REVIEW -- Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is a third-person combat game in the Ninja Gaiden franchise by Tecmo Koei. Keiji Inafune produced the game, providing character designs and creating the character of Yaiba. The game was released for the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and Microsoft Windows platforms on March 18, 2014.

I personally remember being VERY excited for this title when it was announced at E3 a few years ago, but after the tidal wave of negative reviews and feedback came out following the retail release, I was skeptical to buy this title at launch. Now that I'm plowing through last-generation titles on my gaming backlog, I finally got around to playing this bad boy... and let's just say it didn't go as well as I expected.

(Whistles) Let's get this over with shall we?

The Plot: (FULL Spoilers)

The game follows the exploits of the powerful ninja Yaiba Kamikaze. Yaiba was once part of a clan that tested the abilities of its ninja by putting them up against a highly skilled member; in this case it was Yaiba they had to face. However, after growing weary of his work, Yaiba eventually decides to massacre his own clan and leave the survivors to their deaths. At one point he meets with the franchise mainstay Ryu Hayabusa and decides to challenge him, claiming that he is the weakest foe Yaiba has encountered thus far. During the battle he discovers otherwise as Ryu slices Yaiba's left arm and eye, killing him.

Later, Yaiba is discovered by a mysterious organization known as Forge Industries, led by Alrico del Gonzo, brings him back to life and restores his lost body parts with mechanized duplicates, thus turning him into a cyborg, with a female named Ms. Monday as his navigator. Yaiba learns that a zombie outbreak has begun and that Ryu has been searching for the source of the infection. He decides to work with the Forge Industries that resurrected him in order to exact his revenge against Ryu, agreeing to help put a stop to the spread of zombie infection.

Upon finally encountering Hayabusa again one last time, and manage to defeat him, Yaiba finds out that Forge Industries has been manipulating every events, such as unleashing the zombie outbreaks and using him as a tool and self-destruct bomb to kill him and Hayabusa to further the organization's plan. Yaiba decides instead to sacrifice himself to festry the bomb and spare Hayabusa's life in order for him to save his disciple from, Momiji. Upon his revival by Ms. Monday for the second time, she too defects Forge Industries due to Del Gonzo's attitudes and manipulative nature, having unleashed the zombies for his own purposes of seeking immortality.

Once Yaiba landed in an abandoned, yet zombie infested Forge Industries building, Yaiba finds a portal to what appears to be an Aztec-themed alternate dimension and found the real Del Gonzo, whose seems to be in dying state and inside a tube. Though unable to stop Del Gonzo from transforming into the embodiment of the Aztec god of the underworld, Yaiba manage to find a weakspot to make him mortal again. When Del Gonzo trying to escape from Yaiba's wrath, Ms. Monday appears in person and kills Del Gonzo for good. With the portal to the real world closing, Yaiba and Ms. Monday barely escape. In the end, Yaiba and Ms. Monday decide sell the data of curing zombification. Unknown to them, Hayabusa is observing them.

The Verdict:

I can't believe that Keiji Inafune attached his name to something like this. I guess he wanted that cheap plug for Mighty No. 9 as that DLC costume, but still, geez man... Then again, not every Mega Man title was good either, so yeah.

At first glance, this is a VERY buggy and glitch game. Oftentimes, I could find myself getting past troublesome areas (read: difficult for most players new to the Ninja Gaiden series) due to the fact that the enemy AI would glitch up offscreen and fail to spawn more henchmen or fall through the environment and allow me to continue regardless.

In terms of gameplay, this is a VERY short game. The Story Mode spans rough 8 stages (two of those stages are entirely boss fights) while sporting a lackluster narrative, fueled by Yaiba Kamikaze's bloodlust for revenge against Ryu Hayabusa. While I found myself chuckling and laughing at most of the banter between Miss Monday, Del Gonzo, and Yaiba, the game tries TOO hard to be provocative for no reason in terms of content. As a result, Yaiba comes off a huge moron throughout the narrative.

Speaking of enemies, the game sports little to no enemy variety. You'll be spending the duration of the game fighting the same 3-4 enemy types the ENTIRE game, either the standard zombies (Stiffs - along with their elemental counterparts, Clowns, or Punchdrunks), electric Zombrides, fire Priests, or toxic hags. The game also recycles the bosses over again towards the end of the game, so you can tell that Team Ninja didn't spend much time cooking up enemies during development.

Enemy AI is cheap to the core. Be prepared for a LOT of cheap deaths due to attacks offscreen and bad camera angles. Seriously, I thought we left bad camera angles back in PlayStation 2-era gaming?

Don't get me started on that boss fight against Ryu Hayabusa that literally gave me blisters on my thumbs and almost wore out one of the buttons on my controller from the QTE mini-game during this sequence. You need a LOT of luck in that one. I've heard most players say it took them about 200+ continues to complete that level, but I lucked out after roughly 40 attempts.

EVERY in-game enemy in the game falls victim to the Mega Man-esque element weakness tree in a twisted version of rock, paper, scissors. The system is hit or miss but you're going to be forced to depend on it in the game's more difficult encounters, such as a room full of roughly 20+ fire Priests or 10+ Zombrides. Ugh...

As a result of this system, Yaiba's basic attacks don't do much damage, if at all to anything but the basic zombie types (Stiffs). Your best offensive combo is flail to sword x 4 (on X360: B,XXXX or Circle, Square x 4 on PlayStation 3) or flail to cyborg arm (B,YYYY or Circle, Triangle x 4). The first combo is great for crowd control while the later is better suited for one-on-one encounters. Don't abuse the first one too much on Stiffs as you'll have a mob of angry flying torsos after you on higher difficulties.

The lack of a lock-on targeting AND means to jump (replaced by a evasive dash in combat) is absolutely jarring. I know that the Flying Swallow technique is like one of the most OP (read: over-powered) moves in the Ninja Gaiden series (despite the fact enemies can actually block and evade it in Ninja Gaiden 2 and 3), but there's NO reason to strip away the means to jump out of combat completely. I personally found that omission to be completely moronic in terms of game design.

Buy It, Rent It, or Don't Bother?

I'm honestly swaying towards don't bother here as the first few levels will turn most players (even the most dedicated Ninja Gaiden fans) before they get to the more enjoyable parts of the game. At the same time, there's a few good things to discover with this game when you get to the latter half of the game and the Ninja Gaiden Z bonus mode was a great unlockable to give you something to do after completing the main campaign.

I highly suggest renting it if you can, because even the $7 for this game brand new is a bit much in terms of what you have to put up with in this game before it pays off and you actually enjoy it - even that is a big what-if. I'm not going to lie. Most players will throw their controllers or break them out of sheer frustration playing this game. Seriously, if you're new to the Ninja Gaiden series, skip this one. If you're a series veteran like myself, play at your own discretion. There's very few things to like here, but the bad far outweighs the good.