I'm extremely glad IGN gave that brutal review, he just spoke about the games quality like any true fan of the series would. I was more then willing to give this game a chance but the more I hear about it , the less I like.
There was always a sense of worry behind whatever enthusiasm I mustered, kind of convincing myself it'll be okay. I wanted to give Hayashi a chance to shine on his own, every previous effort he and his team have been involved with has either been overseen by others (and likely faltered because of that) OR was simply re-purposing old assets. Ninja Gaiden Black was his training game, where itagaki showed him the ropes but largely still itagaki's product. He then moved onto dragon sword where he took bosses and stages from black and squeezed them into a portable experience, still done mostly under Itagaki's gaze. Some of the few elements added to dragon sword from hayashi include the new bosses which were some of the weaker parts of the game as well as momiji. After this we should all recall Hayashi's full directors cut of black , which came in the form of Sigma. During sigmas development Itagaki was busy overworking himself and his team to the point of burnout building both DOAXtreme 2 as well as Ninja Gaiden 2. As such, he was unavailable. It shows because the pacing of sigma is awkward, racheal levels that no one really asked for get tossed into the game and the player is forced to learn a character that plays almost opposite to Ryu just to see some boobs jiggle. Some portions of the graphics received an inconsistent makeover as well. Thing is though, he WAS stuck dealing with largely the same game for the 3rd time in a row. It was a good enough experience to begin with that none of his decisions made any real impact. The next game he and his team were tasked with occured during the itagaki fallout period. Ninja gaiden sigma 2 was actually something I was incredibly interested in- it looked to cleanup the sloppy boss fights of the standard NG2 while cleaning up the host of remaining bugs you'd stumble across on the xbox. It looked nicer for the most part as well. When it finally came out though, despite the cleaned up visuals and toned down difficulty , we were again forced to play as a bunch of bouncing breasts. I can't lie- I stopped playing the game at momiji's stage. I died about 30 times fighting the 2 tengu's at once at just gave up. The entire game up to that point felt like Ninja Gaiden 2 without the balls and a stage where you play as a jiggly girl ninja cemented that feeling. She was slow and weak and enemies I'd trounce all over with Ryu only 1 stage prior were now putting up far more fight then I was willing to give. Either way, it seemed like the games soul (which was flawless on xbox) was torn asunder. I just had more fun with a sloppy rushed game on xbox than I did with the polished but nuetered ps3 release. Hayashi's team was then tasked with making a metroid game and they had plenty of great ideas , most of which made it into the game, sadly nintendo had already mandated the story the game would follow and the overall tone of the game. The end result is a great game hampered rather heavily by poor decisions that are ALL nintendo's doing. I'd say Other M was the title that showed me, given some time to design their own game that "team ninja dog" could do well for themselves. This , ultimatly is the reason why I held out some hope for Ninja Gaiden 3. I figured, well all these changes are kind of dumb but maybe the game will still be fun to play ? It's really sounding like NG3 is exactly the sort of action game Itagaki would completely hate. An age old interview with him described dynasty warriors as little more then vegetable dicing and it's incredibly disheartening to see that in spite of Itagaki's mentorship , Hayashi has transformed this great franchise into a virtual slap chop.
I guess I will now move my hopes to DOA5, graphically it looks spectacular but it too seems to be adding more flash then actual substance just from the videos I've seen- cinematic smash moves to knock someone around the level, destructible stages? I won't know for sure until I play it but these all seem like ideas meant to hide a game that may end up being really shallow. (I'm a longtime doa fan too).
In short
