Ninja Gaiden: RageBound Review – All Styles, No Heart

2025 appears to be the year of the Ninja. The Assassin’s Creed: Shadow It was one of the big hits in the first half, and a new ninja game is approaching. NinjaAgaiden fans are covered in a complete trilogy. Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, Ninja Gaiden 4 released in January, arrives later this year Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound arrived on Thursday. However, based on my experience, you may want to skip this installment. It’s attractive, but not satisfying.

Ninja Gaden Ragebound This is a 2D side-scrolling action game that pays homage to the original NES Ninja Gaiden Trilogy. The retro graphics are attractive, but the gameplay doesn’t have any meaningful depth. It feels like a concept first project where the ninja slaps to sell it and the ninja added after the fact.

Interestingly, Ragebound serves as a side story for the original NES title. Ryu Hayabusa learns about his father’s death in America, leaves his village and sets the events of the first game. In his absence, fellow ninja Kenjimzo stays behind to protect the village. Soon after that, an army of demons invades. Meanwhile, Kumori, a ninja from her rival Black Spider Clan, feels that her hometown is also under siege. The captured Bumori tells Kenji to use a mysterious dagger to tie her spirit to him.

This dual character mechanic is a Ragebound central hook. The player controls Kenji, who uses the sword, and Kumori helps him in the form of a spirit by throwing Shuriken. Occasionally she can take physical form to reach areas that Kenji cannot access. As the duo progresses, they unleash a powerful screen-clear magical attack.

It will flatten during execution, so that it sounds clever. Kenji’s sword is his only consistent weapon, and the scrub shuriken is tied to a meter that is only filled when Kenji attacks. On a full charge, you might get dozens of throws before it’s empty again. There is a jump-based guillotine attack, making vague noises like enemies and bounces off the enemy, but most are used on platforms rather than combat. The move set is shallow, and the same goes for the level design.

The stage is filled with endless waves of weak enemies that feel repeatedly and die in one hit. Occasionally drop power-ups that can instantly kill large enemies, but these moments do not change the core loop that repeats over and over until you reach the boss.

To credit for the game, boss battles are the highlight. Each has a different pattern, making it even more complicated in the second phase. These encounters made me more tactical with dodges and attacks, and some people needed multiple attempts to negotiate or get wrong. But these fights are the only part of Ragebound that feels like they’ve been carefully designed.

Normal enemies are heartless and most are there to knock you into the pit. Otherwise, they’re easy with a laugh. With healing amulets and generous checkpoint arrangements, it is difficult to actually die. In fact, Kenji’s dodge ability makes him attractive to run beyond most levels. Anyway, the next checkpoint will make you feel soothed.

Levels are set in different regions of Japan, with one stage of the building under construction offering a bit of diversity, but most environments lack creativity or challenge.

Difficulty is also a major departure from the legacy of the ninja Gaiden. The original NES game was well known for being famous, and rebooting the Xbox was even more difficult. Here, the default difficulty feels like “Baby Mode”. You can tweak the settings to remove healing items and increase enemy damage, but that’s about it.

2D pixel art comes from developer The Game Kitchen, known for its profanity series. This style echoes the era of NES and SNES, but the charm fades away quickly. Unlike blasphemous enemies that feature unique enemy design and animation, Ragebound enemies become lazy. They just run towards you and pop like water balloons when they’re defeated.

With a 6-8 hour gameplay price tag of $25, we cannot recommend Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound. There is nothing interesting about the original Ninja Gaiden game other than this side story. Still, it’s just a show of the various ninjas fighting monsters. The game was supposed to be a love letter to the original trilogy, but instead it’s like a bad copy of a love letter made by someone who doesn’t seem to mind too much.

Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is available on PC, Switch, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series consoles.