Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound Has Serious Potential for Old-School Fun

After more than a decade in the shadows, the Ninja Gaiden series returns with not one but three releases this year: the surprise remaster of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black that’s already out, this fall’s Ninja Gaiden 4, and in between, the 2D action platformer that returns the series to its roots, Ninja Gaiden Ragebound. While the mere existence of this trio is a pleasant surprise, Ragebound is perhaps the biggest shock, as the series hasn’t been two-dimensional since the early ‘90s. It’s also being delivered by a developer (The Game Kitchen) and publisher (Dotemu) who are new to Ninja Gaiden. They aren’t new to pixel art or retro throwbacks, though, and Ragebound appears to be in good hands that have real love for the franchise.

If you know The Game Kitchen’s Blasphemous series, you’ll know they produce some of the best-looking pixel art today. Even though the Ragebound reveal trailer featured a lot of hand-drawn animation, everything I saw during my playtime was pixel art, from the title screen to cut scenes. I love the sense of depth they create in a forest area with layers of parallax scrolling, while fireflies drift about in the foreground, unconcerned with all the bloodshed happening right in front of them.

Speaking of bloodshed, defeated enemies provide a satisfying splatter of pixelated red spray. Some bad guys even have multiple death animations. I also appreciate how, while some enemy corpses will fly offscreen or just burst into goo, others remain littered in your wake. Your own blood will occasionally spill on the background.

For its part, meanwhile, Dotemu published TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge, Streets of Rage 4, Metal Slug Tactics, and the upcoming Marvel Cosmic Invasion. This is a team with a track record of reviving dormant game franchises and reinvigorating them with fresh ideas and often dazzling art. That seems to be the case again with Ninja Gaiden Ragebound. It looks like a supercharged 16-bit version of the NES trilogy and adds some gnarly new ninja tricks.

One is the Guillotine Boost, which lets you bounce off enemies and projectiles with a spin attack. Not only will it deal damage, it extends your time in the air and therefore will help you cross wide areas with no ground beneath your feet. Game Kitchen has prepared many platforming challenges for you around this technique.

You’ll notice certain enemies have a glowing aura around them. These you can slash to load your hypercharge attack, which decimates large foes and obstacles with one hit. Hypercharges can be chained together if there are multiple glowing enemies nearby. So in many instances there is a preferable order in which bad guys should be defeated, adding one more layer for you to think about.

Just to be clear, Ragebound is a level-based action game, not a Metroidvania. You make your way through each area slashing enemies, platforming, and fighting a boss at the end -- like the large demon bat thing I encountered in one of the first areas.

Mercifully, checkpoints will prevent you from being sent back to the beginning should you be overcome. At the end of a stage you’re scored on your performance from D to S and will receive a summary of your completion time, number of kills, max combo, collectibles you found, and any challenges you completed. Challenges might be things like not taking damage or killing a certain amount of enemies with hypercharged attacks.

I want to mention the prologue that sets the scene for Ragebound because it’s awesome, but if you want to avoid any and all story spoilers you may want to skip ahead. *pauses* Okay, cast your mind back to that first cutscene that opened the original Ninja Gaiden back in 1989. Two ninja face each other under a full moon. They dash forward, leap into the air, and clash swords. Back on the ground, after a moment, the red ninja falls, and we learn this was Ryu Hayabusa’s father. Most of us had never seen anything so cinematic in a video game before. This event kicked off Ryu’s quest for revenge.

In the prologue of Ragebound, we play as Ryu’s father in the moments leading up to his duel. It’s so cool! Right from the jump, fans will recognize updated versions of classic tunes, like that which underscored the moment Hayabusa San collapses to the ground.

When word gets back to Ryu of what happened to his father, he leaves for America and all the events we witnessed in Ninja Gaiden I-III. Back in his village, some kind of portal is opened that sends demons spilling into our world. With Ryu preoccupied, it’s up to one of his pupils, Kenji, to save the village and dispatch this demonic threat. So it would seem the events of Ragebound play out alongside the original game. A literal gaiden, or side story, then. Clever.

Ryu is in one of his 3D Ninja Gaiden outfits here. He’ll obviously be changing into his original blue outfit for his trip to America, but it’s cool to see a 3D costume rendered in pixel art.

Many gamers who came up in the ‘80s and early ‘90s still have PTSD from those damn birds that first appeared in level 3-1 of the original Ninja Gaiden. They were kind of an annoying combination of the medusa heads and fleamen from Castlevania. My friends, I regret to inform you: The buzzards are back. Thankfully, they still take just one hit and seem to be more manageable here, at least in the early stages.

One of the most interesting new additions to the classic Ninja Gaiden formula is Kumori, a demoness who will become your companion and has some useful tricks of her own. If you happen upon a Demon Altar, Kumori can commune with it and switch to the dark world, where hidden demonic entities are revealed and can be used to navigate environments and open whatever was blocking Kenji’s path. This isn’t a cooperative game, though, so Kenji will remain trapped in the altar while Kumori is galavanting about demon town. She also has special attacks that can help Kenji in combat.

I already encountered some really cool enemies in my short playtime, like a cyclops that spits giant eyeballs from its gut. I like the way it dissolves into a skeleton, too. In a nice touch, clever moments break up the action, like when a demon leaps out at you but is eaten by a dragon snake thing that comes out of nowhere. These are eye candy moments that could just be amusing, or they might introduce a monster you’ll run into later on.

I think old school Ninja Gaiden fans are bound to enjoy this return to form. Ragebound has great pixel art, fast-paced platforming action, and new ideas that elevate the source material. I’m looking forward to learning more about Kumori and seeing how her relationship with Kenji develops. From what I’ve played so far, this seems like another winning combination of beloved but neglected IP with passionate indie devs. Ninja Gaiden Ragebound is out this summer.