80%Emulated

a lot better than sigma but the later levels dragged it down so much. was there to give it a ten until like chapter 10, but some bosses literally feel like when you beat them you won becuase of rng (the worm, and the woman in church)

80%Xbox Series X/S

Dear god after picking this game back up after not finishing the second half since like 2022 (it is 2025 as I write this), it felt like defeating a sealed dragon that's been waiting all this time for me to come and challenge it.

It's a love hate relationship and it's why so many people who have beat it, especially on anything other than normal, have quite the ego.

I love it, I also hate it, thanks Itagaki

it is one of the best action games ever made, the slow paced, methodical combat always hits perfectly. You have to meet it on its own terms.

Otherwise the enemies, but especially the levels and few save points scattered around the game will completely decimate you. if you're up for the challenge, it is a one of a kind game for better and or worse depending on your personal alignment chart.

I hate the ghost fish.

85%Xbox Series X/S

Ninja Gaiden Black is just as hard as I remembered from when I first bought Sigma for PS3 and quit after maybe 15 minutes, drove back to Gamestop, and promptly got a refund because it was just unbelievably hard. Some 2 decades plus later, Ninja Gaiden 4 was announced and simply looked too cool to ignore and got me itching to go back and earn my shinobi badge that I was too cowardly to attain as a 20 something year old gamer. After decades of playing Fromsoft games I thought I was well prepared but this game did not get any more forgiving even with my all my hundreds of hours worth of Souls experience. It was still. Hard. As. Balls. There is no denying how ridiculously cool it is to pull off an Inazuma Drop, the action is just amazing...when the enemies are not pulling the most BS I've ever seen in a game. Enemies will block your every attack, interrupt you whenever they feel like it, and generally just gangbang you relentlessly taking you from full HP to dead immediately. There are no checkpoints. Some bosses will dodge every attack. There can be multiple tough bosses in a level. You simply have no other recourse but to git gud.

In the end as much as I enjoyed my time with it there was an equal and opposite feeling of pure hatred and seething rage due to the sheer unending amount of BS that you have to trudge through. The last levels in particular soured me a lot on the experience when they seemingly forced you to swap to the flail weapon as it was the only decently effective counter to the new ghost piranha enemies that swarm you and grab you. Somehow worse than the cheap, grabby bugs that caused so much rage earlier. In fact, enemies grabbing you as a mechanic was the apex of the rage inducing moments. It pretty much penalized ever trying to block unless you were specifically fighting the trash gremlins that couldn't grab you and as such were seemingly the only enemy past the opening hours of the game that you could realistically use the counter attack skill against. Mixed feelings is the best way to sum up my feelings on the game. Ryu Hayabusa is an awesome and memorable protagonist. The action gameplay, slick cutscenes, and enemy design are all so good. The unfair enemy AI, unfair boss AI for certain fights(Alma, Black Samurai), and cheap grab mechanics are all extremely bad. It's an absolutely monumental game and you can see the inspiration that Fromsoft and others must have taken from it, but From learned some very important lessons in how to balance fairness and absurdly tough design with minimal BS to create truly rewarding challenges. What the hell, I'm still glad I played it. Bring on Ninja Gaiden 4.

80%Xbox

PORTUGUÊS

É um ótimo hack'n Slash com enfase em combates, gostei tanto da gameplay, que finalizei e jogo e já inicei outra campanha.
É um jogo muito divertido e que te dá prazer em jogar com tendo uma dificuldade elevada.
Os gráficos para sua época eram de ponta, a gameplay extramente agil e responsiva, a história é bacana, mas que poderia ter mais profundidade que agregaria muito, infelizmente eles fizeram isso só na versão Sigma de PS3.
Os únicos pontos que poderiam se melhores (e acredito que foram corrigidos nas versões futuras) são a questão da história não muito bem explicada, e a camera que é bem ruim e sempre se posiciona nos piores lugares fazendo você perder a noção de distância e localização dos inimigos, e vocês contras os oponentes, dentre eles, a camera do jogo
Fora isso, um ótimo e divertido jogo para afiar suas habilidades para jogos como ele.

ENGLISH

It's a great Hack'n Slash with an emphasis on combat, I liked the gameplay so much that I beat it and played right away another run.
It's a very fun game that gives you pleasure playing even with high difficulty.
The graphics for its time were cutting edge, the gameplay extremely agile and responsive, the story is cool, but it could have had more depth that would add a lot, unfortunately, they only did this in the SIGMA version on PS3.
The only points that could be better (and I believe they were corrected in future versions) are the issue of the story not being very well explained, and the camera, which is very bad and always positions itself in the worst places, making you lose track of distance and location. of the enemies, and you against the opponents, among the enemies, there is the camera LOL
Other than that's a great and fun game to sharpen your skills for games like it.

100%Xbox 360

Still one of my top 10 games. infinitely replayable, with tons of variety in how many ways to play with the weapon variety. A little unfair, but unlike NG2, only a few enemies are on screen at a time, making the game manageable.

100%Xbox

best in the series because it is black

70%Xbox

On one hand, the combat is satisfying and getting past that one section or boss after being stonewalled is extremely gratifying. On the other hand, I find the camera to be absolutely vile at times (usually during bosses). It likes to get stuck behind pillars and rubble. The camera also has a hard time keeping up with the action at times. I also think most of the bosses are completely uninteresting. In character action games (I despise this term) the bosses are usually a big highlight, but here you get an electric worm, then two electric worms, then a fire worm, two tanks, a helicopter and a tentacle monster you fight multiple times. This game also commits one of my personal pet peeves and that is boss fights with added trash mobs. Off the top of my head two bosses on normal are like this, but on harder difficulties way more do this, like most of the bosses. I didn't find the lack of a lock-on to be a problem, but this seems to vary from person to person. I did enjoy a few of the bosses like Murai, the first Doku fight and the final boss!

I find these two points to be detrimental to my overall enjoyment, so I sadly can't say this is an all-time favorite for me, but it's still a solid action title that isn't afraid to kick your ass. So give it a shot! Maybe you won't have issues with these things and remember to keep trying! If I can do it, then so can you

100%Xbox One

10

100%Xbox

Incredible combat, great challenge, and beautiful graphics make this xbox exclusive hard to pass up. Tons better than anything Devil May Cry has to offer.
96/100

60%Xbox One

Combat is incredible but everything surrounding it ranges from underwhelming to straight up annoying. Stopped a little over half way through because i just don't have the patience for it.

90%Xbox 360

9/10

100%Xbox One

9.6 Amazing game for its time. Graphics still hold up, combat is awesome and rewarding, cool monsters and world design, and a bunch of replay value. Platforming and swimming kinda sucked, but only slightly. Also Awakened Alma boss felt unfair.

90%Xbox

I played this on normal. The first few chapters aren't that hard and the last two or three aren't horrible because you should be pretty well powered up and have a good amount of items by that point, but everything in the middle of the game is quite rage-inducing. I almost threw my controller at a couple points but was able to restrain myself. For me, the chief issue I have with this game's difficulty is something that plagues a lot of hack and slash games from the PS2/Xbox era: ****ing save shrines. It wouldn't be anywhere near as bad if the game had some kind of checkpoint system, but it doesn't. That means you can start at a shrine, fight a ton of difficult enemies, travel all the way to the level's impossible boss, trigger a cutscene, somehow miraculously defeat the boss, trigger another cut scene, get the level complete screen and your ninja ranking, start the next chapter, fight a ton of hard enemies, and die before you get to a shrine which sends you ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE SHRINE IN THE LAST CHAPTER BEFORE THE BOSS. It is heartbreaking. It's such a pain to get killed by a boss and then have to travel all the way back to the boss to get a second shot. Aside from the save system and a few unfair parts, it is a really awesome game and I enjoyed it a lot. Most of the game is hard but somewhat fair and it is possible to master it (if you are better at games than I am, which you probably are). I loved the original series as a kid(except the third one because they took away unlimited continues) and all these years later, it still feels badass to be a ninja. I might try hard mode someday, but I seriously doubt it.

90%Xbox

Is hard is good

100%Xbox 360

Awesome game even playing it this many years later, great replay value although the game eventually reaches a difficulty where you want to destroy your controller! I will shake the hand of anyone who can complete 100% of this game!

95%No Platform Specified

I don’t think I can possibly convey how much of an adrenaline pumping experience the new Mission Mode is with mere words. It has to be experienced. The missions are unadulterated action and if that’s all there were to the game, I’d still recommend it. Instead, you get the new difficulties, costumes, and Arcade Ninja Gaiden making this the realization of every fans' dreams.

Everything about Ninja Gaiden Black leaves me very impressed. Here is a game that can appeal to everyone from the most casual of players to those who haven’t stopped booting up Ninja Gaiden every day. There is one caveat: Those with less than considerable ability won’t get as much out of this game as others due to the incredible difficulty of most of the new content. There's something for every type of gamer here, but not every part is for everyone.

It’s a rare and welcome day when a re-release adds so much to the original that it can bring your excitement levels back to the first time you played the game. This is exactly what everyone should look for in an update to an older game. It’s nice to know that some developers are still looking out for us at the controller side of the deal. With its economy pricing of 29.99, there isn’t any reason, unless you side with Jack Thompson on issues of violence in games, for someone who hasn’t picked Ninja Gaiden up yet to go out and give this a try. If you liked the original, you’ll love this.