It's finally time for another dual review, hopefully bringing something a a tiny bit fresh to the world of online reviews. This time it's for two Shinobi games, both of which seem pretty well known in online circles, or at least mentioned now and then. My first impression of each of these games when I first played them years ago has changed after beating both, read on to find out why.
Let's start with Shadow Dancer, as it's simpler, shorter, and the one I tried first. The game is made up of only a few levels/locations broken up into very short (even for the time) broken up into sub-levels for which I've forgotten the in-game term. The first two sub levels of each location are in the basic "get to the end" format, but you have to rescue kidnapped innocents (?) as you go. I really appreciate that in this game the hostages can't be accidentally killed, which would have created a lot of frustrating pressure otherwise. There are about 6 different types of enemies that are scattered throughout the levels with easy-to-learn patterns that each require a certain strategy. The player can take them down with shurikens when attacking from a distance, or with a sword when attacking close-by. A unique mechanic that immediately stands out is that the player can "charge" an attack where the white dog (wolf?) runs and attacks an enemy. Instead of damaging enemies, the dog keeps them busy while exposing them to shuriken attacks, which is very useful if not necessary for the enemies with ranged attacks.
Overall, gameplay is pretty good and well designed. There are just two issues I have with it. The first, is that the player can only take *one* hit before dying, which is brutal and over-the-top. In the past I could never get past the first level, and gave up on this game thanks to the brutal difficulty. Thankfully there is now a patch which makes it so that you can take 3 hits before dying, which makes the game a lot more reasonable, and combined with the pretty generous amount of lives, I think the game is probably not too hard to finish without abusing save states. Which I still did. With or without the patch, the damage system does have a small leniency in that you don't always take damage from contact with an enemy, only from their attacks/weapons. Unfortunately though, there is a little problem in some of the levels where you cannot attack enemies above or below you until you have jumped to stand on a platform of the same height, despite always being vulnerable to attacks from enemies at any height. That's a bit unfair. What's also a bit unfair is that there doesn't seem to be any period of invincibility after taking damage or even a flinch/damage animation - so even with 3-hits before death, enemies can quite often overwhelm and kill the player in the blink of an eye.
Now for Shinobi III. On the surface, it's a lot fancier. There are many more moves/mechanics available to the player, including wall-jumping, hanging from ceilings, double jumping, and jump kicking. The graphics in both games are nice but Shinobi 3 is really gorgeous and features some pretty impressive sprites, animations, and graphical effects. It's also got much more of an action feel to it, with one level starting on horseback and another with a surfing section. It can be really fun and the cool factor is off the charts. Compared to Shadow Dancer, the player has a lot more hitpoints to help them get through the game, and I used to think it was the easier of the two. Unfortunately, after actually beating both, I think Shinobi III is the more difficult of the two and doesn't always play fair. It's manageable for most of the early levels - just standard "old game" difficulty. Enemies spawn in at close range (as they do in Shadow Dancer), item crates reveal timed bombs, and platforming becomes a bit tricky. I'm going to go into some specific examples in detail, which should hopefully paint a good picture of the difficulty.
First of all, the game doesn't play by the rules it appears to set - the bombs that sometimes appear from inside crates are a great example. The crates would otherwise contain an item to restore health or ammunition, but sometimes they contain a bomb with a small 5 second countdown. That's fine, except that if you stand close the counter skips straight to 0 and the bomb goes off, which is just rude. Then there are certain enemy attacks which appear to be something you could dodge by ducking, but will take you out anyway. In fact, ducking does not work with most of the enemy attacks. Combine that with enemies that can shoot off-screen and it can become very frustrating trying not to take damage. Especially during a segment where you (and enemies) are jumping around on crates that contain the aforementioned bombs. Shadow dancer was a lot more consistent and a lot simpler to understand, so it felt more fair and more like failure was my fault rather than because of the design of the game.
Furthermore, jumping and using all those additional fancy movement mechanics become a major sore point late in the game. There's a level where you must wall-jump, climb, and double jump to avoid lightning on walls and the tops of pillars. It was almost cool but the precision required is pretty hard and uncomfortable. If you jump just a little bit too high, you get zapped, if you fail to wall-jump from exactly the right height and direction, you get zapped too. If you miss a jump you *sometimes* fall into a void below. It doesn't help that there's a couple of places where lightning or spikes wait for you at the top of a wall-jumping segment, which you cannot see until you have reached sufficient height for the camera to pan up, by which point it is already too late unless you already knew what to expect. Towards the end of the game there is a level that combines the hazard lined walls with timed traps and projectiles to add to the frustration. Actually, I might forgive this if the double jumping and climbing worked a bit better. Climbing is awkward because you must jump while holding 'up' to actually grab onto ceilings etc., even if you are dropping onto them. If you press down you will let go and fall, which is quite easy to do by accident but that may be a problem with the controller I used rather than the game. Double jumping on the other hand, is awkward because of the precise but unclear timing. It only works during a minute window before the peak of the jump and only while pressing left/right. It's hard to get this precise timing correct successively and while under pressure and unfortunately double jumping is REQUIRED for most of the platforming sections. I will say that the platforming, despite frustration, is a lot more interesting than in Shadow Dancer where there's not really any challenge besides avoiding dropping into the firing line. Maybe if the double jump was removed and the player could crawl/climb up and down walls to reposition before jumping off, then the platforming in Shinobi III wouldn't be so painful.
Overall I prefer Shadow Dancer. It's a bit too short and the levels could have had more complexity to them, but it feels a lot more well tested than Shinobi III which is stylish but messy. I recommend trying both, but expect a headache to follow Shinobi III. (I was also going to review Strider but gave up in disgust...to be revisited another time).