Ninja Gaiden has been dormant for so long that it’s been a literal decade since we got a new game from the franchise. That finally changed this year, 2025 has easily been one of the best years for the series with the sheer output of releases alone. Two of those titles include Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, a remake of the 2008 sequel and Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, a brand new 2D entry. Capping off the Ninja Gaiden heavy year is Ninja Gaiden 4, a new mainline 3D entry developed in collaboration with the franchise’s legacy developer Team Ninja as the concept lead and PlatinumGames handling the bulk of development as the main developer on the Ninja Gaiden fourquel.
It’s been a long journey for Ninja Gaiden to make a comeback, and one that I thought would never happen after Team Ninja’s disastrous attempt to take the franchise in a different direction with Ninja Gaiden 3, which, for fans, felt like a departure from the Ninja Gaiden formula. Ninja Gaiden 4, however, returns the franchise to its roots, with difficult but satisfying combat, incredible visuals, and a story that kept me on the edge of my seat throughout my over 20-hour playthrough.
Now I’m not saying Ninja Gaiden 4 is a series high point, but it’s definitely an improvement over the series’ lowest point (Ninja Gaiden 3), which is a good sign for the franchise and its hopeful future. PlatinumGames’ approach to Ninja Gaiden 4 is visually striking and plays great, with satisfying but difficult combat that feels like Ninja Gaiden is back in a big way. I am high on Ninja Gaiden 4‘s gameplay, but my main issue with the game isn’t the story itself—it’s more about one specific character.
Ryu Hayabusa Takes a Backseat in Ninja Gaiden 4
Unlike the past three mainline Ninja Gaiden games, Ninja Gaiden 4 does not put you back (at least initially) in the shoes of longtime series protagonist Ryu Hayabusa. Instead, players will control the Ninja Gaiden 4’s protagonist, Yakumo, a skilled young ninja and future leader of the Raven clan, the technologically savvy but darker branch of the Hayabusa clan, who are also the direct descendants of the Dark Dragon. Ninja Gaiden 4’s story follows an exposition-heavy recap of the unsuccessful resurrection of the Dark Dragon that was orchestrated by the fiend Achilles through the use of the Dark Dragon priestess, Seori, to open the underworld in Tokyo.
Ryu Hayabusa ultimately thwarted him, but it wasn’t a happy ending, though. The failed attempt left the husk of the Dark Dragon in the city, turning the Japanese capital into an unlivable miasmic mess and a new stopping grounds for fiends and daemons. With no way to completely get rid of the Dark Dragon, Ryu turned to the Divine Dragon Order (DDO), a military organization with a cybernetic armour army that was put in charge of governing Tokyo and keeping anyone from getting inside the sectioned-off city.
Enter Yakumo of the Raven Clan
Ninja Gaiden 4 picks up as Yakumo hitches a ride on a train to sneak into Tokyo. Before this, we get a flashback of our darkened hero sneaking into another DDO facility to kill the imprisoned priestess after she sealed parts of the Dark Dragon in shrines scattered across the city. Yakumo is initially sent on this mission to fulfill the Raven Clan prophecy of killing the Dark Dragon priestess and “bring peace to the world once more.” Still, as Yakumo tries to kill Seori, she reveals that her death won’t change anything. Only by unsealing the shrines and resurrecting the dragon can it be purified, breaking the resurrection cycle, and that’s the goal of the game.
Yakumo reluctantly agrees and breaks her out of her DDO prison. Ninja Gaiden 4’s setup for its story is simple and defined, but what makes the game a little unbearable is the Ninja Gaiden 4 hero himself. Yakumo is an uninspired character to put in the protagonist role, as he feels more like an uninteresting insert fanfiction OC than any meaningful new protagonist in a franchise like Ichiban Kasuga. He is an uncaring Sasuke type who tries to be so edgy that I might as well cut myself while playing. Thankfully, Yakumo has a crew of interesting characters to draw inspiration from on his mission. These interactions make Yakumo’s character less frustrating to deal with anytime he talks.
Those characters include Umi, Yakumo’s childhood friend and the Raven clan’s resident hacker who helps you with tech support, Tryan, Yakumo’s big brother figure who helps hone his techniques between battles, and Misaki, an adviser. At the top for me is Seori herself, the game’s love interest, who has a mischievous nature that tries her best to get through Yakumo’s cracks to get any reaction out of him, either on comms or when unsealing one of the shrines.
Seori Unseals The Dark Dragon All While Teasing Our Edgy Hero
Ryu is also playable in Ninja Gaiden 4, who teams up with Seori to seal the Dark Dragon shrines as Ryu Hayabusa in a mini prequel campaign visiting the same biomes you visited as Yakumo; so very Devil May Cry 4 that it’s hard to ignore. In contrast to Yaumo, my playtime with Ryu in Ninja Gaiden 4 felt awkwardly silent, largely due to the lack of characters for the Hayabusa master ninja to interact with. Seori does chime in a bit, but her interactions with Ryu felt detached compared to Yakumo’s. This hammered home that she sees Yakumo as someone special with whom she can tease and laugh.
This relationship, which began with an assassination attempt, slowly blossoms into the heart of Ninja Gaiden 4’s story and is easily my second favourite part of the game. If you’re a diehard Ninja Gaiden player, I wouldn’t worry about how the game plays without Team Ninja at the helm, as PlatinumGames does a fantastic job adapting Ninja Gaiden’s core mechanics. Honestly, the gameplay combination of Ninja Gaiden and PlatinumGames feels like the perfect marriage, as the game plays super well and doesn’t shy away from the amount of decapitation of heads and limbs while fighting cyberpunk ninja enemies, who, even with severed limbs, are still down to clown; there is something in the ninja Kool-Aid.
PlatinumGames is no stranger to cyber swordswinging, given their history with Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, making Ninja Gaiden 4 feel like the next step in that ever-so-violent approach. Like the 3D entries that come before it, players as either Yakumo or Ryu will be able to move like a ninja, run on walls, bounce off cyber ninja, daemon, and fiend enemies, and much more. Ninja Gaiden 4 goes back to its roots as enemies and bosses are quite a challenge, even on normal.
He May Be Small, but He is Still Deadly
Thankfully, Ninja Gaiden 4 leaves a lot of health items in chests for you to find. By talking to Tryan, you can use the training room to help you pick up the moves more quickly. I spent at least two hours in there trying to learn Yakumo’s 44 battle techniques. While Ryu’s play style felt fast in his trilogy, Yakumo has a smaller stature compared to Ninja Gaiden’s OG hero, letting him take his speed a step further. In combat, Yakumo is more of an Assassin type than Ryu, feeling quicker with his blocks and dodges, which makes him feel more agile in gameplay compared to Ryu; this was more evident in later chapters.
Unlike Ryu, Yakumo’s default weapon is dual blades that help him slice through any enemies. In Devil May Cry fashion, Yakumo will pull out an ancient relic after unsealing each shrine, which transforms into a new weapon to add to his arsenal, which all can be upgraded by Karma, the game’s other currency, you collect throughout the game. As Yakumo attacks enemies, he can heal the small reddened area in the health bar that appears after taking damage and attacking also builds up your ki gauge, which he can use to enhance his attacks.
Wield Blood Ninjutsu and Transform Your Weapons
Yakumo uses the Raven clan’s blood ninjutsu to execute these moves by holding the left trigger and transforming them into another weapon in the middle of combat. Blood ninjutsu is a more powerful moveset, but also serves another purpose. Enemies, at times, will shroud themselves in an aura as they attempt to hit you with a power attack, which, if you’re ready, you can shatter, staggering them for a bit. Now, Yakumo isn’t a total departure from Ryu, as Yakumo can also use similar techniques from the franchise, like throwing shurikens, Ultimate Technique, absorbing essence, Izuna Drop, Flying Swallow, Wind Run, Guillotine Throw, parrying, and more. Use everything you can do to get the drop on enemies and survive.
Ninja Gaiden 4 is a very AAA game in its production, with visuals that smoothly transition from gameplay to cutscenes that look so good that it’s hard to tell the difference between the two. The game’s UI looks slick as it leans into the Cyberpunk aesthetic, but it’s a little annoying that tutorial controls still stay on the screen even as I killed over 3,000 enemies throughout my 21 hours with the game. For those not fans of gore, Ninja Gaiden 4 attempts to appease both camps with the additional option to tone down the violence in the accessibility menu, which has a ton of unexpected options right out of the gate.
Yakumo lives in the future, so unlike Ryu, our shadowy hero doesn’t deal with Muramasa for his shopping needs. Instead, players will run into a little shrine on their adventures in Dark Dragon Tokyo. When you approach it transforms into a tablet kiosk called the DarkNest Terminal that automatically heals you when you interact with it. This is where Umi operates remotely, allowing players to interact with her, accept optional missions, and purchase items using nincoin earned in battle and from chests. Next to her is Tyran‘s crow. By interacting with the bird, Tyran automatically pops up. By talking to him, you buy new techniques and test them out in the training room.
Not a Bad Place to Start
What sets Ninja Gaiden apart from other character action games like Devil May Cry and others of its ilk is that combat is not distracted by how stylish you are, but getting through a run-in with enemies and doing that without using any health items, even better. Not like that’s the mentality you need in Ninja Gaiden 4, but it does help to be fully stocked up. The chest items you do find will automatically transfer into nincoins because, trust me, when you are out and have a heavy ninja wallet to fall back on to buy at Umi’s shop, you will be thankful for those no-item encounters.
For anyone who has never picked up a Ninja Gaiden game, I don’t think Ninja Gaiden 4 is a bad place to start as a jumping-off point into the series. The story is a standalone tale from a fresh perspective in Yakumo, providing the player with all the necessary context. Additionally, any past events are referenced through the game’s narrative, rather than being drawn from other past games. Although be warned, getting the upgrades in the early game will take time, it wasn’t that much of a problem for me, as I was playing the deluxe edition, instead of the standard.
It’s not that much of a difference other than DLC costumes for Ryu/Yakumo and a bonus 50,000 nincoins, which, in the long run, isn’t much but did help unlock a lot of the cheaper moves at the start; not really an incentive worth it, to be honest. If you’re looking to get more nincoins, though well Ninja Gaiden 4, while a linear game, has some optional areas that go off the beaten path.
Go to Purgatory And Reap The Rewards
This is where you’ll find treasure chests, but also find tori gates blazed with blue fire known as Purgatory Gates, which are challenge rooms where you can fight enemies, but you can choose to fight them at full health or handicap yourself by cutting your health by 10 to 75 per cent. The more of a cut you take, the more nincoins and karama you’ll earn if you survive, that is. You can also take on missions to fight optional enemies and a recurring boss, who, in the last encounter, is almost the toughest one in the game; Yakumo’s second run-in with Ryu takes that crown.
Speaking of bosses, each biome has one big boss that players will encounter. All of them are uniquely designed and stick to the theme of the shrines, but compared to bosses from the trilogy, they didn’t really blow me away. What really got to me was the final boss, which has a second-phase transformation that is probably the most uninspired design in the whole game. When you get past it and beat the game to unlock chapter select, players will also be able to go through Purgatory Gates again, plus the game’s trial mode, where you fight the game’s bosses and combat challenges for rewards.
Verdict
Ninja Gaiden 4 returns with a vengeance. With PlatinumGames at the helm, Combat is the best Ninja Gaiden has ever been, bringing back the challenging but satisfying gameplay that was missing from vanilla Ninja Gaiden 3, with blazing fast combat which includes dozens of heads and limbs that go flying as you slash through enemies in oh so satisfying ways with the variety of Devil May Cry-like weapons at your disposal.
It’s not all good. In a medium where Ichiban Kasuga can carry the Like a Dragon torch just as well, Ninja Gaiden 4’s new protagonist, Yakumo, feels like a downgrade to Ryu and feels shoehorned into the spotlight. This is somewhat compensated for by Yakumo’s cast of characters, with whom he interacts throughout the story. However, he still feels like an uninteresting character whose uncaring edginess serves as a crutch for his character development. Overall, Ninja Gaiden 4 is still a great game to play, and I hope this new Ninja Gaiden connection for Team Ninja and PlatinumGames is the start of a new trilogy.
[The publisher provided a copy of the game for review purposes.]
Reviewed on: Xbox Series S
