Ryu forgets about fighting other ninjas and instead fights robots or something.
http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/reviewmini/36158/ninja-gaiden-iii-the-ancient-ship-of-doom-review-mini
Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom is often seen as the black sheep of the NES Ninja Gaiden trilogy. The first two titles were landmark games delivering hard-as-nails action with the best storytelling on the NES, which relied heavily on ninja tales with demonic undertones. The final game of the trilogy added some new gameplay wrinkles, restructured difficulty, and a shift to more science-fiction based lore.
The Ancient Ship of Doom eschews series villain Jacquio and focuses on “bio-noids,” other sci-fi chicanery involving doppelgangers and robots. While the presentation is still nice, the story itself is mostly nonsense. The first two games, while still basic, had a consistent theme and focus, whereas Ancient Ship of Doom just seems to sidle from weird plot twist to plot twist.
The gameplay more than makes up for it, though. It doesn’t quite reach the highs of Ninja Gaiden 2, but it still has some fun level design with neat set pieces. Early stages have you outrunning lava and hanging from pipes and vines to move around. Along with the shurikens and flame shields accrued through Ninja Arts, the sword can be upgraded, increasing its range. The difficulty level still remains quite high, though only five continues are allowed (as opposed to the unlimited continues in earlier games), making the 3DS Virtual Console-added save states the only saving grace.
It’s still the weakest of the three NES Ninja Gaiden games, but The Ancient Ship of Doom is still well-designed and entertaining. As long you don’t try to make sense of the game’s fractured canon and make ample use of save states, Ninja Gaiden III is totally worth picking up on 3DS Virtual Console.
Topic: Ninja Gaiden III: The Ancient Ship of Doom Review Mini (Read 1473 times)
