Ninja Gaiden 4 Review: Great Combat, Confused Identity

Ninja Gaiden 4: A Digital Tech Explorer Review

Bloody good combat carries Ninja Gaiden 4 through its more granular and extraneous “modern” additions. Here at Digital Tech Explorer, our seasoned team dedicates many hours to every review, diving deep to uncover what truly matters most to you. For a comprehensive look at our evaluation process, discover more about how we assess games and hardware.

Ninja Gaiden 4 grapples with a peculiar identity crisis, feeling simultaneously overburdened and yet somehow lacking, reminiscent of the cult classic action-comedy Surf Ninjas. Perhaps you’re thinking, “Surely Ninja Gaiden 4 shares virtually nothing (besides ninjas) with a notorious flop co-starring Rob Schneider and a magical Sega Game Gear?” Well, prepare for a surprise when you hit the water level in this game.

Need to Know

What is it?

Incredibly bloody throwback ninja action

Release date

October 20, 2025

Expect to pay

$70/£60

Developer

PlatinumGames / Team Ninja

Publisher

Xbox Game Studios

Reviewed on

Radeon RX 9070 XT, Intel i5-13600K, 64GB DDR5

Steam Deck

Verified

Link

Official site

Over the 15 hours it took me to dispatch 2,580 enemies in Ninja Gaiden 4, I sought answers to two pivotal questions. First, does it truly feel like a worthy successor to the seminal Ninja Gaiden (2004) and Ninja Gaiden 2 (2008)—both games I consider among the finest action titles ever made? And if not—if this new iteration, crafted by PlatinumGames rather than Team Ninja, veers into its own edgier or sillier direction—how significant is that divergence?

The answer to that first question became startlingly clear when I found myself riding a ninja surfboard out of a demon dimension, directly into a Tokyo nightclub. There, I was tasked with pulverizing ghost piranhas with a giant hammer as a rave pulsated in the background. This game feels more like a Platinum title than the Ninja Gaiden of old, and at its peak, this is undoubtedly a strength. However, it too often holds itself back, creating the impression of a band performing a serviceable cover song: the notes are right, but the soul-gripping essence is diminished.

Ninja Scrolls

It’s challenging to fully articulate my profound affection for the early 2000s Ninja Gaidens over their contemporaries like Devil May Cry 3 and Bayonetta without devolving into a verbose essay filled with esoteric game design terms. Simply put, while DMC and Bayonetta excel in expressive presentation, the Ninja Gaidens are pure expressions of execution. They demand precise button inputs and timing to survive, rewarding you with fleeting moments of feeling like the ultimate bad-ass.

Unlike some action games, Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2 don’t feature a berserk gauge to transform you into an invincible killing machine; you earn that power through skill alone. Nearly all core combat abilities are available from the outset. True progression comes not from unlocking skills, but from weapon upgrades for more elaborate combos, and from internalizing when to unleash a seven-hit flurry on weaklings versus dispatching tougher foes with a twirling, skull-pulping Izuna Drop.

The highest praise I can offer Ninja Gaiden 4 is its success in largely preserving the precision of chaining a perfectly timed dodge into a limb-severing combo. The thrill of triggering an Obliteration animation on a weakened enemy, granting momentary invincibility as another foe lunges in, is still very much present. It retains that ferocious high of absorbing a blood orb from a mutilated corpse to instantly charge an ultimate technique, all before the body even hits the floor. This provides a crucial moment to breathe and strategize as your ninja performs a brutal animation on the next enemy.

However, much of what Ninja Gaiden 4 introduces is, at best, superfluous, and too often, it obstructs that timeless core design.

Series protagonist Ryu Hayabusa was the ideal vessel for the singularly focused action of earlier Ninja Gaiden games, largely because his personality didn’t extend beyond “ninja in black.” Instead of emoting, he annihilated demons. Backstory? Son of a ninja. Jokes? An alien concept. In Ryu’s adventures, the on-screen point score for slaughtering hundreds of enemies was austere, a stark contrast to Devil May Cry’s enthusiastic “Alright!” or “SSStylish!” ratings. Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2 were as no-nonsense as possible, even when asking you to fight a vamping demon atop the Statue of Liberty.

Halfway through Ninja Gaiden 4, you will literally jump over a shark as Yakumo, a new protagonist who feels plucked straight from the seventh most popular shonen anime of the season. During your journey, you’ll also:

• Repeatedly grind on rails, hopping over identical obstacles and dodging the same pop-out crossing gates countless times.
• Jump over pits and slide under barricades on your surfboard, essentially a frothier version of rail grinding.
• Soar through the air using a ninja wingsuit, dodging falling boulders.
• Begin with a mystifying number of core Ninja Gaiden combat abilities locked behind a currency called NinjaCoin, only to earn enough to unlock them so quickly you’ll wonder why they were gated at all.
• Pick up “missions” mid-level to kill an enemy slightly off the main path.
• Be notified, after every single battle, that you have enough points to unlock a new skill on one of your weapons using a second currency.
• Charge up a berserk meter that enables you to clear an entire screen of enemies with one flashy ultimate attack.

Ninja Gaiden 4, in essence, is replete with superfluous additions.

Some of these extraneous elements are undeniably fun! After the initial hours took me through rainy Tokyo, a perpetually overcast mountain region, and a black-skyed demon realm, I welcomed the sheer absurdity of battling fluorescent piranhas on a disco floor. The surfing segments hinted that the game might finally embrace a distinct personality—even if it leaned more towards DMC’s Dante dispatching demons with billiard balls while eating pizza, or Bayonetta’s BDSM gun-heels. Once you cross that threshold of silliness, you simply have to commit, right?

Regrettably, it never truly does. Yakumo remains bland, a weakness exacerbated by the game’s attempt to make you invest in his relationship with priestess Seori, who spends 90% of the game off-screen (and upholds the series’ questionable tradition of comically busty, bimboified heroines when she is present). Furthermore, almost all of NG4’s additional content feels like an uninspired answer to the equally uninspired question: “How do we modernize Ninja Gaiden?”

Off Balance

The literal and figurative on-rails traversal sections between fights are so repetitive they infuse the levels with a tedious sameness, draining the drama from what could have been flashy, unique moments. The distinctly 2025 game design impulse to gate your core moveset for the sake of “progression” is oddly stunted by how affordably every skill can be purchased within the first hour or two. While preferable to a sluggish drip feed, this progression arc renders the constant pop-ups—offering zero new abilities save for the occasional thrill of blocking one more hit or equipping an extra accessory—feeling like a vestigial remnant of a discarded plan.

The optional missions in each stage also feel awkwardly implemented. They require finding side paths in largely linear levels, but the moment you hop on a rail or catch a gust of wind, backtracking becomes impossible, forcing a restart from a checkpoint or abandonment until a full replay. It’s perplexing that a game offering thoughtful accessibility settings (auto-blocking, color-coded enemies, disabling hitstop, etc., making it playable for a wider audience) also includes blatantly annoying UI elements that cannot be disabled. Why do I need a notification after every single fight confirming I have enough of the secondary currency (earned through stylish kills) to enable a new attack? I understood the first 15 times! And why, in a game that excels when you’re teetering on the edge of death, must a distracting, glitchy red visual effect persist on screen until I heal?

Perhaps these “helpful” interface elements were intended to make the game more approachable. But if that’s the case, I say forget modern quality of life. Give me modern quality of death: weapons that make Ninja Gaiden 2’s scythe and wolverine claws look obsolete, enemies that demand tactical shifts faster than thought, and battle arenas that make me feel like *the* ninja, not just some guy with a mask and white highlights.

Ninja Gaiden 4 genuinely strives for greatness. It overcomplicates combat to the point of almost breaking it, layering in a berserk gauge for flashy finishers and a “bloodraven” modifier button to expend meter on beefed-up, armor-shattering attacks. On the defensive side, it emphasizes situational uses for blocks, parries, and dodges—each with their own powered-up forms accessible via that modifier. The elegant simplicity of classic Ninja Gaiden combos has been superseded by an unwieldy beast, yet I cannot deny the sheer satisfaction when my fingers flawlessly execute inputs, transforming a parry into a decapitating flying swallow, then hitting an elite enemy with an amped-up bloodraven attack just before theirs launches, triggering a stun that provides the crucial window to close the gap and punish them with a devastating combo.

Platinum’s most brilliant innovation in this game, by a significant margin, is Yakumo’s fourth weapon: a pair of mechanical arms that conjure oversized bombs and shurikens for ranged assaults, then unfurl into giant butcher’s blades, claws, or mauls for close-quarters combat, depending on the combo. It effectively functions as four weapons in one and is tremendously satisfying—yet, it’s telling that it’s also the furthest departure from Ninja Gaiden’s traditionally straightforward arsenal.

Ninja Gaiden 4’s momentum dramatically falters in its final act, forcing you to revisit several previous levels as Ryu Hayabusa, armed with a single weapon instead of his usual ten or so. These brief chapters exude strong “contractual obligation” energy, tediously using Ryu to narrate a backstory the game didn’t truly need. His section feels so rushed it almost comes across as a meta-joke on the player—after an entire campaign of anticipation, the first thing you do as Ryu is re-kill the exact same boss you dispatched as Yakumo mere minutes earlier.

Again, Ninja Gaiden 4 executes the fundamentals well—Ryu feels more powerful and substantial, his powered-up attacks delivering a flurry of impossibly fast blows that convey a mastery Yakumo has yet to achieve. I appreciate his inclusion as an option for replaying levels and tackling challenge trials, but Platinum needed to either make his narrative role genuinely impactful or omit him entirely.

Shadow of the Ninja

Where the original Ninja Gaiden focused its action on a city explored with a Metroid-lite sense of discovery, and Ninja Gaiden 2 propelled you across the globe to maintain a brisk pace, NG4 opts for a middling balance. Its stages linger too long in the same few locales, reinforcing the feeling that the game either needed to be shorter or significantly more ambitious. I was, however, pleased to find that it performed flawlessly—an absolute necessity for an action game of this speed and intensity. On my 9070 XT with every setting maxed, the action held steady at a near-unshakeable 120 frames per second.

As a sequel, Ninja Gaiden 4 struggled to internalize the core appeal that makes its predecessors games people revisit repeatedly. Yet, it also wasn’t bold enough to fully shed that legacy and commit to the unrestrained wildness that PlatinumGames excelled at a decade ago. But that lingering question—how much does that truly matter?—is one I’m still contemplating.

Despite its many shortcomings, Ninja Gaiden 4 belongs to a vanishingly rare genre of fast, technical, and flashy action games. It boldly thumbs its nose at the caution, stamina meters, and RPG systems that have dominated the soulslikes of the last decade. In these games, the only stat that truly counts is the kill count, and for that, I am genuinely grateful to experience a new title in 2025. It simply never quite manages to outsurf the legendary waves ridden by its predecessors.