Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z

 Xbox 360
User Score
5.5

Mixed or average reviews- based on 49 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 21 out of 49
  2. Mixed: 9 out of 49
  3. Negative: 19 out of 49
Buy Now
Buy on

Review this game

  1. Your Score
    0 out of 10
    Rate this:
    • 10
    • 9
    • 8
    • 7
    • 6
    • 5
    • 4
    • 3
    • 2
    • 1
    • 0
    • 0
  1. Submit
  2. Check Spelling
view
per page
  1. JohnWitten
    Apr 18, 2014
    6
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. [Condensed]

    Nothing sucks more than a complete loss of progress, and that’s pretty much how I felt about the majority of my experience with the game. I was really looking forward to a fun experience, and although some of my wishes were met, I felt like I always took two steps back to every one forward. You’ll have more fun, especially the first time through, on lower difficulties and get more out of the experience. But there’s also really nothing that prompts a second playthrough, unless you’re a really hardcore fan I guess. The combat related glitches are less noticeable on easier difficulties, but they don’t go away. If you do feel like playing through again, at least rest easy in the fact that any and all of your upgrades and collected items carry across between playthroughs on each difficulty, so you can easily level up completely before attempting it again on a harder setting. There is also a small, side arcade mode that unlocks after playing through, and is an interesting diversion when you’ve become too frustrated with the main content- short though it is.

    Concept: Zombie-killing cyborg ninja master! Being a jerk! I hate Ryu, apparently! Yeah, zombies! Did I mention zombie ninja pirate things? Just kidding- no pirates!

    Graphics: Adopts a cartoonish style instead of the series specific, slightly more realistic one. Isn’t a bad look, but can make things hard to distinguish during fast-paced combat at times.

    Sound: I wouldn’t say the voice acting sucks per se, but the lines the actors were given pretty much made me cringe the entire way through. You could mute the game and still have about the same or a better experience basically.

    Playability: The controls normally work well, but will occasionally glitch up and get you killed- especially if you thought the counter system was actually going to work this time around…

    Entertainment: It has its moments, however it also has a lot of extra crappy baggage on board as well. You’ve been warned.

    Replay Value: Low.

    Overall Score: 6.0    … Expand
  2. samuelmason900
    Mar 30, 2014
    9
    good fun humerous game simply what it has to be
    but camera is the drawback and enemies AI could have been improvised.but.
    but the core gameplay and combat is awesome
  3. Kysar
    May 15, 2014
    3
    Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is one of those games that deceives you: Most of you I'm sure were enticed by the admirable animated visuals and flashy combat, as I myself was. But hopefully, you're not too transfixed on those things that you're not distracted from what's actually enjoyable about this game: NOTHING!!

    While the hack-and-slash gameplay is very much functional, it's nothing you    Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z is one of those games that deceives you: Most of you I'm sure were enticed by the admirable animated visuals and flashy combat, as I myself was. But hopefully, you're not too transfixed on those things that you're not distracted from what's actually enjoyable about this game: NOTHING!!

    While the hack-and-slash gameplay is very much functional, it's nothing you won't get from hundreds of others like it these days, and it might prove worth sitting for an hour through if it didn't constantly break up the action with completely unnecessary Borderlands-style intros to every single meaningless generic enemy.

    Which brings me to question why Ninja Team would ever consider slapping the Ninja Gaiden name on this game; with an obvious zombie apocalypse motif, I can see NOTHING in this game, other than series icon Ryu Hayabusa, that shows me that this is a Ninja Gaiden game. While the game can be frustratingly tough to get past at times, that's only because of atrociously designed enemies with cheap attacks and oversized life bars.

    Blocking is useless, countering is a pain in the ass to want to do with how precise the timing demands, and targeting specific and prominent enemies is nearly impossible. The first few minutes of chopping down zombies might be a little fun, but with how repetitive and gimmicky some sections can be, it gets old very, very fast.

    In conclusion, this game wears down your patience very quickly, it tries way too hard to look cool and edgy, it shoves its uninteresting story down your throat constantly, and with how many better hack-and-slashes there are out there, Yaiba isn't even worth your time by renting.    … Expand
  4. blueyes25
    Mar 18, 2014
    8
    I ´m really liking this game a lot
    It´s very funny and pretty;
    Have a great combat system that is cool to use and AWESOME to see in action

    It´s not an easy game and have lot´s of violence and gore(like all the games in the ninja gaiden series)

    I HATED the platform parts!
  5. zeldare
    Mar 20, 2014
    8
    action combat style is very nice, story line is missing pieces but globally I had great time fighting all the zombies. I wish we could have seen more of Ryu.
  6. CharismaticMan
    Mar 18, 2014
    10
    A gaiden to the Ninja Gaiden series, which takes some getting used to, but this is an action game that has the play feel of the old Devil May Cry games with a new face. It also has loads of zombie comedy which are quite hilarious if you go into the game acknowledging that the game is meant to be different from your average Ninja Gaiden. This is the type of action game that classicA gaiden to the Ninja Gaiden series, which takes some getting used to, but this is an action game that has the play feel of the old Devil May Cry games with a new face. It also has loads of zombie comedy which are quite hilarious if you go into the game acknowledging that the game is meant to be different from your average Ninja Gaiden. This is the type of action game that classic gamers should drool over. Whether or not a fan of the series it is definitely worth checking out.
    To fully enjoy the game you need to get through the game once and power yourself up to use the vast combos available for a second play through.
    My only real vice with the game is the Achievements are far from creative or interesting.    … Expand
  7. TheQuietGamer
    May 25, 2014
    7
    Kind of like this year's Lollipop Chainsaw, only not quite as good, and instead of a skimpily-dressed cheerleader you get a vengeful ninja. With it's goofy concept, immature sense of humor, and cell-shaded graphics, this game bares a lot in common with a Suda 51 title. However the game doesn't have the humor or polished gameplay that I've come to expect from Suda titles. There are someKind of like this year's Lollipop Chainsaw, only not quite as good, and instead of a skimpily-dressed cheerleader you get a vengeful ninja. With it's goofy concept, immature sense of humor, and cell-shaded graphics, this game bares a lot in common with a Suda 51 title. However the game doesn't have the humor or polished gameplay that I've come to expect from Suda titles. There are some issues and irritating moments that keep this title from reaching the heights other action games have achieved.

    Every now and then the camera will obscure enemies, you'll lose sight of yourself in a horde of zombies, and thanks to a lack of a lock-on system it can be hard to focus your attacks on the biggest threat. The game can also be quite frustrating at times when dealing with more than one special enemy at a time thanks to their overpowered attacks. While these issues do make the game more irritating than it should be at times, they don't ruin it. It can be a heck of a lot of fun to button-mash your way through hordes of zombies, and the game manages to stay quite entertaining for a playthrough or two on the easier difficulties. So if you're a zombie fanatic or just someone who's curious about the game, it's worth at least a rental. It's not perfect by any means, but it offers enough off the wall type entertainment to be worth a look. My total score is a 7.5/10=Good.    … Expand
  8. plotlesviolence
    Apr 24, 2014
    8
    OVERVIEW: 3rd-person Beat-em-up, single-player only
    LENGTH: 5-6 hours (this lowered the overall score)
    STORY: (7/10) - The protagonist is unapologetically villainous, so it's more interesting than usual. I like most of the little visual gags (character intros), though Yaiba isn't above toilet humor. There's nothing great here, but for the most part the story is unobtrusive to the    OVERVIEW: 3rd-person Beat-em-up, single-player only
    LENGTH: 5-6 hours (this lowered the overall score)
    STORY: (7/10) - The protagonist is unapologetically villainous, so it's more interesting than usual. I like most of the little visual gags (character intros), though Yaiba isn't above toilet humor. There's nothing great here, but for the most part the story is unobtrusive to the gameplay. The exception is that one 5-second clip right before the second main fight with Hayabusa, mostly because I had to watch it 1000 times.
    GRAPHICS (7/10) - Cel-shaded, with very garish colors. I like it, and it certainly stands out among grey-brown modern realistic games. That said, there's almost no destructibility to the environment, and none of the characters have ragdoll physics. We've had ragdoll physics in beat-em-ups ever since Spiderman 2 on the Playstation 2, and it has always, always been better than the canned animations, no matter how good they are, so every time I see a game without real physics it feels like a step backward. The screen tends to get chaotic and cluttered, but I like that (I also like the dust-of-war effect in Battlefield:Bad Company 2; I think dealing with the visual overload is part of the fun; maybe that's just me). One nice feature is how the context-sensitive items, your abilities, and QTE prompts are color-coded to the Xbox buttons; i.e., the whip-chain light trail is red because you press "B" to do it and B is the red button, so when you have to mash B the prompt will glow red. One wierd thing is that the indicator for mashing the chain button is a fist (but red), which is the same exact diagram the game uses for when you're supposed to mash the strong punch button (but orange); I died several times before I realized that; the game already uses different diagrams for "dash" and "sword", would it have been so hard to draw one more diagram for "chain"? Another criticism is that there's no indicator distinguishing which (and when) I can grab and throw an enemy and which ones won't let me grab them.
    CONTROL (9/10) - I play alot of beat-em-ups, but have never tried a 3D Ninja Gaiden game before, so I can't exactly compare Yaiba to NG2. But Yaiba controls wonderfully. "X" for the fastest melee sword attacks best for damaging strong enemies when they expose their weak points, "Y" for stronger punches that can punch through blocking enemies, "B" for the God-of-War chain attack that has the best range and is the only attack that can hit electricity-shielded enemies, and "A" to dash to avoid an incoming attack. Shoulder buttons to grab, block, or execute an enemy (executions regain health, or for elite enemies will give you a limited-ammo weapon that temporarily takes the place of your chain attack). This works really well, since each attack button is equally effective/important depending on the situation, and it feels indescribably faster to switch just by tapping a different button (whereas in a game like the 2013 DMC: Devil May Cry it was much slower to have to hold down a shoulder button to switch between the devil/angel/normal weapon, much less tap the d-pad to switch one out). Combos are based on switching back and forth between the different kinds of attacks in surprisingly intuitive ways (for example, if you switch between strong punch and chain attack, you end the combo with a stronger but slower chain attack). There's no lock-on, which I like. Combat is kind of like a souped-up Dynasty Warriors but with enemies that actually attack you instead of standing there dumbly, so you have to manage crowds, get your hits in, and dash out of the way before the elite enemies pound you into the ground. There's also an element system consisting of fire, bile and electricity, (i.e., bile + electricity = crystalized-frozen enemy, fire+electricity = storm that consumes enemy), and since enemies can hurt each other, much of the later half of the game is all about tricking the bigger enemies into killing each other by timing your dashes. Throw in the standard rage mode, and you get a combat system that rivals any other 3d beat-em-up. The god-of-war system is probably still better overall, but not by much.
    The fixed camera works most of the time (one or two areas where it leads to cheap deaths).
    For some reason, much of the game is devoted to context-sensitive-button pressing platforming. While I appreciate that it correlates intuitively with your normal attacks (dash to "jump", strong punch to punch through a barrier, chain to hookshot), without a dedicated jump button, this linear "platforming" just seems like it's mocking me; I would have preferred they just move the character in a cutscene rather than have me barely-control it.
    GAMEPLAY (8/10) - Game progression is mostly great, with the exception of one super-cheap bossfight (round 2 vs Hayabusa) just because he could kill you in 3 hits. Otherwise, the game improves and rewards skill pretty evenly. I would love a sequel.    … Expand
  9. aljirik1992
    Feb 17, 2018
    6
    "Я оставил тебеееееее-э-э-э. Паловинку себя!"

    Серия NG со времён бородатой NES была той ещё нервовыжималкой в хорошем смысле этого слова. Чистый, слешарный хардкор, вплоть до 2012 года! Именно тогда вышла NG3, сделав ХАРАКИРИ абсолютно всем фанатам. Затем её расширенная версия для WiiU, как глобальнейшая работа над ошибками, попыталась вернуть былую славу, но было слишком поздно.    "Я оставил тебеееееее-э-э-э. Паловинку себя!"

    Серия NG со времён бородатой NES была той ещё нервовыжималкой в хорошем смысле этого слова. Чистый, слешарный хардкор, вплоть до 2012 года! Именно тогда вышла NG3, сделав ХАРАКИРИ абсолютно всем фанатам. Затем её расширенная версия для WiiU, как глобальнейшая работа над ошибками, попыталась вернуть былую славу, но было слишком поздно.
    Спин-офф же пошёл по скользкой дорожке, решив стать стильным, модным, молодёжным, в точности как перезапуск DMC и отчасти получилось даже хорошо! Сочная, кровавая картинка, циничный юморок главного героя, обилие комбо-приёмов, ЖЁСТКИЕ боссы и зомборуссиш-клюквиш-калоритиш работают как надо, НО!
    Игра скатывается в треш, платформинг в игре однокленточен и попросту банален. Рубить, давить и лупить цепью зомбосоотечественников - "мило", вот только из одной клюквы варенья не сварить, а подсластить эдаким, ой как не мешало бы!    … Expand
  10. shootingstars99
    Sep 1, 2019
    3
    This game starts out fun, and Yaiba seems kind of funny yet cynical at first, but he just ends up being a huge dickhead as the story goes on. The game play itself is a lot of fun, and feels like an old school beat-em-up, but the reason I rate this game so low is that Yaiba is just not a likable dude. If I could jump him off a ledge to just end him after Hayabusa already did, I would, butThis game starts out fun, and Yaiba seems kind of funny yet cynical at first, but he just ends up being a huge dickhead as the story goes on. The game play itself is a lot of fun, and feels like an old school beat-em-up, but the reason I rate this game so low is that Yaiba is just not a likable dude. If I could jump him off a ledge to just end him after Hayabusa already did, I would, but Hayabusa takes care of that for you, twice. I found myself rooting for Hayabusa and Momiji from the moment they were introduced into the game, because Yaiba is just that big of a prick, you can't like him. He ruins an otherwise decent game.… Expand
  11. Onithedemonlord
    Feb 25, 2021
    10
    Not a masterpiece but fun entertainment ninja cyborgs,zombies,giant robots what's not to love and if you didn't like or love this game your degenerate scum who wouldn't know a good time if it bit you in the butt!!!!!
  12. YokoHugo
    Aug 1, 2022
    7
    Hihihihinininjnininijijojojkjojojojojojojkjojkjkjojojojkjkjkjojjkjojojkjkjkjkjo

Awards & Rankings

43
#43 Best Xbox 360 Game of 2014
21
#21 Most Discussed Xbox 360 Game of 2014
36
#36 Most Shared Xbox 360 Game of 2014

Critic Reviews

All reviews »
Metascore
50

Mixed or average reviews - based on 20 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 20
  2. Mixed: 10 out of 20
  3. Negative: 10 out of 20
  1. CD-Action
    Jul 23, 2014
    40
    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]
  2. GameOver.gr
    Apr 17, 2014
    40
    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.
    Read full review
  3. Everyeye.it
    Apr 15, 2014
    63
    Yaiba could have been an interesting take on the genre: unfortunately, it fails on the long run, resulting in a quite boring action game.
    Read full review
See all critic reviews »