Ninja Gaiden 3 will be more accessible

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 24 January, 2011

Brutal difficulty eased for post-Itagaki NG.

Hack and slash series Ninja Gaiden is known for its brutal difficulty – but with the third game in the series developer Team Ninja plans to make the action more accessible.

"Team Ninja's aim with Ninja Gaiden 3 is twofold: to be the number one 3D action game of the time, and secondly, the main character is Ryu Hayabusa. They're the two things we're focusing on," Team Ninja boss Yosuke Hayashi told Eurogamer.

"Then, providing excitement, which is not only from the difficulty. That's just one of the elements. It's more like having excitement from fighting an exciting boss. That is what we needed."

Ninja Gaiden 3 is being developed without the aid of Tomonobu Itagaki , who quit as Team Ninja boss in 2008.

Gamers and critics have described NG3 as a reboot and an attempt by the new Team Ninja to make its own mark on the series Itagaki so loved.

"With the previous Ninja Gaidens, you were playing and you were excited, but it was more about putting the controller into the TV screen or something," Hayashi said. "That kind of excitement we were focusing on and aiming for. So that's why for you maybe it was too difficult at that time.

"That's one of the elements. We're not focusing on it, but focusing on providing excitement."

So, is Ninja Gaiden 3 easier than 1 and 2?

"Not easy," Hayashi replied, "but it will enable more people to play. More accessible. We don't plan to have Ninja Gaiden 3 only for the really good, skilled people."

Ninja Gaiden was a 2004 Xbox-exclusive that Eurogamer awarded 9/10.

"You could however quite reasonably argue that the difficulty curves upwards a bit beyond the reach of the average gamer, and that there are too many instances particularly towards the end when you simply don't have enough health elixirs to continue making progress, and falling back to a previous save game becomes necessary," Tom wrote in his review.

Little is known about Ninja Gaiden 3. Tecmo Koei is yet to reveal launch platforms or a release date - although we can expect a hands-on demo at this year's E3.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (39) Latest comment 12 months ago

Comments for this article are now closed, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • AdamAsunder #1 1 year ago

    I would probably agree that Ninja Gaiden 2 was bloody cheap in places but the first one wasn't that difficult really. It just demanded that you learn the mechanics. I find it much easier than Castlevania's combat where every enemy seems to have an unblockable attack and/or a ground pound and where simply fighting a large spider can take about a year to kill. NG Black even an easy setting where you get to wear a lovely pink armband; you could pretend you were fighting for a Breast Cancer charity or something.

    I'm so conditioned by todays hand holding gaming climate now that alarm bells start going off at the words 'accessible and streamlined.'

    I understand the need to make money but I'm seriously not down with the whole make the game for everyone approach. Focus on the people that are predisposed to like that genre and for the love of the dragon ninja do not even think about QTEs, Ryu will be furious. And when Ryu gets furious people tend to get dismembered.
    Edited by AdamAsunder at 24/01/11 @ 08:48

  • davisorle #2 1 year ago

    Post deleted at 20:44:35 16-04-2012

  • Shinomo #3 1 year ago

    I don't necessarily think that this is good news. In a world of games pandering to the less patient audience, it was nice to see the occasional balls-to-the-wall hard title showing people just what they were capable of with a little patience and practice. Even the oftentimes brutal NG2 on the Xbox360 had a threshold that could be crossed, where you felt absolutely invincible.

    What happens now? Will people with a penchant for the (almost traditional) punishing difficulty of NG still have access to that immeasurable pleasure? Or are they to be passed by?

    A "Dante must Die" esque difficulty had better be on the cards.

  • AdamAsunder #4 1 year ago

    @shinomo.

    I agree. I don't think simplifying or streamlining is the way to go. With a series of the prestige that NG has it would surely alienate the fans they already have and thus do more damage.

    Make it challenging but not as cheap as the second. If you want to appeal to a wider market, don't make it less difficult, inform the player how they should be playing it.

  • Vordred #5 1 year ago

    they should just go back to ninja gaiden 1 for difficulty, it was a challenge and fun, NG2 on the other hand was just cheap 90% of the time. i didn't find NG2 all that fun, it just got annoying and at times was more a case of luck than skill.

  • fiery_jackass #6 1 year ago

    I've recently played through NGB for the nth time and it was an undimmed joy. NG2, on the other hand, got completed twice & returned proving, comparatively, a joyless exercise.

    It wasn't really the cheapness that killed it for me, although that didn't help: my problem was that NG2 was all about spectacle rather than skill. Near enough every fight in NGB had to be approached carefully, with at least half a mind on exactly what you were facing and what it was likely to do. NG2 was all on-screen chaos and constant releasing of auto-aim ultimates, whilst hoping not to get shot by invisible rocket-men.

    fewer enemies please, and less fucking about.

  • Rack #7 1 year ago

    The original was way cheaper than the second, I think people are just wearing rose tinted goggles. This shouldn't be too difficult to make right, add in new "Easy" and "Normal" difficulties then put in the existing difficulties after that. Ninja difficulty can have as much cheap crap as is needed to make it feel like Ninja Gaiden and those elements can just be stripped out for everyone else.

    Edit: Just to clarify the 2nd was less cheap than the first on the easiest difficulty of each game, the harder difficulties may well have been different. There was also a different kind of cheapness that may have affected replay, NG2 was allabout missiles flying at random, NG1 was instant death attacks that could only be avoided by standing in one unremarkable part of the screen. On replay I imagine NG1 felt less cheap as well. If this is the change people need then go ahead, but on Ninja difficulty and above only please.
    Edited by Rack at 24/01/11 @ 09:13

  • des #8 1 year ago

    horrible news,just horrible
    :(

  • AdamAsunder #9 1 year ago

    Hardly rose tinted spectacles when I still play Black now. It's still better than all these QTE pretenders that have turned up since. How you can say NG2 was fairer than NGB is beyond me when it had atom bombs disguised as giant armadillos.

    edit: right, easiest settings. Because that's the foundation on which to base your knowledge.
    Edited by AdamAsunder at 24/01/11 @ 09:18

  • Quint2020 #10 1 year ago

    Every quote from the Team Ninja guy made no bloody sense at all, someone needs a better Japanese translator.

  • Sunjammer #11 1 year ago

    Yosuke Hayashi is a hack, Tecmo is dead, and Ninja Gaiden along with it. Screw all this nonsense. NG2 was a step down but at least it still had heart. The difficulty is as integral to NG as Ryu Hayabusa. All they have to do now to turn me off even further is add stealth sequences. Then we're just piss golden.

  • nickthegun #12 1 year ago

    The only change in 'difficulty' they need to change from the last one is the number of one hit kill sequences. They arent hard, they are just unfair.

  • MattEdWithCheese #13 1 year ago

    the only way that this could be good is if he means that it will be more like sigma 2 with a piss easy lowest but still with the rock solid difficulties for us subs

    if not then at least we have devil's third next year

  • nickthegun #14 1 year ago

    @#1: You are right about castlevania. The combat in that is much more unfair. You cant get in full flow because you never know when an enemy is going to do an unblockable or an area attack. Its almost like they knew the combat was a bit easy and the AI was a bit crap, so they gave everyone an unblockable attack so you cant just stand there and pound the bad guys.

  • JahB #15 1 year ago

    This is exactly why this studio will go down the drain. Itagaki was the heart and soul of the Ninja Gaiden franchise, give 2 to 3 crappy sequels and this series will be dead.

    Dumbing down a title that was always very much aimed at the core audience will only serve to alienate the existing fanbase, and I'm not sure the casual audience will buy into yet another 3rd person hack and slash.

  • DUFFKING #16 1 year ago

    It needs to be a beat em up like the first game rather than a hack and slash like the second game was. NG2 was far too cheap and glitchy too, yet despite that Master Ninja was far harder in Ninja Gaiden Black. The game seemed to force you to spam techniques that contained a few frames of invincibility over and over, polar opposite of NGB which actually punished you for that.

    Sort the camera, fix the frame rate drops and balance the combat please.

  • Machetazo #17 1 year ago

    "With the previous Ninja Gaidens, you were playing and you were excited, but it was more about putting the controller into the TV screen or something" ROFLMAO! Brilliant! :D

    I hugely enjoyed NGII. NG is an example to all. I found that NGSII, though was quite poorly balanced. The initial setting was too straight-forward. After finishing that, playing the next setting up improved things, but it felt like a NGII normal, and a half!

    ALL that aside, though. I'm DELIGHTED to see more NG3 news, to kick off the week. With these kinds of games, and what some people may miss, is that the makers are designing the game they want. So, that being said, I am happy to see what the new game is like, before deciding about whether decisions made in its design are beneficial, or not. I think it's good that the focus returns to Ryu. A "legacy" setting/mode, as a DLC even, would surely be appreciated by fans. But, in may not be in Team Ninja's roadmap.

  • Murton #18 1 year ago

    JahB - "Dumbing down a title that was always very much aimed at the core audience will only serve to alienate the existing fanbase, and I'm not sure the casual audience will buy into yet another 3rd person hack and slash."

    /thread

  • Raiten #19 1 year ago

    So will this mean the end of the last few challenching games? not like all our crybabies haven't managed to ruin games difficulties compleatly allready, because they've zero patience to learn the game.
    I certainly hope the difficulty level won't be droped down, otherwise i might not be even buying ninja gaiden 3 if it turns in to one of these "can play with mah eyes closed !!" games, which pretty much every game is nowdays.

  • nuanimal #20 1 year ago

    "Team Ninja's aim with Ninja Gaiden 3 is twofold: to be the number one 3D action game of the time, and secondly, the main character is Ryu Hayabusa."

    Wait, second objective is Ryu Hayabusa? How is that an aim?

  • Cjail #21 1 year ago

    The toughest foe in Ninja Gaiden is actually the camera system.

    Change that because I am tired of being killed by an off-screen enemy.

  • Skooch #22 1 year ago

    Only played NG2 and I have to say that the combat won me over completely, ended up completing it on everything except the hardest difficulty. Anyone remember the stairs part? The long climb to the top with literally hundreds of enemies and doing crazy combos killing 10 at a time, sweeeet!

    The problem was that it was a little cheap, and so often it would take a little bit of luck (or persistance to wait until a certain chain of events happened) that would decide if you beat the boss or not.

    It's a madly, crazy, mental, tough game for hard-core enthusiasts - don't take that away Team Ninja, just make it fairer please.

  • kalinichenko #23 1 year ago

    ''Little is known about Ninja Gaiden 3. Tecmo Koei is yet to reveal launch platforms''

    PS 3 n Xbox 360 as usual,dont remember the last time Tecmo released any PC game.

  • GamesConnoisseur #24 1 year ago

    Admittingly the difficulty curve is the most challenging area to get the balance right, as everyone skills and patience are variable BUT for me Ninja Gaiden has it's particular set of audience which is the ones hankering after the brutal difficulty.

    As long as they still serve this audience in the second sequel, ie having the proper variable option in the menu and not defaulted ninja dog mode with an infinite health refills!

  • Malek86 #25 1 year ago

    Playing both NGB and NG2 within a relatively short time, I can say that NG2's combat system felt more refined and fluid, the faster pace was more enjoyable, and the platforming parts of NGB were mostly gone, thankfully.

    However, they had to go and fudge it up with cheap bosses, which seriously hampered the fun. What was up with the armadillo fight, when it turned red? Was there a proper way to defeat it? I only made it because I got in a lucky streak where its rocks didn't hit me.

    Not only that, but unskippable cutscenes are the bane of my existence. In the eight chapter, you get to see a long starting scene. Then I got in a fight with huge monsters and they kicked my behind. Result, I have to see the cutscene again. I dropped the game at that point. Was it so difficult to put a save point at the start of every level.... or even easier, just make cutscenes skippable?

    So my wishlist for NG3 is basically like this: make it like NG2, except with less cheapo enemies and with skippable cutscenes. Done.
    Edited by Malek86 at 24/01/11 @ 11:18

  • darkphoenix #26 1 year ago

    sigma 2 was crap, vastly inferior to NG2.
    NG3 seems to dumb the franchise down even more.
    No Itakagi, no NG.
    R.I.P.

  • darkphoenix #27 1 year ago

    sigma 2 was crap, vastly inferior to NG2.
    NG3 seems to dumb the franchise down even more.
    No Itakagi, no NG.
    R.I.P.

  • Mr_Brown #28 1 year ago

    I think this may be a good idea. Surely turning down the difficult isn't just for the benefit of the publishers. It will allow more gamers to see and enjoy the whole game. Surely that's better than a small minority and reviewers loving the game but are confused that nobody else likes it because they had to quit the game due to frustration. Do remember that games used to be so hard back in the day because it had to last 6 months or a year before people got their next game. That has completly changed now. Now that people are getting 3 or 4 a month on average perhaps the frustrating ones will be left unplayed

    That being said, I don't see why they cannot have difficulty settings and have a really easy mode for casual gamers and leave the extreme difficulty for long time fans.

  • SteveHolt #29 1 year ago

    Funny thing is, Itakagi promised the same thing back in 2007, and look what happened, NG2 was much harder than NG1.

    I have 1250/1250 on NG2, and only a corrupted save prevented me from clearing NGB's master ninja mode, so I guess I'm the target audience for NG3, and here's my 2 cents: I only care about Master Ninja modes, just like halo fans only care about Legendary. Do as you please with Normal/easy if you think that it will get you some extra sales - every NG vet knows that the real game only starts on hard difficulty, anyway.

    And stop trying to fight against Itakagi's shadow+ legacy, that is completely stupid and misguided. Since this guy's only achievements are 2 PS3 ports, where all the changes he made were completely off the mark, he'd better keep his mouth shut.

  • metroid455 #30 1 year ago

    yes maybe i can finally get through one without pulling my hair out in frustration of the stupidly cheap difficulty
    just to clarify ive platinum bayonetta so dont say that i just suck at it cuz that game was also challenging but fair and accessible as well, imo team ninja should be getting some advice from platinum games on how to make a challenging but fun hack'n'slash

  • gelf #31 1 year ago

    Ninja Gaiden was possibly my fave game of that entire generation and I never thought it was that difficult with the exception of the high learning curve just to beat the first boss. I rather them make another game like that rather then turn it into yet another blind button bashing hack and slash.

    I honestly don't see what as so difficult about it. But I also thought the same about Shank that was also panned recently for being too difficult here. Then I try to play some cover shooter that gets no such criticism and then die a lot..*shrug*

  • RexRunti #32 1 year ago

    This game has gone from a must have to a probable. I personally found NG1 harder than NG2, probably because in NG2 when you died you learned "don't stand there or you'll die" and so you didn't the next time, where as in NG1 when you died you had to get better at the game to continue. I remember completing NG1 and thinking how hard the game was and how long it took me to do even the first few levels. I started from scratch on a friends xbox a little later just to kill a few hours whilst he was out, I got through several bosses barely getting scratched let alone dying.

    /patiently waits for Bayonetta 2

  • AdamAsunder #33 1 year ago

    Shank wasn't that difficult in single player. You just had to mix things up.

    In coop it was another matter altogether and proof, if needed, that developers shouldn't just crowbar in a coop mode if it doesn't suit the game. The game was artificially difficult because you just couldn't see what was going on half the time. Shame.

    I'll keep an eye on this game but I think it's going to be hard to top Bayonetta this generation. NG2 was rushed out and needed polish, mainly because Itagaki was on his way out the door. Devil's Third is what I'm waiting to see.

  • inutaihanyou #34 1 year ago

    I'm still looking forward to it, i heard Kasumi will be in 3 :)

  • CHAZBIGPOTATO #35 1 year ago

    Remember the Ninja Gaiden on original Xbox, I got to the Skeleton dragon thingy with no health potions and struggled big time to get past it, piece of piss with health elixirs but without it was well tough. I screamed with joy when I finally beat it.

  • DAN.E.B #36 1 year ago

    I loved the first one
    and was really disapointed by the second one.

  • apoc_reg #37 1 year ago

    How incredibly rubbish of them to dumb down one of the last bastions of proper games

  • Phishfood #38 1 year ago

    What they need is a fighting system as versatile and exciting as God Hand

  • manlymanIQ... #39 12 months ago

    All of you retards bitching about how hard NG was in the past need to accept the fact that you're ninja dogs and just play on that difficulty. Don't ruin the whole franchise for us good players with your incessant bitching. I'm at the point now where nothing on NGS2 barely poses a challenge anymore. Also, don't even compare NG to bullshit games like Bayonetta.