Ninja Gaiden 4 is the perfect place to jump into the series

When the first 3D Ninja Gaiden came out on Xbox in 2004, I really wanted to play it; though the game looks a little antiquated now, at the time, teenage me thought that ninja protagonist Ryu Hayabusa was cool as hell. But alas, I didn’t have an Xbox, and I don’t think I could have convinced my parents to let me get such a (for the time) violent game. Even as an adult that could buy whatever game I wanted, I never got around to playing the franchise. Twenty-one years later, I’ve finally scratched that itch.

Ninja Gaiden 4 stars a new character named Yakumo instead of Ryu. Yakumo is a total punk; imagine someone with the short, unaffected personality of Final Fantasy’s Cloud Strife but as an extremely capable and acrobatic ninja who always wears a mask and has hair that sweeps across his face. It’s silly, but it works for such an over-the-top action game. And his personality helps me internally justify the way Ninja Gaiden 4 encourages aggressive, in-your-face fighting.

You have a light and a heavy attack that you can mash to strike your enemies, and well-timed dodges help get you in the right position to keep up your barrage. You can unlock new skills and moves that require certain button combinations, but I almost never consciously used them and usually relied on the standard attacks. As you fight, you’ll also build up energy to be able to switch into a “Ravenbound” mode with stronger attacks that can stagger enemies.

After you do enough damage to an enemy, they’ll get dismembered and then, with one tap of your heavy attack, you can go in for a powerful finishing move with a satisfyingly gruesome animation. I never got tired of seeing Yakumo turn one of my weapons into a vicious drill and jump on it to kill enemies. While ridiculous, it all makes sense given that the game is co-developed by action game experts Team Ninja and PlatinumGames. At times, I felt like I was playing a Bayonetta game, which is a compliment.

The absurdity goes beyond the battles, too. When you’re not fighting off waves of enemies, you’ll traverse the game’s levels by running along walls, leaping from poles with a grappling hook, grinding on rails, catching wind currents to fly through the air, and surfing across the water. There’s even a part where you’ll do all that while zipping through interdimensional portals. Between the fights and the traversal, there’s almost always something interesting happening as you’re running around the world, and when you need a break from the action or to restock your items, the in-game shops tend to be placed right where you need them.

I was constantly flying at enemies, keeping up the pressure with flurries of weapon strikes, and jumping around levels like the coolest ninja ever. There are even parts of the game where you can play as Ryu, who has his own style of play that’s slightly different from Yakumo’s — though I actually liked playing as him less because his heroic personality is so much more boring than Yakumo’s emo vibe.

Despite the chaotic action, the game has a relatively basic, old-school structure. Generally, you’ll play through a few levels, take on a major boss, acquire a new weapon, and rinse and repeat. There’s no open world, which helps keep things focused, though a few areas give you a tad more leeway to explore. While the back third of the game takes a bit of a step down because of some repeated levels and boss fights, I appreciated how straightforward it all was.

Ninja Gaiden 4 is one of my favorite action games I’ve played in years, and it’s the game I always imagined that the original 3D Ninja Gaiden would be. I didn’t feel like I missed anything by jumping in so late in the franchise. And there’s a lot of great Ninja Gaiden games to play next: I loved this year’s excellent new 2D entry, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, and to really get some of that old-school 3D vibe, there’s a new remaster of Ninja Gaiden II for modern consoles, too. After two decades of waiting, now I have lots of catching up to do.

^{Ninja Gaiden 4 will be released on October 20th at 8PM ET on Xbox Series X / S, PS5, and PC.}