Sorry for the spergin'.
KalosKagathos said:
the only real example of dumbing down the Black vs Sigma threads I read mentioned was making the first attack of the berserkers' sword combo counterable.
There were other things too, like many attacks that guard crushed being changed to guard breaks, and enemy AI being changed to be less aggressive, most notably Awakened Alma (who also no longer "leads" Ryu with her energy ball shots; in Sigma they're dodged like every other projectile, whereas in Black you have to switch up between roll-jumping and regular running to avoid getting hit).
Thing is, they made up for it in another way: berserkers now make use of their full arsenal of moves even when they are off screen, something they apparently didn't do in Black.
Which turned multiple berserker fights into affairs in turtle-tactics with, say, the Lunar. You can't afford to fight them normally over a sustained period of time when fireballs will rape you out of nowhere from off-screen. More hardcore, yes. More fun, I would disagree.
It's things like this that tear Sigma down more than dumbing down. Sigma probably comes out even with Black in terms of hardcoreness, surpassing it in a lot of areas*. The problem is, this hardcore nature isn't well designed in Sigma, and makes it seem more like a cheap fan-port than a work by the group that developed Ninja Gaiden for 7-8 years. So many decisions leave me scratching my head in bewilderment. There are lots of these, like placing ogres, basts, berserkers etc. on all the difficulties, rather than having greater differentiation between difficulties based on the enemy types. Or the fact that they don't give you the nunchaku earlier, a la Black's higher difficulties, yet let you pick up the Dabi early (granted, this is a glitch, as you shouldn't be able to break certain barriers with incendiary shuriken in Black, but they forgot to program this in Sigma). Or the aesthetic changes, namely copious amounts of bloom and the terribad final boss music they used instead of the good track Black had.
Those add up to make Sigma look bad in comparison, but the two cardinal sins of Sigma are Rachel and how terribly they screwed up the karma system.
Rachel screwed up the pace of single player a lot, but the real damage in her inclusion was how much they gutted Mission Mode to fill in Missions for her. Sigma loses out on some of the best challenges from Black as a result of them shoehorning Rachel in. No Awakened Alma mission and no Niccae and Ishtaros for Ryu, in addition to some others I forget at the moment. Not to mention, a good deal of Rachel missions were exact copies of Ryu's. It's sad that they couldn't just, I dunno, copy all of Black's missions, allow a character select, and then add more. That doesn't sound that hard, now does it?
And the karma system...oh boy...this is where the hate comes in because Hayashi's team was nothing but lazy and incompetent here. This is why the hardcore fans who have played both Black ans Sigma tend to dislike the latter. Basically, on the higher difficulties, the Sigma team did no work to properly balance the scoring time limits on a lot of encounters, and certain encounters were completely impossible to finish on time. This practically ruins the scoring aspect, especially in places like the fiend challenges. And as icing on the cake, many fights are bugged, and don't even register a score at all. It pretty much ruins a whole different way to play the game that was in black and the original iteration.
*For example, Chapter 1 is MUCH harder in Sigma when playing on Master Ninja, as you have access to only the Dragon Sword, whereas in Black you also start with the nunchaku, and obtain the Lunar halfway in. However, it's a lot less "fun" this way, as you have less moves at your disposal and have to use/abuse the same sort of "safe" moves over and over. Certainly, it requires precision, but I find it to be less enjoyable, and Sigma gives little value to the nunchaku, whereas Black made them a useful early game role-player on higher difficulties.
Also, Niccae and Ishtaros with Rachel and the final challenge in Sigma's Mission Mode are incredibly challenging, but poorly designed. Three greater fiends at once in an area that was cramped with two? Great job Sigma team! Wallspam ad nauseum...fun...
Fat Dragon said:
I never noticed any unfairness from the bosses.
Then you must be much better than I am, or laws of probability continue to hate me.
Gigadeath (the subway fiend) had a nasty habit of "attack stacking", meaning he would spam homing mini-hims at the same time as shooting you with electricity. This left you in a little predicament, as the electricity required you to dodge, but the mini-hims require you to stand your ground and repel them with attacks. Basically, you had to fire off ninpo or take a lot of damage, which made it seem like this boss fight crawled it's way out of the circle of hell reserved for bad SHMUP designs and into the NYC subway.
The two dragons were a little cheap as well, just because they had the magical ability to make the camera go nuts; not just be tricky to manage, but actually spaz the fuck out and make the game unplayable. Granted, this is a one-in-a-thousand fights occurrence, but it still is annoying.
And the rest of the bosses are mostly fine, but I do notice some things they do, that while they aren't "unfair", they'll certainly seem it the uninitiated, like the way Elizabet loves to cancel out of attacks, grab you at lightning speed, and then take off 3/4 of your health. You learn to deal with these things, it just is a bit unintuitive, and something that a non-adherent to the series/genre might find "unfair".
. I'll try the emulator and see for myself, I guess.
