Ninja Gaiden 2 Black Review - Classic Hack and Slash Goodness

Team Ninja might have delivered one of the best surprise game launches of 2025 with the official remake of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black. The OG Ninja Gaiden 2 was released for the Xbox 360 back in 2008 as a direct sequel to the first Ninja Gaiden game. After that, the game was released multiple times on different generations with additional features.

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is an official remake of the OG title on Unreal Engine 5, boasting new visuals and adjustments to enemy behaviour, combat, and quality of life changes. In an era of soulslike titles dominating the market, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is a breath of fresh air that brings back old-school fast-paced combat in a new shell of visuals and in-game mechanics.

As a newcomer to the Ninja Gaiden series, I will say this irrefutably: Ninja Gaiden 2 Black had me hooked. To be honest, I grew up playing titles like Call of Duty and Battlefield and later on moved to titles like Prince of Persia, God of War, and Rocksteady's Batman series. These games brought out my love for beat 'em up hack and slash titles, and Ninja Gaiden 2 Black managed to capture that same feeling for me.

Koei Tecmo

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is an absolute treat for all action-adventure fans. In my ongoing playthrough of the game, I have loved every minute of the game's atmosphere and intense combat simulation that left me wanting more every time I stopped playing the game.

If you have played God of War, Batman Arkham series, and Prince of Persia, you'll without a doubt fall in love with Ninja Gaiden 2 Black. Moreover, the game is a must-play for all Sifu fans, as you'll surely enjoy the game's high-difficulty settings where the enemies will come at you relentlessly.

While I absolutely loved the game's combat system and level design, I felt a little awkward navigating the camera settings in-game. In an era of accessibility, the game's manual camera adjustment stuck out like a sore throat. However, with time you'll get used to it, but in my opinion, a more fluid camera movement mechanic, mainly automatic camera movement, would have made the game more enjoyable for newcomers to the series.

Now speaking from a 2025 point of view, the game's overall atmosphere might seem a little old for most new players considering how level design in modern hack-and-slash titles is more dynamic rather than linear like classic titles. While Team Ninja has preserved the game's original mechanics, a more robust revamp would have made the experience much smoother.

Koei Temco

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black's combat and movement delivered as I expected. The combat in the game makes you feel the raw power Ryu Hayabusa possesses. His each strike hits hard, and you can almost wipe out a mob in no time with proper blocking and special skill use. In these titles, the complementary element to fluid combat is movement, and the game's movement is fast and compact. You can use the fast movement to your advantage to catch enemy ninjas off-guard and avoid their strikes at the same time. The movement is quite similar to Prince of Persia, so I almost immediately adapted to it, making my playthrough much more enjoyable.

Talking about further gameplay experience, I can adapt to most games' NPCs or enemy combatants with a little, and Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is no different. In my point of view, almost all new players can easily adapt to the game's enemy combatants with a little time and patience. However, I noticed some issues with the NPC behaviour in general, which did bother me at times. One of these rampant issues was the unresponsiveness of blocking enemy attacks. I was failing to block enemy attacks even though I was pressing the block button at the right time. Moreover, the absence of a parry feature made my initial run of the game hard, as I was constantly losing health from sudden attacks that I was failing to block.

Koei Temco

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black

As I looked into the game's lore, I came to know that Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is actually a remake of the 2009 PlayStation 3 port of the game title Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2. The game's Steam review features point out the same issue suggesting the original Xbox 360 port is better; however, as a newcomer to the series, I am unable to understand the difference.

Moving on to special skills, the game gives you new skills at each level of the game. However, triggering them was counterintuitive. Unlike most games in the current era, which provide a wheel or special skill tab to trigger them, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black uses the old two-button combo to trigger a special move, and being a hack-and-slash game, I kept triggering the special moves when I didn't need them, making it useless in most situations.

Conclusion

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is a must-play for all beat 'em up, hack-and-slash fans. With exceptional combat mechanics, a great story, and a classic gameplay formula, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black smashes it out of the park in my books. It's true that some aspects of the game might seem like a remnant of the past compared to modern-day titles but that doesn't take anything away from a great experience that is Ninja Gaiden 2 Black.