Nightshade | A Classic Sequel?
41Let’s talk about Nightshade.
Alright, formalities first. Nightshade is the sequel to the 2002 action platformer Shinobi. It was developed by Sega and released in Japan as Kunoichi in 2003 and North America and Europe as Nightshade in 2004. If you’ve seen my video on Shinobi, you would know that it is one of my favorite games of all time, despite its many flaws. Its simple concept, high skill ceiling, and straightforward but challenging yet satisfying gameplay set it apart from many of its contemporaries, which more or less felt like by-the-numbers 3D hack and slash games. If you want to know more about how I felt about that game, check the link for my Shinobi review in the comments. It’s one of my older videos though, so it’s a lot more painful to watch than what I’m churning out now. That slow talking made my videos twice as long as they needed to be. However, I will be explaining a lot of the core mechanics of both games in this video, so you don’t have to watch that review in order to know what I’m talking about in this one, but if you want to know my in depth thoughts on that game then hippity hop on over to that video. With that out of the way, let’s dig in.
Nightshade largely follows in Shinobi’s footsteps, which is why I’m going to be heavily comparing these two games for the duration of the review, but I couldn’t help but feel that something was off during the time I spent with this game. I spent several hours racking my brain to figure out what didn’t feel quite right, but then it hit me like a cleverly placed simile. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Before we get to what specifically bothered me about Nightshade, let’s start at square one, with the graphics and presentation.
The graphics are the first thing you notice when you insert a game’s playstation 2 disc into your playstation 2 and navigate through the menu, so it’s only natural to talk about them first. A lot of people think that graphics make or break the game, but I’m inclined to disagree. Though graphics do matter. I’d argue that graphics are simply one factor of a game’s overall atmosphere, and a game can have bad graphics, but an overall better atmosphere. I’m taking us down this tangent because Nightshade is a much more colorful and graphically proficient game than Shinobi was, as it pushes the PlayStation 2’s capabilities to the limit, but I think it’s worth noting that Shinobi did atmosphere a lot better. The color palate in that game was much more muted, lending itself to the dark and serious story that Shinobi brought to the table, whereas Nightshade’s tone isn’t nearly as consistent. Everything feels a lot more video game-y, and less like an actual world. These overly colorful and bright graphics make the levels feel more arcade-y, like they’re just thrown together because the developers thought they would look cool to slice Hellspawn up in, whereas the atmosphere in Shinobi felt like a natural progression through the ruined city of Tokyo. I will, however, say this: for what it’s worth, Nightshade is one of the most graphically impressive games I’ve played on the PlayStation 2.
The soundtrack is largely forgettable, and I know I’ve been harping on about how much better the first game was but the soundtrack in Shinobi had its fair share of bangers that I’d find myself humming while doing laundry because they were stuck in my head for some reason. There are a few decent songs in Nightshade, but two of those are only decent because they were straight up copied from Shinobi.
However, the story of Nightshade is subpar, as there are many twists and turns that just fell flat. Shinobi’s story is an almost Shakespearean tragedy about a young ninja named Hotsuma whose clan was murdered and reanimated by an evil wizard named Hiruko, and he is tasked with hunting down the possessed bodies of his former comrades and defeating Hiruko so Tokyo can be saved and his clan can be avenged. In that game, you encounter your former students, who have died and whose bodies are being controlled against their will by evil spirits. Nightshade is about a ninja working for the government, who is tasked with fighting her former master and fellow pupils in order to stop them and this company called Nakatomi industries, which totally isn’t a name stolen from Die Hard, from attaining absolute power and reforging the accursed blade Akujiki from the first game. It felt more like a bad fan fiction that wallowed in the story of the original instead of meaningfully evolving it. There is one thing that Nightshade did do better, however, and that is the protagonist. Hibana is a much better protagonist than Hotsuma was, because of, uh, reasons - I’m kidding, it’s because she didn’t have the personality of an angry and sometimes sad cardboard box. She’s like a cheesy 80s action movie hero, with equally cheesy one-liners that she delivers when she kills something. Her favorite one-liners to deliver usually involve informing herself or others that it is not
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Currently, CreamyClaws has 913 views for Nightshade across 1 video. Less than an hour worth of Nightshade videos were uploaded to his channel, roughly 1.85% of the content that CreamyClaws has uploaded to YouTube.