I have to start this out by saying I’ve re-written this review six times. I’ve had so many thoughts over the last 10+ days with this game that I have continued to write, re-write, start over and repeat the process multiple times. I’ve done that because Ninja Gaiden 4 is a paradox. There are expectations placed on its release that are absolutely fair and unfair at the same time. It’s also a game that is a prism–depending on what you expected from the experience will determine how you view the game as a whole. Does it live up to your expectations if you’re a Ninja Gaiden fan? What if you’re a Platinum Games fan? Does it work as a Platinum developed game? Does combining a Team Ninja and Platinum on a storied franchise work at all?
I’ve tried to be as even-handed as possible with this review because I am a die-hard Ninja Gaiden fan. I have played since the 8-bit days on the original Nintendo, and I also really dig Platinum Games and what they produce. If you are in one camp or the other, you’re either going to be pissed or you’re going to be happy. If you like both, you may end up confused, disappointed, or really happy, because Ninja Gaiden 4 isn’t really a proper Ninja Gaiden game nor is it a pure Platinum game.
Ninja Gaiden is not a souls-like
So with that in mind, let’s get this out of the way: You can’t discuss Ninja Gaiden without discussing difficulty. It’s impossible. Difficulty is intrinsic to the DNA of Ninja Gaiden, going all the way back to the NES titles. The promo material for Ninja Gaiden 4 talks excessively about its difficulty. So we are going to talk about it too.
If you like difficult games, there is no shortage of Souls-likes on the market for you to try. These are games that incorporate Dark Souls mechanics into their core gameplay loop. What this translates to is a type of game that is built around being punishingly difficult. Hallmarks of the genre include players spending dozens of hours on one boss, losing progress when they die, and general hostility towards the player. You can pull up Steam and type “Soulslike” in the search bar and find thousands of games to that equate punitive with difficult.
Most games trying to ape Dark Souls gameplay miss the other parts of Dark Souls’ gameplay that make it compelling, and instead only focus on the punitive portion. Due to the industry producing more and more Souls-like games, the mechanics used by the genre have become more wonky and uneven across various titles. The Souls-like genre used to have specific design sensibilities built around smaller and larger skirmishes with a specific set of rules but the genre has become more reliant on misleading windups during encounters, along with breaking long established gameplay rules, all for the sake of ratcheting the difficulty higher and higher.
Ninja Gaiden has NEVER had that problem.
In a numerous ways Ninja Gaiden is the opposite of Dark Souls and the Souls-like genre. The Ninja Gaiden series rewards precision rather than memorization and 95 attempts at a boss that is characteristic of modern day Souls-like games. In most Souls-like games you WILL get outmaneuvered by EVERYTHING. Enemies and bosses will have speed and reach that far exceeds your own. In Ninja Gaiden, it’s the opposite. Ryu Hayabusa doesn’t control like a tank. He controls like a nimble ninja-murder-machine. Success in Ninja Gaiden is predicated on understanding how Ryu moves in relation to the world around him. Understanding his movement abilities and how those abilities can be applied to the current encounter will help you overcome the obstacles presented over the course of virtually every Ninja Gaiden game.
If you can react fast enough and use the right tools at the right time, you can escape most battles in the Ninja Gaiden series without even being touched.
Ryu controlling the way he does coupled with being so reactive to player input is why Ninja Gaiden has never had the rule breaking difficulty escalation problem that Souls-like games have. Ninja Gaiden ratchets up its difficulty by putting you in situations that test your ability to execute Ryu’s movement abilities and move set. NG1 opens with you scaling a small mountain to a monastery, fighting a few random ninjas so you can get a feel for how things work, and then you crash into a hard wall when you fight Murai, the first boss of the game. If you can’t beat him, then you might as well stop playing. Contrast that to later levels where you are using the Flying Swallow attack to take off enemy heads, cover long distances between attacking enemies, combo-ing multiple enemies into an izuna drop, blocking, rolling, etc. It’s everything the Murai fight put in front of you times 10.
Ninja Gaiden II works very similarly. The first stage is in a playground–a skyscraper area that acts as a training course for how Ninja Gaiden II plays. You fight a bunch of incredibly aggressive ninjas, scale buildings, and get comfortable with how the flow of combat works. In a few levels you’ll be dodging rockets, killing demons, and fighting a giant horde of enemies while climbing to the top of an underground temple. This fight famously slowed the Xbox 360 to a crawl because of how many characters had to be rendered on screen.
That’s how Ninja Gaiden ramps its difficulty. And if you die, you try again. You don’t lose souls or money or anything like that. You’re just expected to try again and execute appropriately.
This sounds relatively easy on paper, but making a game like Ninja Gaiden is HARD. It is a balancing act that has been hard to master, even for Team Ninja. I’d argue there hasn’t been a solid Ninja Gaiden since Ninja Gaiden II. That’s why Ninja Gaiden 4 coming back is so exciting but also a risk, especially since Team Ninja isn’t the only team working on this title. Platinum, developer of such titles as Metal Gear Rising, Vanquish, and Bayonetta, are co-developers on Ninja Gaiden 4. Platinum can be uneven at times, but their output action games has had a lot of solid action titles, though none that play like Ninja Gaiden. So is this Platinum doing their best imitation of a Team Ninja creation?
Ninja Gaiden 4 is a paradox, and a prism
Let’s get it out of the way from jump- Ninja Gaiden 4 is a Platinum game that has the Ninja Gaiden name on it. It’s fun, it’s fast, and it’s brutal, but it feels fundamentally different in specific ways that may disappoint fans of Ninja Gaiden Black, or Ninja Gaiden II. Ninja Gaiden 4 WILL please people who love Platinum’s games and the idiosyncrasies that come along with their pedigree.
Your disappointment or satisfaction with Ninja Gaiden 4 will be specifically tied to being able to accept some fundamental design changes and swerves that are present from the outset of the game.
The first major swerve is that Ryu Hayabusa, the man protagonist of every mainline Ninja Gaiden title since the 1980s, is not the main character in Ninja Gaiden 4.
A young Raven clan Ninja named Yakumo is the main character and he’s essentially the opposite of Ryu in numerous ways. Aesthetically Yakumo looks like a Shonen manga character rendered in high definition. He moves like Ryu, but only enough to make you feel like this is Ninja Gaiden, and then he is used as an spring board to introduce loads of new mechanics that feel superfluous at best and unnecessary at worst.
Almost every game released in the last decade has contained a some type of quest system to encourage engagement with the game instead of moving from point A to point B. That’s the second swerve in Ninja Gaiden 4. There is a no“quest-board” style system. Team Platinum Ninja (that’s what we’re calling them for the rest of the review) has attempted to emulate the same level structure of Ninja Gaiden 1/Black, and created a quest system to aid in exploration. This type of quest system would encourage exploration if the levels in Ninja Gaiden 4 were similar to like the levels in Ninja Gaiden 1/Black but they aren’t. The levels in Ninja Gaiden 4 share a similar structure to those in Ninja Gaiden II, which always had you moving forward from one encounter to the next.
The quests are accessed through multiple consoles found throughout each level. They look like little Japanese pagodas until you walk up to them, and they expand into a set of giant computer screens. You can buy items, look at the mission database, which is your quest log, or speak with UMI, one of your partners that’s helping guide you through the blighted Tokyo landscape.
Ninja Quests
This is where the game starts to fracture. This quest system IMPLEMENTATION, rather than the quest system itself, is completely incongruent for this type of game.
Yakumo has a team with him that are there to help him accomplish his mission. Throughout the game you will have conversations via ear piece and through these Umi boards. You can also interact with ravens you find throughout each level and you’ll summon a different teammate who will act as a training bot. You can buy new moves from him with currency you earn throughout the levels, and have conversations with him about your progress.
The ability to have small talk with members of your team after your battles where you’ve decapitated and mutilated dozens of people feels so utterly mismatched to the game’s atmosphere that it’s COMICAL. You encounter these pagodas and ravens numerous times throughout every level and always after major fight where you’ve soaked in blood because you’ve just killed dozens of enemies. This phases NO ONE from your team. Instead they talk to you like you got a pizza delivery. “So…what’s up with you?” style dialogue is beyond ridiculous and works against the game in every possible way.
The quests consist of checklist items you would complete during normal gameplay, such as killing a certain amount of enemies, collecting items, or eliminating a specific target that has a bunch of body guards. The quests will reward currency or helpful items like healing potions.
The quests themselves aren’t anything egregious, it’s just their implementation that’s the problem. There numerous ways to implement quests that would have made more sense narratively than the system present in Ninja Gaiden 4. Use the old “kunai-with-a-message” system from previous Ninja Gaiden games. Have a few extra objectives assigned at the beginning of each level. Or, just have extra objectives pop up after you kill a new enemy type/mini boss. ANY of these implementations would have felt more cohesive compared to what’s in the game now, which has your team yucking it up in the radiated remains of Tokyo.
This team aspect as a whole is absurdly distracting because they’re mainly there as exposition tools or narrative explanation tools. This leads to multiple instances where the game forces you to stop and engage in a walk-and-talk style exposition dumps that serve to highlight how ridiculous it is that the team is even there. The story in modern games are never really the focus so the team members, the banter, ALL of it, feels like grafting something onto Ninja Gaiden 4 that it doesn’t need.
Levels and Setting
Switching gears, since I talked about how the game stops to hit you with exposition, let’s discuss where the game takes place. Ninja Gaiden 4 is set in a blighted version of Tokyo, where the remains of the Dark Dragon are intertwined with the city. The remains have poisoned the landscape and as a response, a military force has occupied the area. No civilians are allowed in or out. Yakumo and his team have to sneak into Tokyo, and the plot unfolds from there. This is another reason the team concept doesn’t work. You carve through the early levels leaving dozens of bodies, hundreds of severed limbs, and gallons of blood behind you, and then one of your teammates just comes strolling in during a cut scene like he just got out of an Uber. It is BEYOND ridiculous. There’s a reason Ryu was a loner and when he had to deal with people he only hung out with other Ninjas.
Anyway, the levels are large, thematically interesting (even though there’s only a few variations on the level themes themselves), and are designed to encourage a bit of light exploration. If you get lost you can activate a directional indicator that will tell you where to go next. You really won’t need to because like all modern games, there is an excessive amount of yellow paint that will direct you where to go.
Guiding you where you should go isn’t a detriment however, because Ninja Gaiden 4 wants you to move from encounter to encounter. Encounter design is the best thing about Ninja Gaiden 4 and it’s where the game truly shines. There are so many memorable fights with both regular enemies and bosses that it’s easy to lose count. Almost all of them can be tackled in various ways, highlighting the flexibility inherent to Ninja Gaiden 4’s combat.
There’s one specific encounter on the second stage where you have to take out roughly a dozen guys with jet packs. That wouldn’t be that hard but Platinum always turns things up a notch, so these guys are super high above you. Bullets are raining down, and other soldiers on the ground are trying every way they can to disconnect your head from your neck. Dodging bullets while zigzagging on the ground (and in the air) to evade aggressive sword swings and eliminate everyone is the quintessential embodiment of what this game truly is—Ninja Gaiden with its Platinum twist.
It’s an interesting formula, and when it works, it is a blast. But that’s only half the time. The other half makes Ninja Gaiden 4 feel like Platinum inserting Bayonetta into a Ninja Gaiden game.
Ninja Gaiden 4 even opens like every Platinum game does–a visually striking and arcade-like intro sequence designed to grab your attention. This intro is thrilling, looks great and frames what you’ll be doing for the rest of the game.
For example, there are sections in the second level where you are navigating an obstacle course by grinding on a rail (with your feet!) that runs throughout the city and you have to dodge different obstacles that are slammed in front of you, leap from rail to rail, and wall run different sections, all while dodging oncoming trains. It all flows well, and is insanely fun. There’s never been a sequence like this in any Ninja Gaiden game. But there have been plenty like it in Platinum developed games. No other Ninja Gaiden games have started this way.
Out of everything good or bad in Ninja Gaiden 4, the encounter design and boss battles are the absolute best part about it, and I think it will be the one place where fans of Ninja Gaiden and fans of Platinum will be in agreement. The sheer insanity of some of the encounters shows a level of confidence that is absolutely impressive, and pretty ballsy in today’s market. The difficulty is spot on from the beginning and the game ramps up accordingly as you progress further. The difficulty curve harkens back to the best parts of previous Ninja Gaiden titles.
With the game ramping up the difficulty as you progress, you have to be able to adjust as well. You don’t level up but instead unlock new combat abilities, procure new weapons and those weapon’s will also have individual weapon-specific abilities. You acquire these new abilities by purchasing them with money earned from combat. Ninja Gaiden 4 has a scoring system tied to each encounter and the scoring system rewards you for playing well. you’ll earn more money by playing well. You’ll receive an overall score at the end of each level that will grant you additional currency to unlock more abilities.
Stylish, Hard Action
For the diehard Ninja Gaiden fan, the combat should feel pretty spot on, but again, it has that Platinum twist. This applies on all difficulty levels, including Master Ninja mode. Combat feels specific in its design rather than chaotic, and skirmishes in each specific area are intentionally setup to provide you with multiple options for engagement and replayability.
There are very few encounters with one or two enemies. Instead, each enemy encounter is designed set up to explore all of the additions that Platinum has made to Ninjaf Gaiden 4’s combat.
Early on in the game you get a grappling hook. Pretty standard, and in most games you would only use that grappling hook for traversal. In NG4, you use it to swing across pits and gaps when needed, but there are multiple times throughout the game where you will see grappling hook points in combat areas. You can use the grappling hook points as part of your combos. You can be in the middle of a combo and latch on to the grappling hook point, using it to zip to the wall and then dashing to another enemy. You can also use a grappling hook point as a way to escape if you’re getting beat on, and you can also use them to step out of the fight for just a moment for a breather, reorient yourself and re-engage.
As I mentioned before, Ninja Gaiden 4 is a paradox. There are numerous moments throughout the runtime of the game that are absolutely thrilling, and they happen from the outset of the game and never really let up. But there are also head scratching decisions that make me feel that this game would be received better by certain members of the gaming public if it wasn’t called Ninja Gaiden 4. And all of that has to do with Yakumo.
Can it really be Ninja Gaiden without Ryu?
Yakumo is very much a Platinum character, from his design aesthetic to his move set. He has a weightlessness to him that Ryu never did in previous Ninja Gaiden titles, and I don’t know if it will sit well with some Ninja Gaiden die-yards.
In prior Ninja Gaiden games, when Ryu Hayabusa would launch an enemy, they would fly upwards to a height that felt like 7-8 feet off the ground. You could follow that launcher with a couple of hits for a juggle combo with the Dragon Sword and the enemy would die or drop to the ground. When you procured other weapons besides the Dragon Sword, you could string together some pretty absurd, but “realistic” feeling combos. Ryu had a weight to him that made him feel extraordinarily acrobatic but not ridiculous. Ninja Gaiden’s combat looked like a visceral style of Wire-fu from martial arts movies; exaggerated but not supernatural or otherworldly.
Yakumo throws all that out of the window.
His normal sword attacks, while resembling Ryu’s attacks, are super exaggerated and extremely over the top. When he launches someone, they fly 15-20 feet in the air. When you execute an enemy, Yakumo is covered in so much blood he looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. This exaggeration goes into absolute bonkers territory with the additional Blood Raven form that Platinum added to Ninja Gaiden 4’s combat.
Blood Raven Form
The game describes the Blood Raven form as a “technique that manipulates the blood of oneself and enemies, transforming it into a massive weapon, capable of slicing through multiple photos at once.” What this translates to is an absolutely ginormous blood red sword that has entirely different moves and abilities the same way a new weapon would in previous games. Unlike a new weapon, you cannot use the Blood Raven form whenever you want. It has a refillable meter that drains when activated. The meter also builds by itself so you can sit still if you want and get a full meter before your next encounter if you wanted.
The game also has a rage meter, similar to what we’ve seen in plenty of other action games. You can combine the rage meter with your Blood Raven form for an attack that will instantly kill certain enemies. You can take out a whole line of them and get a pretty wild looking kill screen from performing the move properly.
On paper, the Blood Raven form sounds very interesting, something that has a lot of potential, but in practice Raven form ends up being too much. One could argue that “being too much“ is what Platinum is known for, but this isn’t Bayonetta, it’s Ninja Gaiden. Not only that, it’s the first proper Ninja Gaiden game we’ve had in over a decade.
There are expectations after waiting for a new Ninja Gaiden for over a decade and Raven form isn’t it. Instead, it’s the epitome of what some diehard Ninja Gaiden fans will hate about 4, because of their expectations, since there hasn’t been a new Ninja Gaiden in over a decade. At that, Raven Form is one of the many things Platinum game fans will LOVE about Ninja Gaiden 4.
Stick Skills
Yakumo’s Raven form FEELS like it was supposed to be a fun addition to the game, and it can be in specific instances, but it is so interwoven into the basic gameplay of NG4 that it is absolutely a detriment.
The mechanical complexities that were added on top of a game that is already absurdly fast and requires a high level of focus and precision while already being mechanically complex just bloats the combat in ways that feel shitty. This is “a hat on top of a hat” to borrow a phrase from Bill Hader.
That level of mechanical complexity may scare off certain players. Further, because of the addition of the Raven Form, there have been mechanics added to the game that REQUIRE the use of Raven form, like stopping an enemy from executing a crazy charge/stun attack. You cannot stop some of these moves unless you use Raven form. The amount of unblockable garbage that enemies can throw at you has gotten hilarious and that’s only here because of the Raven form.
What makes Blood Raven feel so weird is that the other weapons feel so much fun to use. There are so many moves to unlock, and I really don’t know WHY Blood Raven form was needed. That feeling is further exacerbated by the fact that Ryu doesn’t get the same amount of weapons he gets in other Ninja Gaiden games. I understand that Yakumo is the main character but again, this is another reason why diehard fans are simply not going to be happy and Platinum fans won’t care. Why relegate Ryu to second string in his own game series? And why stuff the game with so many mechanics like this?
Difficulty Debate
Now, all of that sounds like I’m down on the game but it also allows me to highlight a set of features that should absolutely be applauded, and that is the Hero difficulty option available in game.
There is a cyclical conversation that occurs, seemingly every time a difficult game is released. It never goes any where and devolves into one side screaming “GIT GUD” at the other side that just wants to play the game. The “GIT GUD” team loves to say that easier difficulties rob the player of the intended experience. I’ve even seen people comment to players that want an easier experience that they “don’t deserve to play the game.”
Fun fact: Team Ninja was famous for having their easy mode in Ninja Gaiden carry the name Ninja Dog. It only became available after you died a bunch of times.
Hero mode lets you toggle on options like auto/auto evade, and set them so they only activate when health is low, or you can turn them on all the time.
There is an auto heal option, as well as an auto movement option which will automatically take on movement based challenges like wall running or rail grinding. You can think of these as options that will help you get through the game and enjoy it at your level. Hero mode allows the player to avoid getting savagely murdered while also showing them how the game should look and play at higher levels. It’s a very effective on-ramping tool for people who may not have experience with a game like this.
There is also an absolute GRIP (that is a technical term. It means a LOT) of options for people with disabilities, visual and otherwise. You can change the color of pretty much any enemy type, any interactive object, traversal points, and objects that are usable with Raven Gear (such as grappling points). There are settings for people who are left handed, and there’s a control setting for single-hand play. There’s even a small convenience of a shortcut button, which is defaulted to photo mode but can be set to other things, like the reload checkpoint, help, or even going straight into training mode.
Yup, there’s a training mode! with all kinds of set variables so you can practice. You can view your move list, try combos, and adjust the equipment you have on hand to see if it makes a difference with what you’re trying to do. Something else that’s really cool is every time you acquire a new move the game offers to send you into training mode so you can try it. Some people may bristle at this but I think it’s a great addition.
I cannot stress enough how thoughtfully intentional these modes are and I cannot give the devs enough credit for including them.
Presentation
Switching gears for a second, I do want to praise how NG4 looks. I don’t think NG1 or NG2, from a character design standpoint, were ever really great. Ryu looked fantastic and the games were always technical show pieces but the character designs always felt super generic. That is not the case with NG4.
The Raven Ninja clan that Yakumo belongs to is a group of techno-ninja that is pure Platinum from a design aesthetic. The same goes for pretty much every character model in the game. This entire game looks like what William Gibson would have come up with during an LSD fever dream if he has to write a cyberpunk version of Shogun.
The sound design is also another area that feels like the paradox is on full display. Multiple fights have hard rock music playing in the background, and contribute to framing Yakumo as a badass. It’s one of those things that is a signature of Platinum games but it doesn’t feel right in a Ninja Gaiden title, whose previous games leaned into orchestral and electronic stylings and not rock. If you like Platinum games then the musical themes won’t bother you. It will feel normal. But It doesn’t “fit” in Ninja Gaiden, and really sums up NG4 as a whole. It IS a paradox, but you can see why and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Platinum obviously wanted to honor what came before with the previous Ninja Gaiden games, but didn’t want to copy Team Ninja’s homework. Ryu FEELS like Ryu when you’re playing him. Yakumo FEELS like a Platinum character. The boss encounters are FUN and demanding. The level design is fun. The aesthetic is interesting. But all of it doesn’t feel quite right if you’re looking for a proper Ninja Gaiden title. It feels awesome if you’re in it for the next great Platinum game.
Regardless of which camp you fall into, the game feels overly stuffed with mechanical complexities but also a bit empty at the same time. That makes the game very hard to judge.
Verdict
It’s very obvious the team behind this cared about what they made and wanted to make the best game possible. I’m happy as hell we even got a new Ninja Gaiden game, but this doesn’t really feel like Ninja Gaiden, so I’m scoring it two ways: As a Ninja Gaiden game, this gets a 2.5/5. There are things here that feel right but there’s just not enough.
With that said, as a new Platinum game it gets an 4/5. It looks good. It plays great, and it has a confidence in its encounter design that is phenomenal. There is so much that works here that even things as ridiculous as the team aspect of the game can be overlooked. The additional mechanics and the general overstuffed feeling are more difficult to look past, but then again, Ninja Gaiden 4 does what Platinum always does, it ramps things up to 11.
Performance Notes
I played Ninja Gaiden 4 mainly on PC and my Steam Deck OLED. Ninja Gaiden 4 is Steam Deck certified. More on that in a moment.
I did encounter a few graphical glitches as well as some performance issues throughout my playtime. The opening sequence frame rate dropped into the teens and twenties until I dropped volumetric fog to low. I have a very beefy PC so this surprised me. My colleagues at SmashPad advised me they did not encounter these issues on console so this could be a PC specific issue. I also encountered specific but infrequent issues with texture meshes not rendering on level 3, along with general stretched out visuals due to playing on an Ultra Wide monitor. The stretched out visuals were remedied by adjusting my resolution and Microsoft has advised us that these issues will be fixed in the day one patch that will go live when Ninja Gaiden 4 is available to the general public.
As for Steam Deck OLED performance, this really is another instance where Ninja Gaiden 4 is a paradox. It is weirdly playable/unplayable on Steam Deck, depending on what you can tolerate but it’s absolutely remarkable it will run at all. Team Platinum (Ninja) has managed to create a Steam Deck profile with multiple adjustments to make 4 not only playable on the Steam Deck but if you switch the profile and tweak your settings a bit the game will maintain 50-60 fps throughout your play through. From a technical execution standpoint it’s absolutely brilliant, even down to the way the changes made to get the game running on the Steam Deck thoughtfully tie into the visual aesthetics presented.
When playing on Steam Deck, the main character is always super in-focus, but the background isn’t. The background and the details therein are out of focus except right where you’re focusing. It comes across as semi-pixelated version of a depth of field effect.
Things that you attack become sharp, while other things bleed into the background. In skirmishes with multiple enemies, you remain clearly defined while markers on the enemies are the visual details that remain defined so you know who you’re hitting. For example, some enemies have yellow emblems on their helmets to indicate they are stronger versions of the typical enemies you face early on in the game. Even in Steam Deck when the resolution drops those enemies are easy to identify because the color of their emblem sticks out. There’s also a red targeting reticle that stays in focus to show you who you’re currently focused on, even if you haven’t locked on to that specific enemy. This helps you know where you’re swinging even when the action gets crazy. There are other enemies that have shields and even during extremely tense action, the sheen from the shields is clearly visible so you know who you’re attacking. This results in enemies being jumbled together but still visible due to their design cues and how those design cues interact with these specific performance settings. It is something that could have gone wrong in so many ways but works really well considering this is a modern day AAA title, something the Steam Deck can typically have issues running.
I think the most interesting part of the implementation of the Steam Deck settings is that there was a conscious decision not to render things in high-definition that don’t have gameplay impact. For example, the Umi console, when viewed on my PC is sharp and detailed. When viewed on the Steam Deck, all the information on the screens of the Umi console are pixelated. What’s interesting about this decisions is that in these very specific instances, playing with the visuals in this manner works well with the aesthetic that the team has come up with and it doesn’t end up being a visual distraction. In screenshots it doesn’t look great but in motion it works and works well.
The downside to this particular implementation comes into play when you’re fighting groups of enemies and the action becomes too frantic. The resolution will drop considerably in order to maintain frame rate. You can tweak the visuals to be a bit clearer if you play with the video settings but that will result in frame rates close to 30 fps, which I strongly advise against. Some people will be happy with a lower frame rate but Ninja Gaiden 4 is a game that absolutely should be played at 60 fps or higher. The benefits are tremendous.
Again, the ability to play this game on such a low powered system is another paradox in a game full of them. This is a AAA game that should not run on the deck but it does. I would be willing to bet it will run well across many PC setups with minimal tweaks.
Despite the graphical compromises required to get NG4 running on the Steam Deck, I have to applaud Team Platinum (Ninja) for even getting this running on the hardware. It is impressive they were able to do so and to keep the frame rate consistent.
RIP Itagaki-san
Just something to note… while I was playing this game for review, the news broke that Tomonobu Itagaki had passed away at age 58.
Itagaki was the creator of the Dead or Alive fighting game series and behind the revival of the Ninja Gaiden series that started in 2004. To say he was passionate about Ninja Gaiden and action games in general would be dramatically underselling it. I read an interview with him conducted by James Mielke back in the mid 2000s where Itagaki stated he put a high priority and value on his games responding quickly to the player’s input, and that he wanted his games to always have a high level of interactivity, playability along with incredible graphics.
He also wasn’t shy about expressing his opinions and sometimes those opinions didn’t sit well with others. Regardless of his stances on various pieces of hardware or game releases, the man’s work has left an indelible mark on action games and the gaming industry as a whole.
Ninja Gaiden, when it launched on the original Xbox, set the bar TREMENDOUSLY high for action games. Some would argue that the bar hasn’t really hasn’t been touched since Ninja Gaiden Black. It is one of the greatest games ever made, and knowing Itagaki passed while we are on the cusp of what could be another revival of a series that he fostered and championed, one that has been with me since I was a child … well, it sucks. It sucks he couldn’t still be with us and continue to receive recognition for what he added to the fabric of gaming as a whole.
I have to start this out by saying I’ve re-written this review six times. I’ve had so many thoughts over the last 10+ days with this game that I have continued to write, re-write, start over and repeat the process…
I have to start this out by saying I’ve re-written this review six times. I’ve had so many thoughts over the last 10+ days with this game that I have continued to write, re-write, start over and repeat the process multiple times. I’ve done that because Ninja Gaiden 4 is a paradox. There are expectations placed on its release that are absolutely fair and unfair at the same time. It’s also a game that is a prism–depending on what you expected from the experience will determine how you view the game as a whole. Does it live up to your expectations if you’re a Ninja Gaiden fan? What if you’re a Platinum Games fan? Does it work as a Platinum developed game? Does combining a Team Ninja and Platinum on a storied franchise work at all?
I’ve tried to be as even-handed as possible with this review because I am a die-hard Ninja Gaiden fan. I have played since the 8-bit days on the original Nintendo, and I also really dig Platinum Games and what they produce. If you are in one camp or the other, you’re either going to be pissed or you’re going to be happy. If you like both, you may end up confused, disappointed, or really happy, because Ninja Gaiden 4 isn’t really a proper Ninja Gaiden game nor is it a pure Platinum game.
Ninja Gaiden is not a souls-like
So with that in mind, let’s get this out of the way: You can’t discuss Ninja Gaiden without discussing difficulty. It’s impossible. Difficulty is intrinsic to the DNA of Ninja Gaiden, going all the way back to the NES titles. The promo material for Ninja Gaiden 4 talks excessively about its difficulty. So we are going to talk about it too.
If you like difficult games, there is no shortage of Souls-likes on the market for you to try. These are games that incorporate Dark Souls mechanics into their core gameplay loop. What this translates to is a type of game that is built around being punishingly difficult. Hallmarks of the genre include players spending dozens of hours on one boss, losing progress when they die, and general hostility towards the player. You can pull up Steam and type “Soulslike” in the search bar and find thousands of games to that equate punitive with difficult.
Most games trying to ape Dark Souls gameplay miss the other parts of Dark Souls’ gameplay that make it compelling, and instead only focus on the punitive portion. Due to the industry producing more and more Souls-like games, the mechanics used by the genre have become more wonky and uneven across various titles. The Souls-like genre used to have specific design sensibilities built around smaller and larger skirmishes with a specific set of rules but the genre has become more reliant on misleading windups during encounters, along with breaking long established gameplay rules, all for the sake of ratcheting the difficulty higher and higher.
Ninja Gaiden has NEVER had that problem.
In a numerous ways Ninja Gaiden is the opposite of Dark Souls and the Souls-like genre. The Ninja Gaiden series rewards precision rather than memorization and 95 attempts at a boss that is characteristic of modern day Souls-like games. In most Souls-like games you WILL get outmaneuvered by EVERYTHING. Enemies and bosses will have speed and reach that far exceeds your own. In Ninja Gaiden, it’s the opposite. Ryu Hayabusa doesn’t control like a tank. He controls like a nimble ninja-murder-machine. Success in Ninja Gaiden is predicated on understanding how Ryu moves in relation to the world around him. Understanding his movement abilities and how those abilities can be applied to the current encounter will help you overcome the obstacles presented over the course of virtually every Ninja Gaiden game.
If you can react fast enough and use the right tools at the right time, you can escape most battles in the Ninja Gaiden series without even being touched.
Ryu controlling the way he does coupled with being so reactive to player input is why Ninja Gaiden has never had the rule breaking difficulty escalation problem that Souls-like games have. Ninja Gaiden ratchets up its difficulty by putting you in situations that test your ability to execute Ryu’s movement abilities and move set. NG1 opens with you scaling a small mountain to a monastery, fighting a few random ninjas so you can get a feel for how things work, and then you crash into a hard wall when you fight Murai, the first boss of the game. If you can’t beat him, then you might as well stop playing. Contrast that to later levels where you are using the Flying Swallow attack to take off enemy heads, cover long distances between attacking enemies, combo-ing multiple enemies into an izuna drop, blocking, rolling, etc. It’s everything the Murai fight put in front of you times 10.
Ninja Gaiden II works very similarly. The first stage is in a playground–a skyscraper area that acts as a training course for how Ninja Gaiden II plays. You fight a bunch of incredibly aggressive ninjas, scale buildings, and get comfortable with how the flow of combat works. In a few levels you’ll be dodging rockets, killing demons, and fighting a giant horde of enemies while climbing to the top of an underground temple. This fight famously slowed the Xbox 360 to a crawl because of how many characters had to be rendered on screen.
That’s how Ninja Gaiden ramps its difficulty. And if you die, you try again. You don’t lose souls or money or anything like that. You’re just expected to try again and execute appropriately.
This sounds relatively easy on paper, but making a game like Ninja Gaiden is HARD. It is a balancing act that has been hard to master, even for Team Ninja. I’d argue there hasn’t been a solid Ninja Gaiden since Ninja Gaiden II. That’s why Ninja Gaiden 4 coming back is so exciting but also a risk, especially since Team Ninja isn’t the only team working on this title. Platinum, developer of such titles as Metal Gear Rising, Vanquish, and Bayonetta, are co-developers on Ninja Gaiden 4. Platinum can be uneven at times, but their output action games has had a lot of solid action titles, though none that play like Ninja Gaiden. So is this Platinum doing their best imitation of a Team Ninja creation?
Ninja Gaiden 4 is a paradox, and a prism
Let’s get it out of the way from jump- Ninja Gaiden 4 is a Platinum game that has the Ninja Gaiden name on it. It’s fun, it’s fast, and it’s brutal, but it feels fundamentally different in specific ways that may disappoint fans of Ninja Gaiden Black, or Ninja Gaiden II. Ninja Gaiden 4 WILL please people who love Platinum’s games and the idiosyncrasies that come along with their pedigree.
Your disappointment or satisfaction with Ninja Gaiden 4 will be specifically tied to being able to accept some fundamental design changes and swerves that are present from the outset of the game.
The first major swerve is that Ryu Hayabusa, the man protagonist of every mainline Ninja Gaiden title since the 1980s, is not the main character in Ninja Gaiden 4.
A young Raven clan Ninja named Yakumo is the main character and he’s essentially the opposite of Ryu in numerous ways. Aesthetically Yakumo looks like a Shonen manga character rendered in high definition. He moves like Ryu, but only enough to make you feel like this is Ninja Gaiden, and then he is used as an spring board to introduce loads of new mechanics that feel superfluous at best and unnecessary at worst.
Almost every game released in the last decade has contained a some type of quest system to encourage engagement with the game instead of moving from point A to point B. That’s the second swerve in Ninja Gaiden 4. There is a no“quest-board” style system. Team Platinum Ninja (that’s what we’re calling them for the rest of the review) has attempted to emulate the same level structure of Ninja Gaiden 1/Black, and created a quest system to aid in exploration. This type of quest system would encourage exploration if the levels in Ninja Gaiden 4 were similar to like the levels in Ninja Gaiden 1/Black but they aren’t. The levels in Ninja Gaiden 4 share a similar structure to those in Ninja Gaiden II, which always had you moving forward from one encounter to the next.
The quests are accessed through multiple consoles found throughout each level. They look like little Japanese pagodas until you walk up to them, and they expand into a set of giant computer screens. You can buy items, look at the mission database, which is your quest log, or speak with UMI, one of your partners that’s helping guide you through the blighted Tokyo landscape.
Ninja Quests
This is where the game starts to fracture. This quest system IMPLEMENTATION, rather than the quest system itself, is completely incongruent for this type of game.
Yakumo has a team with him that are there to help him accomplish his mission. Throughout the game you will have conversations via ear piece and through these Umi boards. You can also interact with ravens you find throughout each level and you’ll summon a different teammate who will act as a training bot. You can buy new moves from him with currency you earn throughout the levels, and have conversations with him about your progress.
The ability to have small talk with members of your team after your battles where you’ve decapitated and mutilated dozens of people feels so utterly mismatched to the game’s atmosphere that it’s COMICAL. You encounter these pagodas and ravens numerous times throughout every level and always after major fight where you’ve soaked in blood because you’ve just killed dozens of enemies. This phases NO ONE from your team. Instead they talk to you like you got a pizza delivery. “So…what’s up with you?” style dialogue is beyond ridiculous and works against the game in every possible way.
The quests consist of checklist items you would complete during normal gameplay, such as killing a certain amount of enemies, collecting items, or eliminating a specific target that has a bunch of body guards. The quests will reward currency or helpful items like healing potions.
The quests themselves aren’t anything egregious, it’s just their implementation that’s the problem. There numerous ways to implement quests that would have made more sense narratively than the system present in Ninja Gaiden 4. Use the old “kunai-with-a-message” system from previous Ninja Gaiden games. Have a few extra objectives assigned at the beginning of each level. Or, just have extra objectives pop up after you kill a new enemy type/mini boss. ANY of these implementations would have felt more cohesive compared to what’s in the game now, which has your team yucking it up in the radiated remains of Tokyo.
This team aspect as a whole is absurdly distracting because they’re mainly there as exposition tools or narrative explanation tools. This leads to multiple instances where the game forces you to stop and engage in a walk-and-talk style exposition dumps that serve to highlight how ridiculous it is that the team is even there. The story in modern games are never really the focus so the team members, the banter, ALL of it, feels like grafting something onto Ninja Gaiden 4 that it doesn’t need.
Levels and Setting
Switching gears, since I talked about how the game stops to hit you with exposition, let’s discuss where the game takes place. Ninja Gaiden 4 is set in a blighted version of Tokyo, where the remains of the Dark Dragon are intertwined with the city. The remains have poisoned the landscape and as a response, a military force has occupied the area. No civilians are allowed in or out. Yakumo and his team have to sneak into Tokyo, and the plot unfolds from there. This is another reason the team concept doesn’t work. You carve through the early levels leaving dozens of bodies, hundreds of severed limbs, and gallons of blood behind you, and then one of your teammates just comes strolling in during a cut scene like he just got out of an Uber. It is BEYOND ridiculous. There’s a reason Ryu was a loner and when he had to deal with people he only hung out with other Ninjas.
Anyway, the levels are large, thematically interesting (even though there’s only a few variations on the level themes themselves), and are designed to encourage a bit of light exploration. If you get lost you can activate a directional indicator that will tell you where to go next. You really won’t need to because like all modern games, there is an excessive amount of yellow paint that will direct you where to go.
Guiding you where you should go isn’t a detriment however, because Ninja Gaiden 4 wants you to move from encounter to encounter. Encounter design is the best thing about Ninja Gaiden 4 and it’s where the game truly shines. There are so many memorable fights with both regular enemies and bosses that it’s easy to lose count. Almost all of them can be tackled in various ways, highlighting the flexibility inherent to Ninja Gaiden 4’s combat.
There’s one specific encounter on the second stage where you have to take out roughly a dozen guys with jet packs. That wouldn’t be that hard but Platinum always turns things up a notch, so these guys are super high above you. Bullets are raining down, and other soldiers on the ground are trying every way they can to disconnect your head from your neck. Dodging bullets while zigzagging on the ground (and in the air) to evade aggressive sword swings and eliminate everyone is the quintessential embodiment of what this game truly is—Ninja Gaiden with its Platinum twist.
It’s an interesting formula, and when it works, it is a blast. But that’s only half the time. The other half makes Ninja Gaiden 4 feel like Platinum inserting Bayonetta into a Ninja Gaiden game.
Ninja Gaiden 4 even opens like every Platinum game does–a visually striking and arcade-like intro sequence designed to grab your attention. This intro is thrilling, looks great and frames what you’ll be doing for the rest of the game.
For example, there are sections in the second level where you are navigating an obstacle course by grinding on a rail (with your feet!) that runs throughout the city and you have to dodge different obstacles that are slammed in front of you, leap from rail to rail, and wall run different sections, all while dodging oncoming trains. It all flows well, and is insanely fun. There’s never been a sequence like this in any Ninja Gaiden game. But there have been plenty like it in Platinum developed games. No other Ninja Gaiden games have started this way.
Out of everything good or bad in Ninja Gaiden 4, the encounter design and boss battles are the absolute best part about it, and I think it will be the one place where fans of Ninja Gaiden and fans of Platinum will be in agreement. The sheer insanity of some of the encounters shows a level of confidence that is absolutely impressive, and pretty ballsy in today’s market. The difficulty is spot on from the beginning and the game ramps up accordingly as you progress further. The difficulty curve harkens back to the best parts of previous Ninja Gaiden titles.
With the game ramping up the difficulty as you progress, you have to be able to adjust as well. You don’t level up but instead unlock new combat abilities, procure new weapons and those weapon’s will also have individual weapon-specific abilities. You acquire these new abilities by purchasing them with money earned from combat. Ninja Gaiden 4 has a scoring system tied to each encounter and the scoring system rewards you for playing well. you’ll earn more money by playing well. You’ll receive an overall score at the end of each level that will grant you additional currency to unlock more abilities.
Stylish, Hard Action
For the diehard Ninja Gaiden fan, the combat should feel pretty spot on, but again, it has that Platinum twist. This applies on all difficulty levels, including Master Ninja mode. Combat feels specific in its design rather than chaotic, and skirmishes in each specific area are intentionally setup to provide you with multiple options for engagement and replayability.
There are very few encounters with one or two enemies. Instead, each enemy encounter is designed set up to explore all of the additions that Platinum has made to Ninjaf Gaiden 4’s combat.
Early on in the game you get a grappling hook. Pretty standard, and in most games you would only use that grappling hook for traversal. In NG4, you use it to swing across pits and gaps when needed, but there are multiple times throughout the game where you will see grappling hook points in combat areas. You can use the grappling hook points as part of your combos. You can be in the middle of a combo and latch on to the grappling hook point, using it to zip to the wall and then dashing to another enemy. You can also use a grappling hook point as a way to escape if you’re getting beat on, and you can also use them to step out of the fight for just a moment for a breather, reorient yourself and re-engage.
As I mentioned before, Ninja Gaiden 4 is a paradox. There are numerous moments throughout the runtime of the game that are absolutely thrilling, and they happen from the outset of the game and never really let up. But there are also head scratching decisions that make me feel that this game would be received better by certain members of the gaming public if it wasn’t called Ninja Gaiden 4. And all of that has to do with Yakumo.
Can it really be Ninja Gaiden without Ryu?
Yakumo is very much a Platinum character, from his design aesthetic to his move set. He has a weightlessness to him that Ryu never did in previous Ninja Gaiden titles, and I don’t know if it will sit well with some Ninja Gaiden die-yards.
In prior Ninja Gaiden games, when Ryu Hayabusa would launch an enemy, they would fly upwards to a height that felt like 7-8 feet off the ground. You could follow that launcher with a couple of hits for a juggle combo with the Dragon Sword and the enemy would die or drop to the ground. When you procured other weapons besides the Dragon Sword, you could string together some pretty absurd, but “realistic” feeling combos. Ryu had a weight to him that made him feel extraordinarily acrobatic but not ridiculous. Ninja Gaiden’s combat looked like a visceral style of Wire-fu from martial arts movies; exaggerated but not supernatural or otherworldly.
Yakumo throws all that out of the window.
His normal sword attacks, while resembling Ryu’s attacks, are super exaggerated and extremely over the top. When he launches someone, they fly 15-20 feet in the air. When you execute an enemy, Yakumo is covered in so much blood he looks like a Jackson Pollock painting. This exaggeration goes into absolute bonkers territory with the additional Blood Raven form that Platinum added to Ninja Gaiden 4’s combat.
Blood Raven Form
The game describes the Blood Raven form as a “technique that manipulates the blood of oneself and enemies, transforming it into a massive weapon, capable of slicing through multiple photos at once.” What this translates to is an absolutely ginormous blood red sword that has entirely different moves and abilities the same way a new weapon would in previous games. Unlike a new weapon, you cannot use the Blood Raven form whenever you want. It has a refillable meter that drains when activated. The meter also builds by itself so you can sit still if you want and get a full meter before your next encounter if you wanted.
The game also has a rage meter, similar to what we’ve seen in plenty of other action games. You can combine the rage meter with your Blood Raven form for an attack that will instantly kill certain enemies. You can take out a whole line of them and get a pretty wild looking kill screen from performing the move properly.
On paper, the Blood Raven form sounds very interesting, something that has a lot of potential, but in practice Raven form ends up being too much. One could argue that “being too much“ is what Platinum is known for, but this isn’t Bayonetta, it’s Ninja Gaiden. Not only that, it’s the first proper Ninja Gaiden game we’ve had in over a decade.
There are expectations after waiting for a new Ninja Gaiden for over a decade and Raven form isn’t it. Instead, it’s the epitome of what some diehard Ninja Gaiden fans will hate about 4, because of their expectations, since there hasn’t been a new Ninja Gaiden in over a decade. At that, Raven Form is one of the many things Platinum game fans will LOVE about Ninja Gaiden 4.
Stick Skills
Yakumo’s Raven form FEELS like it was supposed to be a fun addition to the game, and it can be in specific instances, but it is so interwoven into the basic gameplay of NG4 that it is absolutely a detriment.
The mechanical complexities that were added on top of a game that is already absurdly fast and requires a high level of focus and precision while already being mechanically complex just bloats the combat in ways that feel shitty. This is “a hat on top of a hat” to borrow a phrase from Bill Hader.
That level of mechanical complexity may scare off certain players. Further, because of the addition of the Raven Form, there have been mechanics added to the game that REQUIRE the use of Raven form, like stopping an enemy from executing a crazy charge/stun attack. You cannot stop some of these moves unless you use Raven form. The amount of unblockable garbage that enemies can throw at you has gotten hilarious and that’s only here because of the Raven form.
What makes Blood Raven feel so weird is that the other weapons feel so much fun to use. There are so many moves to unlock, and I really don’t know WHY Blood Raven form was needed. That feeling is further exacerbated by the fact that Ryu doesn’t get the same amount of weapons he gets in other Ninja Gaiden games. I understand that Yakumo is the main character but again, this is another reason why diehard fans are simply not going to be happy and Platinum fans won’t care. Why relegate Ryu to second string in his own game series? And why stuff the game with so many mechanics like this?
Difficulty Debate
Now, all of that sounds like I’m down on the game but it also allows me to highlight a set of features that should absolutely be applauded, and that is the Hero difficulty option available in game.
There is a cyclical conversation that occurs, seemingly every time a difficult game is released. It never goes any where and devolves into one side screaming “GIT GUD” at the other side that just wants to play the game. The “GIT GUD” team loves to say that easier difficulties rob the player of the intended experience. I’ve even seen people comment to players that want an easier experience that they “don’t deserve to play the game.”
Fun fact: Team Ninja was famous for having their easy mode in Ninja Gaiden carry the name Ninja Dog. It only became available after you died a bunch of times.
Hero mode lets you toggle on options like auto/auto evade, and set them so they only activate when health is low, or you can turn them on all the time.
There is an auto heal option, as well as an auto movement option which will automatically take on movement based challenges like wall running or rail grinding. You can think of these as options that will help you get through the game and enjoy it at your level. Hero mode allows the player to avoid getting savagely murdered while also showing them how the game should look and play at higher levels. It’s a very effective on-ramping tool for people who may not have experience with a game like this.
There is also an absolute GRIP (that is a technical term. It means a LOT) of options for people with disabilities, visual and otherwise. You can change the color of pretty much any enemy type, any interactive object, traversal points, and objects that are usable with Raven Gear (such as grappling points). There are settings for people who are left handed, and there’s a control setting for single-hand play. There’s even a small convenience of a shortcut button, which is defaulted to photo mode but can be set to other things, like the reload checkpoint, help, or even going straight into training mode.
Yup, there’s a training mode! with all kinds of set variables so you can practice. You can view your move list, try combos, and adjust the equipment you have on hand to see if it makes a difference with what you’re trying to do. Something else that’s really cool is every time you acquire a new move the game offers to send you into training mode so you can try it. Some people may bristle at this but I think it’s a great addition.
I cannot stress enough how thoughtfully intentional these modes are and I cannot give the devs enough credit for including them.
Presentation
Switching gears for a second, I do want to praise how NG4 looks. I don’t think NG1 or NG2, from a character design standpoint, were ever really great. Ryu looked fantastic and the games were always technical show pieces but the character designs always felt super generic. That is not the case with NG4.
The Raven Ninja clan that Yakumo belongs to is a group of techno-ninja that is pure Platinum from a design aesthetic. The same goes for pretty much every character model in the game. This entire game looks like what William Gibson would have come up with during an LSD fever dream if he has to write a cyberpunk version of Shogun.
The sound design is also another area that feels like the paradox is on full display. Multiple fights have hard rock music playing in the background, and contribute to framing Yakumo as a badass. It’s one of those things that is a signature of Platinum games but it doesn’t feel right in a Ninja Gaiden title, whose previous games leaned into orchestral and electronic stylings and not rock. If you like Platinum games then the musical themes won’t bother you. It will feel normal. But It doesn’t “fit” in Ninja Gaiden, and really sums up NG4 as a whole. It IS a paradox, but you can see why and it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Platinum obviously wanted to honor what came before with the previous Ninja Gaiden games, but didn’t want to copy Team Ninja’s homework. Ryu FEELS like Ryu when you’re playing him. Yakumo FEELS like a Platinum character. The boss encounters are FUN and demanding. The level design is fun. The aesthetic is interesting. But all of it doesn’t feel quite right if you’re looking for a proper Ninja Gaiden title. It feels awesome if you’re in it for the next great Platinum game.
Regardless of which camp you fall into, the game feels overly stuffed with mechanical complexities but also a bit empty at the same time. That makes the game very hard to judge.
Verdict
It’s very obvious the team behind this cared about what they made and wanted to make the best game possible. I’m happy as hell we even got a new Ninja Gaiden game, but this doesn’t really feel like Ninja Gaiden, so I’m scoring it two ways: As a Ninja Gaiden game, this gets a 2.5/5. There are things here that feel right but there’s just not enough.
With that said, as a new Platinum game it gets an 4/5. It looks good. It plays great, and it has a confidence in its encounter design that is phenomenal. There is so much that works here that even things as ridiculous as the team aspect of the game can be overlooked. The additional mechanics and the general overstuffed feeling are more difficult to look past, but then again, Ninja Gaiden 4 does what Platinum always does, it ramps things up to 11.
Performance Notes
I played Ninja Gaiden 4 mainly on PC and my Steam Deck OLED. Ninja Gaiden 4 is Steam Deck certified. More on that in a moment.
I did encounter a few graphical glitches as well as some performance issues throughout my playtime. The opening sequence frame rate dropped into the teens and twenties until I dropped volumetric fog to low. I have a very beefy PC so this surprised me. My colleagues at SmashPad advised me they did not encounter these issues on console so this could be a PC specific issue. I also encountered specific but infrequent issues with texture meshes not rendering on level 3, along with general stretched out visuals due to playing on an Ultra Wide monitor. The stretched out visuals were remedied by adjusting my resolution and Microsoft has advised us that these issues will be fixed in the day one patch that will go live when Ninja Gaiden 4 is available to the general public.
As for Steam Deck OLED performance, this really is another instance where Ninja Gaiden 4 is a paradox. It is weirdly playable/unplayable on Steam Deck, depending on what you can tolerate but it’s absolutely remarkable it will run at all. Team Platinum (Ninja) has managed to create a Steam Deck profile with multiple adjustments to make 4 not only playable on the Steam Deck but if you switch the profile and tweak your settings a bit the game will maintain 50-60 fps throughout your play through. From a technical execution standpoint it’s absolutely brilliant, even down to the way the changes made to get the game running on the Steam Deck thoughtfully tie into the visual aesthetics presented.
When playing on Steam Deck, the main character is always super in-focus, but the background isn’t. The background and the details therein are out of focus except right where you’re focusing. It comes across as semi-pixelated version of a depth of field effect.
Things that you attack become sharp, while other things bleed into the background. In skirmishes with multiple enemies, you remain clearly defined while markers on the enemies are the visual details that remain defined so you know who you’re hitting. For example, some enemies have yellow emblems on their helmets to indicate they are stronger versions of the typical enemies you face early on in the game. Even in Steam Deck when the resolution drops those enemies are easy to identify because the color of their emblem sticks out. There’s also a red targeting reticle that stays in focus to show you who you’re currently focused on, even if you haven’t locked on to that specific enemy. This helps you know where you’re swinging even when the action gets crazy. There are other enemies that have shields and even during extremely tense action, the sheen from the shields is clearly visible so you know who you’re attacking. This results in enemies being jumbled together but still visible due to their design cues and how those design cues interact with these specific performance settings. It is something that could have gone wrong in so many ways but works really well considering this is a modern day AAA title, something the Steam Deck can typically have issues running.
I think the most interesting part of the implementation of the Steam Deck settings is that there was a conscious decision not to render things in high-definition that don’t have gameplay impact. For example, the Umi console, when viewed on my PC is sharp and detailed. When viewed on the Steam Deck, all the information on the screens of the Umi console are pixelated. What’s interesting about this decisions is that in these very specific instances, playing with the visuals in this manner works well with the aesthetic that the team has come up with and it doesn’t end up being a visual distraction. In screenshots it doesn’t look great but in motion it works and works well.
The downside to this particular implementation comes into play when you’re fighting groups of enemies and the action becomes too frantic. The resolution will drop considerably in order to maintain frame rate. You can tweak the visuals to be a bit clearer if you play with the video settings but that will result in frame rates close to 30 fps, which I strongly advise against. Some people will be happy with a lower frame rate but Ninja Gaiden 4 is a game that absolutely should be played at 60 fps or higher. The benefits are tremendous.
Again, the ability to play this game on such a low powered system is another paradox in a game full of them. This is a AAA game that should not run on the deck but it does. I would be willing to bet it will run well across many PC setups with minimal tweaks.
Despite the graphical compromises required to get NG4 running on the Steam Deck, I have to applaud Team Platinum (Ninja) for even getting this running on the hardware. It is impressive they were able to do so and to keep the frame rate consistent.
RIP Itagaki-san
Just something to note… while I was playing this game for review, the news broke that Tomonobu Itagaki had passed away at age 58.
Itagaki was the creator of the Dead or Alive fighting game series and behind the revival of the Ninja Gaiden series that started in 2004. To say he was passionate about Ninja Gaiden and action games in general would be dramatically underselling it. I read an interview with him conducted by James Mielke back in the mid 2000s where Itagaki stated he put a high priority and value on his games responding quickly to the player’s input, and that he wanted his games to always have a high level of interactivity, playability along with incredible graphics.
He also wasn’t shy about expressing his opinions and sometimes those opinions didn’t sit well with others. Regardless of his stances on various pieces of hardware or game releases, the man’s work has left an indelible mark on action games and the gaming industry as a whole.
Ninja Gaiden, when it launched on the original Xbox, set the bar TREMENDOUSLY high for action games. Some would argue that the bar hasn’t really hasn’t been touched since Ninja Gaiden Black. It is one of the greatest games ever made, and knowing Itagaki passed while we are on the cusp of what could be another revival of a series that he fostered and championed, one that has been with me since I was a child … well, it sucks. It sucks he couldn’t still be with us and continue to receive recognition for what he added to the fabric of gaming as a whole.
by Leigh Lamb
