Okay. As I suspected, I was newbing out regarding Ninja Gaiden Sigma. Forget I said anything.
Actually, don’t. Don’t forget. Let’s talk about this a bit further. It’s a hard game, granted — and it’s got a gazillion combos and stuff, great. And many weapons (cool), with choice of advancement (nice) and secrets (awesome) and stuff (oh yeah). Oh — and it’s fun. It really is. It’s lots of fun…
…once you get the hang of it. Ay, there’s the rub! It’s a matter of practice, really. Studying the combo list (which should be more readily acessible, methinks — and particularly, should not “forget” where we were once we leave the menu and return) — and slashing and kicking away. As a friend pointed out, this game seriously lacks a “practice arena” of some sort — we had to New Game it repeatedly to catch the curve.
That’s the point, I guess. The game requires more learning than it offers you bodies to practice against. It takes about two runs of the first stage to learn what you need from it. The second stage requires you to master skills that you can only place on top of a solid base from the first. And so on, and so forth.
I don’t mind the game being hard. I relish it. But this is not Gradius. It’s a game with a saved state and exhaustible inventory. The main difference being, in a shooter with no saved state, you are expected to play the game repeatedly — you know you’ll do it, simply because there is no alternative — and learn from each play through, doing better each time, reaching further stages with more lives and better-chosen power-ups (I’ve just seen an example of that after more than doubling my Super Stardust HD score; I chose a no-rockbreaker upgrade path that did wonders to my complexion). Ninja Gaiden Sigma does not present this approach as a natural one, instead guiding the player into thinking he should be perfectly able to tackle the next stage simply because he was able to survive this one.
The arena idea would be really appropriate. We could have a Practice Mode available either from an in-game or the main menu and we’d be able to quickly check the command list for the equipped weapon while fighting endless hordes of enemies. Dieing would present no penalty, simply dropping us straight back into the action. Of course, only enemies we’d already faced in-game would appear, and only the obtained weapons would be available at their current upgrade levels. A “preview the move” feature (like in Soul Calibur practice mode) would be perfect as well, so we can see a move happening before we attempt to perform it.
That would be cool. We can only hope to see this kind of advancement once Ninja Gaiden 2 arrives. In the meantime, I’ll keep playing this one.