Ninja Gaiden 4 is a bloody triumph, seeing its co-developers back at the top of their respective games.
Ninja Gaiden 4 is, without a shred of doubt in my mind, the best action game of 2025. It’s co-developers Team Ninja and PlatinumGames doing what they do best; firing on all cylinders to provide a wicked hard combat experience that puts priority on learning effective combo routes and enemy behavior — as well as spatial awareness — over bloated health bars or other cheap difficulty tricks.
Like the best of its peers, such as Devil May Cry 5 or the Bayonetta games, Ninja Gaiden 4 gives you all the tools you need to make quick work of almost any foe in the game. But getting to that point is a skill that demands utmost mastery at its higher difficulty levels. And embarking on that journey here manages to recapture that satisfaction of the best the character action subgenre has to offer.
If you’re already a Ninja Gaiden head, you’ll be pleased to know that all the staples are here. Multiple weapon types with expandable move sets, dismemberment for instant-kill obliteration attacks, and the need for a careful balance of offense and defense to get the better of the armies of enemy soldiers and daemons standing in your way.
It’s not without its faults. Environments can be quite dull, often lacking in the gorgeous vistas and arena variety of its predecessors — while prior games often had you fighting for your life in claustrophobic spaces, combat areas in Ninja Gaiden 4 are decidedly more open and boxy. There’s also an over-reliance on on-rails platforming sections that are largely scripted. They can look cool, but certainly lack the challenge and thrills of the main combat loop.
These slight hitches aside, Ninja Gaiden 4 provides an exhilarating combat experience with strong enemy variety and tremendous chapter-ending boss fights. And as a bonus, while the main plot isn’t spectacular, series fans can expect plenty of callbacks to Ninja Gaiden’s universe — albeit none that I will explicitly spoil for you in this review.Raven’s call
In Ninja Gaiden 4, the corpse of the colossal Dark Dragon continues to loom over Tokyo, emitting a rain of death and decay that threatens to destroy the city. Our newcomer protagonist, Yakumo, is a ninja of the Raven Clan that forms an uneasy alliance with a priestess named Seori. The goal of the partnership is to actively resurrect the Dark Dragon in order to slay it — body, soul, and all — for good.
Returning series legend Ryu Hayabusa, meanwhile, is none too happy at the prospect of bringing such a great evil back to life. He allies himself with the Divine Dragon Order (D.D.O. for short) — one of the game’s main enemy factions — in order to combat the Raven Clan’s plan.
This doesn’t so much set up Hayabusa as the villain as it does provide conflicting ways to solve the problem at hand. It’s the most interesting aspect of Ninja Gaiden 4’s plot, but don’t expect Nier Automata levels of storytelling here. Like other games in the series, the story serves a simple backdrop to the action, not the core focus.
Yakumo himself begins as a fairly one-note entity. I do love his design, emulating a painfully 2010s level of edginess; clad entirely in black and sporting a haircut that threatens to cover his line of sight entirely. But he’s an effective contrast to the more traditional, arguably sensible look of Hayabusa. Something much more rebellious and unpredictable in nature.Steeped in blood
That chaotic nature plays strongly into Yakumo’s weapons and abilities. While he has access to iconic Hayabusa-brand moves like the gap-closing Flying Swallow and cranium-obliterating Izuna Drop, Yakumo’s very much his own beast with his signature Bloodraven form.
At any time during combat, assuming you have a sufficient amount of gauge, Yakumo can enter Bloodraven stance by holding the left trigger. This powers up his light and heavy attacks, but is also able to break through guarding enemies and interrupt unblockable attacks noted by a handy exclamation point icon.
