Finishing up Gessen and I feel myself enjoying this less than Burst, which comes as a surprise. The gameplay here, while overall refined, just falls flat due to the camera and inbalanced challenge. The camera is just too close to your character, even though I know that it's probably intentional, but for gameplay purposes it's pretty uncomfortable. Zooming out a bit more would really improve it. And Burst, while also prone to cheesing and some rather unfair moments, was still way better balanced than Shinovi Versus. Shinovi Versus is easy, way too easy. And even if the player himself makes it challenging with hard mode (while not gaining anything in return, great design choice) it's not much different, except when the enemy AI is cheating and breaking combos left and right with no rhyme or reason.
It's also rather unimpressive that Shinovi Versus is even more repetitive than Burst, with less environmental changes or differing mission objectives. And most of those missions run shorter than the loading times to get to and from. Burst was a pretty mediocre game, but it had that diamond-in-the-rough feeling to it as well as much charme. I thought that if Shinovi Versus improved on it some more, it would make a pretty neat Beat em 'up, but it somehow got worse in many aspects of the game and I can't excuse that in a sequel, even if it's an indirect one. Will probably finish it regardless, since I want to see the Crimson Squad story, but I am feeling a bit let down right now and will probably hold off on DLC and Dekamori, as well as being a bit more wary before jumping into SK2.
