(Credit: Dotemu/The Game Kitchen)
2025 is shaping up to be a great year for video game ninja fans. Tecmo Koei will release the long-awaited Ninja Gaiden 4 after shadow-dropping the Ninja Gaiden 2 remake in January. Likewise, Sega is getting in on the action with a new Shinobi game as the company combs its past for contemporary hits. But if your tastes lean more toward Ryu Hayabusa's original NES adventures, there's only one game for you. Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is a new 2D entry in the classic series, this time from developer The Game Kitchen and publisher Dotemu. I played a few early levels of the exhilarating side-scrolling action game (coming this summer to PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch) and enjoyed its mix of classic platforming and thoughtful mechanical depth.
Retro-Inspired Music, Graphics, and Story
Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is a throwback to the 1980s-era video games that birthed the franchise and that informs every aspect of its presentation. Appropriately rad retro music, full of driving guitar riffs and bold synths, puts you in the perfect headspace for over-the-top combat. Developer The Game Kitchen already demonstrated its excellent sprite work with Blasphemous, which continues here. Large, detailed, and pleasantly pixelated characters leap across bold environments with crisp animation.
The premise strikes the right tone between wacky and self-serious. Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is a side story to the original 8-bit game; a Ninja Gaiden: Gaiden, if you will. Instead of playing as Ryu Hayabusa, you control Kenji Mozu, a young ninja from the same village. Eventually, you find yourself tethered to the spirit of a rival Black Spider ninja named Kumori. Together, you must dispatch a lot of evil ninjas and demons.
(Credit: Dotemu/The Game Kitchen)Gameplay: Moving and Striking With Precision
I played just a few early stages, but I was surprised by how much variety Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound contains in such a purposefully retro package. I attacked tricky enemies with straightforward slashes while jumping and climbing walls during the intro stage. However, the tutorial introduced more acrobatic techniques that blended combat and platforming, like the cool guillotine drop maneuver that let me perform mid-air bounces off enemies and projectiles.
Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is powered by a system that rewards you for slaying marked enemies. After killing them, you're given a temporary special attack that bodies any foe in a single hit. However, this one-shot attack vanishes after a few seconds, so you must quickly use it.
The mechanic encourages you to assess the battlefield and prioritize the right targets in the right order. It makes the difference between fighting for your life against a heavily armored demon or instantly demolishing it. This adds satisfying tactical elements to even the most simple breakneck stages filled with enemy hordes and giant bosses.
(Credit: Dotemu/The Game Kitchen)The game further opens once you gain Kumori's other abilities and sub-weapons. These include shuriken you can toss in any direction, a chargeable Ragebound Arts super attack that kills all the on-screen minions, and the ability to enter a spirit world for brief gauntlets that push the platforming challenges to the forefront.
Ninja Gaiden is an infamously tough series, regardless of if you're playing the 2D or 3D titles. Ragebound continues that tradition. When I arrived at the demo's final stage, I could sense the game slipping into arguably annoying retro difficulty. It's not like Blasphemous is a particularly easy game, either. However, it offers many tools and communicates how and where to use them. I look forward to seeing how much of that carries over into Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound.
Go, Ninja, Go!
There's no shortage of ninja games on the market, but the Ninja Gaiden name still carries much weight. Based on my early look, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound appears to honor the franchise's earliest incarnation while injecting it with fresh ideas. It launches on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S, and Nintendo Switch (and hopefully Switch 2) this summer. Check back then for a full review.