Nightshade

THE BAD:
Bad voice acting, Somewhat Stindgey graphics. Bad Camera. Difficulty Maybe a little too hard for most gamers.

SUMMARY:
I'll keep it short.

Shinobi for the PS2 was a hard game, the difficulty wasn't in the game but the games mechanics. You see; In the second last level of shinobi you had to run along these walls parrallel to each other. Now this would be all fun in easy if this is all you had to do but no. While you are running along these walls. These Demons or "Hellspawn" appear and start blasting fire at you. Naturally you'll want to take them down with your sword. So, you double jump in the air and slash and dash and slash and dash and slash and dash killing all six hell spawn . Problem is though after you've killed them, your suspended in the air untill your Tate animation finshes.

The Question comes up; how are you gonna get back to the wall without plummeting to your doom to the dark pit below?

"Easy I'll jump" Sorry buddy, This game only allows two jumps while your in the air and since you used both of them to kill that hell spawn your screwed!

"Then I'll air Dash back to the wall" alright. oh wait that's right your only allowed one DASH per SLASH.(each time you attack the enemy your giving one dash and only one dash to use freely untill you attack the enemy again) "Crap!, My dash wasn't far enough to reach the wall. My last hope is to move my character towards the direction of the wall as he's falling in hopes that'll he'll cling onto it and save himself from plummeting to the pit of doom." But in your last attempt you fail, and thus another game, is over.

As you can see this little mechanic of "dash and slash" made the first game very tedious and frusterating and overall adding to the extreme difficult of the game because for most of the dashing and slashing you do in this game is in the air. I can't count how many times I died from the gapping holes of death, from the various levels in Shinobi.

In Night Shade, They've improved it so now, when you slash, your given a dash, an extra jump and an Aerial Kick. Believe it or not this little addition to the game mechanics improves the game dramatically making the game less difficult and actually enjoyable. infact I actually got an S ranking in one of the levels because of this.

There's also some other minorities to it's predacessor Shinobi, like
-your charged up your tate attack only attacked ground units, not aerial ones.
- one of the Ninjitsu spells doesn't allow you to use your sword untill the spells finshed.

But with these minorities out of the way,plus the tutorial mode and unlockables Nightshade has become a much more enjoyable experience to play.You can actually go back to Shinobi after playing Nightshade and play a better game cause then you actually know how the game is suppose to be played.I recommend this to anyone whose played Superhero games such as Spider-man or X2:Wolverines Revenge, it's definately worth a look for anyone who wants a challenge.