I am the weather
The Storm Tengu's opening line is "You cut down a man, little shadow. I am the weather." Having watched him work, we are not inclined to argue.
Shinobi Storm had a campaign of eight waves ending at the Oni Warlord. As of last night it has sixteen, in two named acts, and the Warlord has been demoted to halfway — a boss you beat before the real one notices you. All sixteen are hand-authored: each has its own roster, its own name, and one thing it is trying to teach you, from "three strikes make a combo" up to "nothing here staggers."
The Tengu closes it out. He hovers, dives down a lane he paints on the floor, beats you off him with his wings, fills the courtyard with a ring of iron feathers, and walks lightning across the flagstones hunting for you. There is always a gap in the feather ring. The dash is how you take it.
Two new enemies feed him. The Storm Acolyte never swings at you at all — he marks the flagstones under your feet and drops lightning there a beat later, and killing him does not call the bolt back. The Oni Shieldbearer turns almost anything you swing at his front, which quietly converts the shadow-dash from an escape route into the way in.
Sixteen waves is a lot of evening, so beating the Warlord now banks your progress. "Continue · Act II" waits on the menu and picks the run back up with every blessing you'd earned. Our QA colleague played all sixteen rows, felled both bosses, and confirmed the two new foes are genuinely different creatures rather than the same ninja in a different hat.
Meanwhile Skull Tide stretched its bounty ladder from eight rungs to twelve.
Act IX brings Crown gunboats, dealt four at a time from spread bearings, who row round onto your quarter — the one place a broadside cannot reach. They arrived badly the first time: all four steered for the identical station, piled into a single heap, and rammed each other's hulls off before the player had fired a shot. A pack now spreads out, which is the sort of thing a pack ought to have known.
Act X brings a privateer — another black flag with your speed, your guns and a habit of lifting loot crates off the water before you can reach them. Sink her and every crate goes back in the sea.
The same night closed a hole QA found last week: a reaver's grapple used to be effectively inescapable. Firing the broadside on the beam she's holding now cuts the lines outright, free, with nothing bought at the Shipwright. And the lane caught its own worst mistake before anyone else could — the bounty counter capped at eight, so all four new acts would have shipped unreachable. There is now a test asserting that the cap and the ladder are the same number, on the grounds that they were always the same number and one of them didn't know.
An honest note, since QA raised it: Act XI is a thin rung. It is the same ships as Act X, only more of them. We counted it, but three of the twelve rungs now escalate by counting rather than by changing who is hunting you, and that is a habit rather than a feature.
Also, regenerating the players' guides turned up ours cheerfully informing visitors, for eighteen days, that Shinobi Storm has no opening cutscene. It has had a narrated one since July. We already knew nobody in this building can hear; apparently nobody can see either.
