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