NINJA GAIDEN Σ

This does not have to be a in a single playthrough and does count Karma from both Story and Mission modes. Turning on the Karma display by clicking LS or going into the menu and pressing X is strongly recommended.

There are 2 ways to earn Karma in Story Mode, earning it from combat during a chapter, and then additional bonuses awarded at each end of chapter screen. You will recieve up to 100,000 Karma in each category. The amounts awarded depend on how fast the chapter was completed, how many enemies were killed, how much yellow essence was obtained and how many filled Ninpo slots remain. To maximise these bonuses, never skip fights and fight quickly, complete any optional Ambushes, kill enemies with ETs and UTs to earn extra yellow essence and try to preserve Ninpo if you can avoid using it (or pop a Devil Elixir pre end of Chapter).

To maximise Karma earnings from combat in Story Mode, aim to finish each fight under the assigned time and try and perform as many Essence Techniques (2000) and Ultimate Techniques (5000) as you can. The additional Karma for ETs and UTs is only earned while there is time left on the fight, so once the clock hits zero, no more Karma bonuses (other than the KIll bonus) will be awarded. For each fight where a Time and Kill bonus can be awarded, the Time bonus will be 10000 Karma, the Kill bonus 1000 times the number of kills. Bosses have a Kill bonus of 100,000 Karma each. If you leave the area where a timed fight is taking place, the Kill and Time bonuses will be forfeit, even if you then return to the fight afterwards, with any kills achieved so far earning 100 Karma each.

Depending on how much you incorporate ETs and UTs into your combat, how many Ambushes you complete, how quickly you complete chapters and whether you are preserving Ninpo or not, a full playthrough can be anywhere from around 6-10 Million Karma.

In Mission Mode, there are no end of mission bonuses and neither are there Time or Kill bonuses. You will still be credited for using ETs and UTs however, so aim to work these in where possible. Most missions can award 75,000 to 100,000 Karma, even on low difficulties, though some of this will be performance dependent. Karma is earned seperately for each difficulty, so completeing a mission on all four difficulties will add 300-400,000 Karma to your total.

To earn the 50,000,000 Karma required for this achievement, you can either aim for completing the game on each difficulty in Story Mode, and play only the easy parts of Mission Mode, or to play the majority of Mission Mode and the Story once or twice. If you are aiming for a 100% on this game, this will be earned naturally, most likely while playing through Mission Mode, unless you specifically play through the Story with the aim of maximizing your Karma score. To earn this the fastest, I would recommend completing the game on Normal and up to at least Chapter 9 on Hard, as this will let you use the Azure Dragon Helm, which is by far the most useful bit of equipment in the game.