Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2 - General discussion

Oh definitely, I’m looking forward to it haha. Do you have a lot of experience with NGS2?

Curious to see the progress. Master Ninja was...quite the wack-up for me back then. Especially the girl chapters. Then I played NGII on Warrior and got swarmed, barely made it through Mentor haha. What a ride.

Infinity_Divide wrote:Oh definitely, I’m looking forward to it haha. Do you have a lot of experience with NGS2?

I do, yes. I bought the game when it was first released and played it on and off for years. Over the past 6 months, I've actually started putting in effort to get better (did not complete Mentor or Master Ninja until the most recent timeline). Master Ninja was extremely difficult. Even after completing it, I could tell I was not yet "good" at the game. It takes a lot of study and repeated play (at least for me) to fully appreciate the game. But it was fun even without that work put in, so by no means necessary...though it does continue to be rewarding :) Also, I'm still not great...so much more work to do. Very enjoyable combat :)

Royta/Raeng wrote:Curious to see the progress. Master Ninja was...quite the wack-up for me back then. Especially the girl chapters. Then I played NGII on Warrior and got swarmed, barely made it through Mentor haha. What a ride.

Oh man, yes, I spent hours on the Ayane mission in Mentor mode...ironically, it wasn't as hard once I did it on Master Ninja...I might've got lucky haha. I'm looking forward to going back to NGII on XBOX360 at some point too. That sounds fun!

It's a lot of fun to just burst through. When I had a back injury at the time I waltzed through the game with every weapon on Master Ninja (Chapter Challenge) which was an absolute joy.

Also, Infinity_Divide, if you get to the point to where you want to play online at all for the Team Missions, please do let me know. I'm still actively playing and probably will be for a little while, I have finished all of the team missions now, but they're still hard...and fun, so I keep playing to get better. Just let me know!

Royta/Raeng wrote:It's a lot of fun to just burst through. When I had a back injury at the time I waltzed through the game with every weapon on Master Ninja (Chapter Challenge) which was an absolute joy.

Holy moly, that sounds like quite the challenge. I'm imagining playing through everything with the kusarigama. I may give that a shot :) I have some of the best memories of playing games when injured or recovering from surgery, so I can understand that!

I'm currently doing the same in NGII, finished BotA run last year and did Dragon Sword this year. Halfway through Claws now, hoping to tackle the Kusarigama next! It's a ton of fun though won't lie, you really start to learn to use the weapons more effictively and learn their movesets.

hebass wrote:Also, Infinity_Divide, if you get to the point to where you want to play online at all for the Team Missions, please do let me know. I'm still actively playing and probably will be for a little while, I have finished all of the team missions now, but they're still hard...and fun, so I keep playing to get better. Just let me know!

Will do! I’ll have to get better first though, I still sort feel like I don’t know what I’m doing haha.

Speaking of the weapons, I have a question: do you guys change weapon depending on the enemy type? Or is it more of just a preference of what you want to use in general? Does the environment influence which weapon you use?

Every weapon is fully usable against every enemy type, especially in Sigma 2 where enemies are more the same in terms of HP values and delimb percentages are a lot more consistent across the board. In NGII though some enemies like Werewolves can tank a crap ton of hits compared to a regular ninja that dies after a few regular blows. So there's definitely some weapons that are better for others. This translates to NGS2, but there's some weapons that function differently.

With that out of the way:

Dragon Sword: all round weapon. True Dragon Sword's 360UT is a good OHKO move against high health ninjas and Rasetsu. XY(hold) > Shuriken > Flying Swallow is an OHKO in NGII, not sure in NGS2.

Lunar: mostly great for its 360OLUT which is a great delimb against Van Gelf's. Also has an Izuna loop on Genshin, making it a fine choice. XYYYYY (iirc) is a great attack when facing multiple enemies due to its i.frames (its the combo where the chains go lose and smack those around, level 3 only).

Claws: great for tougher foes thanks to >Y which has bonkers delimb, like werewolves and gelvs.

Dual Katana: the go-to boss-killer for newer players thanks to its >Y(Hold), YYYY and 360Y (iframes).

Tonfa: great against Fiend Genshin (>Y, >YY, 360Y). Good mobility weapon. Probably the most overpowered weapon in the game if there is one.

Flails: >Y is very powerful, great against bosses, high delimb.

Regarding the enviroment. If there's a lot of walls the Dragon Sword and Claws shine best imo since they have the best off-the-wall moves.

Nice pointers there Royta.

As for switching weapons against certain enemies, I typically don’t...but you certainly should if you enjoy it. I usually pick a weapon at the start and stick with it. There are sections of the game that I will sometimes switch...like the stairs in chapter 13 now. It drives me crazy to get grabbed for an insta kill there and so I tried using Enma’s Fang UT there just recently and it works well.

The Kusarigama has a nifty move that allows you to lift the pesky dogs off the ground in a loop.

The claws have a way to flying swallow into an izuna drop on some enemies as well which can be a fun time.

Tonfa can kill the Mecha Soldiers with a half powered UT.

Finding ways to de limb quickly can be fun as well.

In more recent times I’ve been focusing on the Blade of the Archfiend for team mission purposes. It is useful on multiple missions...but not strictly necessary. In the team missions, you choose only a single weapon and fight multiple enemy types with it (depending on the mission).

Nice, thanks for the tips guys. Will have to toy around with some of this stuff. I do have another question though...how exactly do delimbs work? Sometimes I seem to delimb an enemy with an attack right away, and sometimes I have to use the move several times.

Delimb is simply a %. The values in Sigma 2 are a bit...skewed. There are some moves that have a very high delimb% while others have a low one, but these tend to have other functions.

XXY with the Dragon Sword has a good delimb in the "Y" part of it, while >Y with the Claws has huge delimb%. Other moves like running XX with the Dual Katanas have very low delimb%, but are an area of effect attack.

There are some 'guaranteed' delimb moves but they are very rare. The grabs of the Kusarigama are a guaranteed delimb for example. Doing a flying swallow against an aerial foe is also a guaranteed delimb (in most cases a vivisection).

Note that the % of each attack is in a few categories:
- right arm
- left arm
- right leg
- left leg
- head
- torso

Most attacks have 0% chance to remove the torso, as that's an OHKO. Head tends to also not be present in most moves. XXYY with the Flails has a very low % against arms and legs, but a huge % (50+) against removing heads, which is an OHKO, which is fantastic.

There's a lot of tactical applications present here, though Sigma 2 did away with most of these. You can for instance use a move that you know favours delimbing an arm, like XXY, to have an archer drop his bow, making him a non-threat. Or use an attack to remove a Striga's canon.

Some enemies are 'immune' to certain categories though. You cannot delimb the torso of a Van Gelf without Void Ninpo, nor can they lose their legs. These are rare instances though. Sigma 2 does away with most delimb-immune foes like Red Dragons from NGII.

Hope that explained it all :)

Wow, thanks for the explanation, sounds like a really fantastic system, very creative. Is there an advantage to delimbing a leg instead of an arm, or vice versa? Also, do head and torso delimb attacks tend to be harder to land?

I really think it is the perfect system. Not only does it give casual players something, namely cool finishers, there's a ton of mechanical depth present with it. Also love how it is still random, making combat always exciting.

> legs and arms
Enemy movesets change accordingly. Usually with their legs they are more of a threat as they still have projectiles and gain access to their suicide attack, but without their arms some enemies are still surprisingly mobile, so it is a tossup. Without their arms they also get a suicide attack, but this one is usually escapable.

> head and torso
Usually these are enders of really long strings or part of charged moves. The Flail's ET goes for the head, as does the XX>XY of the Dual Katana. But also some of the harder to nail off-the-wall attacks like X with TDS and Claws.

Torso moves usually require a unique setup. XY(hold)shuriken>Flying Swallow with the Dragon Sword is a torso cut. Though I don't recall if NGS2 has that one considerig how much it changed some values around.

NOTE: some OT animations have a unique start-up animation that can be used in creative ways, or can work against you. >Y is a unique animation for the Dragon Sword against enemies with a missing leg that sees Ryu kick. If they are too low (like on stairs) this kick can miss. But you can also use it in juggles as shown here:
https://youtu.be/iFswPXilclg

EDIT: you can also cancel certain attacks into an OT as shown at the end of that short clip. Really useful.

Damn this game is crazy. Thanks for the explanations.

>something for casuals but also deep

That’s exactly what I thought, it’s also obvious that the enemies change when they’re missing a limb so you know something deeper is happening than what’s at surface level, awesome stuff.

>arm suicide usually escapable

In the sense that you just need to mash or something more specific?

>head and torso

Is there like a comprehensive list of these delimbs? They’re probably on this site and I missed it...

>clip

Yeah I didn’t think there would be that much going on with the OTs either. I feel like I really haven’t known anything about this game this whole time. I also have to ask, how are shurikens usually used? I tend to throw them at certain enemies to shut them up while I target another foe, other ways to use them?

> this game is crazy
Wait until you play its older brother.

> deep but casual
They heavily marketed it as a casual mechanic which was interesting. There were some people that were worried about it. They noted in early interviews that they felt Ninja Gaiden Black was only fun to play if you were good at it (true), and wanted players to also have fun on that road to being good. Hence this system. I do feel some things behind it were also luck, but every man needs some luck.

> arm suicide
Yeah mashing.

> delimb list
Oh boy. If you can arrange a move-list with inputs that I can copy I can write guesswork numbers for NGII's delimb% on them for you haha. We never got a data-dump, but I can easily categorize every move in my head from Never-Rarely-Sometimes-Nearly Always. I did post a list of 'useful moves' a while back: https://stinger.actieforum.com/t550-ninja-gaiden-sigma-2-general-discussion#10372

Note that delimbs are a lot more rare in NGS2 due to the enemy stat buff to compensate for the lower numbers.

> shurikens
They have a few uses. One being animation canceling as it speeds up recovery like from the DS's XXY. It is great to use after an OT to shut up the nearest target, the hitstun of it is pretty long so you can easily throw a star and start attacking another target. Can also be used to keep enemies airborne. Lastly it increases your air-time. So you can do a Flyingswallow(lvl2) into shurikens, or start with shurikens to stagger a foe and then swallow them (so that they don't auto dodge, timing on this one is tight though).

They can also be used to change animations. If you do XYXXXY the final Y will be an Izuna. But if you do XYXXXshurikenY you get the downwards slash.

They also do damage, be it very, very, very, very, very, very little. It takes up to 700 shurikens to kill a Golden Van Gelf in Sigma 2 on Master Ninja.

It's honestly the best weapon in the game imo due to how versatile it is.

NOTE: god I love talking shop about NGII haha.

>list

NICE. Thanks for that, very useful. Did enemies in this version get buffs all the way around? Like HP/delimb resistance/damage?

>shuriken

Oh duh, yeah animation cancelling is definitely a big one that I forget to actually utilize. Never thought to do shuriken into swallow, pretty neat. Is there a benefit to doing the downward slash instead of Izuna?

>700 shurikens

Shit...note to never use these for damage, gotcha. Haha.

>love talking shop

I knew I should’ve listened to you sooner about playing these games. When we recommend things to each other, NG2 and ZOE2 get played...can’t ask for much more than that.

> enemy buffs
Their HP and delimb resistance got a huge buff. Regular IS ninjas can now tank up to 3 Izuna's IIRC while originally one could sometimes kill. Due to this, and the lower enemy counter and their increased damage output (OHKO on Master Ninja mostly) the game's style really shifted to more defensive when starting out.

If you play the way you do in Sigma 2, in NGII, you won't make it through Warrior in that game.

> downward slash
Izunadrop is unsafe upon recovery, especially in NGII where you're swarmed from all sides, so there's that. Downwardslash also knocks enemies down, allowing you to do the special 'you're knocked down' Heavy attack which deals monsterous damage and delimb%.

> we should listen to each other
In that case: give Death Stranding another shot. I'm totally hooked on it haha. Jokes aside, don't fear NGII. If you ever make the jump the game can feel like an absolute mess of a game compared to Sigma 2. Go through that.

I finally get to play this today since I have a day off. Taking breaks from games I’m trying to get into annoys me.

>won’t make it through warrior in NG2

Oh boy. So what you’re saying is clearing MN in NGS2 means nothing, haha.

>izuna vs downward slash

Awesome, good to know. It’s funny how everyone calls these games izuna drop spam fests yet they don’t know these details...

>death stranding

I’ve considered playing it again, after my initial dislike of it simply because it wasn’t MGS, I grew to appreciate it for other things, mainly how unique it is and still having that signature attention to detail when it comes to traversal(not so much the combat though...).

>NG2 can feel like an absolute mess

I just worry about some of those sections I remember hating, like fighting the underwater enemies and the green tunnel. If you know ways to cheese these parts please let me know, as I’ve said I really get turned off by annoying sections these days.

You can check the topic with AeternalSolitude, I mostly cover the 'how to avoid the dumb sections' there. There's a ton of quick tactics or preps that can see you avoid those encounters all together. It is a game with the highest of highs, but by far the lowest of lows. For water-combat for example, just use Ninpo and dash to the exit, I never do those fights. While for the worm you can just hide in one of the caves and spam Scythe or Arrow UTs for an easy win. Takes a minute.

> Sigma 2 Master Ninja means nothing
It does, don't get me wrong, it just plays very different. Since in NGS2 a single hit spells death you play far more defensive and use abilities like counters far less frequently. So it is more the playstyles not matching, as NGII requires 100% agression from you paired with more realiance on counters (counters are still great in NGS2 though mind you, just very risky compared to NGII where damage taken is like 1/10th).

> izuna
Usually a good indicator of the "mechanical blindness" Birdman preaches. Izunas are a beginners trap. High damage in a game that isn't about damage output at all. Delimbs are always faster and most importantly: safer. You can easily get grabbed in the Izuna recovery by a delimb foe with no way out. It has more merit in NG:B, but even there it is outclassed and most late game foes can't be launched anyway.
Looks really cool though.

> Death Stranding Combat
It's grenade launcher is fantastic though, remote detonatable slip and tranq mines? Pretty sweet but too little to late mostly.

>highest of highs and lowest of lows

It really frustrates me when games are like this, it seems that a lot of the greats in the genre(IMO) have sections that just flat out suck and don’t belong in the game. The games that are on the light side with this stuff(DMC1) are fine but games like W101...well, you know how I feel about that. Even for it being a traditional action game, even DMC5 has the levels with V which kill replays for me. I think this is actually one big area I have to compliment From Software, their games are really free of crap from beginning to end.

Anyway...

>NGS2 vs NG2

So essentially NGS2 and NG2 use the same concepts and mechanics in a different manner? In that case it’s very interesting how the same things can work really different circumstances. I wonder just how much I’ll have to re-program my brain when I get to NG2.

>izuna drop and delimbs

This kinds of beg the question: does this game force you into a play style of forcing delimbs on the highest setting? Let’s say someone does mostly go for damage, would there be any merit to that play style?

> lowest of lows
The difference with NGII though is that, imo, the lowest of lows parts still use the game's core mechanics and thus can be circumvented with smart play or experience. You can't do that with something like the swimming sections in DMC1 or the horrible shmup elements of W101.

To sum the 'bad' parts up:
Chapter 3: tight rope sections, sewer bats, gigadeath boss fight
Chapter 5: water fights (2x), water dragon boss
Chapter 6: Bone giant
Chapter 8: intro fight, ogre fight,
Chapter 9: infinite mines, the water village fight, fish fight, green cave, double dragon boss
Chapter 10: Acid Pit
Chapter 11: Rasetsu fight for some I personally love it
Chapter 12: double Armadillo boss
Chapter 14: Dagra Dai

All except two can be pretty much negated, and one of those two (Acid pit) can be partially skipped. Only Gigadeath can't be hard skipped with an overpowered tactic. So it isn't "that bad". The downside is, you need someone to share the deets with you so you don't have to suffer like he did (me). This doesn't count for challenge runs ofc or trying to do all TOVs.

> NGS2 vs NG2
> same but different
Pretty on the mark. I always loved being able to play them both, such a weird duality you don't see a lot. There are some minor other tweeks though like NGS2 giving the Izuna to every weapon and having Izuna be available at Level1 for every weapon.

> does the game force you
Not at all. The smart-delimb playstyle is an invention of players that just happened to work with the intended mechanics. In NGII you'll delimb an enemy long before they die, in NGS2 they might die before you delimb them. Should note that the two aren't mutually exclusive either. If an enemy loses two limbs, they die instantly, so going for two types of delimb moves i.e. one that goes for the legs and one that goes for the arms, and you've got an OHKO combo (the X-counter of the Talons works for this, or throwing two IS at a foe).

Going for raw damage in NGII will give you more consitent results I feel since delimb is still % based. But if you use the %es smartly, you can nuke a fight way faster than going for pure damage (UT spam not withstanding ofcourse).

Pretty interesting to see:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1KIZaueOJc&feature=emb_logo

Lots of mods and editing was done to make this possible from what I know, but there is a possibility that we can make Sigma II into the 'dream NGII' one day if it is kept up. Looking fantastic!

How faithful is the black mod to og ninja gaiden 2 reboot?

So, I am in a situation where I can't use my living room tv to play OG NG2. Luckily I have the Nintendo Switch and Master Collection. Sigma 2 doesn't run that well on the system but it is what it is. So I got used vanilla's main gameplan - delimbing, but on Sigma 2 the enemies are like tanks especilly IS Ninjas. Do I need to change my playstyle completely or is patience the key to success?

Sigma 2 really requires a different playstyle. For one you need to play massively agressive, as enemies aren't that plentiful so there's way more openings. Delimbs are also mostly absent in your regular moveset, but there are a few you can abuse. One of the biggest ones is that the level-1 UT of the Dragon Sword now has a guaranteed delimb, which you can abuse.

GT is mostly crap now, even with walls. In general you want to use headstomps into Izuna for the most damage or longer YYY strings.

It leads to a way more effective-based playstyle imo, even moreso than before. But longer strings are now easier to do (less enemies to interrupt you).

Thanks for the tips once again. I got so used to >Y so I kinda need to rewire my brains again.

Yeah they're basically really different games that just happen to look the same honestly. Takes some rewiring to say the least.