Playing Ninja Gaiden 4 on my PS5 Pro takes me back to playing the original on Xbox

Playing Ninja Gaiden 4 on my PS5 Pro was not on my bingo card for 2025. I thought Team Ninja’s series had been laid to rest, replaced by Souls-likes focused on finding your way around vast landscapes and taking on enemies of shapes and sizes

However, I’ve been enjoying Ninja Gaiden’s revival, proving that not everyone wants games inspired by Dark Souls and Elden Ring. Released in October for consoles and PC, it’s a return to form for a series that’s lain dormant for so long, and it pumelled me with pangs of nostalgia for when I first played the series back in 2004.

The way of the Gaiden

Let’s go back 20 years. The year is 2004, and I’ve been hearing about a ninja series that’s being rebooted. After having grown up playing titles like Sega’s The Revenge of Shinobi and Core Design’s Ninja Shadow of Darkness, I was curious about what Team Ninja was working on; I had recently finished Capcom’s Onimusha 2 and was looking for something else to scratch that ninja itch.

Ninja Gaiden was the answer. Led by the late Tomonobu Itagaki, the title was initially developed for the Sega Dreamcast, then the PS2, before Itagaki convinced the heads at Team Ninja that Ninja Gaiden could thrive on Microsoft’s Xbox. They agreed, and the result was a game that honored the series’ past but brought it up to modern standards.

You play as Ryu Hayabusa, a ninja looking for revenge after a clan raided his village and killed his childhood friend. What follows is 16 chapters based around the region of Tairon, where you run, slash, and perform various magic attacks to defeat enemies and bosses with stacks of gore.

What made Ninja Gaiden work so well was its speed. Using the Xbox ‘Duke’ controller, you could easily perform combos, run on walls, then slam onto enemies from a great height. It felt so satisfying to pull off time and time again, and over 20 years later, that feeling persists.

Granted, there have been numerous re-releases of the three Ninja Gaiden games, most recently the Master Collection, available on PS5, Xbox Series S/X, and Nintendo Switch. I’ve replayed Ninja Gaiden on my Switch several times through this compilation, but having now played Ninja Gaiden 4, it feels like the series has come full circle.

A Gaiden reborn

Although Itagaki had long departed Team Ninja by the time Ninja Gaiden 3 was in development, I still enjoyed my time with parts of the game, despite some dull stages and a greater reliance on gore. But when Ninja Gaiden 4 was announced, I was excited to say the least, but also cautious.

When a series reaches its fourth entry, it can go one of two ways. Either it leverages what worked before, resulting in a subpar game, much like Sonic 4, where past levels were revisited in a very average manner. Or, it takes certain aspects and updates them for old and new audiences alike, much like Tomb Raider 4, with its engaging story and updated mechanics that made everything feel fresh again. Ninja Gaiden 4 falls into the latter.

As you go through the first few chapters in Neo Tokyo, there are moves and magic attacks that recapture the moments of the early Ninja Gaiden chapters. Granted, there’s no hub in the fourth game like in the original, but that’s not a complaint. Instead, you get fast-paced action, wall-running, and an engaging story that brought me back to 2004.

Ninja Gaiden 4 respects its past, but rejuvenates it with mechanics like a weapon upgrade system and the ‘Beserk’ meter, which transforms the antagonist, Yakumo, into a powerful form that dishes out gruesome but fun attacks, making every button press feel very satisfying.

It’s clear to me that Team Ninja made Ninja Gaiden 4 with Itagaki’s game design ethos in mind. That’s why it’s one of the best games of 2025. With Shinobi Art of Vengeance also heralding the return of the 2D Shinobi series, it’s great to see these two franchises return for old heads and new players alike.

As things stand for the ninja genre, what’s old is new again. For Ninja Gaiden, it feels like a return to form for the series. I hope Itagaki had a chance to play before his passing, as I’m sure he would have been pleased to see his many protégés pull the fourth entry off successfully.

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