Shinobi
10 Nov 2002
All releases
10 Nov 2002 - PlayStation 2
05 Dec 2002 - PlayStation 2
15 May 2003 - PlayStation 2
Tags
Gamers waited many years for another installment of the Shinobi series. Now they finally get what they have wanted. Shinobi takes place in Tokyo, where a mysterious evil force has taken over, and it is up to you to stop it. You play Hotsuma, who is the leader of a clan called the Oboro Clan. Hotsuma is the only survivor of his clan and all of his dead clansmen are now fighting against him due to this evil force.
The game has eight levels, each of them broken into two sections, and with bosses along the way. The control scheme allows you to dash, attack, jump and throw shurikens. A lock-on feature is also provided. It should be noted that the game also has a few hidden features such as holding attack during lock-on to do a charge attack, double jumping and throwing shuriken to do a shuriken burst, and a stun kick by press down and attack while locking on. The main objectives of the levels is to kill. No item fetching is required, however the ninjutsu scrolls come in handy, and some levels require Hotsuma to break stone pillars to continue. Shinobi also contains combo features. One of these features is called a "tate" kill, whereby if enemies are killed in a chain, a cutscene will play killing all enemies at once and dropping more Yin for your blade. The other feature is that as Hotsuma kills with his cursed blade "Akujiki", the sword will change different colors indicating different damage multipliers.
Gameplay:9.5
Music:9
Graphics:7
This game is much better than most people say, please give it a try. The only major flaw in this game is the final boss.
احـمـد
2
كانت بتكون جيدة لولا هالسلبيات
I'll put in about as much effort in describing the story as they did writing it. It exists. Ok now I can move on.
Unfortunately ends on one of the worst notes I've ever seen a good game end on. The final boss was mostly well designed in concept, but in execution became a mess of RNG, unreasonable mechanics/mob behaviors, an excessively large HP bar and in general runs insanely long for every single attempt. Each restart begins with an unskippable waste of time fighting the ghost of the boss that is essentially a cutscene that randomly runs longer and can hurt. After that the insanely bad boss fight begins. I am honestly in shock I beat him.
Sadly, I'm not sure if I could recommend this to people. I loved so much of it, but endings are even more important than beginnings and the adventure in the middle. It's what you choose to end on that leaves the person consuming something whether it be a film or book or what have you, that defines their overall memory of your art with. With Shinobi, I immediately forgot it was a good game due to how awful the final boss was. I hope I'm the future I don't forget how much good preceded that.