Game:

Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z (2014)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 36:15

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1

Now it's your turn.


I was reading some reviews for this game, and now I have a felling some people don't understand exactly how reversals work. So, here is a quick tutorial:

Any reversible melee attack in the game is marked by a white semi-transparent animated sphere. If you then press the block button — Yaiba will counter it. Counters are extremely powerful: they do a lot of damage (or outright instakill weaker zombies) and knock countered enemies on the ground, opening them for another attack. But, here is a catch. If you see a white sphere on an enemy and press block on reaction — you are already too late. The proper timing for a counter is the exact moment when the sphere appears. So you have to learn enemies' attack animations by heart and just know when to press the button instead of following a simple visual cue. This adds an enormous chunk of artificial difficulty to the game, especially on later levels where you have to fight several types of enemies while holding their whole movelists' animations in your short-term memory while also trying to keep track on 20 enemies or so around you.

Reversals are one of the best moves in Yaiba's arsenal and the game is clearly designed with that in mind, but, at the same time, it actively makes you not to do them. Plus, reversal time windows are pretty short (shorter than parry windows in Revengeance on higher difficulty levels) and you can't do reversals out of a block: you have to not hold the button for at least a couple of seconds, or you'll just block again. I already mentioned that Y:NGZ is short. You can beat it in 2-3 hours if you know what you're doing. But most of reports in the Internet about first playthrough time are in 8-12 hours range. Which shows just how much of artificial pandering this game has. And if they'd ease on reversals and some zombie combinations — people would beat the game in 2-3 hours and complained about that. Without a bigger budget it's a catch 22.

Projectiles are the different story though. The rule of thumb is: if it's a single projectile (like a fireball) than you can send it back. It's much easier to do too: as long as a rocket/slimeball/whatever is in Yaiba's general vicinity — he can catch it without much effort on a player's side. Electric rays, vomit streams, etc. obviously can't be reversed. :)

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