We know your mind. You’ve already turned over the page, taken a sneaky wee shufti at the score, been ever-so-slightly disappointed and are now glaring incredulously at this paragraph, screaming “Why? Damn your eyes! Why?” Well, before we tear the game to tiny pieces with wholly justified criticism, let’s talk about all the good stuff, which to be fair there is still plenty of.

It all begins with a kidnapping. A girl with Team Ninja’s patented mega-breasts sits, legs folded, in Muramasa’s shop, asking probing questions about Ryu’s whereabouts. Now, it wouldn’t be Ninja Gaiden if she wasn’t immediately stolen away by a large group of demonic ninjas hell-bent on world domination, would it? And guess what? Ryu, unfortunately, gets there just a moment too late, and lo, the game begins. We’re taking the time to tell you this for two reasons. Firstly, as per usual the plot doesn’t really make any sense and the parts that do are evidently now missing from a derelict arcade cabinet circa 1985. But secondly, that it’s exactly what we expected, and in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter all that much. This is a combat game. You can bandy words like action and adventure around the place until the cows go blue in the face, but it won’t make a bit of difference. There may be doors, there may be keys to find that open them, secreted in nearby and rather obvious chests. But at the nuts and bolts level, neither the plot nor the arbitrary questing change the fact that every open area is a fighting station and the corridors merely the train that paces your whistle-stop tour of death.

Punctuating your journey, you’ll find a truly mesmerising array of blades to play with, each with its own style of combat. You can switch between them by pressing up on the D-pad, then selecting your chosen boss-twatter from a horizontally scrolling menu. The same is true of your projectile weapons and of course, your Ninpo (‘that’s magic’ to you, me and Paul Daniels). Sadly, active weapon switching isn’t viable and the reason is instantly obvious. Switching between weapons sets in motion a small but irritating piece of loading, which can only mean one thing: the animations for a particular weapon can only fit in memory one at a time. It’s not a huge bugbear, since the switch takes place while the game automatically pauses itself. So you do kind of have the ability to switch weapons as you please in a fight, but it does encroach on the actual enjoyment.

Ninpo, as in previous Gaidens, is a pretty handy way of getting out of a situation involving overwhelming numbers of enemies, since it not only damages those around you but also puts you in a kind of temporary invincible mode in which you cannot be hurt. We uncovered four effects on our playthrough, but despite all sporting snazzy names and associating themselves with different elements, they pretty much all did the same thing. Ranged weapons are unchanged from previous outings; you’ll begin with an infinite supply of ineffectual shuriken and later you’ll acquire the bow and the ability to find and purchase incendiary shuriken, which penetrate the skin shortly before exploding your target into a steaming pile of quivering flesh. Later these also serve as a particularly pointless way to open walls with huge cracks running through them, which, if it’s still not obvious, also sport a ‘throw shuriken at this, dumbass’ message that’ll appear when you walk near it.

We’re not going to list all of the weapons here because to be frank, lists don’t make particularly interesting reading. So for the greater enjoyment of the public at large and the relief of ADD sufferers… here’s the highlights. Tiger Fang and Dragon Claw, the two duel-wielded katanas, make a reappearance and are just as enjoyable to strut about with as they were in Sigma on the PS3 (which you should check out). The Tekko-gaki or ninja claws are brandished on both hands and feet and constituted our firm favourite during the ‘middle bit’ (much more on the ‘middle bit’ later). And finally, and perhaps far too late arriving as they do around mission ten, is the Vigoorian Flail – essentially nunchuks with spiky bits. And while we’re in the habit of being entirely fair, all of the weapons, bar none, are pretty entertaining to use.

Itagaki-san and his team have made a solid attempt to bring a wider audience to the delights of Gaiden-land by making the standard difficulty level far, far easier than its punishingly satisfying forefather. He’s accomplished this by mapping some of the trickier combos either to repeated taps of the same button or a simple charge move activated by holding down Y for various lengths of time. As ever, timing is vital and simply attempting to mash your way from start to finish amounts to an almost fetishistic love for the ‘You’re dead’ screen. The problem, though, is that it really doesn’t take very long to get to grips with, after which you’ll be literally breezing through the missions with very little cause for concern. It simply doesn’t feel challenging enough. But that’s why games such as this have multiple difficulty levels, right? After dutifully switching to the harder of the two initially available, things started to improve. By the time we’d reached the end of the second mission, though, things had become so torturously hard that progressing from one checkpoint to the next had become as good as impossible. There are gamers in the office that have completed the previous Gaiden on the hardest difficulty – no easy feat we’ll tell you – and many couldn’t progress this time around. This constitutes our first major bugbear; there are only two difficulty settings, one so easy as to feel redundant and the other requiring a lifetime of dedication to gain an inch of ground in the level. There is no happy medium.

And the nagging feelings of misery don’t end there. While the game starts out with enough polish and pace to embarrass a fast bowler, things go very swiftly downhill. The eight or so missions that make up the middle section of the game just seem unloved, almost as if only the first and third acts had enough time in development. Sparsely textured floors, walls, ceilings, caves and jungles loom drably around every single corner, with each minimalist arena providing yet another set of identikit enemies to battle against. And while the fighting is excellent fun it does eventually start to grate with lack of an adequate venue for your dastardly slaughter.

As you progress there are other issues too. Invisible walls are everywhere as well as irritating design flaws such as liberally scattering dozens of identical doors throughout the environment with only one that opens, the rest behaving in very much the same way as your common or garden wall. Furthermore, there are a couple of levels in which you’ll have to guide Ryu to the top of a tower or the inside of a mountain, culminating in a series of very hairy jumps. Failing any of these will see you falling down almost to the very start again. To be honest, we’d rather have just died. The upshot of this is that by mission seven or so you’re really going to be feeling the grind – a sensation that isn’t helped any by the story not really providing adequate motivation to see what lies around the next corner. And then there are the bosses. Early bosses point to a satisfying challenge ahead, but assuming so would be a mistake – the difficulty of end-of-level guardians ranges from cruelly frustrating to dead in ten seconds or less.

Ryu, as before, can run on water and we’re guessing that because of this Team Ninja has decided to make water sections pretty common. It’s a shame then that combat both over and under it is so frustrating. As is the norm for all but a select few third-person action games, diving and swimming are woefully fiddly and counter-intuitive. In order for Ryu to run on water, you’ll need to repeatedly tap the A-button or he’ll sink; shame then that you’ll need to be launching combos using X and Y at the same time then – it seems someone has forgotten how many thumbs belong to your average gamer.

Despite its many flaws, though, there is no denying Gaiden’s cool. With its outrageously bloody combat, featuring all manner of entertaining dismemberment, its punishing pace and truly kick-ass music, Ninja Gaiden II somehow remains entertaining despite its many flaws. It’s just not the game we were all waiting for.

Dan Howdle