This version of Ninja Gaiden is s significantly inferior game to it's Game Gear counterpart.
While visually, it may look better, it's gameplay is fundamentally based on cheap design. While something like Shinobi requires some logical thinking to progress, Ninja Gaiden is heavily reliant on throwing enemies off screen directly into the path of the player to cause them to either lose health or outright be knocked off the map.
Unless have replayed, and memorized a map, there is almost no way to counter these. The game is specifically designed for cheap deaths, with no tactic other than replaying it and learning the trigger points. Perhaps this will appeal to certain users, but to me, this isn't fun and not really skill based.
Aside from that, boss battles are fairly well designed, and comparatively fair. Learning how to overcome them, and simply executing a pattern repeatedly. The levels themselves are more about platforming, clamoring up walls rather than side-scrolling alone a level plane.
Like many of of the game, it has a timer. Failure to complete a level in time is in instant fail state. The timer isn't a problem, but it feels pointlessly anti-fun. The game has some exploration, secrets to check out, but game seems more interested in trying to limit it with a death clock that serves very little purpose for the gameplay outside of it. Which is unfortunate, as the levels are varied, nice looking and show some creativity.
Like the Game Gear version, it has some nice story-telling sequences that add context to the game. It's simple stuff., basic revenge, but it makes the levels feel like a connected journey, with an actual character than a sprite.
This seems to be another case of the Game Gear version being better, not just in regards to the Master System, but the NES version as well. The only advantage here is that this is a significantly longer game. compared to the Game Gears sparse content. Given the choice though, would recommend that version over this every time, the Master System version is a game based on the worst aspects of challenge.
