Once a storied and respected franchise, Ninja Gaiden‘s reputation cratered with 2012’s Ninja Gaiden 3, followed by an even worse Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z. For nearly 12 years the series remained dormant, until an explosion of games, including Ninja Gaiden 4, put the franchise back on the map.

I’m happy to report that the “Year Of The Ninja” is in full swing. We got Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, Ragebound, and Ninja Gaiden 4 all in the same year, and all of them are worth playing.

Ninja Gaiden’s Style Is Back

And They Pulled Off A New Hero Swap

The dual-development efforts of Team Ninja and Platinum Games have pulled off quite a feat with Ninja Gaiden 4. Not only did they resurrect the franchise and get it back to its flashy technical roots, but they also implemented a new star that people are actually going to like.

While Ryu is still very much present and playable, he doesn’t pop up properly until much later in the game. Instead, you’re playing as Yakumo, a member of the Raven clan, and soft rival to Ryu’s Hayabusa clan. The catch is that although Yakumo has a ton of new abilities at his disposal (including a powered-up Bloodraven form), he also sports a similar base moveset from the three mainline modern Ninja Gaiden entries.

As a result, picking up Ninja Gaiden 4 feels like riding a bike again, but it’s not a straight copy-and-paste job here. The gist is that you’ll use light and heavy attacks, combos, blocking, and dodging to your advantage, with a killer array of special moves. I enjoyed acclimating to Yakumo’s ins and outs, and his Bloodraven stance nuances were particularly fun to master.

For instance, enemies telegraph unlockable attacks, which can be often canceled by throwing out a quick Bloodraven ability. Bloodraven form serves multiple purposes, like breaking guards and taking out multiple enemies at once. It’s all governed by its own meter, which is in addition to an additional Devil Trigger-like super meter that lets you go all-out on foes for a limited time. Because of how many tools the development team armed you with, you feel like a formidable one-man army at all times.

Yakumo’s whole vibe is also dark and mysterious (more so than Ryu), and the Raven clan is more technologically advanced than the Hayabusa clan. That, combined with the focus on a grimdark Tokyo, allows Ninja Gaiden 4 to differentiate itself from its predecessors and spread its wings.

There’s A Lot Here For Veterans And Newcomers Alike

Including Optional Steep Challenges

In typical Ninja Gaiden golden-era fashion, the locales are incredibly diverse, too. You’ll start off raiding a cyberpunk-like city, and end up in demon realms and far-out villages, among other surprises. While the story isn’t the most tantalizing, the drama and the promise of more zones, moves, and spectacle-filled boss battles propelled me through the game.

Hardcore fans will be happy with this one as well. There’s a hard difficulty available from the very start, as well as a “Death Wish” modifier for the challenge/time trial mode. In short, you can opt to toggle on Death Wish and fight bosses on demand without upgrades or advantages. It’s going to make for some awesome “no-hit” videos and speedruns.

Completionists will also be able to root around for all the game’s collectibles, as well as challenge rooms, which ask players to risk maximum life for better rewards. If you’re not into all that, you can change the difficulty to “hero mode” (an easier setting) and zip around to your heart’s content and skip the collectible grind. The story is long enough to have some meat on the bone, and even just one completion feels like a full action game experience.

There are some things I would have loved to have seen shored up, though. The Raven clan mainframe, accessible in most of the game’s levels, provides a light quest system, mainly steering you toward “killing X number of Y enemies” or “find and take out a secret elite.”

For the most part, you can just grab all the quests and do them at your leisure, but there’s a small degree of bloat in this system, as I never really found it necessary for the game’s core loop. Even the rewards for completing quests can feel superfluous, and could have been sprinkled into the levels to further promote exploration, rather than gated by a menu screen.

Yakumo is somewhat customizable, with options to pick up new weapon skills and all-encompassing base abilities from in-level NPCs. Sadly, a lot of these felt incremental in nature, and far too minuscule to make a big difference until you pick up a ton of them and start using them all together.

Ninja Gaiden 4 Is Nearly As Good As 1+2

I’m Hoping We Get A Follow-Up

If you’re looking for a new action game to really live in, this is it. Because of the addition of the new protagonist, it’s entirely possible to boot up Ninja Gaiden 4 and not feel lost. For veterans, all the muscle memory from past entries will feel like second nature, especially when you pull off your first satisfying Izuna Drop.

2025 is a packed year, but Ninja Gaiden 4 is one of the best games on offer so far. It’s hard to believe we’ve gotten two great Ninja Gaiden entries this year after over a decade on ice.

Systems

Released

October 21, 2025

ESRB

Mature 17+ / Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, Suggestive Themes

Developer(s)

Platinum Games, Team Ninja, Koei Tecmo Games Co., Ltd.

Publisher(s)

Xbox Game Studios

Engine

PlatinumEngine

Prequel(s)

Ninja Gaiden 3

Pros & Cons

• Responsive, swift, and stylish action.
• Lots of diversity when it comes to your moveset.
• Serves as a great new starting point for action fans.

• Some levels go on too long.
• Many upgrades don’t feel impactful in story mode.