Ninja Gaiden 4 - Ch. 5 (Master Ninja) New Game

I hope my fellow USA folks all had a Happy Thanksgiving! I was really hoping to have this chapter done last weekend, and I made it all the way to the boss last Saturday and decided to practice and learn how to fight this guy in the Trials Mode... oops! The game decided I no longer wanted my checkpoint and overwrote it without any warning. This was a huge bummer because I had some struggles getting through this Chapter as a whole. I really hope Platinum comes up with a patch for this issue. I'm quite sure it is not anyone's intention to destroy their hard earned Master Ninja checkpoint save on purpose, but it seems that the game is unable to save more than one "checkpoint" at a time. Beating the boss in trials mode created a new checkpoint save for my already completed Hard play-through and erased my save. Beware that this could, and probably has happened, to some of you. Very frustrating.

To top it off, I nearly lost my best friend Reggie (the best dog on planet Earth) earlier this week due to a sudden severe illness, and he was rushed to the vet hospital where I was left an emotional wreck for two days to find out if he would pull through or if I was going to have to make an extremely difficult decision. Thank goodness he responded well to the treatments and didn't require emergency surgery. Cherish every moment you have with your loved ones! (Even if it's "just" a dog or a beloved pet of any kind) Of course, events like these are a huge reminder that life can take sudden, unexpected turns and leave us full of regrets. My dog had been trying to tell me something was wrong, and I was unable to recognize the seriousness of the situation until it was very nearly too late. On this Thanksgiving, I am thankful to have him back home and doing much better, I am thankful to have the means to have been able to afford the care he needed in a time of crisis, I am thankful to my family, friends, and coworkers who are there when I need them most, and of course, I am thankful for a delicious meal! We all have things we're thankful for, and that's why Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday here in the States.

Sorry for the long-winded speech everyone lol. Since I had already, pretty much, played through the chapter once already, my second go-through was just a bit easier this time around. There are definitely some tricky spots here and there, and if you're careless against any one of these enemies, they will send you to the loading screen in the blink of an eye. I did my best to find everything in the chapter that there is to find, but if I missed anything, please let me know in the comments. I also continued to use the Yatousen (rapier) exclusively for this chapter. It really is a super fun weapon to play with! The boss of this chapter is fairly tough. His second phase has a lot of very awkward movements and it can be really tricky to properly time your counters/parries, so it's best to play fairly safe until you really nail down his patterns. I spent a good amount of time practicing this boss in Trials until I found a fairly consistent strategy for getting passed him. Obviously, I would've rather not used my Talisman, but I honestly wasn't sure I was gonna beat him on the first try anyway, so I figured, why not? Money is now much less a factor since I've acquired all of the purchasable skills available to me. For Chapter 6, I will try to implement both of my current available weapons, and if I remember correctly, Chapter 6 was extremely tough on Hard, so Master Ninja will be a handful, no doubt. I'll do my best to try and get the next one out as quickly as I can. Thank you all for watching!