Nightshade, released in Japan as Kunoichi (くのいち) and stylized in all regions with the kanji 忍 behind the title, is an action video game for the PlayStation 2 (PS2), developed by Overworks and published by Sega in 2003. It is the eleventh game in the Shinobi series and follows the exploits of a female ninja named Hibana. The game is a sequel to the 2002 PS2 game Shinobi.

Story

In Nightshade, the player plays as Hibana, a female counterpart to Shinobi's Hotsuma. She is a government-employed ninja tasked with the elimination of members of the Nakatomi Corporation, which has unwittingly unleashed hellspawn upon futuristic Tokyo. She is also ordered to recover the shards of "Akujiki", the legendary cursed sword that Hotsuma used to seal the hellspawn the last time.

Characters

Gameplay

Nightshade's missions are linear, and each one culminates in a battle against a challenging boss opponent. The core of Nightshade's gameplay is hack and slash, with accumulating combos on spawning enemies about the level. Using Hibana's arsenal of a katana (the primary weapon), short daggers (achieve less damage, but score a higher combo multiplier), shuriken (long range projectiles), and various ninjutsu spells, the game challenges the player to achieve as high a score as possible while eliminating the opposing threat. Nightshade also includes aspects of platforming. With Hibana's ability to dash in mid-air, the game requires the player to use this ability to bypass holes and hazards. Game mechanics restrict Hibana to only a double-jump and an air-dash before she falls, requiring the player to strike enemies in mid-flight to stay in the air. By doing this, the player combines accuracy and timing to stay in the air continuously, or fall to their death. If the player has a completed save file from Shinobi then Hotsuma, the protagonist of the previous game, is available as an optional playable character. He differs from Hibana in that he does not use daggers like her and is only able to use Akujiki, the sword he used in the previous game. Hotsuma plays exactly as before with the same arsenal of moves and operates under the same mechanics as he did in the previous game. He must always be finding and defeating enemies to feed their souls to Akujiki, or the cursed sword will devour his soul instead and kill him.

Development

Soundtrack

The Nightshade soundtrack is based upon the Japanese techno of the previous iteration, Shinobi. All tracks were produced by Fumie Kumatani, Tomonori Sawada, Keiichi Sugiyama, Yutaka Minobe, Teruhiko Nakagawa, and Masaru Setsumaru of Sega Digital Studio. Nightshade did not see an official soundtrack release until July 2014, where it was released digitally on Amazon Music and iTunes.

Reception

Nightshade received "average" reviews according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. In Japan, Famitsu gave it a score of one nine and three eights for a total of 33 out of 40.