Ninja Gaiden 4 - Review

Ninja Gaiden 4 is a revival of the series that hadn’t seen a mainline new entry since 2012, a 13-year gap. This time however instead of the minds behind Team Ninja being at the helm, Platinum Games has lent their touch and made the game in their own very unique style.

Ninja Gaiden 4 sees you take up the mantle of Yakumo, a Ninja of the cursed Raven clan. Don’t fret though, even though Ryu Hayabusa isn’t taking centre stage this time, it doesn’t mean he isn’t present. Yakumo is an incredibly edgy, straight talking and hyper focused Ninja protagonist and is reminiscent of another Ninja that Platinum Games have brought to life before. That feeling persists throughout the entire game, there is such a heavy feeling of Platinum Games quick and slick gameplay with regular dismemberment and lots and lots of blood.

Ninja Gaiden 4 is probably the quickest feeling and slickest overall in terms of combat and gameplay in the entire series. The touch of Platinum Games is felt right out of the box. In an almost Devil May Cry style there are plenty of skills and unique abilities to unlock and use that make combat feel active and every encounter just different enough in the ways you can approach it. Couple this with a number of different weapon types you’ll unlock through the game, as well as both Bloodbind Ninjutsu forms of those weapons, there is a near limitless number of ways to approach each combat encounter and boss fight.

The main loop revolves around attacking enough to dismember an enemy, hitting your heavy attack and executing them with an obliteration. Obliterations having multiple different unique animations depending on the enemy, the attacks used before and then what weapon you are actively using. Couple this with the ability to rapidly dodge around, activate Bloodbind forms to deal big damage and occasionally go berserk to allow you to instant kill any enemy you hit with correct timing. Like all Ninja Gaiden games you’ll need to get very good and very competent with the gameplay itself to feel like the true Master Ninja you are meant to be.

Strangely with how slick the combat feels, movement in the game can at times feel just a little bit too clunky. The camera is just slightly offset from centre, which normally doesn’t cause much issue. But in some environments, I found that it made moving around when sprinting a little less responsive than it should be and would make you move just slightly off from where you are actually wanting to go. Couple this with Yakumo feeling somewhat heavy in the butt and being almost a tank when moving around and the sections between combat can feel a little off. It’s nothing major, and later in the game in the platforming reaction sections the slickness returns. But it almost feels too reminiscent of how clunky movement can feel in the earlier Ninja Gaiden entries.

Speaking of the platforming reaction sections, NG4 does a tremendous job of keeping you using all the different gadgets and move tools you get throughout the game, and as you get more familiar with them creating intense sections where you’ll swap between grinding on rails, flipping back and forth to avoid oncoming trains, sliding or jumping over obstacles to quickly soaring through the air, before having to surf across water or any number of crazy combinations. Couple this with daemons who change the environment and sometimes only having a mere fraction of a second to react and these sections are easily some of the most impressive in the game. Both visually and in terms of their intensity and skill demand.

Further on that note, and somewhat of a major spoiler to follow here. SPOILER WARNING. At a certain point you will once again go through the earlier chapter bosses as another character. This character plays pretty differently to Yakumo, feeling a little heavier in platforming but making up for that by being much more powerful in combat. A completely different style of combat too, one focusing on Ninpo magic and rapid quick powered up attacks. The chapters with the second character are much quicker to get through, these being the first time I got SSS rank, finishing most of them in under 10 minutes, compared to the 30 or so for the other chapters. Upon beating the game you’ll unlock the ability to play as this other character for the entirety of the game, giving a good amount of replay value here alone.

Speaking of replay value, after beating the game a whole range of new activities unlock and open up to keep you invested in the game. You’ll be able to do combat trials for almost every chapter in the game, revisit and attempt to get high scores in all the different purgatory challenges, as well as refight all the bosses in the game in Boss specific trials, with both Yakumo and the secondary character. Add to this a new difficulty that looks to remind you of just how hard these games are meant to be, with the self-contained challenges of getting Untouchable and SSS ranks for all missions. The replay value of the game is super high, which is impressive with this easily being one of the longest to beat Ninja Gaiden games at around 15 to 16 hours depending on how good and how quickly you plow through the story.

The story itself is nothing too out there for a Ninja Gaiden game. It aims to put you in the shoes of the Raven clan, the ones who have had their bloodline cursed as a result of them being the descendants of the Dark Dragon. In a modern Cyber future style Tokyo with the giant carcass of the Dark Dragon hanging in its sky raining down blood on all the inhabitants of the city. Yakumo originally intends to kill the Dragon Priestess to fulfil his clan’s prophecy but is convinced by Seori that it is possible for him to cleanse and permanently kill the Dark Dragon once and for all but will need her help to revive him so he can be properly cleansed. Another take on the Dark Dragon theme of the Ninja Gaiden series, the story doesn’t do anything egregiously wrong and is fun to play through and experience, through the eyes and experience of someone other than Ryu Hayabusa. There are a few twists and turns as you go through, and it does a good job of not being too obvious with how things are going to end up.

Side missions are present throughout the game too and I found these to be a little bit underwhelming. For the most part these involve you needing to explore a little bit off the beaten track to either fight a group of stronger enemy variants, a recurring Ninja boss, or find a key item in the environment. There is also the usual ‘kill X of Y enemy with Z weapon’ or some variant. These serve mainly as chapter filler rewarding you with Ninja Coin, consumable items and occasionally accessories or half of the two items required for increasing your max health. While I wasn’t expecting anything much here, it would have been nice to have some level of variety or at least have them be slightly less common and with a better reward to justify their inclusion. They add some level of replay to the chapters themselves as even being pretty observant of the environment I missed a fair few of the items or special encounters on my playthrough. They add a little bit of flavour to the game, but not enough to really make them anything more than a chore.

Ninja Gaiden 4 is easily my favourite in the series. Platinum Games are a dream team for this style of game and have created a fantastic hard hitting, gore filled, limb flying jaunt into the world of Ninja Gaiden. Snappy combat, a genuinely enjoyable story with just enough post-game content to keep you coming back and not feeling like it is all too samey. A little bit clunky in general movement but made up for in platforming reaction sections. Side missions are a bit of a chore, but not anything that really detracts from the overall experience. A fantastic return to form for the series, and one that I’m sure Tomonobu Itagaki would have been proud of. Thank you for giving us 21 years of Ninja Gaiden.

The Score

9.0

Review code provided by Xbox

The Pros

Incredibly slick combat

All weapons feel useful and distinct in how they are used

Visually stunning, with plenty of blood and limb flying

The Cons

Weak Side Missions that feel like chores

Clunky movement in a game where everything else feels so snappy