NG2 is really a game that didn't come together with all its parts. It's an enjoyable mess if you play on Acolyte/Warrior, but if you play on Mentor/Master Ninja I'd argue it just becomes a bad game that I wish I had never bothered suffering through all those years ago. It really pales in comparison to its predecessor.
Feels like there's so much stuff working against each other in the game. You've got all these fast weapons and combo variety but as you turn up the difficulty, more and more of the moves become worthless and you have to spam the same few moves that dismember enemies quickly so you can OT them as quickly as possible. Where NGB makes you utilise more of your weapon's depth on higher difficulties, NG2 forces you to use less. Also nearly every fight becomes exactly the same in NG2 MN because the design of most of the game's encounters was to have a bunch of dudes on the outskirts of a fight constantly spamming projectiles. Nearly every fight was basically spamming the dodge and wind run for the i frames and then spamming the same 2-3 attacks in between.
That's basically the entirety of MN, spamming Talon ->YYYY combo for the common dismember and insta OT, spamming the sword's Flying Swallow -> Izuna Drop combo, or spamming Scythe aerial attacks, all intersperesed with windrun dodges. Meanwhile NGB is punishing you for that sort of spam.
Was also really buggy, I remember being particularly miffed fighting the stupid subway worm thing on MN and when I finally was about to kill it it just left the arena never to return. Also quite a few cheaty enemy moves where the game would have a telegraph animation for an attack but it would consider the attack having hit you before that animation concluded. The undead ninjas were pretty bad for it, and the soldier-like ninjas in the forest liked to do it as well, they'd jump over your head THEN kick you to the floor, but the game considered you "hit" when they jump over your head IIRC. They were always the unblockable attacks too.
Also the bosses sucked.
Honestly, NGB has some pretty shit parts too but I love that game at least. Despite that, given how everything else in the franchise has turned out I do kind of worry if it was just a fluke on TN/Itakgaki's part.
