I often dream that I am a Samurai on the path of justice with a glorious afro. Anyway, onto the review!
Swordplay, beautiful visuals, and fantastic hip-hop soundtrack are the highlight of the game. The soundtrack is done by rapper RZA, and it's cast of celebrities create terrific, lively voice-overs. Ninja-Ninja, is quite possibly one of the most enjoyable characters you'll encounter, due to Samuel L. Jackson's excellent performance. The gameplay consists of the basic, light, heavy and kick attacks. All of which can easily flow together into combos. Then, there's the focus mode which will slow down time, and deliver devastating and gory attacks to your opponents. You'll find yourself lopping off plenty of parts. Arms, heads, legs and even fingers and toes. You may also parry, use dash attacks, cut bullets or deflect them back.
The game is littered with terrible platforming sections. Afro will occasionally turns himself in the wrong direction, or barely gets any distance, causing you to redo the sequence. You'll notice that the destructible sections will sometimes crumble after you restart, only if you mess up the sequence before it break away. This isn't as frustrating as the games terrible camera. It can only be turned on it's Y-axis. It's not exactly the bad thing though. It's the part where the camera gets stuck on objects or twitches around. Sometimes, a section of the screen will cut to an enemy entering the area and doesn't help the situation. There's not a huge variety of enemies. Sometimes, levels will feel some what desolate as you wander the area. Other times you'll beg for them to stop coming. Bosses don't really do anything to add and have a tendency to spam attacks. There's a few that change things up a bit though, such as one that leaves you fighting for your life as you plummet towards the Earth.
The bad certainly outweighs the good for a game that spent 4 years in development. That won't stop you from enjoying the game however. It'll probably last you a good 7 hours, and the hidden items will keep completionists coming back. If you're a fan of the series, you'll definitely enjoy this game. If you're not? Then you might want to save your money for something just a little more worthwhile.