X3F vs. Tomonobu Itagaki: Ninja Gaiden II difficulty concerns

by Richard Mitchell { Jan 14th 2008 at 2:15PM }

Gamerscore Blog recently extended us the offer to ask Tomonobu Itagaki, the outspoken head of Team Ninja, one question about Ninja Gaiden II. We thought long and hard about the question, and this is what we came up with: some changes have been made to Ninja Gaiden II to make it more accessible to the gaming community at large, most notably the regenerating health system. What do you say to gamers who are worried that Ninja Gaiden II will be less challenging as a result? You may behold the detailed answer to that question (in video form) after the break.

Tags: ng2, ninja-gaiden-2, ninja-gaiden-ii, team-ninja, tecmo, tomonobu-itagaki, tomonobuitagaki

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Easo @ Jan 14th 2008 2:21PM

Thanks for the vid and thanks for using gametrailers and not game videos.

baby sea tuna @ Jan 14th 2008 2:22PM

Can't they just add a n00b difficulty setting like they did with Black? I didn't mind running around that with a pink ribbon on as long as I could finish the game without throwing my controller through the TV.

xenocidic @ Jan 14th 2008 2:35PM

Can someone summarize what is in the video for those of us who are at work?

bigC24 @ Jan 14th 2008 2:47PM

Basically:

They added regenerating health to the game for multiple reasons.

One is to make the game more appealing to those of us who got our ass kicked while playing the first.

Two is for immersion reasons. Itagaki felt that having to go into menus to use health potions pulled people out of the game too many times, and it hurt the games total immersion.

He does mention however that you can't regenerate ALL your health like in first person shooters. So for example if you take 50 points of damage you can only recover 25 points of health (This depends on difficulty settings)