The first reviews for Ninja Gaiden 3 are in and – somewhat unusually – initial verdicts on the game are completely mixed.

With reports surfacing on the web you’d expect to have some idea whether the game is a must-purchase or not. And yet, critical opinion on the recent edition in the Ninja Gaiden franchise is entirely divided, with no-two reviews being the same.

IGN’s Mitch Dyer has delivered the most notable panning, giving the game an ‘awful’ 3 out of 10 and criticising everything from the difficulty, to the story and the voice-acting.

At the other end of the spectrum is CVG, who awarded the game a relatively impressive 8 out of 10, heaping praise upon the title for taking the franchise to new places by tempering the notorious difficulty Ninja Gaiden was once infamous for. The new multiplayer mode has been slated by both IGN and CVG, however, with it being deemed ‘unnecessary’ and ‘clunky’ respectively.

But the UK’s Official Playstation Magazine has praised the new online mode, with Phil Iwaniuk describing it as a “silver lining” added to a singleplayer campaign that is “as forgettable as it is fun”.

Ultimately then, it looks like the answer to the question ‘should you buy Ninja Gaiden 3?’ remains inconclusive, with the game currently sitting at a rather average metacritic score of 60.