A fine game in it's own right, around the 7.5-8.0 range, but the changes are not to many fans liking and thus is getting ridiculously bad press. I've seen angry fanbases before, but this is one of angriest I've seen in a long time. A lot of these from people who never even bothered to play the game itself so it's even worse to try to reason with these people.
For me the main story is alright. I started on Hard mode right away (and got damn is it hard) and fights can begin to get bit repetitive because they just drag on forever, but the heavy action sequences like the exploding monorail and chopper battle in Day 2 and the T-Rex battle in Day 3 are really fun experiences. I can see how they simplified things with the bone to steel moves and what not, but I'm essentially playing the game the same way I did NGS1 and NGS2 with heavy reliance on Izuna drops and finishing guys off with Obliteration Techniques and Ultimate Techniques.
People are all upset that your life refills after you clear an area and that you just have one ninpo, but it all fits within the context of the game. The fights themselves are harder now because of the life refilling aspect and your ninpo charges as you do more damage to guys in a fight. Then you unleash it and it'll kill all enemies currently on screen and refill your life there so trick is to survive these fights until you're near death then unleash your ninpo that you've been storing to get back to full health and be ready for the next wave.
The one legitimate gripe I see is that there's only the Dragon Sword. The rest of the weapons are coming later via DLC and will be free (FREE DLC IMAGINE THAT) with the claws and scythe coming next month.
Where the game truly SHINEs though is the online aspects of the game. You start out with a nameless ninja who's level 1 and you level him up by playing the various online modes and as you level up he learns more abilities and techniques and new colors and accessories to put on your ninja. I think the max level is 50. My guy is currently level 26.
Ninja Trials return pretty much exactly as they were in NGS1 and NGS2. There's 10 of them to do per difficulty (maybe 5 on the later difficulties I don't know yet) and for me this is the best part of the game. You can choose to do them solo or team up with a partner online and just try to beat the Trial and earn karma points to get on the leaderboard.
Then finally there's the Clan Battles which feature 4 on 4 team deathmatches. Team with the most kills in 5 mintues wins. You're given a contract at the beginning of the match which usually entails killing someone in certain way (bone to steel, bow and arrow, ghost kill, falcon dive, etc) so everyone in match is always trying something different as completing these contracts earns you more points to level up faster. Once in awhile a special contract will pop up that'll completely change the nature of the game. Examples include betraying a member on your team by killing them and joining up with your opponent or another being the clan aspect is turned off and it turns into a huge free for all.
The Clan Battles have been what I've been playing the most and I just can't get enough of it o_o
tl;dr this game is solid. Yeah it doesn't quite live up to the past 2 games as far as the main story is concerned, but the online is awesome and I wish more people I knew were playing with me
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