Introduction: What is the game?
This time developed by PlatinumGames and overseen by Team Ninja, Ninja Gaiden 4 is the newest entry in the Ninja Gaiden series, character action games known for their fast-paced combat and high difficulty. You play as Yakumo, a new protagonist introduced in this game alongside Ryu Hayabusa, the iconic main character from the previous games.
Story
The main character Yakumo is tasked with releasing four seals and freeing the Dark Dragon in order to kill it for good and free Tokyo from its evil. The story of the game is incredibly simple and mainly acts as a way to get you to the action, and most of the dialogue is simply heard through a radio as you play through the missions.
Basic gameplay systems
The combat in Ninja Gaiden 4 is melee focused with four different weapon types that you will find throughout the game. These include the Takeminakata: a pair of dual swords that are the first weapon you get and can transform into a single, slower blade with increased range; and the Yatousen, a rapier that transforms into a giant drill-like lance. There are several other weapons in the game, but I won’t go into them here as discovering them is quite fun. Each weapon has two forms: the Base Form, and Blood Raven form. The two forms of each weapon have completely different movesets and they can quickly be swapped between by holding a button, which makes them all very fun to play and improvising combos and changing weapons on the fly is incredibly smooth. Using the Blood Raven form does use a resource called the Bloodbind gauge which is an important part of combat because enemies have certain unblockable attacks that can only be interrupted with Blood Raven form attacks, so you should always have at least some charge left in order to deal with them when necessary.
Combat involves a lot of blocking, dodging, and parrying enemy attacks by timing your own attack to intercept an enemy swing. Blocking is the easiest defensive method to use but you can only block a limited amount of hits in a row; while dodging and parrying require tight timing but have no limits to how much they can be used. There are various other techniques unlocked throughout the game that add much more depth and strategy to combat.
One aspect of combat can be very annoying at times though, and that is the lock-on system. This game automatically locks on to the nearest enemy with certain actions, meaning that sometimes you can be snapped toward enemies that are off-screen despite attempting to target an enemy you’re directly facing due to the other enemy being slightly closer.
The other playable character, Ryu Hayabusa, has the same basic gameplay mechanics with the exception of the Bloodbind gauge being replaced by the Gleam gauge, which functions the same but instead of changing his weapon, will add follow-ups to his normal attacks when used. Ryu also only has one weapon, the Dragon Blade, a fairly basic but fun to use katana.
The main thing that separates Ryu’s gameplay from Yakumo’s is the Ninpo magic Ryu can use; these are powerful techniques that consume the Gleam gauge and include moves like strong projectiles that can pierce through enemies and waves of wind that instantly dismember weaker enemies in a large radius around you. In my opinion Ryu feels unfinished as a character due to only having a single weapon, but he is still fun to play as and will be fleshed out more in an upcoming paid expansion.
Difficulty
Enemies in the Ninja Gaiden series are highly aggressive and there are a lot of them. Paired with the speed and mechanical complexity of the games it naturally makes them challenging as enemies will all attack you at the same time, making the fighting quite hectic as you decide how to deal with encounters.
Ninja Gaiden 4 has four difficulty options to choose from, which are Hero, Normal, Hard and Master Ninja. Hero is an easy mode with added accessibility options like auto-move, which will automatically complete some traversal actions for the player such as wall-running. Normal mode is the standard difficulty and what I would recommend to someone new to Ninja Gaiden but familiar with action games, while Hard mode simply cranks up the number values so enemies deal more damage. Players experienced with the series will likely enjoy this setting.
Then there is Master Ninja difficulty which remixes enemy encounters throughout the game, introducing harder enemies earlier and replacing the basic versions of enemies with their stronger variants that have increased HP values, more aggressive behaviour and more attacks. This setting also increases enemy damage so much that you will likely die in 1-3 hits from almost any enemy even with a fully upgraded HP bar. This difficulty is only unlocked after beating the game once.
Extra content and completion time
Beating the game also unlocks Combat Trials and Boss Trials. Boss Trials let you refight any boss from the game while Combat Trials are more in-depth challenges that will really test your skill and patience. These trials include conditions like limiting your arsenal, needing to defeat waves of enemies under a time limit or while your health is constantly draining or – the most frustrating one – you die in one hit.
The main story of the game is on the shorter side as usual within the genre, most likely taking around 15-20 hours to beat on a first playthrough depending on player skill and difficulty. But 100% completion including all the challenges and Master Ninja difficulty will likely take around 40-50 hours.
Technical information
For this review I played on the base model PlayStation 5 using the performance mode which allows for 120FPS gameplay. The game runs nearly perfectly and I very rarely noticed any drops in the framerate, only seeing slight dips in performance during some Master Ninja difficulty encounters due to the larger number of enemies compared to other diffculties. My biggest gripe with performance are the load times that, while not necessarily being too long by themselves, do add up when the game already has overly long animations for things like the game over screen or intro screens when starting a combat trial.
Conclusion
Ninja Gaiden 4 is an excellent entry in the series and one that I would recommend to anyone who is a fan of action games, whether you’re familiar with the series or not. While the story isn’t notable and there are a couple of potential annoyances in the gameplay, the combat feel makes for a very enjoyable time spent mastering the game and overcoming higher difficulties.
Screenshot sources: myself