Ninja Gaiden has something of a storied history with Xbox.
The franchise itself debuted in the 1980s, but was rebooted in 2004 specifically for the original Xbox. Since then, it evolved into a sprawling franchise with a variety of remakes, spin offs, and more recently, remasters.
As we approach Xbox's 25th anniversary, it is perhaps appropriate that Ninja Gaiden is joining the likes of Gears of War, Halo, Forza, Flight Simulator, Age of Empires, and Fable as yet another Xbox story staple, developed in partnership between Xbox Game Studios, Koei Tecmo, Team Ninja, and now, the legendary Platinum Games.
Platinum Games is responsible for what is arguably one of the best 3D hack n' slash titles of all time in Metal Gear Rising (at least in my view), which is why I was more than excited to see how the studio handled Ninja Gaiden 4.
I openly admit I'm not a huge player of these titles, barely remembering my experience with the original game back in the day. I've been playing the remasters as part of the Master Collection released recently, but consider this more of a franchise newcomer's review, which I presume many of you will also be.
Ninja Gaiden is generally known for its combat complexity, difficulty, and shall we say "light" approach to story delivery. These are games all about style, slashing, and severed limbs — and Ninja Gaiden 4 delivers that in bloody abundance.
This review was conducted on Xbox Series X|S and Xbox Ally X using a code provided by Microsoft. Microsoft did not see the contents of this review prior to publication.
Ninja Gaiden 4 Review: Performance and Graphics
Developer: Platinum Games.
Publisher: Xbox Games Studios.
Genre: Hack n' slash action.
Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PS5, Windows PC.
Length: 12~ hours.
Players: Single-player.
Xbox Game Pass: Yes (Ultimate).
Xbox Play Anywhere: Yes.
Launch date: October 21, 2025.
Price: $41.49 at Loaded (Xbox, PC)
Ninja Gaiden 4 is the first game that I've reviewed roughly half of the time on the Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X, which is a testament to its overall optimization and performance quality.
Ninja Gaiden 4 is a hack n' slash showcase as noted, but the canvas upon which you can carve your bloody art is fairly impressive in its own right. Like other games, Ninja Gaiden is a meandering mash up between neo Japanese mysticism and cyberpunk vistas, and the developers spared no quarter expressing themselves here.
In Ninja Gaiden 4, you play as Yakumo, a young ninja of the Raven clan, directly rivalled against series' legend Ryu Hayabusa's Hayabusa clan. Yakumo's Raven lineage gives him an appropriate array of Raven-inspired powers which look as spectacular as they feel to deploy in combat, but we'll talk more about that in the gameplay segment.
Ninja Gaiden 4 doesn't revolutionize the franchise's delivery of storytelling. Once again, it's a pretty light-touch affair, providing the most thread-bare excuses to go headlong into slicing hundreds of enemies into tiny pieces. I think the game could've used a bit more ambition here.
I'm not suggesting it needed to transform into a cinematic masterpiece by any means, but the characters and story beats aren't even memorable really here. Metal Gear Rising's character roster spawned an array of memes that endure to this day, I doubt Ninja Gaiden 4's cast will be remembered in the same way. But it's not a big deal, I doubt many are exactly here for the story beats.
Where Ninja Gaiden 4 does truly excel is in its visual creativity. An ancient curse has gripped future Tokyo and threatens to spread beyond. Yakumo's quest to stop it puts him on a collision course with various factions that seem to want the curse to spread, alongside the demonic entities it summons. As a result, you'll face off against sci-fi ninja cyborgs and ancient folkloric demons in equal measure. Some of the boss designs look sooner ripped from a soulsborne title, and fit flawlessly into the visual universe being curated here.
The game is incredibly performant with crisp visuals. Performance mode is better on Xbox Series X|S, delivering 60 FPS while maintaining good visual clarity. On the Xbox Ally and Xbox Ally X, the game is also very performant. I found it best with TSR scaling turned on and FSR turned off, with dynamic resolution scaling also turned off — as both could too aggressively crush visuals. FPS is nice, but there can be so much chaos on screen with projectiles and enemies rushing you from all sides that you might want to sacrifice some frames for visual clarity in this one. But even on the base Xbox Ally, you'll have a solid experience here with some graphics tweaks. Very impressive.
Ninja Gaiden 4 Review: Gameplay and Story
Ninja Gaiden 4 doesn't pull punches when it comes to relentless, restless violence, and we're absolutely here for it.
Armed with a range of deadly weapons, from simple katana's all the way up to Doctor Ocotpus-like sci-fi claws, Ninja Gaiden 4 gives you blank canvas and begs to be sprayed with severed limbs and splattered blood.
For this fourth instalment, Platinum Games' combat design shines through with gusto, proving that the studio behind titles like Nier Automata and Metal Gear Rising still has it. It borrows heavily from combat traditions outlined in the previous games, while expanding upon it with inspirations from the likes of Devil May Cry among others.
Continuously slashing enemies and weaving in parries and dodges raises your chances of severing an enemy's limb, leaving them open for an instant and stylish DOOM-like glory kill. These execution animations never get old, and are hugely varied across the game's different weapon types.
There's a truly huge array of combos and combat skills to learn for each weapon, and it can honestly be fairly daunting if you're not typically a fan of these types of games.
Mastering all of them fighting game-style will be absolutely necessary to conquering the game's higher difficulty modes. You can also get away with pretty much button mashing on the lower difficulties if you don't fancy getting too sweaty with the game's move lists. Even on normal, though, Ninja Gaiden 4 can be a deeply challenging game.
The game's signature combat move is Yakumo's Raven form, which can be triggered at will by holding down the left trigger. In this mode, Yakumo's attacks are augmented with the power of the Raven clan, and increase his damage, reach, and blocking power, while draining out its associated combat meter. Using these attacks wisely is crucial to avoiding damage, as enemies sometimes leave themselves open to be staggered specifically by Raven-enhanced attacks.
Learning enemy attack patterns and cleverly using the game's Raven form abilities made me feel smarter and more skillful than I am, which I think is the hall mark of a great hack n' slash title. It really accentuates that ninja fantasy with confidence, and its bombastic combat animations and execution sequences really injects some Metal Gear Rising nostalgia for good measure.
I do have some minor gripes as pertains to map design and side questing. Earning upgrades is often best done by performing side quests, which largely amount to "kill x mobs" and "find this item" drudgery. The fact there's no actual map system in the game can also make it a chore to actually find where a lot of these are — which is an old school tradition I think might've been best left in the old school. But they don't impede the game's beefy 10-12 hour campaign, unless you're trying to be a completionist.
Ninja Gaiden 4 Review: Conclusion
Ninja Gaiden 4 is a very strong entry in a year that has enjoyed many high profile ninja titles, from Shinobi, to Ghost of Yotei, to Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound itself. It doesn't reinvent the franchise's formula, instead respecting the franchise's strongest entries with a sprinkling of Platinum on top for good measure.
I wouldn't have minded a little bit more ambition with the game's characters or story delivery, and I don't mean 30 minutes of cutscenes between each action sequence either. But Devil May Cry 5 and even Platinum Games' own Nier Automata and Metal Gear Rising showed that you can have a hack n' slash that embraces the weird a little more and delivers something a bit more memorable. But I doubt many of you were here hoping for that.
What you were hoping for is wanton limb-slashing spectacle and style, and Ninja Gaiden 4 delivers that in buckets. This is a great start to what is hopefully a strong revival for one of the industry's most iconic hack n' slash traditions.
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