would not that require to slow down NG2 a little bit? NG2 is faster, not for the better...the difficulty its just cheap crap (missels and explosive kunais alll over) , I didnt feel like it was lack of skill when I died on master ninja unlike in NG1/Black/sigma. I´m with you on preferring ninja gaiden 1 gameplay, the only thing I prefer in sigma over black is only small touches like the dodge moves (it´s so cool 8D~) and the top on the water gameplay and off course the polished graphics, but ng1 to ng2 there´s a huge difference that comes on the careful dodging and very strict frames of weak points that harder enemies rarely had (remember the wip boss or the skull monsters?), weapons would make a HUGE difference in fight to have an uper hand, in NG2 feels you can do well with just any weapon on any enemy since all are versatile unlike the original...I dunno, just saying it would require a HUGE amount of changes that takes a LOT of thinking/studing and I dont trust TN now to touch NG2 on balance besides fixing it´s flaws....I still think NG3RE is meh.
Kind of, but not exactly. Ryu's movement and attacks became faster, but enemy movement didn't really (Crow Shadow Demons are among the fastest foes in any of the games). NG2's combat problems were rooted in things aside from its sheer speed. For example, terrible collision and hitstun plagued almost every encounter with larger fiends. Bosses had stupid attacks and attack patterns, making the best way to fight them exploiting loops, rather than legitimately recognizing patterns and using reflexes to maximize offensive opportunities. Perhaps most prominently, the game
expected you to get hit. A lot. How can you not when you're being sprayed with bullets, rockets, and incendiary shurikens from every direction in almost every single encounter? Allegedly to offset this, you have partially regenerating health, free heals at save statues, etc.
It's my honest opinion that those features were fucking bullshit. I far prefer the approach of Ninja Gaiden 1, where the idea was to try and complete every encounter flawlessly (which you could do consistently provided you don't mess up). This philosophy is clearly reflected in its gameplay, whereas NG2 sloppily throws a handful of enemies at you with the goal of barely surviving to build your health back up afterwords. Yes, I realize it's technically possible to complete Ninja Gaiden 2 on Master Ninja without taking damage save the acid pits (shinobier did it, IIRC), but no one can perform like that consistently because the developers never planned them to. So, it's stuff like that I'd like to see fixed, while still hosting the weapon selection/movelists, OTs and fluid responsiveness of NG2.
the little I played from sigma I was only disappointed from the lack of puzzles water graphics (I mean come on xbox version looked way better on this) and lack of costumes, but then again I only played it a bit to help my friend on higher difficulties ...
I still personally feel that Sigma 1 is the second-worst of the main Ninja Gaiden titles from TN (right after NG3 vanilla, which was horrible), but that's a topic for another time.
