u/Legendary_Falcon_89

I've started yet another Very Hard replay and this time with the goal of attempting to hit all time bonuses. Fun Fact: It's actually easier to get time bonuses for most fights on Very Hard and Master Ninja than it is on Ninja Dog, Normal, and Hard where you get so little time to finish off enemies it's insane.

At any rate, restarting from a checkpoint was already a feature in many games even back then, for several years before NG1 even came out. Admittedly, I had little use for this feature on standard runs, but when I'm going for Karma and I screw up a fight, the only ways to reset to my last save are to either let enemies kill me or go back to the main menu and reload my last save that way. Kind of a huge oversight on Team Ninja's part in an otherwise incredibly fine-tuned game.

It's genuinely pretty funny to me that this is one of my biggest complaints when the vast majority of people would rail against the camera or awkward platforming. With me, I can deal with all of that other stuff no problem as well as some of the occasional jank, but not having a convenient way for me to reset checkpoints on any given run is a step too far, lol.

I just did a replay of this on Mission Mode in NGB, and it's always just such a fun challenge. I think what separates it from other Missions/Ninja Trials is that it's not just a simple enemy or boss gauntlet. It actually incorporates multiple phases with shops and save points in-between, as well as infinite projectiles for any that you unlock. Essentially, it's like an arcade game version of this game's mechanics that you clear in about an hour but is addicting to do multiple runs of to best your previous score.

I love how you have to plan which upgrades and items to buy and form strategies around that, as well as purposely doing your best to earn money early on (this is by far the most useful the Armlet of Benediction is in the entire game). I've kind of learned how to optimize the early phases so I have excess to work with for phases three and four which are by far the toughest ones (with Phase 5 being very easy if you've saved enough Ninpo for Nicchae's minions). I honestly would love more challenges like this as it makes for a fun routing challenge while emphasizing the best aspects of this game's combat system.

I honestly feel like this would have fit the other games beautifully. With NG4, they kind of had something like this with Abyssal Road, but really it's just a glorified Bloody Palace mode, with the first 70% being disappointingly easy. Also, item routing/management doesn't even feel necessary in that game, and you can already start with all of your upgrades, so that's a non-factor. Having this specific set-up where you're playing more of a highly concentrated mini-campaign feels so much more rewarding, IMO.

At any rate, as you can probably tell, I've been on yet another NGB kick lately, this time mainly focusing on Mission Mode.

So, I'm going through a new Master Ninja playthrough of NG4 to experiment with the game some more as I only beat it on Master Ninja the one time a few months back. I do want to take the time to learn the game better. That said, I was quickly reminded of how much I hate how Yakumo/Ryu barely ever react to being hit. It's primarily a problem for two reasons: the first being that it's hard to tell what you actually took damage from at certain points which makes it harder to learn enemy attacks properly, and the second is that it allows enemies to stack damage on you to a ridiculous degree.

In previous NG games as well as several other games (including other Platinum titles), the recoil or knockback your character gets from taking damage both emphasizes the dangerous point of the enemy attack while simultaneously preventing you from taking multiple attacks at once. It's akin to how your character gets temporary i-frames after taking damage in a 2D sidescroller to prevent you from taking multiple hits at once or in other cases having attacks at least knock you back away from the enemy. And of course you can still get juggled or combo'd, but the attack recoil is still emphasized and this comes as extra punishment for getting caught by crowds or by certain devastating attacks.

I think with NG4 in particular I'm just not a fan of how on top of taking high damage from most attacks on Master Ninja, they can also just stack on you in an instant. A lot of times you can't even tell what hit you. When you combine that with the insane tracking on most enemy attacks, it leads to a pretty nasty combination where you can die instantly from even a full health bar.

Now, before anyone says it, I fully acknowledge that it's a skill issue on my part. To be clear, I don't think that it makes the game super hard since you have items in abundance to fall back on, but on this run I'm just challenging myself not to use items. I enforced this condition on myself, so it's on me, and I'm not blaming the game for it. I'm just simply pointing out that I don't care for how the game executes this particular aspect of it's design. I do genuinely think this would have worked better had most attacks caused Yakumo/Ryu to stagger at least somewhat as proper feedback to getting hit. As it stands, the only time that really happens is with certain grab moves, getting knocked out of the air, or when your health gets low enough after an attack to land you in a critical state. Personally, though, I think damage recoil should just be the norm for this game.