When I heard that Spanish developer The Game Kitchen, known for the excellent Blasphemous series, was put in charge of a new old-school Ninja Gaiden game to be released under the DotEmu banner, I couldn’t be happier, and the more I finally played Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, that feeling only grew and grew. It’s a game that is a near perfect marriage of traditional and modern design sensibilities, making it an experience worth having regardless of skill level or experience with previous entries of the franchise.
Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound takes place concurrently with the newer Xbox-era Ninja Gaiden games, where its protagonist, Ryu Hayabusa, leader of the Hayabusa clan, is off saving the world, while his protegé, the young and reckless Kenji is put in charge of protecting their ninja village. Horror strikes as demons attack the place, putting our new hero on a war path in order to set things right. On the way, he is joined by Kumori, a member of the Black Spider clan, sworn enemies of the Hayabusa, who put aside their differences in order to put an end to the Demon Lord’s schemes.
This new Ninja Gaiden plays as a sidescrolling combat game, much like the ones on 8-bit Nintendo, but with some added gameplay features that make it stand above the now admittedly aged structure of Tecmo’s classics, while retaining what made those titles so beloved in the first place. And this being a The Game Kitchen joint, it’s absolutely brilliant when it comes to its art, controls, and most importantly, the level of challenge at play.
The relationship between Kenji and Kumori is a unique one when it comes to playing Ragebound. While the title screen and promotional art would suggest it being a game where you pick one of them to play as, it’s in fact one where you play as both. Upon their meeting, a dying Kumori imbues her soul into her dagger, urging Kenji to stab her, thus fusing both characters, unifying their powers into a single being. With this fusion, you get the good from both worlds, as Kenji is deadly at close range and has great mobility, while the Black Spider clan member can fire off ranged projectiles and cast magic.
It’s by smartly using their skillset that makes Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound such a joy to play. The level design takes into account that you’ve got those powers at hand, but it’s up to you to figure out how to go outside of the box with them. Each stage has a list of challenges to complete, similarly to what was done in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge, and they are especially tricky to pull off, making coming back to them repeatedly much less of a rote repetition affair, and more of having you get better by simply playing through the game and really learning its ins and outs. Not to mention the inclusion of special ‘black ops’ levels that are a step above normal versions of places you’ve visited before, with an extra layer of difficulty to shake things up.
Along the way, you can collect a number of knick knacks like crystal skulls and jeweled beetles, which you can spend buying upgrades or relics. The latter come into play in some clever ways as they can make the game substantially easier or harder if you do so choose. If you decide to get rough, such as taking away health items in levels or doing away with checkpoints altogether, you’ll be rewarded with much better grades at the end of them, thus unlocking new items to buy and, of course, the bragging rights for doing it all in the first place.
I wouldn’t necessarily call Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound a difficult game, though. It’s more of a tough but fair time, which considering The Game Kitchen’s previous release, Blasphemous 2, was a substantially more playable game than its predecessor – something that I absolutely loved seeing – it makes sense that they’re applying that into this new one. It’s something that would never be thought of back in the 1980s, when the originals came out, where rentals were the inspiration behind making admittedly short titles last considerably harder in order to squeeze value out of them.
But don’t go thinking there’s nothing of the old games under Ragebound’s hood. If you’ve ever tried one of them, you’ll see what I mean: enemies are deviously placed in order to make you miss jumps if you don’t time them right, and there are moments where you’ll simply be overwhelmed by their sheer numbers. However, none of these get to the point of feeling cheap, as scrolling back and forth doesn’t respawn foes like it did 30 years ago.
Their presence plays a double role, since most of the time you’ll need them in order to reach higher platforms by using the series’ trademark guillotine jump, or in order to hypercharge an attack so you can take down an otherwise indestructible obstacle in your way. Not to mention the titular Ragebound attack, which builds up over time as you fight, and is ridiculously devastating, even more during the game’s excellent boss fights.
As with both Blasphemous games, Ninja Gaiden Ragebond is pure pixelated bliss. Animations are fluid and incredibly violent, and there’s a sense of life all throughout the game that are only rivaled by the development team’s previous works, which happen to be the most beautiful games I’ve ever played. All this visual greatness is followed up by an electric soundtrack that captures the sheer insanity of the fast-paced action surprisingly well. Following the style set by its precursors, Ragebound is also chock full of cutscenes that pay loving homage to those nostalgic classic titles, showing the undisputed talent from the folks at The Game Kitchen.
While a departure from the slower, more deliberate approach from the games that put their team on the map, providing a lightning-fast, level-based adventure with speedrunning in mind, there’s no denying that Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is an absolute hit, a true sequel that captures the magic that made Ninja Gaiden a household name decades ago and still lives on in its fans’ hearts all over the world. It was definitely worth the wait.
