Ninja Gaiden 4 is a one of the finest character action games in years, easily the finest since DMC5. Many of us did not think Platinum still had their fastball; Astral Chain was good, conditionally, so was Transformers Devastation, but a real grand slam we have not seen from them in quite some time. No one is happier to be proven wrong here than me. Platinum's take on Ninja Gaiden is of course not going to line up 100% with either of the original Itagaki flavors, but it captures the spirit of intensity and speed those games embodied quite well. NG4 focuses on a new character, Yakumo, with a new combat style. Most of the old moves remain, like the useful Guillotine Throw and the iconic Izuna Drop, but Yakumo fights with a blood attack meter, allowing him to spend that meter for what is essentially a heavy attack that breaks enemy unblockable attacks and staggers anything but bosses over a specific area depending on which of the four weapons you use. Blocking is limited compared to the earlier NG games, but in exchange any attack that breaks block is properly telegraphed, which is where the blood attack counters come in. This creates a characteristic very open and fair language for offense and defense as is characteristic of Platinum (And not so for the NG franchise.) while retaining NG's aggression and intensity. The result is also, a first for the Ninja Gaiden franchise, bosses that are not terrible. There are a couple that are annoying, but they manage to be tough but fun, without the cheese of Alma or Elizabeth being able to freely break the rules. Ryu is also a part of the game, he gets the DMC4 style arc of retreading Yakumo's part of the game, but with the benefit of his stages being set on fast forward, condensing entire arcs of Yakumo's journey into a brief stage rocketing you from combat encounter to combat encounter skipping the downtime of repeated scenery. The devs clearly wanted to do a bit more with Ryu, but you can see the creaking of the budget here as Ryu gets only one weapon compared to Yakumo's four, but with his own classic Ninpo tied in an extremely overpowered way to his equivalent meter to Yakumo's blood meter. The game opens itself up upon clearing it, letting you revisit every stage, boss, and challenge fight with either character as well as offering a bunch of gimmick post-game trial fights to boot, making it an extremely easy game to replay piecemeal.
Every character action game has flaws, and combined with the schizophrenic nature of the NG community, this results in a lot of grifters, trolls, and freaks lambasting the game for the modest crime of having on rails segments as level transitions being slightly dull on repeat play, which is a fair complaint except that almost without fail every single other top shelf character action game apart from Assault Spy has something similar, and the previous Ninja Gaiden games easily have far worse segments than any on rail segment in NG4, doubly so because it is Itagaki's style to throw you into an atrocious controlling gimmick and then kill you repeatedly in it. Regardless of how one can compare it to the previous games, Ninja Gaiden 4 is still one of the best action games out there, easily deserving a spot on the top shelf next to the NGs and DMCs of the world..
