Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z Review - Soulless
Tecmo‘s Ninja Gaiden series is long-running and well loved, thanks mainly to a high difficulty level and emphasis on speed and combos. Ryu Hayabusa however takes a backseat and the protagonist this time is the anti-hero Yaiba, a ninja fuelled more by anger and revenge than anything else.
Yaiba meets with Ryu in the game’s opening cinematic, and it ends badly, leaving Yaiba to want little more than to slap Ryu about and take him down a peg; in the meantime, though, the world becomes overrun by zombies. If that seems like a sudden and odd juxtaposition, then you’re not alone there… There isn’t much of explanation as to why zombies are everywhere, except that they are. That’s not a problem in itself, but raises questions for those actually attempting to follow the storyline.
Gameplay is fast and responsive, for the most part feeling satisfying and weighty enough. Basic swords attacks flurry out with on button, with “punches” and your Chain Flail also available. Buttons strung together create combos and extra attacks can be unlocked as you play, but unfortunately, it’s not quite enough to keep combat interesting.
Dodge, attack, dodge, attack, dodge, attack. Never before has the basic action game formula felt so… Mundane. Zombies spawn constantly, but when each combat section can be several minutes worth of grunt zombies, all of which can be tackled with mashing the face buttons, it quickly loses any interesting traits it had. Bosses and mini-bosses also pop up occasionally, offering a more difficult challenge, but the dodge, attack, dodge, attack method doesn’t really change. The only change introduced in combat is elemental damage, where the elemental attributes of weapons and enemies effectively change how you play the game, but even this still isn’t enough to make the lacklustre combat feel anything more than that.
Gameplay is broken up by simplistic environmental puzzles, such as “throw this zombie at that wall”, “break the once particular wall by mashing the button” or “press a button to scale a wall”. The latter being particularly disappointing. You can just hold forward and press one of two buttons to perform fantastic jumps and leaps across the stage to the next area, which will no doubt be filled with more combat.
The camera in this game is awful, just awful. The cel-shaded colours look pretty at first, but once zombie blood is flying around the screen, it looks less appetising and more messy. More than once I lost track of where Yaiba actually was on screen due to the clash of awful colours. It ultimately became garish and difficult to watch.
The audio in this game is perfectly acceptable, but not worthy of praise. The soundtrack is fine, as far as, it doesn’t get annoying, but it isn’t memorable either. Voice acting from Yaiba and Miss Monday is, again, perfectly acceptable but not noteworthy in any way.
The game is a shame. I really wanted to enjoy Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z, but the combat, graphics and mundanity of it all made it difficult to play, let alone enjoy. Elemental attributes do not work well in a fast-paced action game, and whether or not the game’s legacy is “difficulty” is besides the point, as this game isn’t just difficult, it’s utterly boring.