Ninja Gaiden 4 [Review]

Ninja Gaiden 4 knows when to start and when to end, with challenging gameplay and nice player expression held a bit back by its terrible dialogue and story.

Unlike most of their recent outputs (great in their own ways) like Bayonetta 3, Astral Chain and Nier Automata, this edgy emo ninja adventure is just like the action games of the PS3 era, like Devil May Cry 4 and Platinum's own Vanquish: linear corridors that lead the main character to contained zones filled with waves of enemies, with light platforming in-between them, divided by chapters.

There's no skill-tree or attribute progression, on purpose, to make the battling and combat as straightforward and constant as possible. Packing 1 to 3 thousand (!) enemies per chapter, Ninja Gaiden 4 proposes a gameplay centered on tactically dismembering the enemies to then execute them with strong attacks. Keeping an eye on which combos, abilities, and weapons are good to dismember each type of enemy is key to win encounters, and finding them is fun, experimenting with combos work and most of the abilities can connect with other combo strings satisfyingly.

It is a very precise game, with tight timings and hit boxes, and while dying is pretty common – I've died 114 times in my 16 hours campaign on Normal! – the game starts giving health items to help with repeated game overs, so it balances the difficulty “real time” without changing the rules of the game. The retries are also very amicable, as it is given the option to both retry battles, encounters, or restart at the previous checkpoint. It is also possible to face some encounters stealthy and ignore them altogether. Added all of this to the fact that Yakumo, the main character, is very strong from the start, Ninja Gaiden 4 is one of those games that are really difficult but impressively approachable because of intelligent decisions by the developers.

Every chapter has a challenge room and some of them have hidden battles on unexpected paths, so there's a bit of exploring, but it isn't the focus of the game at all. These said challenges are great, but only combat focused. It is a miss because NG4 has great movement and platforming potential that wasn't explored that much outside of on rails sections that aren't that fun. There are hidden collectibles and special missions to do it as well, but nothing that groundbreaking. There are accessories to be collected that can change some gameplay elements, but they're somewhat hard to find and hidden behind some dull side missions, so interacting with different equipment build is not that flashed out. It is not a problem here because each of the 4 (and a half) weapons have an extensive repertoire of moves and combos, and everything feels overpower, so the tools are more innate to Yakumo and not tied to his equipment.

The amount of enemies sometimes felt too much. Was it really needed to have 2k enemies per chapter? Even with Ninja Gaiden 4's great enemy variety, there are so many enemies in the stages in a way that repetition is unavoidable, and the annoying ones can gatekeep the game for some people, hindering the accessible effort that the game otherwise brilliantly nails. So the gameplay ranges from good to great, with some missteps on the enemy amount and the on-rails sections.

The only real bad thing in this game is the story and narrative. Do they really expect me to pay attention to the dialogue that happens at the same time of the intense battles? This paired with terrible audio mixing when people talk and constant retries results in repeated dialogues that make some sections borderline infuriating, and sometimes it feels that the cast simply can't and won't stop talking. There was a boss fight that I faced that from the beginning to the end there were people talking, and I insist it is IMPOSSIBLE to read while battling. The cutscenes aren't that better, as the story is at the same time extremely simple and overly convoluted, since I couldn't read the events in between these videos most of the time the story felt disjointed and uninteresting. It is really short on the story, though, and some cutscenes are stylish, so it doesn't hurt thaaaat much.

Although I feel that I'm complaining about the game nonstop for 700 words already, I really liked this game because of its battle systems and how easy it is to be “in the zone” mentally while playing. It is addicting, gorgeous and very well-made, with pretty animations and over the top executions, extremely precise inputs and a great avenue for combat expression. Seeing two different people playing NG4 will result in seeing two wildly different fight styles and battle approach. Because of this, the game is a success, even with its poor story and annoying moments.

While not perfect, it is one of the best action games of this generation, and the amount of dopamine in each well executed encounter is almost unmatched. It feels good to say that the Platinum standard lives on, even on “modern” times.

8.5/10

Ninja Gaiden 4 is unfortunately published by Microsoft, and although I really liked the game, if you don't care about Platinum or Ninja Gaiden, I'd say it is better to wait a bit for a good sale on this one or buy it physically/used – or even playing it with a shared Steam account or in absolutely any other way. I say all of this because It is relevant (even if hypocritical, of my part) to highlight the BDS movement call for boycotting Microsoft services and Gaming Products due to their complicity in the genocide in Gaza. You can learn more about it here, but, to quote the article:

“Microsoft provides the Israeli military with Azure cloud and AI services that are crucial in empowering and accelerating Israel’s genocidal war on 2.3 million Palestinians in the illegally occupied Gaza Strip”