The story begins as many others do, an evil entity is going to destroy the world and you have to save them. You play the role of Ryu, a ninja who has been training for years and wants to get the Dragon Sword out of the hands of the evil Fiends, since the blade becomes stronger as more and more evil spreads through the land. Although the story line does not sound very original, it is actually quite interesting and the visuals are the best I have seen. I can actually say that I am glad it was delayed, since this is a complete game, without bugs, and looks and plays better than any other.
Right from the start, the intro scene shows you how much work was put into the game and once you get into the game, you can see, that it is not only the cut-scenes that took a lot of time to perfect. The game plays very smoothly, with very little loading and a smooth feel all the way through. The buttons take a little getting use to, and I actually switched the settings at first, however, I had to switch them back to the default, since there is a reason why they are laid out as they are. This is not a simple button smasher, you have to learn the moves and combos to get far. With each weapon, Ryu has almost 40 moves and dozens of combos, each one of which is very cool to see. In addition, he can hang on walls, run on walls, throw projectile weapons, flip enemies and do magic. You can interact with a lot of the things around you, not to the extent of Max Payne, but enough to keep it interesting.
As you play the game, you will notice one thing first and foremost: it is hard. The enemies are smart, they defend, counter attack and grab and the bosses are even harder. As you go through the game, you will notice that the best way to defeat the bosses is to learn their patterns of attack and try to sneak in hits whenever you can. The enemies vary throughout the game and don't get too repetitive. Their attacks are varied and they will often attack you in packs. You must learn to use your blocking, counters, magic, throws and combos to defeat them. The only problem with a game being this difficult is the saving. As usual, there is no quick save and you have to reach a save point to record your progress, which are sometimes more than twenty minutes apart. I would suggest backtracking a little sometimes, in order to save your progress after a long task, if no save point is nearby. The only attack that is sometimes annoying, is the arrow shooting, since it can be auto aim or not, sometimes you don't have enough time to manually aim before getting hit by enemy projectile weapons.
I also like the fact that they avoided the cheap falling to make the game harder, that is often used in action games. Ryu can fall ten stories and not loose any power, however you do have to start your climb again. There are also very few places where you can fall, the game is hard simply because the enemies are tough.
There are a few things that could have been improved on. The camera angle is good about 90% of the time. This is something that is to be expected in third person games, since there is so much action and some tight spaces, you sometimes get hit from behind without any warning or fall because you misjudged the distance of a jump. Also, the quick attack and use buttons are the same, so once in a while I found myself in a fight, and suddenly opened a door and left the room. Since enemies often reappear, I had to start the fight over, this is however a very rare occurence.
The game remains interesting through all sixteen levels. The story progresses with beautiful cut scenes and you learn new spells, get new weapons and moves at a regular basis. I would advise you to explore the levels since you want to get the power ups that increase your health bar and improve the strength of your magic.
There are also some nice extras. Once the game is completed a Very Hard mode opens and a movie cinema, so you can re-watch all the cut scenes. You can also unlock Ninja Gaiden 1, 2 and 3, however this is a difficult task, especially for 2 and 3. There is an online multiplayer mode in the menu, yet it will only commence in May and from what I am told it is a competition to see who are the best Ninja Gaiden players, of which the top players will compete in a tournament (maybe for prizes).
This game is a must have for XBox owners who like action games. I would say it is one of the top ten games on the XBox and the best so far this year (I still have not played Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow).
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