Let's discuss the elephant in the room with this game.

The marketing continues to refer to this as the "definitive Ninja Gaiden 2 experience." The problem is, this is an averaged Ninja Gaiden 2 experience. While many reviews will cry about things that were removed for the better, the fact remains that NG2 Black is a re-work of Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma which is already available, cheaper, on Steam.

Ninja Gaiden 2 Black completely remasters Ninja Gaiden 2 in modern fidelity using the Unreal 5 Engine, making almost everything look better whether it's monsters, NPCs, weapons, effects, the levels themselves, or the cut-scenes which are in-engine (like the original.) Additionally, Gaiden 2 Black actually restores the blood and gore from the original Xbox 360 game and makes them better. There are some cut-scenes where the blood looks just as bad as the original game, but the majority of the time it looks better. Sigma 2 not only removed the blood almost entirely (Keep in mind Sigma 2 is the Master Collection version) but it also neutered the gore so there were minimal decapitations or dismemberment. 2 Black has restored all that.

Most characters, enemies included, have been reworked and/or improved like Sonia, Momili, Ryu, Volf, Elizabet and more. Some aren't changed very much like Muramasa and Alexei.

This version also removed most of the content that was added in Sigma 2 as far as unnecessary extra bosses in the Ryu levels. Some reviews iwll complain about this but the reality is this content was garbage and it was removed for a reason. For instance, the statue of liberty boss, or the additional statue boss in chapter 1. That includes costumes which would have been fine to leave in.

The major sins of this remake are obvious to those that actually played the original. Sigma 2's infinite arrows are in this version not to mention there are no arrow types. The charge shot is removed, though it may not have been in Sigma 2 to begin with. The game forces you to use items like Lives of the Thousand Gods - you cannot save them for later, and they do not actually heal you anymore. But worst of all, in many areas the enemy count was drastically reduced to make the game easier in Sigma 2 and the enemies weren't restored for this version. Most of the challenge of NG2 was being spammed with 8000 rockets at once so it's not really that hard without them.

2 Black plays exactly like Sigma 2 and that isn't necessarily a good thing. There's severe downtime between animations and Sigma 2 was designed to be as annoying as possible by doing things like capitalizing on those downtimes where your character literally can't move. The movement speed and the clunkiness is all still here, too. Not to mention a camera that's often worse than the original NG on Xbox.

It's worth a purchase to get something closer to the original on PC and Xbox if you don't own the original and an Xbox to play it on, but the price is a little steep. Plus you get all the fun issues that come with Unreal 5, like the game barely running at 4K without DLSS and render resolution settings being set right. Unless you want to sacrifice graphics, the main feature of this remake.