[Tecmo Koei]Ryu is Back in Ninja Gaiden 3 (Info & Discussions)

[River26]

Those that liked NG 2 & NGS 2 will be pleased to announced that NG 3 has been greenlit, thanks to Tecmo Koei

Here's more

Tecmo Koei revealed Ninja Gaiden 3 during a behind-closed door event today (in conjunction with TGS), reports VideoGamer.com. The announcement was accompanied by a teaser image showing blood-soaked franchise protagonist Ryu Hayabusa removing his mask.

According to VideoGamer, the image represents themes that will be explored in the new sequel: both the "human side" of Ryu and a "more violent and bloody experience" (if you can believe it). Neither platforms nor further release information was given.

Shortly before E3 last year, Team Ninja boss Yosuke Hayashi talked up his studio's commitment to furthering the Ninja Gaiden series. Today's reveal is the first hard evidence of Ninja Gaiden 3 since that time.

Update: GamePro confirms the reveal went down at a private event hosted by Team Ninja, and adds that Ninja Gaiden 3 "is so early in development, the developer only showed journalists a piece of concept art" (above; see a bigger version after the break).

The teaser image is as follows;

[ensatsu-ken]

This will be interesting, to say the least.

As everyone on this board who knows me probably knows, I am a HUGE fan of Ninja Gaiden, both in terms of the classic NES games as well as the re-imagining of the series in the 3D games. However, I must admit that I am very nervous for this 3rd game, being the first new NG game with Team Ninja in its current state. That is to say that the 3 leading members of Team Ninja, Itagaki, Matsui, and Ehara, will not be involved with this project at all.

As for Yosuke Hayashi, he is the man who did the remakes of the XBOX NG games as the Ninja Gaiden Sigma games, but to be honest I feel that he really didn't do much of anything to improve on what were already great games in their original formats, aside from making them look better. Well, actually, in the case of NGS2 I'll give him credit for having made a lot of bold changes (most reviewers wouldn't notice this unless they played more than just story mod on the default difficulty setting), but I really found that his changes didn't improve on any of the flaws of NG2. And as for NG2, I do love the game, but I was disappointed at how it was rushed into release due to Itagaki's leave from Tecmo, and as Itagaki confirmed himself, he and his team ran out of time to finish balancing out Ninja Gaiden (its still far from a cheap and unfair game, as most people like to complain, though, and I know that for a fact since I can beat the game on any difficulty besides Master Ninja mode without using a single healing item at all) and also never polished out quite a few of the games various glitches.

Having said that, I'm still willing to give the more broken up Team Ninja a chance and see how well they can make a new NG game without the head members of the former team present.

Now, Ninja Gaiden Black (the revamped version of the 1st game on the original XBOX), is by far my favorite hack n' slash game of all time. It was just superb from start to finish, had great level design, and had perfect pacing. Ninja Gaiden 2 was a great but very flawed game that, while I loved it, didn't come close to topping what the 1st game had done for me, as the 1st game just had a much higher replay value on the whole. That said, NG2 did introduce A LOT of great new elements that worked very well, and I'm really hoping that NG3 will be the game that combines the best elements from the first 2 games. That is to say that I want it to keep the intense enemy AI and superbly designed boss fights (I was most disappointed with the boss fights in NG2, in comparison to the 1st game), as well as the more open level design of the 1st game, while also retaining the extremely amazing combat-system from the 2nd game, as well as the high-quality of fluid animation from both games.

If they can do this, then I'll be buying NG3 on day one.

[Desensitized]

Hmm... I'm skeptical, but will keep my eye on this.

[Grave]

(its still far from a cheap and unfair game, as most people like to complain, though, and I know that for a fact since I can beat the game on any difficulty besides Master Ninja mode without using a single healing item at all)

You just have a lot of time on your hands .

Joking aside, I haven't played any of the Sigma games, so obviously I can't give an opinion about Team Ninja since Itagaki's departure (and I don't own a ps3). I'd definately like to try the Sigma games out one day since I'm just a fan of hack n slash. (Although, I'm fairly choicey about mines though )

I'm looking forward to this though.

[ensatsu-ken]

You just have a lot of time on your hands .

Correction: Total Ninja Gaiden fanatics have a lot of time on their hands. I just watched their videos and copied their strategies, which is how I found how easily most encounters in the game could be dealt with, so really I just saved myself a lot of time by essentially just ripping off the pro players.

Anyways, despite my own skepticism of how this game will turn out, I have to admit that no matter what, I'll still be buying this game regardless, just because its freaking Ninja Gaiden, and I'm just too much of a fanboy of the series to not totally jump all over a proper sequel FINALLY coming out, after TN has wasted most of their time just remaking the same games over and over again. Its not often that I get to see a new NG game come out, so I'll try my best to be excited for this one, but honestly I don't have a lot of faith in Hayashi as a team leader, so I'm really keeping my fingers crossed, here.