LTTP: Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge -- It's pretty good? LTTP (2025)

Doing master ninja trials.

These things are a bit nuts. They feel completely unbalanced, but somehow I'm making progress. Did MN01 (seems like the strat is to leave regular ninjas alive as long as possible and spam the scythe), pretty close to getting MN03 as well (legit the Van Gelfs are what I've died the most to). MN05 seems super tough but you can just spam UTs while making laps and switching the camera as needed to keep an eye on everyone. It's a bit absurd that you have 3 scythe wielding epigonos just spamming UTs at you though.

Looked at some videos of the UN trials and they look batshit insane. Seems like they nerfed the bosses a bit to make up for the fact there's no co-op but idk, 2 players and 2 bosses with double the health is just a way better deal than 1 player with 2 bosses and half the health. The 7 clone Ryu + 5 Epigonos looks manageable, with scythe spam for the first 3 waves and potentially UT spam for the fourth. So might start with that.

Does anyone from TN actually playtest these or do they just throw shit in there and see what happens?

E: Did MN03. It's pretty reasonable with scythe's graveyard spin. For the Van Gelfs: charge a lv 2 UT as soon as the trial starts and fire it off at both as they approach you from the other side of the room. You want to fight them closer to where you start because they spawn from the other side of the room and so you have a bit more leeway with spawns. As they approach keep spinning and dodging towards the wall. Go for the OT as soon as you can and repeat for the other one. If you kill both close together, you can charge another lv 2 UT and deal some damage as the next two approach. It seems like 1 lv 2 UT + 2 or 3 graveyard spins are enough to often kill, if not delimb before that. If you can keep a Bloody Rage UT from this wave through the final wave it can help. Saving ninpo for the end helps too.

Next wave is 2x genshin. Make a beeline for the one that's closest to you (Northwest), and keep a medium distance. Technique is same safe strat for genshin -- bait his flying swallow and immediately dodge, XYXXXY for izuna drop. If your X misses, or if Y fails to launch, or if he blocks X, get away immediately. 2-3 of these will kill a genshin, and the second is the same technique. Now the complicating factor is that the genshin not in melee range will fire piercing voids. However, you don't actually need to watch him. You can listen for the void sound effect and learn the timing to dodge based on sound alone. You want to keep genshins separate though (not too tough, one will typically hang back for voids), but if worst comes to worst, you might need to run up to both and pull aggro from one.

Final wave is clone ryu -- these have no response to scythe spin so long as you keep them at the outer edge of the scythe. If they are too close they can recover before you have time to dodge and can izuna drop you which often is an instant kill. As soon as you kill him epigonos and clone ryu will spawn. They spawn towards the middle, so aim to kill the first clone towards the edge of the arena so you don't get bollocked in the back with a UT. That said, technique for epigonos + ryu is the same as for single ryu. Epigonos has no response unless he's either very close to you, or using a scythe. So basically do the spin to win and dodge trick until epigonos changes to scythe, at which point back off and let him change back. I imagine the same technique would work in UN03 with epigonos + 2x ryu, but harder against 3x epigonos in that trial or in MN05 because one of them will almost always have scythe out. In that case a slow reliable kusarigama UT spam probably would work better.

There's a double doku and a regent with alchemists mission, might try those.