Ninja Gaiden/YMMV

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• Adaptation Displacement: Somewhat of a subversion. Most of the fans who are aware of the 2-player Beat'Em Up version of the arcade believed it came before the first NES game. In reality, the arcade version was developed simultaneously with the NES version, with the two teams making their own game based on the same basic concept.
• Anticlimax Boss: Sort-of with the Dark Disciple, who claimed to have the power of the "Devil Incarnate", but gets punched out anyway
  • He was piss easy in the original game, but Ninja Gaiden Black significantly upped the difficulty by nerfing the Flying Swallow (a diving sword strike that would be a Game Breaker in the original, if it wasn't already Nintendo Hard).
  • Considering that roughly 70% of the game is spent chasing her down, Elizabét in Ninja Gaiden II isn't much of a challenge. She's arguably easier than Volf.
    • Until Sigma II rectified it: like with the Dark Disciple, good ol' flying swallow spamming won't work this time!
  • The Final Boss in Ninja Gaiden 3. Not that the fight isn't visually impressive, but you spend 50% of it fighting fiends it sends at you, another 30% doing QTEs and 20% actually fighting it (the way you fight the Statue of Liberty in Sigma 2 more or less). All in all, it is probably the easiest boss of the game.
• And the Fandom Rejoiced: For Nintendo fans, the fact that Ninja Gaiden 3 will hit the Wii U and along with the dismemberment back.
  • And for added bonus, new weapons and ninpo are in for Wii U. Needless to say that PS 3/360 fans are not happy with this.
  • Also the inclusion of two additional weapons as free DLC in the Xbox/PS3 game. The choice of removing all weapons except the katana wasn't exactly received well. Though "rejoiced" is a big word considering how bad the fandom reacted to the game.
• Awesome Music: Has its own page.
• Complete Monster: If you're thinking that Jaquio is a sick bastard, you're very right.
• Contested Sequel: Yosuke Hayashi's drastically different vision for Ninja Gaiden 3 let many fans skeptical to say the least. Some fans think it is still a fun action game in its own right, if not on par with the first two games. Others prefer to pretend it never existed. Interestingly, Hayashi was already involved in another Contested Sequel...
• Crosses the Line Twice: Ninja Gaiden II is so ridiculously gory that it practically skips the offensive, and goes straight to hilarious. May or may not double as Narm Charm.
• Crowning Music of Awesome: The Ancient Ship of Doom has one in form of the theme from Stage 1-1. It's awesome as it's catchy.
• Demonic Spiders: The ghost piranhas (WHAT?!) infesting the labyrinth in Zarkhan for Ninja Gaiden (Xbox). Their pack tendencies, respawning capabilities and sheer, unimaginable tenacity make one question the existence of a just and loving God and ask why the game's designers hate the player so damn much. In fact, just about all of the enemies drop into this territory at higher difficulties.
  • Originally, the ghost piranhas were just decorative, until Itagaki found out about them and told the team to make them enemies.
    • Their difficulty may be toned down in the sequel, but there is one chapter where you have to deal with them alongside the Water Dragon. Painfully worse in II but noticeably easier in Sigma 2.
  • In the first game, especially at the highest difficulties, a good portion of the non-human Mooks are this, really. The black "laser eye" fiends or the cat fiends are just hellish to fight in groups.
  • Ninja Gaiden II has a literal kind with Black Spider Ninja Rasetsu, as the boss on the first level. He and his other derivatives turn into common enemies later on.
  • The birds in the NES games. Oh God, the birds.
  • You liked the Goddamn Bats in the first Xbox game? In Ninja Gaiden II, meet the giant bats! They are thrice as big, make thrice as much damage, are thrice as tough and are still unblockable. More often than not you will take damage while trying to kill them.
  • In the same NGII, the infamous Incendiary Kunai Ninjas are usually this when you fight them in large groups. Take a guess why by looking at their name. Strangely, in Sigma 2 they are also dreaded enemies, but for completely different reasons: they use their explosives less often but are much tougher and much more competent at close combat instead. Especially in higher difficulties, where their claw attacks deal huge damage.
• 8.8: IGN's 3.0 of Ninja Gaiden 3. It gained quite the backlash already.
• Ensemble Darkhorse: Robert T. Sturgeon in The Dark Sword of Chaos. A Mysterious Informant/Protector with an agenda of his own, Cool Shades, able to take down demonic horrors with a single gunshot, who turns out to be a top United States Army operative and such an extremely loyal ally to Ryu that he makes a Last Stand to guard his back in the very bowels of Hell? This is especially notable considering how well Ryu gets along with covert government agencies...
• Evil Is Sexy: Elizabét.
• Excuse Plot: Primarily a trait of Itagaki's games, which can both be summed up as "Big Bad attacks the village, Ryu chases Big Bad to his lair and defeats Bigger Bad"; there is little dialogue and the details on the mythology picked up here and there in books or scrolls don't really bring much to the plot itself. Hayashi's games (both Sigmas and Dragon Sword) are a tiny bit more fleshed out. Ninja Gaiden 3, however, is much more plot-driven, going back the tradition of the NES games.
• Expy: Ninja Gaiden 3 is appropriately seen by some fans as the Devil May Cry 2 of the entire series.
• Fashion Victim Villain: The Regent of the Mask in Ninja Gaiden 3. Having for an outfit a red Badass Longcoat, a Cool Mask, a mysterious hood and a gold-plated Gloved Fist of Doom, can only make you one. To compliment it, he's armed with a Royal Rapier.
• Game Breaker: The Unlabo(u)red Flawlessness in Ninja Gaiden, when used by a player skilled enough to stay alive at 15% health, can cut enemies down with shocking speed (most of them at any rate). Then again, given the strict health requirement and the game's difficulty, this isn't as severe as the others listed.
  • The Izuna Drop in all the games is fairly easy to execute and will instantly kill any human-sized Mook. In Ninja Gaiden, enemies often block and you can only do it with "katana-like" weapons so its use is restricted. However, the sequel allows its use with almost any weapon, and enemies don't guard at all. Sigma 2 nerfed it slightly by making some mooks (almost all of them on Master Ninja difficulty) resilient enough to survive it.
  • Ultimate Techniques are a similar case: in the first game, without absorbing essence to speed it up, it takes 4 seconds to charge a full-powered UT and their range of effect is limited. In Ninja Gaiden II, it takes only 2 seconds, with some weapons' UTs being glaringly over-effective on large groups of small mooks.
  • The Windmill technique from the NES Ninja Gaiden, capable of killing every single enemy (and boss) in the game with one use.
• Goddamned Bats: Actual bats for the modern games. The critters do annoying damage, and come in large packs. Explosive variants start showing up from Black onwards. Almost all the enemies start as this and become Demonic Spiders on higher difficulties.
  • Bats are also regular enemies in the NES games, and they're in all respects similar to Castlevania bats.
  • Goddamned birds in the NES trilogy!
  • The "jellyfish" in the amazon level for Ninja Gaiden II. Sure, they don't move and are easy to eliminate, but they get in the way...and they just. Never. STOP. SPAWNING. Of course, you can try to swim trough them... at your own risk.
• Goddamned Boss: The infamous giant worm boss in the Amazonia level of Ninja Gaiden II. It's not even difficult, simply horribly ill-designed: 90% of the time you'll not see it, even when you're hitting it. It was so bad that Sigma II didn't even try to make it better: they just mercifully removed it from the level, along with the entire "green tunnel" section. You won't even notice it.
  • The two "armadillo" bosses in the underworld level in Ninja Gaiden II. You don't know the meaning of Camera Screw until you've gone through this fight. Like the giant worm, Sigma II removed it, replacing it with a fight against Marbus.
• I Knew It: Due to the breadth of shared traits between Irene Lew from the NES trilogy and Sonia of NGII, more than a few fans theorized that Sonia was a modern re-imagining of Irene and that they were the same person (Sonia's bio even hints that her name is an alias). Come Dead or Alive: Dimensions, it turns out that they were right.
• It's Easy, So It Sucks: Ninja Gaiden 3 is a far cry from its punishing predecessors. No wonder it's being critically savaged!
  • Although, while it's a cakewalk for anyone who beat the first two games, it's still pretty hard for a newcomer.
• Memetic Mutation: "Just a girl. Get out of here!"
  • Why? BUSINESS OF COURSE!
• Narm: The Worlds of Power book is filled with this, starting with the groaner on the first page, "Dedicated to the ninja in everyone's dad."
  • The "don't kill me mate" scene at the very beginning of Ninja Gaiden 3 is so overdone that for many it ends up being hilarious instead of a Player Punch.
• Nightmare Fuel: About the only thing anybody knows about the original arcade machine is the circular saw from the continue screen.
• Only the Creator Does It Right: What certain fans think about the modern trilogy and one of the reasons there's so much bashing on Hayashi's games (both Sigmas and Ninja Gaiden 3). Any title not directed by Itagaki can only be a pale imitation. It doesn't help that before leaving Tecmo, Itagaki specifically said he didn't like Sigma, that Ninja Gaiden II was the definitive version of the game and he was the only one legitimate enough to continue the series.
• Player Punch: Ninja Gaiden 3 goes to great length to make you feel the pain of the enemies you kill, be it the brutal Steel-on-Bone mechanic or the moaning of enemies if you don't finish them off.

Crawling and bleeding Mooks: I don't wanna die... I don't wanna die!

• Replacement Scrappy: Although not a big fan favourite to begin with, it's amazing how much Sonia in Ninja Gaiden II can make you miss Rachel. Depending on how you see it, may or may not be rectified with Sigma II.
  • Every woman in the modern trilogy is this to old school fans who still see Irene as Ryu's One True Love.
    • Which is all the more ironic in the case of Sonia, considering that she and Irene are one in the same.
• Ruined FOREVER: This was the fan reaction when health regeneration was announced as a feature in Ninja Gaiden II, fearing that all the difficulty of the game would be removed. Boy, were they wrong.
  • And this is the reaction of many fans to Ninja Gaiden 3: no decapitations/dismemberments (though they're replaced by a somewhat more brutal mechanic), no shops or weapon upgrades, no healing items, only one weapon type and one ninpo. And small Quick Time Events. Sacrilege! And on the top of that...
  • Sequelitis: ... it went so bad that IGN even gave it a brutally harsh 3.0!!!
• Scrappy Mechanic: The save system in the first X-Box game makes it so that if you die, you have to restart at the last save point, no exception. Meaning if you die against a boss, you have to redo the section between the save point and the boss. And if you die at the beginning of the following chapter without having saved, you have to redo the boss.
• Seinfeld Is Unfunny: Someone watching the plots of the NES series today will find them narmy and a bit overdone with their "three twists per second", but at the time they were a big leap forward for videogame storytelling.
• That One Attack: Zedonius' flame wall in Ninja Gaiden II is unblockable and undodgeable. Even some moves with invulnerability frames don't protect you! The only thing you can do against it is use a ninpo, but if you're out of it, pray he doesn't use it.
  • Actually, it is dodgeable. You have to stay away from him when he is about to attack you with it.
• That One Boss: Just about every single one of them, especially in the modern games.
  • Murai in Ninja Gaiden deserves a special mention for being not only the first boss of the game, but being so goddamn hard to start with.
• That One Level: The infamous 6-2 in the first NES game. 6-1 and 6-3 are both extremely difficult as well, but 6-2 takes the cake for cheap deaths and one spot where you seemingly have to exploit a flaw in the programming to get past. If you die even once on the final boss, you're forced to redo the entire stage at 6-1 again.
  • The "Path of Zarkhan" chapter in Ninja Gaiden. Not that it's particularly harder than previous chapters but you spend most of the level swimming back and forth to solve a puzzle, and after that you must go through a very long and boring swimming sequence through areas previously visited but now submerged. Sigma removed that puzzle and made the level more straightforward, but you still have to swim a lot.
  • The Elevator Action Sequence in Sigma II for Rachel's chapter, mainly because of Camera Screw issues and also because Rachel's melee weapon isn't very adapted to fight in narrow spaces. Of course, it gets worse at higher difficulties where the upgraded flare fiends are Demonic Spiders and deal a lot of damage - often One Hit Kills in Master Ninja.
  • Ayane's chapter is infamously the hardest one in Sigma II, and has plunged many a player into an abyss of despair in Master Ninja. Prepare to see the Game Over screen a lot with her.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks: What some fans think of Ninja Gaiden 3.
  • It's the Same, Now It Sucks : What other fans think of Ninja Gaiden 3.
  • It's Easy, So It Sucks: Also what other fans think of Ninja Gaiden 3.
• Unfortunate Implications: In Sigma II, you play a Japanese man who literally fights the Statue of Liberty. Granted, you were fighting a statue of Buddha two stages prior (presumably if the series ever goes to Rio de Janeiro, we'll fight Jesus).
• Villain Decay: The Malice Four (Barbarian, Bomberhead, Basaquer, and Bloody Malth) become ordinary Mooks throughout the stages in The Dark Sword of Chaos and can be killed with a few hits. Granted, they're located on platforms where they'll most likely throw you into a pit, but they were major bosses in the first game. Bloody Malth was even the one who defeated Ryu's father.
  • Justified in a Guide Dang It: the Mooks are in fact sub-standard clones of the original Malice Four.