Shinobi

When I couldn't find my old Shinobi (PS2), because I felt I lost it and I had to order a new one! I'm glad I did and it's been one year since I played and enjoyed it! In fact, it was an awesome video game to play! But the only two complaints I have are how hard the Last Boss is to defeat in the Final Stage of this game and that the extra stage I unlocked is hard to clear and get an "A" Rank on! Anyways, I haven't tried the game yet! I will eventually!

game is in very good condition works perfectly with no issues ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

I forgot why I put this down years ago. It’s so boring. Waste of time

This game is good. The action, the boss battles, the level layout, so epic and so imaginative. I've heard a few complaints that this game doesn't do justice to the original Shinobi game, and I haven't played it. But that aside, this game is incredible. The action and adventure of a Playstation 2 game, and the classic feeling of going through stages/levels. The more combos you get, the stronger your sword becomes. The only complaint I could find in this game, is beware of the water level. That's probably one of the hardest challenges in PS2 videogames I've ever encountered. Touch the water, you die. What can you stand on? Buildings and walls, but the water keeps rising and falling and the shadows cover almost everything. Even so, this game is an instant classic. Give it a try.

I love this game! The action, the style, the difficulty and the all the gore!This game is pretty simple but it is very difficult. There is no complex combo system or items to manage and use but there are many bottomless pits, enemies that do massive damage and just failing to perform certain attacks with pinpoint timing may cause you to fall to your death. This game will piss you off but if you have the patience to develop the reflexes necessary to beat this game then you will be amazed. I love the cutscenes, the music, the graphics and the simple gameplay.You have to try to game.

With its neon-lit visuals that are spare yet beautiful, its atmospheric sound and music, and above all, its innovative and well-implemented game play mechanics, Shinobi is sure to be a winner with any true connoisseur of Action/Adventure games. A word of warning, however: Shinobi is not in the least for casual gamers, i.e., those who are unwilling to be trounced time and time again before being able to successfully complete a level or defeat a boss, and/or those disdainful of gameplay mechanics or control schemes that are in any way a departure from the norm.The player-character, Hostuma, controls very responsively and has a host of groovy ninja moves at his disposal, including wall running, double jumping and a very neat dashing ability which can be executed consecutively on the ground, once in the air under normal circumstances, and an additional time immediately after striking an opponent while airborne. This means that if you have a swarm of aerial opponents about you, you can leap to one, strike him down, dash to the next, and repeat until the entire group is decimated, all without touching the ground. Hostuma's dash also has another, special application, aside from the fairly standard uses of evading attacks, reaching and attacking enemies quickly, and traveling longer distances in the air by combining it with double jumping： every time Hotsuma dashes, he leaves behind an after-image. If you dash away from an enemy and leave them standing before an after-image, most of the time the foe will attack it instead of pursuing you, giving you a window of opportunity to strike. This can be a life-saver at times (particularly on Level 3-A, in which you are set upon by hordes of highly aggressive, sword-wielding zombie dogs).Even with just the mechanics described above, Shinobi would have had very good gameplay. What really makes the gameplay great, however, is the Tate (pronounced tah-tay) system, the proper employment of which allows you to cut down a large group of opponents quickly with a minimum of hassle. Every time you defeat a foe who is by his lonesome, he falls immediately. However, if you are fighting two or more foes, each foe leading up until the last will be frozen in place a short time after defeat and your sword will become just a little stronger, making it much easier to "freeze" successive foes. After the last opponent falls, or when you wait too long before defeating the next -- at which time the frozen enemies fall regardless of those remaining -- your sword returns to its original power, so it is in your best interest to hit your enemies as quickly as possible. Killing three or fewer enemies in rapid succession, however, while advantageous because of your sword's power accretion, is not a true Tate; that comes into play when you quickly defeat four or more opponents, whereupon you are rewarded with a stylish cutscene in which Hostuma performs a sword flourish and all enemies fall together. It is especially advantageous to attack all the weakest enemies of a group first, since that makes it easier to down the real toughies, direct, drawn-out confrontations with whom might result in significant damage to yourself. In fact, some tougher foes take much more trouble and time to defeat if you don't Tate them. This goes doubly true for the bosses; it is far more satisfying, but far quicker to defeat a boss by quickly freezing the various demons he/she has conjured until you have amassed enough power to Tate the big baddy along with them. Nothing feels more awesome than vanquishing a big, bad boss beast with one sword stroke! A final word about Tate: Hotsuma's demon sword, Akujiki, requires constant nourishment in the form of dark energy, which you gain automatically upon defeating a foe. Wait too long between feedings, and the sword will begin to drain your life. A Tate however, will usually fill up your sword's hunger gauge, and if you make it a habit to Tate whenever possible, Akujiki will almost never go vampiric on you.Shinobi's graphics are quite simple when compared to most games of its generation, but they are beautiful in that simplicity. There is no gross over-texturing, as evident in disappointments like Halo 2 and The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, as each object is textured just enough to give it personality. Also, neither the character models nor environments are polygon-rich, but the hard angles resulting from the relatively low-poly count never look ugly, having been placed so that they fall into line with the game's art design. Due to this graphical economy, slow-down is almost completely absent. The dark, brooding colors highlighted by bright neons, along with the game's unusual character and enemy designs, lend the game an 80's anime aesthetic. Since all of the game's character models have so much personality in-game, it is easy to imagine that they lost little in the translation from design to implementation; the enemies, and most especially the boss characters, are all very interesting to look at and well-animated, and Hotsuma himself, with his flowing red scarf, four-eyed helmet and confident demeanor, will surely go down in video game history as one of the most stylish player-characters ever.Overall, Shinobi's sound is exceptional. The grunts, slashes, clashes, explosions and the like are all pretty standard, though never inadequate. The chorus of death cries let out by a flock of enemies during Tate, however, is really titilating! The Japanese voice acting, though there is little of it, is excellent, and really lends itself to atmosphere-building. Kudos to Sega's U.S. branch for not excluding the Japanese track and forcing us to listen to the kind of lack-luster English dub-drivel that has marred many a game imported from Japan! By far the best part of Shinobi's sound is its wonderful techno music. It has a fast enough pace to perfectly compliment the quickly-moving gameplay, yet is so thoughtfully composed that at the same time it projects an atmosphere of complex mysticism.If you are up to the challenge, I cannot recommend this game enough. I am at a loss to understand why so many supposedly hardcore gamers, even editors at some major video game review mags, regard it shabbily. I can only surmise that they are indeed not hardcore gamers, that they are only willing to scarf down one deriviative FPS or cookie-cutter sports title after another, completely unknowing of what a great Action/Adventure truly is. What happened to you, Sega? Put Sonic on ice for a while and get back to making games like this!

From a long time Shinobi fan, I am very dissapointed in this game. Its a pure action game with some cut scenes to highlight the hacking and slashing you will do throughout. Combos are intresting way to rack up points and power up your sword, but when you fight so many enemies at once and they block all frontal attacks, its gets very annoying. You end up jumping/dashing around everyone to try and get behind them but then the camera only does an adaquate job of keeping up and you lose half the enemies behind it - meaning attacks from the side you can't see.Graphics are pretty nice for the PS2, but its definetly showing its age. The textures do get pretty bland and unimaginative though. Running through a city with pale purple neon lights and almost non-existant signs or moonlight or interactable objects besides a few boxes and vending machines is boring.Sound is average, no tunes stick out in my head and I usually forget its even playing after ahwile.Story is medicore at best - not really even worth mentioning.Controls get the job done.Even though I own all the other shinobi games on home consoles, I would have to recommend this as a rental. Go pick up one of the genesis titles for some better platforming action.

I remember playing the very first shinobi in arcades way back in the 80's. Seeing Shinobi return with modern-day gaming technology was a big surprise.This game is your typical run of the mill action hack 'n slash game. Its not really boring...its alot of fun actually. Most hack 'n slash games get boring rather quickly but Shinobi manages to maintain exciting gameplay throughout most of the game. The soundtrack is sort of Japanese-techno with a quick beat. It sounds somewhat inspired by Japanese Animation. The graphics are pretty decent (though noticeably full of PS2 'Jaggies') and the flowing sash that trails behind your character is very, very cool.Unfortunately I have noticed that many people complain about the difficulty. Frankly I must agree. The game can be extremely frustrating at times. I found myself spending more time turning it off and walking away from it than sitting through and playing it. When you die in the game you must restart from the beginning of the level, no matter how much progress you made, which is, needless to say, very frustrating. The game is a good challenge but it definitely would've benefit from mid-level save checkpoints.'Tate' kills are a nice little reward for quick multi-kills. They occur when you killed a group of 4 or more enemies in quick succession. When you kill all of them, you are treated to a brief in-game cutscene with Shinobi striking a pose, sometimes uttering a line, and then watching your enemies fall to bloody pieces around you (again, looking as if inspired by Japanese Animation.) These kills help to fuel your power and will increase the power of your weapon. However, in later levels Tate kills will become very necessary for you to survive, since your sword begins to consume your life. If you go more than 1 minute without killing an enemy, you will die. this becomes very frustrating, since it leaves no time for you to look for secrets. Tate kills also become nearly impossible in later levels since the enemies become stronger. Some cannot even be killed...many enemies requires lots of dashing and jumping to even do damage to their invincible blocking. These incredibly annoying enemies often take so long to beat that the other enemies die before the Tate can be completed.Fighting enemies can sometimes become frustrating. The targeting system is pretty strange...instead of targeting the nearest enemy, it will target the enemy that is often farthest from you or is most directly in your line of view, often resulting in the closer enemies around you getting in some cheap hits. Sometimes in the middle of a combo, Shinobi will freeze in a pose, allowing other enemies to get a good 2 or 3 hits on you. Otherwise, the fighting just takes a little bit of skill and some getting used to, but you will enjoy it.The commercial was right: Shinobi's back. And in a big way. This is definitely a good game but you must have a high threshold of patience. This game can become very frustrating, resulting in cheap deaths(especially in levels that are just packed with pitfalls) and unbeleivably difficult boss fights lead to many fights being done and over and over. Alot of the levels are very bland and very repetetive as well. But the game has a good story, told through some pretty good cinematics. The American voices aren't that bad either. Usually translated voices are pretty awful, but Shinobi has some decent talent (although the rogue ninja woman has an irritating 'school-girl' type of voice).If you were a fan of Shinobi in the past, or are looking for a fast-paced action game with a decent story, pick it up. However if you are a casual gamer that isn't looking for much of a challenge, stay away. The difficulty of the game will probably get to you rather quickly.

What has brought the once mighty Sega so low, that they would release this piece of.... gear, and try to pass it off as a game? Shinobi, perhaps the coolest ninja series ever, is forever annihilated by this poor excuse for a... whatever it is. Hotsuma's design is actually fairly decent as far as movement and effects. That's where the buck stops though. The levels were drawn by a near-sighted fourth grader who was able to eek out some rectangles. Seriously, if you blink, you get instantly lost in levels where every wall looks the same( grey, drab, flat), and you can't tell whether you are going forward or backward. As for the enemies, there is neither an attempt at or a pretense of any AI. Instead, as the levels progress, the enemies just get more and more hitpoints, and "invincible angles" (what a stupid feature) so that by sheer probability you are bound to mess up and die the next time you blink or sneeze. If you like aneurism induced comas, go ahead and buy this one. For all others, this is a pass.