i'm working my way through hard mode now... I got to chapter 4, decided i was using too many potions and restarted.... so i'm playing through again and trying to conserve ... generaly i use a lot of potions when i play this game, and the price increase was causing me problems.
On this second attempt at hard, i just beat chapter 2. i had trouble with the boss there because i decided i was going to beat it without using ANY potions. Unfortunatley when i made it to him i had 1/3 health because of the horse fight in the circle. So i had to fight the boss about 12 or 13 times, running around trying to kill a few of the fat, flying, magic ninjas to replenish my health before i got raped in a corner. I guess i could have loaded the save point at the river and fought the horses in the circle again, but i had already done that 3 times and still ended up using 1 potion there. So anyway, the biggest difficulty of hard mode for me so far is the price increase, because i'm a potion whore and i hate farming essence..
I should probably read up and learn some of the cheap essence farming tricks that people use... i've always avoided those in the past because i figured they would sort of mess up the ballance of the game.
One thing i've decided, i'm not gonna be shy about using ninpo on these higher difficulty's.. The fire wheels cause the chapter 2 boss to die very quickly if you use them tacticly and i'm sure the stronger spells will be handy against some of these minions on the later bosses.
Mrbob said:
he classic NES games are on the disc. You have to unlock them again the same way it is done in Ninja Gaiden.
i've visited a bunch of boards and nobody has found a way to unlock them. apparently the strategy guide for this game is all screwed up and all sorts of information released to the press is innacurate... like the order of item unlocking and things like that. On normal mode, finding all scarabs unlocks arcade ninja gaiden. not sure what happens on hard mode but plenty of people have beaten it now and i haven't heard of anybody unlocking any of the nes games.
Maybe you have to finish with master ninja on every chapter now? i remember that was one way to unlock some of them in the original game.
Brandon F said:
Game is still great(still give the slight nod to DMC3), but there really isn't that much in here that separates it from the original+Hurricane packs. Maybe the missions will change my mind.
missions are AWESOME. i started playing with them this morning and i could not stop. it's like playing a racing game, doing time trial... you just have to better your score. They also force you to use all your weapons and come up with new kinds of tactics. Mission mode is not only fun, but it's a great way to practice playing the game and it is an easy way to jump in and get a few minutes of killer action. although i am dissapointed that the online scoring for mission mode doesn't rank you for each mission, but only takes into account your cumulative score for all missions. it would have been fun trying to master a single mission and measure your score on it against the best players.