Shinobi: Art of Vengeance – SEGA Villains Stage DLC review

There’s nothing inherently impressive about a crossover at this point. Everyone does them now, and arguably everyone does them way too much. If you’re going to do a crossover, it needs to be able to stand on more than just the concept. Shinobi seems to understand this. Always the trendsetter, Shinobi did crossovers before they were cool (or legal). Now in the age of crossover saturation, Shinobi does crossovers where the crossover itself barely matters.  

The SEGA Villains Stage DLC adds five new stages to Art of Vengeance, culminating in three boss fights with the aforementioned Sega Villains: Death Adder from Golden Axe, Goro Majima from Yakuza, and Dr. Eggman from Sonic the Hedgehog. This concept led me to believe that you would be playing levels based on the worlds of those games, but that’s not really the case. You won’t be fighting any new enemies taken from those franchises or even experiencing level design gimmicks inspired by them. For the most part, you don’t even run through areas that recognizably take place from the villains’ worlds. That only happens during the boss fights.

Instead, the new levels largely take place in the void-like “Ankou Rift” settings from the main game. In these levels, you fight the same kinds of enemies and complete the same kinds of platforming gauntlets that the main game throws at you. The distinguishing feature of these crossover stages seems to be that occasionally you’ll see something in the background that you’ll recognize. Avid gamers may see these things and say, “oh, that’s the big turtle from Golden Axe,” or, “oh, I guess that city stuff kinda looks like the city in the Yakuza games.” Those are the things I said, anyway. To no one in particular.

The level design simply doesn’t deliver on the crossover premise. Like, sure, technically the focus is on the villains themselves, this just feels like the least exciting way to deliver on that premise. I’m not exactly clamoring for Shinobi to devolve into wacky fan service, but if you’re going to the trouble of inviting Dr. Eggman in the first place, you might as well take advantage of the opportunity, right?

To be fair, the bosses themselves do deliver. All three of them faithfully capture the spirit of their source material conceptually while adapting them well to the Art of Vengeance aesthetic. Each fight has multiple phases full of tricky attack patterns, so they’re all satisfying to conquer. They’d be great bosses with or without the cameo star power.

My favorite fight ended up being the one with Death Adder. I had actually been playing Golden Axe pretty consistently a few months ago for a 1 Credit Clear, so my mind is in peak condition to appreciate every little detail about its final boss. He looks awesome and imposing, and he puts up a fight that appropriately matches his aesthetics. When he did his dragon summon to transition to the second phase of his fight, it hit me in just the right kind of fanservice-y way to win me over.

As far as its premise goes, then, I’d say the Sega Villains DLC only partially succeeds. However, the more I played it, the less that mattered to me. Take away the crossover set dressing, and you still have some of the best-designed content in the entire game. These levels may just remix old content, but they’re great remixes. The difficulty picks up close to where the end of the main game left off, and each stage takes full advantage of that fact. The combat encounters in particular push Art of Vengeance’s mechanics to their limits, and I love seeing some content fully explore that aspect of the game.  

The stage design philosophy also explores what Art of Vengeance might have been like with more traditional stage design. Art of Vengeance shook the formula up slightly in its main game by including several labryinth-like stages and light puzzles. In contrast, every level in the DLC keeps things linear and focused on the action.

I didn’t hate the fake-Metroid level design approach, but I also didn’t think it added all that much either. I do wish there were at least a few hidden secrets to find akin to extra lives or power ups in the classic Shinobi titles, but no such luck here. There are at least plenty of skips and shortcuts to find throughout the stages, so those kind of fill the void.

Unfortunately, the Sega Villains DLC maintains my biggest gripe with Art of Vengeance as a whole: the level length. Even with the DLC splitting the Golden Axe and Yakuza areas into two stages, I still felt like each stage went on too long. Not in the sense that I found the level design boring, but rather the length adds too much friction to my desire to continually grind them out for S ranks in the Arcade mode.

Regardless, I’m just happy to play more Art of Vengeance. More than what any crossover gimmicks may lead you to believe, that’s exactly what this Sega Villains DLC is: more Art of Vengeance. It has the same strengths and most of the same weaknesses of the main game. Art of Vengeance was my favorite game last year, so if you’re in a similar boat, I’d say that’s more than enough to justify a run through these new levels.