Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z

It’s equal parts silly, gory, and stupid – exactly what you’d expect from the concept.

Since Itakagi-San left Tecmo, the Ninja Gaiden series fails to impress. And so does Yaiba, even though the comic design is as consistent as impressive and the bossfights remind you of the past. But whenever you don’t need skills or good reactions to get through a fight but pure luck, a game is in trouble. And the ninja-cyborg is in grave danger.

Yaiba could have been an interesting take on the genre: unfortunately, it fails on the long run, resulting in a quite boring action game.

A mess. And not just all the blood and body parts.

Spark created a good combat system, then threw it in a blender full of chaos and confusion, ruining most of the experience. When Yaiba works as intended, it's good fun. Unfortunately it mostly doesn't.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z has an interesting style but lacks of substance and is technically poor. The level design is boring and the camera issues are pretty difficult to deal with. If you're looking for a good action game you should check out something else, or to wait for a price cut.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z reminds me a lot of last year's Deadpool game. It's a very limited hack and slash that enthusiasts will enjoy on a rainy weekend, but it fails to really ascend beyond that status. Yaiba isn't a bad game per se, it's just shallow.

Gaiden games have always been challenging, but they’ve also always been fair. Yaiba is not. Instead, it’s unbalanced and arbitrarily punitive, and after the first few hours, it’s not worth putting up with anymore.

As a side project to the main series, Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z offers an interesting shift in tone and a main character with a lot of promise, but the combat and puzzles feel too rote and unpolished to deliver on the strong potential of the concept.

I would turn a blind eye to a non-existing level of challenge posed by Yaiba and to excessively simplified combat system, but why is the hero such a yokel?! [06/2014, p.50]

A mess of a game that doesn't really know what it is trying to achieve. Fans of the legendary Ninja Gaiden franchise should keep their distance from this one.

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z does a disservice to the franchise by having its name attached. I wanted to love it, but it just kept making me despise its design. Anyone interested in this title should steer clear. There is little here to redeem its many problems, and what it flaunts as its bullet points are hardly worth sticking around for.

Keiji Inafune and his pals got us there: we were expecting something big, and Yaiba Ninja Gaiden Z is just another insult to the beat'em all gender. Despite some diversity from one combo to another, the fights quickly become boring because of an out-of-age AI, amongst other faults. Mediocrity in the level design reinforces this very straightforward aspect of Yaiba, which is far from its ancestors from a technical point of view.

Frustrating, convoluted, messy, mediocre and, frankly, kind of wrong. Even hardcore fans of the Ninja Gaiden series should avoid it. In fact, specifically fans should avoid it.

Even with our expectations lowered, Yaiba still managed to disappoint. It’s even more sexist than we presumed, uglier than some 360 launch titles, and feels budget-y without the accompanying charm. Hayabusa deserves better.

Rich in ideas yet terrible at executing them, Yaiba picks up all the things people hated about recent Ninja Gaiden games and just runs with them.

Ninja Gaiden Z is crass and stupid but rarely funny. It's mean and dumb but never witty or subversive.

Though it does a handful of things right, Ninja Gaiden Z is overshadowed by a litany of awful design decisions. There's just no getting around the fact that it's a wretchedly bad action game. Even the most dedicated Ninja Gaiden fans should avoid this one.