Ninja Gaiden 4 - The Final Preview

Let me take you on a quick journey back to the past for a second. It’s the early 2000’s, years before a little game called Dark Souls would forever change the landscape of the action and action RPG genres. It was a time mostly without stamina bars; a time when style, spectacle, and creative expression of combat ruled above all else, a time when games like God of War 1 and 2, Devil May Cry 1 and 3, and God Hand blazed the trail for others to follow. But if you ask me, there was one game that stood above all of them, a masterclass of action design, that challenged and thrilled the teenaged me with aggressive enemy AI, gorgeous visuals, and the most dazzling combat system I’d ever seen. That game was Ninja Gaiden… (and later Ninja Gaiden Black.)

I made a whole feature on why I think Ninja Gaiden is the pinnacle of the action genre, so I won’t spend too much time on that here, but the point of all of this preamble is to say that my expectations coming into Ninja Gaiden 4 were massive. And yet somehow, based on the four chapters of this preview build, it is living up to them. This is exactly what I’ve always wanted a modern Ninja Gaiden game to be.

Let’s get one thing out of the way first, while this is co-developed by Platinum Games, make no mistake, this feels like Team Ninja’s Ninja Gaiden, through and through, regardless of whether you’re playing as Ryu Hayabusa or newcomer Yakumo. There’s no split of Yakumo’s levels feeling like a Platinum Games protagonist and Ryu’s feeling like traditional Ninja Gaiden. The two do have distinct playstyles and movesets, but you’ll be doing a lot of the same tricks with both characters, from izuna drops, to guillotine throws, quick charge ultimate attacks, etc.

Where Platinum’s influence is truly felt is in the absolutely wild segments in between bouts of combat. One level felt like a demonic 3D Sonic stage as I had to bounce between physics defying rails while avoiding getting shot by a helicopter, using my grappling hook to pull myself from rail, to rail, to wall, back to rail, finishing off with a dramatic leap into an assassination from above to kickstart the next combat encounter. It was just one of the many times I grinned like a giddy little child, laughing out loud, and shouted “that was so sick!”

When it comes to the fundamentals of combat, Ninja Gaiden 4 feels like an even better version of Ninja Gaiden 2. You’ve got light attacks, heavy attacks, shurikens, and of course, the signature flying swallow attack that allows you to quickly dash towards an enemy out of a jump and potentially slice their head right off with just a single strike. New to Ninja Gaiden 4 is a powered up form for both Yakumo and Ryu, accessed by holding down the left trigger, that allows them to use slower but much harder hitting attacks, fueled by a meter that is filled primarily by landing hits with your base form and by using obliteration techniques on dismembered foes.

You’ll need to use this form primarily to break through an enemy’s guard once they start blocking your standard attacks, or to guard against one of the many especially powerful red glowing attacks that some larger enemies and bosses like to use. Yakumo’s Bloodraven form allows him to use a giant blood sword that extends and allows for some really cool looking attacks that hit a wide area, while Ryu’s Gleam Form allows him to use the kinds of multihitting high speed sword slashes that you'd normally get from charging up an ultimate technique.

But it’s the small touches and improvements that really made me fall in love with Ninja Gaiden 4’s combat. The way that Guillotine Throws now home in on enemies and can be used to knock airborne foes out of the sky; the way you’re now more encouraged to use the environment to your advantage thanks to powered up flying swallows when you use them out of wall runs; how you can now use quick charge ultimate techniques right after landing from an Izuna Drop or Flying Swallow; or the way you can use your grapple to zip up to flying drone, leap off them, land two strikes on a flying enemy, and then literally yank them out of the air and piledrive them into the ground. This is exactly the kind of substantial, but ultimately iterative upgrade to the classic style of Ninja Gaiden’s combat that I had hoped Ninja Gaiden 3 would be.

Perhaps the thing I was most delighted about though was that Ninja Gaiden 4’s boss battles, or at least the two that I’ve played so far, are excellent. Outside of a small handful of exceptions, bosses have never been a particularly strong suit of the series, but right out of the gate the first boss, a large samurai armor clad enforcer, was a satisfying test of my skills, reflexes, and pattern recognition. It was an intense one-on-one fight against an enemy that was reactive to what I was doing. He would parry my attacks and follow up with a quick counterattack of his own, if I stood too far away he would quickly close the distance and bring the aggression to me, he would sneak in unblockable attacks to simultaneously threaten and provide me with an opportunity to stun him by quickly hitting him with an attack out of bloodraven stance. I was on the edge of my seat throughout the whole fight, and even when I died, I would catch myself smiling at how much fun I was having.

The second boss was a little less traditional, as after our first encounter she fled, leaving me to chase her throughout a distorted demon hellscape, but the actual battle itself was no less impressive. She wielded a giant umbrella that she would twirl around continuously, forcing me to be precise with my blocks whenever she got close. Another thing I appreciated about both these fights were the grapple points that I could use to quickly zip out of the way, and then flying swallow right back in to keep up the aggression.

My demo gave me a ton of skills unlocked right from the start, and while that was very much appreciated in the sense that I had Ryu and Yakumo’s full set of tools available for me to play around with, it also didn’t give me a good sense of what the progression will be like in the full game, and how much of that arsenal Ryu and Yakumo start off with. Which is something I’m very much looking forward to figuring out when I get my hands on the full version. At the very least I can say that the training and tutorial tools in Ninja Gaiden 4 seem excellent. There’s a full training mode where you can practice against customizable enemies, you’re able to look back and get explainers with video on every technique you’ve learned, full combo lists, the whole works.

While levels are linear and I didn’t happen to find any golden scarabs or crystal skulls, there are still things to find and do off the beaten path. There are terminals throughout the level that come with sub missions, such as defeat X number of enemies in Y location, or locate a number of creatures called Gourdy’s that are gourd shaped fiends that you can capture by completing a quick button press minigame. By far the coolest thing to find though are combat challenge rooms, where you can actually set your health handicap and get a reward based on how hard you make the challenge for yourself. I loved the challenge rooms in the OG Ninja Gaiden 2, so I was super happy to see a form of them return, and the ability to essentially set your difficulty is a cool change that gives you an appropriate reward for the effort you put in. The currency you gain can be used to purchase items and abilities at the shop, but again, I didn’t really have to engage with this all that much in this preview build since most of the things I needed were already provided to me.

It’s rare when you wait for a game for more than a decade and it finally comes and it seems to be everything you wanted and more, but so far, Ninja Gaiden 4 is shaping up to be that game. October 21 can’t come fast enough.

Mitchell Saltzman is an editorial producer at IGN. You can find him on twitter @JurassicRabbit