One of the best Xbox games.

User Rating: 9.6 | Ninja Gaiden Black XBOX
One of the best Xbox games just got a little bit better adding more difficulty settings, more costumes for Ryu Hayabusa to wear and a whole new Mission mode with 50 challenges to beat.

Story of Ninja Gaiden Black is nearly the same as the original, which is to say not very good. There is still enough plot to keep the player interested and the story takes Ryu Hayabusa in many different places to fight against many different kind of enemies ranging from ninjas to giant skeleton creatures. In short someone has stolen an evil Dark Dragon Blade and destroyed Hayabusa village, so it’s up to Ryu to get that blade back and his revenge.

Graphics and level design are in a word great in Ninja Gaiden Black. The game runs in a high speed with no frame rate problems anywhere. This is truly one of the best looking games on the Xbox available.

Controlling Ryu Hayabusa is very easy and the game itself is easy to pick up and play, but... enemies are there to kill you, so especially in the beginning player will get his or her ass kicked many times over. Star of the show is combat, which is fun, interesting and varied, but there are also some role-playing elements in terms of weapon upgrades and new combo moves. On top all that the setting itself is some what similar as in action adventure games.

Sound and music reminds me of Japanese anime and it is solid, but not really remarkable excluding few exceptions.

It’s been over 10 years since the last time I felt so pleased in myself after finishing a game. It is extremely rewarding to get to the end even in a normal difficulty setting.

If you have an Xbox and you haven’t played Ninja Gaiden yet, then you should have Ninja Gaiden Black immediately. This game is THE reason why I bought Xbox in the first place.