YMMV / Ninja Gaiden (2004)

• Anti-Climax Boss:
  • Although he's built up as The Dragon of the Holy Vigoor Emperor and the Greater Fiend who destroyed the Hayabusa Village by himself, Doku in the modern Ninja Gaiden is incredibly easy due to fixed attacks patterns; unlike Alma, his maneuvers are predictable and telegraphed. Even on "Master Ninja" difficulty of Ninja Gaiden Black is the fight against Doku pathetically easy.
  • Ninja Gaiden: the Dark Disciple, who claimed to have the power of the "Devil Incarnate", can be taken down through repeated use of the "Flying Swallow" technique when using the True Dragon Sword, which was a Game-Breaker in the original release. However, Ninja Gaiden Black re-balanced the boss via Nerfing the Flying Swallow.
• Complete Monster: Murai stands out as a truly horrible individual. Once part of the Hayabusa Clan, Murai defected from the group and plotted their demise. Being a neutral ally of the Hayabusas, Murai used his position and knowledge to sell them out to Emperor Vigoor under the guise of the Dark Disciple while luring away his nephew, hero Ryu Hayabusa, during the scheduled invasion. With the Hayabusa Clan decimated and their Ancient Artifact , the Dragon Blade, in the hands a vengeful Ryu, Murai sends him out to hunt after Vigoor to get revenge. This is actually so Ryu would increase the power of the Dragon Blade through the blood of Emperor Vigoor's forces. He and his servant Gamov then kept watch and helped increase the number of demons so it would fuel the Dragon Blade, despite the collateral damage it would leave. After Emperor Vigoor is killed by Ryu as Murai expected, Murai reveals himself as the true villain and steals the sword away from Ryu, and backstabs his loyal servant Gamov. He then tries to kill off Ryu and intends to take control of the world with the sword. Manipulative and traitorous, Murai would betray and slaughter anyone for power.
• Demonic Spiders: In the first game of the modern trilogy, especially at the highest difficulties, a good portion of the non-human Mooks turn into this, such as the black "laser eye-firing" fiends or the feline-based fiends, thanks to their agility and lightning-fast attacks, especially when fought in groups.
• First Installment Wins: The 2004 game (and more specifically its Updated Re-release, Black) is often considered to the best game in the series due to its polish and well-rounded mix of combat and exploration, in contrast to its sequels which are much more contentious.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The game sold pretty poorly in its native Japan (selling only 60,000 copies in its first four months, according to Itagaki), but was critically acclaimed and sold pretty well in North America and Europe. A large part of this can be attributed to Itagaki choosing to develop for the Xbox (which was and remains a niche brand at best in Japan) due to being impressed with its dev kit and powerful hardware for the time.
• Obvious Judas: Turns out Murai, who in his very first scene talked about how much of a shame it was that the powerful Dark Dragon Blade wasn’t being used and who sends you letters telling you to kill as many people as possible on your quest for revenge was the bad guy all along! Who could have seen that coming?
• Polished Port: The version of Black available on the Xbox One (and by extension, the Xbox Series X|S) runs the game at a flawless 60fps in native HD (or 4K on the Xbox One X). These days, this is considered the definitive way to play the game.
• Sequel Difficulty Spike: Or rather "re-release difficulty spike"; the original Xbox Ninja Gaiden was hard but nothing pain-inducing. Black (and by extension Sigma) cranked it up a couple notches by introducing new vicious enemies, giving pre-existing ones better AI (and a grappling maneveur for Black Spider Ninjas), throwing out the window what little Mook Chivalry they could have, significantly nerfing overly efficient moves like the Counter or Flying Swallow and adding the utterly sadistic Master Ninja Mode.
• That One Boss:
  • Murai in the modern Ninja Gaiden, not because he's the Warm-Up Boss, but rather he's a Wake-Up Call Boss.
  • The first fight with Alma from the same game is often regarded as the toughest at that point due to aerial, agile strikes, unpredictable attack patterns, high-damage maneuvers (some of them unblockable) and high-resilience to almost all weapons in Ryu's arsenal at that point in the game. The later Awakened Alma Boss Fight before the climax is worse when these attributes are also carried over; the True Dragon Sword or the Unlaboured Flawlessness won't be of much help.
• That One Level: The "Path of Zarkhan" chapter in the first game: not that it's particularly harder than previous chapters, but players spend most of the level swimming back and forth to solve a puzzle. Upon solving that, they must go through a long swimming sequence through areas previously visited but now submerged. Sigma may have removed the puzzle and made the level more straight-forward, but the chapter favors swimming shenanigans over action sequences.