Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z review

Hello there,I'm Accel and this is my review on Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z.Bearing about as much resemblance to Ninja Gaiden as a Lada does to a Rolls-Royce, Yaiba is so poor, so ill-thought out and implemented, that it falls flat almost as soon as you've sat down with it.Taking its cue from the Grindhouse craze that stopped being relevant or interesting shortly before it had even started, Ninja Gaiden Z jettisons Ryu Hayabusa as the lead in favour of pitting the eponymous Yaiba against hordes of undead.

Game link: :http://www.yaibangz.com/
Steam link :http://store.steampowered.com/app/252230/



At its very core, there are a few decent ideas that I hope drove Yaiba’s development in the first place. Ryu Hayabusa is about as dry as leads get, so an outspoken foil is the natural reaction. Ninja Gaiden’s realistic visuals aren’t artistically expressive, so a comic-inspired design makes sense. From those tenets, it’s easy to see that they’d extend the outrageousness to the combat, cramming more enemies with crazier moves and weird elemental effects into the fray. Unfortunately, all of those experiments end in disappointment.

Carrying out executions is key to success in Yaiba. Once you've smacked a zombie hard enough he'll pop out an icon signifying his preparedness to be executed, at which point you hit the left trigger to carry out a gory kill cutscene. These icons are fairly forgiving in their lifespan, barely challenging the reaction times of even novice players, and appearing frequently enough that your health bar, which these executions regenerate, will stay reliably topped up.

Difficulty spikes hugely when special zombies appear, but combat options are shallow enough, with no parrying or clever skill-based timed attacks to speak of, that tactics devolve into button-mashing and running away. The by-the-numbers fighting is broken up by the ability to wrench arms and other parts from the defeated corpses of these enemies, briefly granting you their abilities. Hardly game-carrying stuff though.

After taking in the crisp-looking combat in the likes of DmC: Devil May Cry and Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, the stylistic departure Yaiba makes is not a welcome one. The cartoony visuals really don’t lend themselves to a hack-and-slasher, and we were reminded of this constantly. On the slightly less-offensive side of the spectrum are awful effects, like near-opaque smoke or chunky sprays of water. Far more detrimental are the two measly camera options that either make indoor navigation a chore or keep you so far from the action that you’re likely to get confused during chaotic battles.

You can choose to have an up-close view of Yaiba while fighting instead, but that makes projectile attacks nearly impossible to predict. There’s also not enough enemy variety for our liking, and the non-boss zombie variants that do exist look so similar that you might not be able to tell if the undead creature you’re whaling on in extreme-wide-view is a grenade-dropping kamikaze, a bile-spewing creature, or an electric enemy — at least, not until it’s too late and you’re inflicted with a screen-obscuring ailment.

Woeful camera direction during some encounters renders the game near-unplayable at times, as Yaiba is reduced to a few distant, obscured pixels while the camera attempts to fit the entire scene into view, while interminable and frequent load screens make death a patience-sapping chore. This is an average action game that hoped to be carried by its appealingly crass, bloody art style and audacious main character, but instead Yaiba feels strategically basic and tonally childish. The character may find redemption in the game's plot, but you'll find no such payoff as a player.

I endured hideous games in the name of playing through a fun adventure, but Yaiba is simultaneously frustrating and boring. The concept of various elemental weapons and barriers interacting and combining is interesting, but the execution is far too messy. With the rare exception of minibosses who wear their elements on their sleeve — like the fire-engulfed Holy Roaster and the electric Zombride — you’ll have a hard time figuring out which of the game’s three elements (bile is the third) work best on a given enemy without diving into the game’s far-too-wordy database. When combos do come into play, they often don’t go in your favor. Did an electric attack hit Holy Roaster? Hope you’re far away enough from the chaotic vortex that results, as it’ll engulf everything nearby.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z seemed to have a noble, reachable goal: create an action game on par with the core Ninja Gaiden series, but with a bit more of an edge. It fails to do that, or to even be a passable form of entertainment. It’s just an ugly game in almost every respect.I think this game deserve a score 5 out of 10. So what do you guys think, share it on the comment section below