Switch · Classic Vidya Review
Ninja Gaiden Sigma
Completed 31 Mar 2025
Still Holds Up
Hall of Fame
Cover Art
Ending Screen
- It is kinda unbelievable that this is a 21 year old game.
- I had no frame of reference at all for what’s going on here, other than Ninja Gaiden on the NES (also reviewed on this site!)
- Mainly, I know I want to play the 2nd one of these, but I figured it would be best to start with the first game first. They all come in 1 package anyway.
- On the Switch, load times are pretty brutal (especially when walking around large areas like in the city) but this game has been released a million times on a million platforms so if you don’t care about playing handheld, you’re sure to find it elsewhere
- If your only frame of reference is the 1st Ninja Gaiden game on NES, there’s lots here for you! It has obnoxious enemy placement! It has slippery platforming! There are even areas where you can “walk enemies off the screen” to despawn them, just like the original! You wouldn’t necessarily think all this stuff could translate from 2D to 3D, but it does!
- I played on Normal mode, never caved and dropped down to Ninja Dog, and I think that’s probably as good as I can do without hundreds of hours of practice. “Hard” or “Very Hard” would be awful, however, “Normal” is not quite as brutal as the original on NES.
- I am unsure as to “the lore” on which of the 3D Ninja Gaiden games people like, and which versions of them are supposed to be “the best.” They’ve been remade about a billion times and for every platform under the sun
- This game does a great job of capturing that same feeling that the NES games used to give; some areas are extremely annoying until you learn how to do it; some areas are genuinely difficult and demanding that you execute. But once you are through it you feel like you’ve accomplished something and you know you could do it again, but better next time.
- The combat in this game is THE ENTIRE thing. Some areas want you to do these little Legend of Zelda style puzzles to advance to the next room in a dungeon or whatever, but that stuff is honestly pointless. You don’t care about anything other than the combat.
- The world does feel big and fleshed-out though. The combat encounters seem to happen all over the place and you can use the entire world to move around them. It’s not like Bayonetta 1 where every combat encounter is in its own little arena.
- Once again if you like these kind of games, you know you like these kind of games. I loved it so much, when I finished my first play-through, I immediately started another one just so I could be in those early levels and see how much better I’d got at the game.