With more Soulslike games getting released every year, it feels like we’ve lost something over the last decade, as more developers and companies veer away from pure action games. More and more action games are trying to cash in on the wild popularity of Souls elements, making it hard to find games that go for that high-speed, pure action experience. But Ninja Gaiden 4 is, at a glance, a return to the glory days of action games — a bone-crunching and gore spewing adrenaline fest that simply wants you to feel like an unstoppable god. And despite the debacle that was Ninja Gaiden 3, this entry in the franchise manages to mostly bring Ninja Gaiden back to the hallowed heights of the first two games. I say mostly, because it’d be right up there with Ninja Gaiden 2 if Platinum Games could have simply trimmed some of the game’s excess.
There were a lot of questions I had leading into Ninja Gaiden 4 that gave me some trepidation on the series coming back. For one, it’s been thirteen years since the last mainline entry, and Ninja Gaiden 3 didn’t exactly live up to expectation. The other aspect was Platinum Games leading development on Ninja Gaiden 4, as the studio’s had a rough go of things in recent years with games like Star Fox Zero and Babylon’s Fall. But Ninja Gaiden 4 is easily the best game Platinum has made since Astral Chain.
And what’s most fascinating about Ninja Gaiden 4 is that it does have a distinctly different feel from the rest of the series — you can feel the Platinum DNA in there. It’s like a bizarre homunculus of Ninja Gaiden and Platinum, but it somehow works. It has the high-speed intensty of Ninja Gaiden, mixed with the complex combos and interweaving mechanics of Platinum’s games and, somewhow, manages to blend those two styles into a coherent core. Like the rest of the Ninja Gaiden games, this is a pure action game completely focused on stringing together combos and decimating enemies as quickly as possible.
Instead of playing as longtime series protagonist Ryu Hayabusa, you assume the role of a newcomer named Yakumo, part of the Raven Clan of ninjas — a clan destined to fight the Dark Dragon from the shadows. Introducing Yakumo and an entirely new cast of supporting characters is one of the stranger aspects of Ninja Gaiden 4 — largely because the game never really gives you a reason to care about them. Yakumo has some complexity that gets shown later on, but still pales in comparison to the stoic but sarcastic Ryu. And, yes, Ryu is playable in Ninja Gaiden 4 but he doesn’t appear for quite a while. You don’t see Ryu until roughly halfway through the game, and it’s even longer before you get to step into his shoes. But the good thing here is that Yakumo, from a gameplay standpoint, does a good job of filling in for the master ninja.
Ninja Gaiden 4’s biggest strength, and what makes or breaks it, is its combat system — a blindingly fast, nail-biting affair that’s very good at making you feel cool even when you mess up. And that’s largely because the game’s combat system is deceptively simple, with most of your actions mapped to only a few buttons. But there’s complexity continuously layered into all of that as you unlock new moves, weapons, and accessories.
Just to give an overview of the combat at large, you have a light attack and heavy attack, then a dodge/block button mapped to the right trigger. Those are, essentially, the majority of what you’ll be using. But Yakumo also has a unique Bloodraven Form that you can use by holding down the left trigger, changing his attacks to heavier more damaging ones that can break enemy’s guards. The blood gauge constantly builds as you attack and do damage, and constantly drains as you use Bloodraven — so it quickly becomes a game of staying on the offensive to maximize blood gauge use.
Mastering Ninja Gaiden 4’s systems means understanding exactly how to use Bloodraven, and getting adept at pulling off dodges and parries at the exact moments enemies try to hit you. But the other factor here is the dismemberment system, a key feature of the series making a return.
When you cause a certain amount of damage on enemies, you’ll hack off a limb or two, putting them in a state that significantly reduces their speed. If you press Y when an enemy is like this, you can do a delightfully bloody execution that sends viscera spewing every which way. It’s intensely satisfying but also serve a mechanical purpose by taking out an enemy quickly and giving you a few frame of invicibiliy as you pull off the move. Using these executions quickly becomes vital to succeeding in combat, and that’s especially true as you get more weapons. There’s extra complexity woven in with weapon skills and combat skills, all of which give you additional inputs to use in battle, and more combos to choose from. There’s an unbelievable amount of depth crammed in, and that’s without even mentioning traversal accessories like the grappling hook, or a board that lets you surf over water.
Each major “area” of the game also features completely distinct enemies with unique skills, like little demon lanterns that explode when you defeat them, or ethereal fish that swarm you in giant packs.
So all that variety sounds great and the minute-to-minute gameplay is thrilling — you’re probably asking what the problem is, right? The sole issue with Ninja Gaiden 4 is the pacing, that’s literally it. The actual combat is fantastically enthralling, but there’s simply too much of it. Every level in Ninja Gaiden 4 feels like it’s just a touch too long — like you could have taken out 4-5 battles and things would feel much snappier.
Ninja Gaiden 4 is exhausting to play, and that’s both good and bad. Every battle feels like you’re fighting for your life, and it’s thrilling to come out on top. But when you’ve got six of those kind of battles in a row, it gets to be a lot. The game does try and throw in some traversal and side missions, but it just doesn’t go far enough.
In my mind, the gold standard of action game pacing is Ninja Gaiden 2 — an entry was masterful at knowing when to throw enemy grunts at you, switch to some ninja wall running, throw in a bombastic cutscene, or a boss battle with unique mechanics. Ninja Gaiden 4 doesn’t manage to strike that balance well, and it’s not even a matter of there not being other things to do than fight enemies — there’s simply too much fighting.
Contrast this with one of my personal favorite Platinum games, Metal Gear Rising: Reveangence. That game got exactly to its point on everything; smaller levels that can be beaten quickly, huge climactic boss battles at the end of each one, and tight pacing that mixes in a surprisingly political story. With Metal Gear Rising, developer Platinum was firing on all cylinders, and the studio knew exactly how to keep the pacing tight and get players moving onto the next big bombastic event.
Ninja Gaiden 4 comes within a razor’s edge of hitting those same highs, and genuinely could if just a little bit of the extra battles were trimmed off the edges. But even with that in mind, Ninja Gaiden 4 is a thrilling return to the pure action game — something I’ve been craving for years. Even as much as I’ve loved God of War reboot and Ragnarok, those games have also veered more into the cinematic film-like experience Sony wants than pure action. Ninja Gaiden 4 feels like a statement that purely action-focused games still work in the modern landscape of games, and I genuinely hope we see more like it.
