Nightshade (PS2)
The appeal of the hack and slash genre is certainly its simple and quick enemy combat, but for games in the genre to avoid becoming so repetitive that they quickly lose their appeal, it’s important to add some extra layer to the gameplay to keep the player interested. Nightshade is a hack and slash game at first glimpse and one that almost seems like it will just be a procession of enemy encounters to carve your way through with your blade, but the Tate system the game introduces not only adds another layer of depth to the fights, but ends up becoming the most important part of the experience.
When the game’s heroine Hibana is fighting a group of enemies, her move set is actually fairly limited. She has regular slashes bound to the square button and holding the stick down when attacking causes her to attack rapidly with her short swords, these moves being your usual attacks for most fights. A kick attack exists to deflect certain enemy projectiles, and if you can’t use your invaluable dash to get around an enemy with a shield to attack them from behind, you usually need this simple kick to open them up in a fairly basic way that doesn’t really make fighting them more involved. Besides your ninjitsu spells that are good for quick bursts of damage or fighting power and the long range projectiles for foes you can’t dash towards or jump your way to easily, these are most of the attacks you use to kill the game’s many robots, ninjas, and creatures. While these could have been fairly dry and limited attack options, the Tate system turns them into something much more.
Once you defeat the first enemy in a pack of foes, rather than dying or disappearing, they’ll turn greyish and linger in the area as a meter near your health depletes. This timer indicates how much time you have left to head over and hit another enemy to get your Tate going. Once you have chained together at least four enemies in this manner, you can activate the flashy Tate kill, Hibana posing and instantly eliminating every foe she had disabled with her attacks up to this point. While at first seeming like a fun flourish to make killing enemies more satisfying, this method of defeating your opposition actually speeds up the process considerably. Tough enemies who would otherwise require multiple hits and good maneuvering can be stunned and added to the chain fairly easily if you hit them as part of your growing Tate. Flying enemies who can otherwise be a pest can be dashed to and taken out with one swipe of your sword, the player able to travel through the air by chaining together floating foes into a Tate elimination. Rather than these being a sequence of straightforward brainless encounters with simple foes now, each one is laid out in a way where a Tate can speed up the fight and even contribute to the optional scoring system. Battles derive their difficulty mostly from having the enemies spaced out in different ways or packing defenses you need to get around without losing your Tate timer, and the tougher foes ask you to consider who you kick off your Tate with to ensure you can actually complete the technique.
Even the game’s bosses can end up a drastically different fight if you learn how to best add them to the end of a chain. Some bosses, so long as you can tag the regular enemies properly, can then be instantly defeated with the Tate so long as you use your charged up square attack to wrap things up. This can be immensely satisfying when pulled off and is often difficult enough that it’s not just a cheap way of skipping a hard fight either, and since the charge attack has limited uses tied to its own meter, you can’t be too careless with it if you want to have that ace in the hole. However, the bosses are also where we start to encounter some of the problems with the Tate system. Many of the bosses almost feel like they are either going to be good fights that wrap up with a Tate or slow and repetitive affairs where, since the Tate is difficult to set up or you might not have your charge attack available, the fight boils down to avoiding attacks for a while, slashing your foe for very little damage, and repeating this over and over again. Most of the boss styles are split between giant monsters and other warriors with unique weapons, and while the warriors are more interesting with their concepts like a woman whose umbrella controls water and a samurai with a pinwheel blade that generates tornadoes, they also seem to defend as they please and take the longest to whittle down if Tate isn’t working out. The monsters follow fairly basic patterns so you can often just attack them during their vulnerable period and then run around avoiding their attack phases, but this basically means any boss that doesn’t have a nifty Tate setup can end up either forgettable and plain or grueling in its slow gradual progress.
Most of the play is progressing through the levels though, and generous checkpoints means you can retry bosses easily and the tougher areas on your journey are usually accommodated for in a similar manner. However, another mark on the interesting Tate system comes from the game’s camera and lock-on systems. While you can toggle whether or not the game snaps your attention to the next enemy and even disable it during the action with a button press, some Tates, especially ones where you use foes for aerial progress, depend on it for a smooth and successful maneuver. It’s not unheard of to chain plenty of foes together only for the lock-on to pick a target far away from you instead of the next logical enemy in the chain, and this can be really bothersome when you need to go from one to another to effectively navigate platforms. Platforming in general in the game isn’t too exciting because the wall runs and jumps aren’t as smooth as you might like, but just like the odd lock-ons during enemy-based platforming, the problems are at least infrequent bothers rather than constant issues. The main issue with Nightshade really seems to be that the Tate system that makes the combat so satisfying has little quibbling points where it is relied on to the point the game’s small stumbles end up breaking the flow briefly.
Nightshade does generally have a good balance of its elements outside of the Tate interruptions though. Health is placed sparingly to make finding it incredibly welcome without feeling like you’re constantly on the edge of death. Boss fights often have some hidden health in breakable objects to uncover, and levels in the game often have little extras to find like health bar expansions or secret coins for unlockables. The difficulty is usually satisfying in its toughness when it’s working as intended, and the procession of enemy groups is paced well. However, the story does feel like it’s just going through the motions. Nightshade, known as Kunoichi in Japan, is a follow-up to the PS2 game known simply as Shinobi. The Akujiki blade from that title has been shattered and scattered around Tokyo, hellspawn called to the city by its cursed power. Giant monsters guard pieces and warriors working under the Nakatomi Group seek to gather them all, but the ninja Hibana is deployed by the government to beat them to the punch. She has a personal connection with a few of the opposing warriors like her former master Jimushi and his new apprentice Hisui, but the interactions are fairly surface level and don’t feel like they do more than their function of getting different bosses lined up for the player to face. The game’s 12 levels don’t need a deep story to make their action worth engaging with, but it is hard to get invested in the plot because of its unimaginative structure.
THE VERDICT: Nightshade won’t win fans with its mediocre plot or the unexceptional and sometimes harsh platforming, but this hack and slash put all its eggs in the Tate basket and could have flourished for it. Every enemy encounter becomes more than just killing what’s before you as the flashy finishing move expedites the process if set up properly. The enemy types are more about how they play into this kill chaining technique, and some bosses can be trounced in an incredibly satisfying manner if you figure out the setup for their Tate execution. When the Tate doesn’t work though, either because of its difficulty or some technical issue, the game can lose some of its thrills, but the constant chase for the efficient and elaborate Tate maneuvers helps Nightshade be an interesting enough action experience despite its shortcomings.
And so, I give Nightshade for PlayStation 2…
An OKAY rating. Because Nightshade wants to be difficult on top of relying on a complex combat maneuver for most of its skirmishes, it’s best less patient players avoid this title despite its satisfying twist on hack and slash action. The moments the camera fails you, the platforming goes awry, or a boss has to be killed the slow way can test the limits of your patience, but Nightshade is still a serviceable action game because enough of it continues to experiment with its fun Tate concept. A shallow plot and simple attacks aren’t as big an issue when you’re entering new battles where you have to have good reflexes and a smart approach to the action to get the most out of the fight. It almost feels wrong to call it a hack and slash because such basic tactics are more your back-up plan if the more intelligent attack set-up isn’t working out for some reason. Tate is such an integral system throughout that its highs are what keeps Nightshade from being worse but its lows are what jeopardize the game’s ability to provide an entertaining experience. It ultimately ends up somewhere in the middle, where it’s constantly teetering between exciting and frustrating. Knowing all it needed was fewer technical issues and boss battles that don’t drag if you’re forced to rely on regular attacks really makes it a shame that Nightshade ended up with a fun twist on hack and slash action it couldn’t fully deliver on.
Nightshade’s action has a good system at its heart but the execution holds it back from realizing its potential. Most hack and slash games are doomed to be middle of the road experiences because they rely too heavily on a fundamentally basic combat system, but the Tate threatened to help Nightshade rise above that trend only for it to slip back into the middle of the pack as it can’t fully realize the ideas it puts forward. There’s certainly some way to make Tate the heart of a consistently thrilling ninja game, but Nightshade can only show us a fraction of what it could be. For something that needs to be smooth and snappy to remain satisfying, Nightshade’s technical flaws hold it back from always achieving that exhilarating rhythm.