Now on to the rest of the mission, after reloading from that crash. This is the final part to put an end to this let down of an NG sequel. After the on rails section, we encounter a new boss in the form of Cliff who has become a big silver monster that kind of reminds me of Volf.

Cliff is a pain to fight. He likes to grab damn near instantly which is difficult to avoid if you don’t see it coming. His other attacks are basic combos and firing projectiles, which aren’t really an issue. It’s really just the grabs. You’re supposed to use his grabs to land Steel on Bone attacks on him more often, which is why he spams them, but it’s harder than it looks. At least for me it was. He also has a phase where he removes the bow from Ryu for the rest of the game. What a dick.

After that, we get to team up with Theodore, who is Regent of the Mask after having gained his memories back and deciding to not be an asshole. Theodore acts as an unkillable NPC ally and has his own moveset. There are a few enemies that can normally only be taken down with the bow where he’ll blast them down with his alchemy, which is nice since Ryu can’t do it himself anymore.

I really wish Theodore was playable in this game. He has a moveset all ready to go, but since he doesn’t have tits, instead Momiji, Kasumi, and Ayane are the characters we get alongside Ryu. Such a missed opportunity cuz he looks pretty fun to play as.

During Theodore’s section, we have what is probably the hardest part of the game. At the end, we’ll encounter 3 of the Lovelace clones and have to fight them all. After defeating them, 3 MORE drop down so you’re likely to lose here just because you’ll be drained for HP by this point in this game that doesn’t have healing items. On Chapter Challenge mode, you don’t even get Regent to help you here, so the fight is even harder.

After that, we’ll have one final fight against Theodore He hasn’t changed much from the last time we fought him as Regent, but he’s still a full on boss so he can take some work to go down. Also, you may just want to let him kill you if you don’t finish him off with high HP.

Because you see, we get thrown into the FINAL boss of the game as soon as we fight Theodore. And the game DOES NOT heal us in between fights. It also resets your Ninpo by equipping you with the True Dragon Inferno, so if you were saving that, sucks for you.

Canna is the final boss and she isn’t even a proper fight. This is an awful cinematic boss fight with the real challenge being fighting endless waves of enemies as Canna attacks randomly throughout the fight. Your goal is just to fill your NP gauge, which I was only able to do by switching to the Lunar Staff for this part and using it’s multi-hits and OT to raise Ninpo as quickly and safely as possible.

After you get your Ninpo, you’ve pretty much won because that was the hardest part of the fight. Then it’s just some QTE moments and attacking Canna’s hands a few time, which is easily done. You just have to figure out you were even supposed to do that. It’s hard to tell because during the first phase, attacking her hand did nothing. Later you suddenly can, with no indication of how or why.

Also, when her phases shifts, she can suddenly OHKO you if you’re on the edge of the building when she randomly decides to destroy it. Your only warning that the ground will cave is that the ground is slightly cracked...which you have all of half a second to realize and react to before her hand has already slammed down and OHKO’d you. She can potentially do this twice and it’s cheap bullshit each time.

One cool thing I like from this is that it displays Ryu’s absurd physical strength once he’s not hampered by the Grip of Murder curse. Ryu blocks a sword swing from Canna and he’s not even winded by it. In fact, the sword he’s using breaks before his arm does and he just continues to fight it. I shouldn’t have to remind you Canna can clear through an entire building with ease. Where was this kind of reference to Ryu’s strength in that Death Battle featuring him and Stryder, huh?

Anyways, once we get through allll of that mess, we’ll get to QTE Canna to death and beat the game. Of course, Canna still lives after it all. During the last attack the game pauses during the close up of Ryu about to slice Canna and won’t actually progress until you hit Square or Triangle. I’ve waited it out before and Ryu will eventually get a button prompt telling him to do it, but that’s it.

And there, finally done with this game and finishing off my play through of the NG series. I will never play Ninja Gaiden Z: Yaiba. You thought NG3 was bad from all I’ve said about it? Yaiba somehow manages to be worse. I hate that game and if NG3 didn’t kill the franchise then Yaiba sure as hell did.

I do have hopes for NG4 though. It’ll have to be good to make up for NG3 and Yaiba, but if they can get their act together, I’d love to experience a new NG game.

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