and 2, the entire Devil May Cry franchise (excluding 2, including DmC: Devil May Cry), have replayed the original Darksiders multiple times, and have played through Darksiders 3 twice. I’ve also completed Bloodborne three times, which may not specifically be character-action but is close enough. The point is more that I’ve not only become far better versed in the genre, but with each title played and replayed I’ve gradually gotten better than I was over fifteen years ago. Ninja Gaiden Sigma would be the proper litmus test, and though it seems as if the game has been made “easier” through additional checkpoints and some remixed encounters, the overall game remains the same.

That I’ve completed Ninja Gaiden Sigma certainly suggests that I’m better than I used to be, but I still likely have plenty of room to grow. Unfortunately, Ninja Gaiden is not the game I yearn to improve on. It is extremely well polished in terms of feel, performance, and the sheer variety of moves available to Ryu, but there are a series of little quirks that seem to sabotage the player at the most inopportune moments. The Flying Swallow, for example, is an incredibly useful attack wherein Ryu slashes forward at lightning speed, slaughtering groups of smaller critters such as bats, dealing heavy damage to your average foe, and perhaps even beheading some of the weakened ones. It can help the player get out of a tight spot, help meet the opponent head on from a distance away or across, or just deal some serious damage to a clustered group.

The problem is that the move does not seem to execute in a consistent fashion. Under most circumstances it seems to fail due to the player not being close enough to a target, but there are instances where Ryu is directly before his foe and still fails to perform the Flying Swallow. This is particularly stressful during a late-game boss fight where the ability is valuable and stuns the opposing monster temporarily. Ryu could be right in front of the opponent only to execute a downward strike instead, or swing away in an opposing direction.

Flying Swallow or its mechanics are not necessarily the problem, however. It’s the automatic lock-on running behind the scenes, its logic invisible to the player. There is no manual lock-on available, with the analog stick seeming to be the primary intended method of selecting a target. The game will instead often swing at or strike an enemy opposite or away from wherever the player may be pointing. This can even result in the player attacking empty air, both away from where they are pointing while simultaneously away from any of the enemies present. Whatever logic is guiding the game’s auto-aim, it is imperceptible to the player. To make an odd comparison, it’s like you have a traded Pokémon that’s higher in level than your gym badge ranking. Most of the time Ryu will obey, but there’s that chance he’s going to ignore you and do whatever he pleases instead.

Which is not to say that players can’t begin to intuit or work around the game’s internal logic. There are plenty of no-damage runs on the highest difficulty available on YouTube to observe such behavior. I cannot comprehend how much time and practice it takes to get that good, but it certainly can be done.

For all other players, however, the question is whether this is enough to ruin the game on its own. I’d say that it is not, especially for the first fourteen or fifteen chapters. In fact, some of my favorite missions were light on combat mechanics and heavier on exploration and the linearly non-linear key finding and gate unlocking that video games call “puzzle solving”. Combat was mostly there to ensure the player stayed alert and had some spicy encounters, but it wasn’t otherwise out to kill them in those levels. The boss of these maps were typically a sufficient enough challenge to close things out on, meaning the level beforehand could be a more calming experience in which resources were stacked or preserved.

Which is perhaps why the final chapters feel so frustrating in comparison. The game begins to increase not only the frequency of battles, but their difficulty as well. One challenging chamber will lead to another, almost as if the game is mocking you for your overconfidence. You thought you were doing well playing so far into the game? Let’s see how well you do when pulled down to the chamber below, forced to evade massive fiends while running through endless spawns of ghost piranhas. Running low on resources in the final two chapters? That’s a shame. Rather than provide a shop to purchase more healing items from, you’re just going to have to run through multiple boss fights in a row and hope you do well enough that you don’t have to fight them all again. Hope you’ve been careful with your save files as well! Don’t want you getting screwed, now, do we?

It’s where that “tough but fair” claim comes into play. Not only does the game auto-targeting betray you here and there, but the game’s director, Tomonobu Itagaki, seems to take delight in designing scenarios that would break less skilled players. You can hear him shouting through the game’s code to “git gud, scrub”. No doubt there are plenty of players that delight in this sort of mocking challenge, to overcome it and wear their victory with pride.

Yet I cannot help but feel as if the game is demanding too much, that the player needs to play by rules the game itself refuses to obey. Much like Sekiro enraged me through shoddy framerates on console and pivoting foes with blades magnetically locked to the player, Ninja Gaiden Sigma will make its foes invincible during all but a handful of frames. This is fine, right? Strike an enemy while they’re open before returning to a defensive position or stance. It feels pretty typically action-game, only the enemies are also inconsistent in regards to their openings. You can study an enemy’s attack patterns, determining that they are open after a set combo, only to discover when you attack that they can chain that into a brand new combo. No flinching, no acknowledgment they’ve been hit at all, just suddenly launching into a continued attack that you’d never seen before. Okay, so maybe they only do that when you choose to try and take advantage of that opening? Not at all. Sometimes you can strike safely from behind, other times they’ll follow up with an extended combo regardless of whether you struck at them or not.

The game offers no tell or information when it is going to be one or the other. You just need to take the risk and hope you can block or roll out of harm’s way should they continue their attack. Constant invincibility and inconsistent patterns of attack paired with a disobedient auto lock-on lead to a very frustrating game that feels not only unfair, but gleefully so.

This write-up largely feels overly negative, but that is the sort of mood its final chapters left me in. For three-quarters of my time I was eagerly playing from one mission to the next, having a blast despite the occasional quirks of the game. By its conclusion, however, the game began to feel spiteful and mocking, as if it was hazing me. For some, I can see the sense of accomplishment you’d develop from such an experience, as if you earned your right to see the credits roll.

For me, it has dissuaded me from ever coming back, even if only to see how much better I’ve gotten now that I’ve completed it.