Ninja Gaiden 4 PS5 Review. While the upgraded version of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black came out earlier this year, a new 3D Ninja Gaiden game hasn’t hit storefronts for 11 years. Much like Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z, Ninja Gaiden 4 is developed by a different team than Team Ninja. PlatinumGames certainly knows how to make action games, with a rather impressive track record consisting of some real bangers. The one hang up that comes with PlatinumGames is that their games need to be directed by a different team in order to make a cohesive product. When it comes to Ninja Gaiden 4, the end result seems to reflect a similar lack of directional help.
Ninja Gaiden 4 Review (PS5) – Ninja Gaiden Kinda
Return the Dark Dragon
You reprise the role of Yakumo, one of the members of the Raven Clan of ninjas. Much like the famed Dragon Clan, the Raven Clan works more in the shadows to keep the world safe from fiends. You take control of Yakumo as he infiltrates New Tokyo, which is now under the relentless rain of the Dark Dragon that Ryu Hayabusa locked up under New Tokyo.
The priestess holds power over the seal that keeps the Dark Dragon locked up, so you seek her out to kill her and thus kill the dragon. However, mid-mission, the priestess convinces you to ally with her, indicating that instead of killing the dragon again, you need to awaken the dragon and then purify it. Since the dragon has been killed before, it’s only a matter of time before it gets resurrected by someone else later on.
Right away, everything seems narratively off in Ninja Gaiden 4. Yakumo, who basically grew up fully believing that the priestess must die, stops his attack on the priestess just because she leads into a random thought. She doesn’t tell him to stop or anything. Instead, she tells him he should spare her. He hears her out entirely and then goes with it, using the “I’ll cut you down if you’re lying” phrase to cover up the weak character development.
2000s Storytelling
Yakumo calls his support team to let them know. They naturally start questioning him, so Yakumo says he’s shutting off radio communications while they escape. In the very next room, his support team chimes in with background information on the enemy he’s facing, like Yakumo never turned off his radio. There are even points where the story tries to elicit emotional responses out of you when the story provided little to no attachment to the events. This is nitpicking at its finest, but there’s very little redeeming quality to the story overall or the delivery of said story, leaving you with plenty of room for criticism.
Then, mix into that formula a voice actor for Yakumo that screams early 2000s edge lord, with a forced deep and monotone voice with little personality to it, and you have a recipe for mediocrity. The writing places Yakumo at the center of the universe, and everything revolves around him. Nothing feels organic and nothing feels believable. The story strictly and solely acts as a vehicle between fights. So, as long as you’re not here for the story, you can make do with what Ninja Gaiden 4 presents to you.
With that said, the Ninja Gaiden franchise features a great deal of gameplay elements to pull inspiration from. Unfortunately, it seems like Ninja Gaiden 4 pulled more inspiration from Ninja Gaiden Yaiba for its surface-level elements and then from Nier Automata for the rest of it. Even with elements that work well on their own, mashing them together doesn’t mean they will succeed as a cohesive package.
Turn Off That HUD
To make things worse, the HUD absolutely fills the entire screen, with combo point tallies running on the upper left, health bars on the bottom, tutorials on the entire right side, and interaction points appearing all over the place. I hyperbolize a bit with the interaction points, but they muddy up an already filled screen. Combine that with a screen also filled with enemies attacking from all sides, and it’s so easy to get lost in everything.
Then there are gunner enemies who shoot at you from off-screen. Yes, the game presents a lock-on icon on you so you can “know” to anticipate a range attack. But bury that icon in a sea of enemies, and you get hit with a lot of different things that just feel cheap.
Thankfully, you can disable all of this visual clutter to your liking. There are enough settings where you can either get rid of the entire HUD or mix and match the different visuals on screen. You can even move the camera closer or further away from Yakumo. I just don’t appreciate needing to adjust all of these settings just to make the game okay to play.
Some Good Ideas…
By the time I hit chapter four, I already had enough currency to buy all of the character skills. It was by this point when the game started to feel a bit closer to a Ninja Gaiden game simply because I finally had access to the skills I expected from the franchise. After you buy the ability to parry, the game becomes more approachable. So, even though I don’t think it’s worth the effort, if you already bought the game, at least give the game a few chapters before you decide to get rid of it.
In fact, needing to balance between your standard attacks as well as your Raven Form attacks adds some welcome combat variety. If an enemy uses unblockable attacks or puts up defenses, you can counter them by using your Raven Form attacks. Then, you can keep your combo going without interruption. There is a decent combat loop here.
However, branding it with Ninja Gaiden was a terrible idea. If it had been an original game, it might have gone over better. The operative word is “might” simply because you also spend a large amount of time in this game just running down linear paths with no enemies in sight and very little to do. Just a ton of running forward. You then come across fights that don’t give you the kind of rewarding challenge that fans come to expect from this franchise. Instead, it’s just enemies with simple routines placed in massive groups strictly to overwhelm you instead of test you.
…And Several Missteps
As a personal aside, playing this game reminded me of all of the uneventful running around I did in Nier Automata and Replicant. I love those games, but I never think about how much time I spent running around doing nothing while playing them. It’s interesting how an intriguing story can make you overlook shortcomings like that. It’s the difference between substantial creative engagement and insubstantial sensory overload. Ninja Gaiden 4 is the latter.
To compound that frustration, the pace of combat is so much faster than the other games in the franchise. You get the staple animations and skills that you come to expect from a Ninja Gaiden game, but the rest of combat feels like a more intricate version of the combat from Nier. It’s a lot of strategic button mashing instead of responding to what enemies do.
Boss fights work the best simply because you get to focus on one enemy. This brings out the potential of combat simply because you finally get to think about how to use parries, dodges, and different weapons to maximize your odds of success. In every other flight, which usually sees you swimming in enemies, you just dodge when you can and then chip away at the hordes.
This might be my biggest gripe. After a few chapters, I started to get a feel for combat in Ninja Gaiden 4. There’s nothing wrong with combat in and of itself. I even enjoyed it from time to time. However, the longer I played, the more it felt like a shoehorned use of a beloved IP. Even cameos of beloved characters feel forced. I saw Ayane show up for a single scene later in the game, and all I could think was, “They squeezed you in, too, eh?”
It Gets There Eventually
For the record, I started playing Ninja Gaiden 4 on Normal difficulty because that’s what I have played with all Ninja Gaiden games. Ninja Gaiden games are hard and, to play devil’s advocate, can sometimes feel cheap in giving you any leniency. In Ninja Gaiden 4, it’s not actual difficulty that creates the challenge. It’s the sheer volume of enemies and visual obstacles to deal with at once.
Later on, you get a weapon that uses sweeping attacks. In many standard fights, this trivializes most encounters. The basic enemies tend to get interrupted very easily, so swinging this weapon blindly means you win unless there’s a stronger enemy in their ranks. Then, just focus on the stronger enemy and then clean up. Several times after I got this weapon, I just mashed Square while I pet my cat in my lap.
Hell, there were even stretches of game where I just ran by enemies. I didn’t encounter many locked paths along the way, which made it easy to skip tons of fights. This is probably due to how the game tracks your score based on combos, time, and damage taken, which provides you with currency to unlock skills.
Eventually, you get to play as Ryu Hayabusa himself. You even unlock him once you beat the game. While it’s not the authentic experience, his combat pace and move sets feel familiar and homey. PlatinumGames can clearly mimic what makes the franchise special. Why staple two games together like this? Especially since you need to wade through 10+ hours playing as Yakumo before you get into the leather onesie of the Dragon Clan Ninja himself?
A Shaky Return
Maybe Ninja Gaiden 4 could be the weird transition game that helps the franchise find a new path in future entries. Like I said before, there is a good combat loop here. It just lacks the refinement and potency that fans have come to expect from this franchise. The Ninja Gaiden stories have never been complicated or over-the-top, but this one offers very little substantive content or drama to get its hooks in you. It’s not perfect by any stretch of the word, but the right person can find a good time here.