55 hours done, and a lot more to go

Ninja Gaiden: Done! Sweet. Well… sorta done.

I’ve just beat normal mode, and my game timer says about 29 hours. Including deaths, retries, etc, I’m suspecting it’s closer to 55 hours. And that’s normal mode. Now I’ve unlocked mission mode and hard mode.

Hard mode is going to prove challenging. I think in the original Ninja Gaiden for Xbox, they did what they did for Devil May Cry, namely, New Game Plus, but in hard mode – you carry all your items over to hard mode. I hear in NGB… well, you don’t. And that’s gonna hurt.

Yeah, I’ve been reading about it on the gamefaq boards, and I’ve used gamefaqs a few times to help me through the game. I feel a bit bad with the last few levels, because that’s when farming became really easy. There are these fish that die in 30 seconds, respawn after 30 seconds, and they give you about 6000 gold each time. So in about 15 minutes I can reach max gold and buy anything I’ll need, and then after challenge or so I’d go back and farm again. So yeah, last few bosses ate cheap item deaths.

So I’ve missed quite a few secrets in the game I think, haven’t looked at the FAQ for most of those yet (although I did for one secret weapon, which REALLY helped me through the game from level 4 on). Now I have Mission Mode which gives me soo much more replay, and then there’s hard mode, so I can unlock very hard, so I can unlock Master Ninja mode (equivalent to DMD mode in DMC I suppose). I hope I carry my items over from hard mode =)

Speaking of Ninjas, I finished reading Betrayers of Kamigawa. Time for Saviors.