Ninja Gaiden II - Chapter 2: The Castle of the Dragon (Path of the Master Ninja)

I actually went back and redid this after finishing Chapter 7, the first run was pretty sloppy.. You basically just have a massive handicap for Chapter 1 and 2 of Master Ninja. The middle Chapters are actually quite easy outside of a few Tests of Valor. It's like a difficulty roller coaster.. Don't waste all your items here. Chapter 2 is even more brutal, save them or farm essence if you want to do everything there. If you get grabbed by a Warlock your pretty much dead. This grab is less deadly once you get some health upgrades but it's almost your entire starting healthbar. Any Kamikaze grab will also likely instakill you. You can live through some of them later in the game but their still deadly, don't mess around near wounded enemies. Don't land right in front of them with on landing UTs, you'll need to find actual openings on Master Ninja. Most of the enemies in the game can and will punish you in the brief frames your vulnerable. Incendiary Shuriken Ninjas love to interrupt UTs regardless of the range. Jumping off their heads is a good way to set it up. I planned my route a lot better this time around. I suggest not taking the blue orb chest at the start until you reach the door by the herb if you want to save healing items. You don't really have many options with a Level 1 Dragon Sword and ground attacks are generally a bad idea if there's any Incendiary Shuriken Ninjas around. You may also want to save the Red Essence chest if you want to get through the archers. You can usually bait the first group you encounter to run towards you, you can despawn the later ones by running back near the save point. Most ground attacks at this point really don't work when there's Incendiary Shuriken Ninjas around. Even getting pinned will interrupt your attacks, there's also annoying ones that just random explode in the air around you. These can actually chip away at you until your dead, you don't even need to take a clean hit on Master Ninja to end up dead. Warlocks have an extremely annoying instant grab that deals massive damage, but they teleport around so much that you really need to get in their face to land UTs. They also have a deadly kamikaze grab which they can use out of teleports.. These can also be fatal if you go for an Izuna Drop with the Lunar Staff and miss. A lot of enemies have an annoying habit of using instant counterattacks on landing or antiairs anytime you do a normal jump. Never just run around or do normal jumps against IS Ninjas. If there's multiple delimbed enemies just spam Y. There's invisible walls blocking the corners in the boss fight and the claw ninjas random fall out of Izuna Drops. It's actually just a complete nightmare on Master Ninja with your current health bar, even if your healed up you still get killed from full health by Resatsus unavoidable grab. The fight is pure luck. You can be frame trapped and comboed to death, the camera doesn't work, the game randomly changes targets during combos making it nearly impossible to land Izuna Drops with the Lunar Staff which is really your only option. There's a pretty good chance you'll be instantly sniped out of onlanding UT by IS Ninjas. Rasetsu actually ended up clearing up most of them with his projectile which gave me a great opening. They don't drop Essence if he kills them. I'm not sure if they stop spawning here, I've killed a lot of them on NG+ but it doesn't seem like it.. I'm really happy with this run overall. I installed the game which noticeably improved the framerate and loading times but I've been getting a few freezes already. I've had horrible luck with freezes and a few corrupted Save Files already. I'm keeping a few Save Files and saving a bit more regularly so this shouldn't be an issue this time. I'm actually finishing Master Ninja this time.