REVIEW: ‘Ninja Gaiden 4’ Is A Solid New Entry In The Series

After well over ten years since the last mainline title, Team Ninja is finally releasing Ninja Gaiden 4, and with it comes a new cast of characters, challenges, and some modern flair. The game provides great new elements while still providing a familiar but stellar Ninja Gaiden experience.

Ninja Gaiden 4 takes place several years after the third game in a now transformed and warped version of futuristic Tokyo. The city rests below the Dark Dragon’s empty husk after being slain by Ryu Hayabusa. However, this husk has since plagued the city with an endless rain of miasma. Yakumo, the top ninja of the Raven Clan, is tasked to kill a priestess connected to the Dark Dragon in order to destroy it for good and put an end to the endless rain.

However, upon getting to her, she reveals that the only way of accomplishing his clan’s goals is for him to destroy the seals that bind the Dark Dragon, allow its resurrection, and then purify it. Yakumo accepts and brings her along to accomplish this goal. The game sees Yakumo encountering several hurdles and meeting several characters along his journey, including Ryu Hayabusa himself, who has his own goals.

Ninja Gaiden 4 introduces a new protagonist, Yakumo, joining a line of mighty warriors.

Ninja Gaiden 4 provides an interesting story concept and a serviceable plot. However, the narrative doesn’t provide much else, as while there are some exciting and engaging moments, most of the entertainment from the game stems from combat and the exhilarating boss fights the bosses provide. It’s also worth noting that the introduction of Yakumo as a new protagonist, was a perfect opportunity to provide some variety to the protagonists of the series personality-wise. This is because most of them, like Ryu, are all stoic warriors with not a lot of depth to their characters.

Unfortunately, this goes the same for Yakumo as he’s even less talkative and amusing than Ryu, which is a shame. Thankfully, many side characters, specifically Seori the priestess and Umi, Yakumo’s handler, have enough personality and are endearing enough to make up for the protagonist’s lackluster character.

Gameplay-wise, Ninja Gaiden 4 provides one of the best gameplay experiences in the franchise so far. Players fight enemies in fast-paced combat using several ninja skills, weapons, and tools. One of the most notable new inclusions in the game is BloodBind Ninjutsu.

The gameplay, particularily on PC, proves to be some of the best yet.

This Ninjutsu style sees Yakumo use his and his enemies’ blood to execute a variety of powerful moves that can break an enemy’s guard as well as add variety to his moveset and combos. Each Bloodbind attack depends on the weapons you have equipped. Each weapon gives several devastating finishers with different animations that look gory but amazing. The bulk of the enjoyment the game offers stems from fighting enemies that are not only well designed but also offer different challenges to overcome.

Each level is finely crafted and is immensely fun to play through. Be it flying through levels, parkouring, grinding rails, or fighting bosses, there’s never a dull moment during gameplay. What’s more, segments in the game where you play as Ryu are also fun in their own right and offer more creativity and variety to the game.

Players can also unlock several skills and moves to extend their arsenal. However, while they unlock weapon skills using skill points, they have to use the game’s currency, Ninja Coins, to unlock new combat moves, which are separate from weapon skills.

The use of Ninja Coins proves frustrating when you have to choose between other purchases.

The problem with this is that using Ninja Coins to unlock new combat skills when you also need them to buy restoratives and other consumables is tough, as you often have to prioritize one over the other. Thankfully, this is only an issue if you want to use all the skills in the game. Just using half of them will be enough to get you by, especially if you’re no stranger to Ninja Gaiden or hack and slash games.

That said, players who aren’t new to the genre or series may not find Ninja Gaiden 4 challenging until they bump up the difficulty to Hard mode, as the easier difficulty modes won’t provide the optimal difficulty the series is known for. Conversely, the Master Ninja difficulty mode is extremely hard and only advisable to players who enjoy going through the pain of perfection.

Ninja Gaiden experts and action game fanatics can also indulge in the game’s well-designed training mode that lets players test their combat skills or hone them for the challenges ahead. The training mode does its job excellently as it allows players to freely test out the harder-to-execute combat skills. Visually, Ninja Gaiden 4 looks fantastic. It sports a great futuristic modern Japanese aesthetic, intricately designed character and object models, great lighting, and immaculate character designs.

The aesthetics and visuals are top-notch, full of futuristic designs and details.

Ninja Gaiden 4 also runs smoothly on PC, that is, if you have a GPU that has at least 6 GB VRAM. Having any GPU with less VRAM, regardless of the generation or model, will lock you into the lowest settings possible with no option of adjusting any of them, at least on the pre-release build this review is based on. However, it’s worth noting this may hopefully change with the release version.

Overall, Ninja Gaiden 4, while not perfect, is a solid new entry in the series. It offers an amazing and satisfying combat experience, great boss fights, and a memorable visual experience. As such, it’s easy to recommend the game to both Ninja Gaiden and hack and slash players, especially if they’re playing the console versions.

Ninja Gaiden 4  will launch on October 21 for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam and Microsoft Store.