With more Soulslike games getting released every year, it feels like we’ve lost something over the last decade, as more developers and companies veer away from pure action games. More and more action games are trying to cash in on the wild popularity of Souls elements, making it hard to find games that go for that high-speed, pure action experience. But Ninja Gaiden 4 is, at a glance, a return to the glory days of action games — a bone-crunching and gore spewing adrenaline fest that simply wants you to feel like an unstoppable god. And despite the debacle that was Ninja Gaiden 3, this entry in the franchise manages to mostly bring Ninja Gaiden back to the hallowed heights of the first two games. I say mostly, because it’d be right up there with Ninja Gaiden 2 if Platinum Games could have simply trimmed some of the game’s excess.
There were a lot of questions I had leading into Ninja Gaiden 4 that gave me some trepidation on the series coming back. For one, it’s been thirteen years since the last mainline entry, and Ninja Gaiden 3 didn’t exactly live up to expectation. The other aspect was Platinum Games leading development on Ninja Gaiden 4, as the studio’s had a rough go of things in recent years with games like Star Fox Zero and Babylon’s Fall. But Ninja Gaiden 4 is easily the best game Platinum has made since Astral Chain.
