Tecmo Koei
Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z was developed by Tecmo Koei who has also developed the Dynasty Warriors franchise, which is by far one of my favourite gaming franchises as well as the previous Ninja Gaiden games which feature Ryu Hayabusa as the main character. Tecmo Koei’s game producing history dates back as far as 1981 with Pleiads.
Single player
The story of Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z revolves around the main character Yaiba Kamikaze who was the head of a ninja clan where his disciples were tested against him, after facing many weak disciples Yaiba grew impatient and massacred the clan, fast forward to the introduction of the game to where Yaiba meets Ryu Hayabusa (The franchises’ main character), Yaiba then accuses Ryu of being weak and a battle ensues. On the contrary to Yaibas’ declaration Ryu strikes Yaiba down without a word cutting out both his left eye and his left arm, and promptly leaving him. Yaiba is recovered by some Mafia-types and is implanted with a new cybernetic eye and arm by the lovely miss Monday, but a man’s pride cannot be fixed with cybernetic implants, but his bling would be significantly improved.
After receiving these cybernetic upgrade (and mission details) Yaiba sets off on his magical adventure to revenge through the wondrous burning city which we’ve all seen in other games.
The game starts off with sending lone enemies at you with a brief cut scene that explains a little about them, and displays their Latin names. It has to be mentioned that the cut scenes that feature the hobbling undead are not horrifying and do a good job of lightening the mood to make the gaem seem less serious, which I believe is a good thing because Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z just doesn’t feel like a game that was made to be a serious game, even when it comes down to the character there may be characters whose sole purpose is revenge but Yaiba doesn’t feel like the serious revenge type of character and there are no real serious undertones to the game. All the enemies that are present in the game have humorous merits, and for enemies that don’t take themselves seriously they don’t half pack a hell of a punch.
I’ve heard that Ninja Gaiden games are difficult but I have never played one until Yaiba, and I must say that it is a difficult game unless you can counter all those zombies. I do not pride myself on my reaction time and Ninja Gaiden has confirmed that I never should. Another thing I did to counter how difficult I found the game was to “exploit” (meaning that this option was probably there to help gamers such as myself) the bloodlust mechanic. Bloodlust relies on how many times you hit the enemies standing in your way, when you fill the meter (which takes a hell of a long time) you can unleash Yaibas’ anger, in the form of becoming immune to damage and stuns and doing more damage, as well as Yaibas’ big mouth. This ability allowed me to absolutely decimate the first boss without a care in the world, and admittedly I did find it pretty cool because it gives you that flase sense of being good at the game.
Combat
The combat in Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z focuses around using combos to get more points in the level. The combos in the game rely on stringing the 3 attack types together in rapid succession, these attack types consist of your sword (Medium damage- close range), your cybernetic fist (High damage- extreme close range) and the flail (Low damage – long range). When fighting the usual crowd of Stiffs (Zombies) I found myself relying solely on the flail to keep all the zombies at bay and then dodging all the way to the sides of the arena, which got repetitive and made me felt like I was cheating the game, but any attempt I made to use my sword or fist in a crown resulted in me receiving multiple bite marks and an annoying greyscale screen.
Graphics
Due to the limitations of my machine I was not able to see Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z in its full glory, but what I saw I liked, I’ve always like cell shaded games but I’ve never seen one to be made as gruesome as this, although there are no entrails getting splattered everywhere when you do a zombie finisher, you do get to see Yaiba dis-arm other enemy types and then use these arms as nun-chucks (no lie). The art style fits the game and its setting perfectly, but the thing that lets me down is the camera angles of the game. I didn’t expect Ninja Gaiden to restrict the players vision so much and when you enter combat in a big enough arena not only does the camera flip between 3 different angles, but the one you are using most of the time in the fight will be zoomed out too much so I can’t see Yaiba not to mention the counter attack symbol that appears as a faint line across the enemy’s’ head’s.
Music
When I first started the game my hopes were heightened by the main menu music, that music is my jam. Never have I played a game where I got hyped to play the game because of the main menu’s music, it’s even got to the stage where I leave the game open just so I can listen to it.
Unfortunately however I haven’t heard a piece of music within the game that can top the main menu, though this could be due to the laceration of flesh and Yaiba’s compulsive vulgarity. Don’t get the fact that Yaiba being vulgar is a bad thing though, it nice to see a more angry and vulgar main character lately, the last one I saw was Asura and he’s a god whose meant to be angry all the time.
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
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