looking for a real old-school action game challenge, but most potential players would rather never suffer the sheer frustration it can cause.
• Special Effect Failure: Hotsuma has his Scarf of Asskicking even in cutscenes, but while it's fine for it to clip through things in gameplay because of the simplified visuals, it's very blatantly not made for the fancier and more dynamic motion-captured animations in the cutscenes. The result is a lot of the scarf constantly clipping into Hotsuma's back if he so much as even bends over a bit.
• That One Boss: Chances are it's Hiruko in a rare case of the final battle entering this status. Using "TATE" attack is essential to killing him because your normal attacks barely scratch him. You have a very short window to attack him because you can't hurt him when he attacks and he teleports around the arena and any missed "TATE" combos when hitting him are lost with no chances for anything other than normal hits. On top of this the only enemies you can get a "TATE" on are these talismans he summons that don't have features to differentiated the front or back from making it hard to tell which side you should even attack to set up the "TATE", and they fire projectiles at you which can interrupt it, and when he summons large numbers of them you can get pummeled with projectiles on top of Hiruko teleporting in close to attack you with his fans. Most of his attacks aren't very hard to dodge if you are focused on him, but if you are trying to build up a combo you can easily get hit from attack coming from off-screen.
• Too Cool to Live: Hotsuma, as he perished when the Golden Palace collapsed.
• Vindicated by History: In the age of its release, Shinobi was too damn hard for most audiences looking for a more straightforward successor to the previous games. Nowadays, it's seen as a particularly unique, if still a bit overly cruel and precise, neat little action game that is a hell of a feather in a hardcore gamer's cap.