Review: Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z

In recent years, the Ninja Gaiden series has had a string of 3D action remakes revolving around fast, fluid, yet deeply satisfying gameplay. Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is the latest title in the series, and it takes quite a few detours. As a result, I’m really divided as to how I feel about it.

You play the part of the eponymous Yaiba Kamikaze — a ninja with a shady history who, in the intro movie, has a run-in with series mainstay Ryu Hayabusa. Ryu ends up separating Yaiba’s shoulder — along with half his face — from the rest of his body. Yaiba soon wakes up with some shiny new cyborg components, and discovers that there has been a zombie outbreak; the world, for all intents and purposes, has been overrun. On the one hand, he wants to exact his revenge on the ninja that killed him, but on the other, he also wants to take down the corporation that brought him back to life, led by the mysterious (and annoying) Gonzo. As you might have gathered, the story is pretty terrible. In fact, it manages to confuse and mislead over the course of the game, so it really doesn’t matter. What does matter is the ACTION.

Yaiba starts out fast and furious. In fact, I’d even say it was really fun for the first hour or so. The fighting mechanics are a little more simplistic than previous Ninja Gaiden games, at least at first, but it’s fast and easy to get the hang of. Soon enough, the game throws in some low-level bosses, and when you finish them off (via quick-time events, naturally), you can use one of their body parts to attack others with. It seems gruesome, and in some ways it is, but it’s also pretty fun… until said bosses start to have the ability to spew fire, bile, and electricity. Then things start to get confusing.

Different combinations of these forms will create explosions or whatnot, and trying to remember the right combination really starts to destroy the fun. Sadly, this happens very early in the game, before even the lack of diverse gameplay starts to destroy its fun. Of course, you can increase your headcount to fill up a special meter and unleash your “Bloodlust”, a move that essentially increases your ability to tear zombies apart. Plus, there’s a simplistic levelling component which provides perks at each level up, but these are really just new moves. I found most of the new moves somewhat useless, but several perks came in handy.

Each level contains several special items strewn about. Completionists may find tracking these down of interest, but it wasn’t enough to draw my attention away from just trying to get through the game. Of course, bosses get bigger and bigger and more and more badass, but the biggest problem is, as the game progresses, it just throws MORE of them at you. It all gets samey, especially due to Yaiba‘s reliance on QTEs, which almost ruin the game.

It’s sad, really; certain components of Yaiba are exemplary. Many of the cutscenes are fully animated, and really come across as highly professional, in the vein of Japanese anime. Even the static cutscenes — which aim to simulate a comic book — contain great comic-style art. The in-game art design itself is also very distinctive, providing a cel-shaded cartoony feel, which separates Yaiba from the Ninja Gaiden titles that came before it.

But then there’s the campy story, and the almost Suda51 levels of childish innuendo (seriously, Yaiba would have been better off without the innuendo, it didn’t fit in with the rest of the title), not to mention the extremely cheap shots that the game design takes towards the end. You get nothing but repeated battles, in addition to repeated QTEs that become button-bashing, gamepad-crushing feats of frustration. In the end, everything that makes Yaiba seem like a good game just gets pushed aside.

I can’t lie: there were times I had fun playing Yaiba. It doesn’t take itself seriously, so there’s no need to pay attention to the story; you can simply melt into zombie destruction. It’s fast-moving and you can pull of some fun moves while flying about. But, it just doesn’t evolve over the course of the game — you keep doing the same thing over and over and over again. And when it all comes to a head? It takes cheap shots just to make the final few levels really damned difficult (it works, but it’s more frustrating than anything else). More than that? Several of the end-game bosses require players to defeat them multiple times, and if you die partway though, you have to go ALL THE WAY BACK TO THE START. Argh. I hate that.

It’s not a bad game, but it’s far from great. If you’re a Ninja Gaiden fan you might like it, but even then, I’d wait until you see it in the bargain bin.

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