Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus Review: Challenging Fast Pace Action

Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus Review

PlayStation Vita
Action

About the game

Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus is quite the intense action title that has been re-imagined for the PlayStation Vita. You play the role of a Ninja by the name of Ryu Hayabusa through a number of chapters throughout the game. It has a good story for you to follow and is presented to you very well in beautiful looking cut-scenes. You will probably find yourself drawn in by some of the situations that the story presents you with as well.

As you make your way through the game you’ll be doing a lot of fighting. It’s a lot of fast pace, stay on your toes type of fighting. You’ll need to make sure you master your technique and you’ll certainly want to remember that it’s good to block in this game. It’s actually more than just good to block, you’ll need to block if you want to survive. For example, there are action titles that you can just attack your way through and not have to worry to much about blocking the enemy attacks. Well this isn’t one of those games, if you don’t block, you won’t survive.

The levels are designed fairly well and they are fun to make your way through. You’ll have moments where you will need to run along the side of the walls. You’ll also have times that you need to run up a wall and jump back onto a ledge. There are a lot of nice ninja-like abilities for you to perform in this game and it gives you a lot of fun opportunities to do so, whether those opportunities are required to move on through a particular stage or if it’s just to find random treasure chests scattered throughout the game.

Ninja Gaiden Sigma Plus is going to challenge you, especially if you choose the normal or harder difficulty. This is by far one of the more challenging games I have played. The boss fights are what make the game the most difficult, as getting by them is one of the hardest things about the game. But that doesn’t mean the regular enemies you encounter at each level is cake walk. Every moment in this game you will need to be on your toes in anticipation of a heavy fight because this game definitely brings it to you.

The difficulty can get a little frustrating, especially on the harder difficulties. However, it gives you the option that if you die to many times you can retreat to the lesser difficulty, which I eventually did do. Even after starting to play it on the lesser difficulty, it still presented me with a most difficult challenge. Let me give you an example of one of the more annoying type of situations. You will encounter times where you need to kill enemies that are on horseback or on motorcycles, and that’s one of those times where I did get overly frustrated with the game. Though I must say, throughout it’s difficulty the game is still a lot of fun. The fighting is something you can really get into and find it very enjoyable, even if you are getting beat up most of the time.

Another thing that makes this game difficult, is the time I had enough health items to get me by a difficult area in the game, but my health was really low to continue on. I would save it immediately when I came upon a save point, but your health continues to remain low. To continue on, I basically couldn’t take more than two hits or I would die. So I would need to hope for a shop, randomly scattered in that level, to buy more health items. I have to say, in one situation, that scenario didn’t present itself. I kept dying, so much so, that I got frustrated and ran away until I couldn’t run anymore. Without giving a spoiler to the games story, I luckily ran into the perfect situation that ended that chapter. But that’s just another example of how challenging this game can be.

The shops and the save points can be found throughout each chapter, though you certainly wish the save points appeared far more often than they do. As for the shops, you can earn credits along the way, which will enable you to buy health items. However, you can never seem to buy enough of those items, which is what I spent most of my money on much of the time. You can buy other things as well, such as upgrades for whatever weapons you have.

When you get to the point when you’re tired of seeing the game-over screen, when playing the main game, there is also a “Ninja Trials” option for you to play. So instead of seeing game-over while playing the main game, you can see it there as well. Ok, all joking aside…it has a number of missions within it for you to choose and play. Missions such as ‘destroy a certain number of enemies’ or ‘destroy a certain number within a specific period of time.’ There are also other mission types as well for you to unlock and enjoy. These missions, although difficult as well, are also just as fun to try and attempt to complete.

That is probably one of the best things about the game when it comes to it’s difficulty. It’s not to overly frustrating, but it will certainly knock you down a lot of the time. This makes completing the game and the Ninja Trials a lot more time consuming. That also increases the value of the game. Sure, there will be plenty of moments where you will probably want to put the game away. However, it is still fun enough that it will keep you coming back to it so that you can try and complete more of the game.

Gameplay – Controls

One of my main issues with the gameplay and it’s controls are the camera problems. I really can’t stand the camera in this game because it isn’t smooth and messes up on me a lot of the time. It’s very hard to manage, though if you remember in battle, you can reset it by pressing the right bumper button. I do wish the camera felt better than what it does. It would make the experience that much more enjoyable. Other than that, the fighting feels really good and it’s a lot of fun to play out.

I will say, that the touch screen controls work fairly good. An example is the front touch screen when it comes to using the bow and arrow. It can be hard to use the touch screen bow and arrow due to the difficulty, but there are opportunities when it works. You touch the screen to pull out the bow and then touch the target to shoot the target. It’s that simple and it is very accurate. The back touch screen of the Vita gets some use as well when it comes to using your Ninpo abilities. It’s as simple as pushing the correct areas on the back touch screen.

Sound – Graphics

There is a very nice soundtrack that comes along with the game. You’ll have many good moments enjoying the music as you make your way through the game. The voice acting is pretty good as well. Visually the game looks fantastic and has some fairly nice cut-scenes for you to also enjoy.

Enjoyment Level – Fun Factor – Final Notes

Just to emphasize one more time, this game has a lot of frustrating moments that could really annoy you. So make sure you are ready for that, and if you are – be patient and make your way through a fun fast-paced action title.

I certainly liked my time spent with this title even though it drove me crazy in most instances with its difficulty. But the action is fun and handles really well outside of the camera issues. It’s a game that will keep you very busy for a long time because of that difficulty. Plus, it has a lot of fun “Ninja Trails” missions for you to go through and enjoy. If you are a fan of action titles and you are up for a most difficult time, then you should look no further. This will certainly be a worthy game for you.

Score: 8/10