idk why DmC was and remains such a punching bag when Ninja Gaiden got it much worse, multiple times in a row:
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Nintendo, a publisher that typically afford good studios the environment to make great games and wrings good games out of mediocre studios, roped in Team Ninja to make a legendarily bad 3D Metroid: it's not bad because of Team Ninja, mind, but...
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Team Ninja takes the "lessons" learned from Nintendo and completely torpedoes Ninja Gaiden 3 with 'em: drastically smaller and shallower toolkit, one-note enemies and bosses, no real resource management/progression to speak of, QTEs for days and tons of forced, one-note rumination from Ryu Hayabusa on the nature of murder that makes no sense and goes nowhere
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Team Ninja lets Keiji Inafune and Spark Unlimited (a combo fresh off ruining Lost Planet) give the western-dev treatment to Ninja Gaiden via Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z, and say what you want about DmC's combat but it at least exists in the same ballpark as classic DMC; Yaiba's completely braindead
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a decade later, and fresh off a redemption arc of sorts thanks to Nioh, Team Ninja finally returns to Ninja Gaiden with some half-arsed ports of the worst possible versions of the 3D trilogy
- People fuckin love Capcom y'know? Hell this was still SF4 Arcade Edition era. The days of dorks wearing terrible Megaman sprite edit perlers around their necks at conventions.
- While DmC pre-Definitive had some terrible game design decisions (yet another dev copying Ikaruga without studying what that game actually says and does), its crimes are more about aesthetic, tone and writing. Stuff that any ol' mug can see. Explaining why the NG3 dinosaur is a worse experience than Black's 4398 rocket launcher assholes is much harder to parse at a quick glance.
- Repeating 2) here but it's such an openly, disgustingly misogynistic game in a way that sticks out even compared to AAA Western games of its time or the lens of objectification Team Ninja's games view their women through. At least Tina Armstrong can hit a fuckin Shining Wizard.
- Nobody at Team Ninja was as openly contemptuous in interviews, promotional material and GDQ keynotes the way Tameem Antoninades was. Dude just gleefully spruiked how actually a popular and financilly successful series was bad, is bad and always will be bad because it's ｔｏｏ ｇａｙ.
Anyway it is truly awful that you can't just play Ninja Gaiden Black on the Switch etc. More people deserve to experience that 3D Ninja Danmaku Action Hell.