Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound Review

Player(s): 1
Extra Features: N/A

Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is the latest game in the Ninja Gaiden series and carries on the story from the original NES trilogy. The game is developed by The Game Kitchen, creators of the Blasphemous series. I have no experience with Blasphemous, so I don’t know how it compares. They sure did a great job with Ragebound, so I must check out their other games! Just like the NES games, the Ragebound is a 2D action sidescroller. Get through each stage and defeat the boss at the end.

Storywise, the game happens during the events of the original Ninja Gaiden on NES. Ryu leaves Kenji behind to protect Hayabusa village while Ryu is on the journey to meet with Walter Sullivan and find his father’s killer. Players start out in control of Kenji. Eventually Kenji meets up with Kumori, a member of the Black Spider Clan and you’ll get to play as her for a few stages.

Kenji and Kumori have around the same gameplay style, but Kenji is more melee based with attacks while Kumori is more projectile based. Each of them have the same overall attacks though. The controls for the game are quite simple. You have a sword slash, jump and dodge. The game has a Symphony of the Night feel to its overall movement. Each character will lean forward before starting a dash, much like Alucard.

Wall climbing returns from the NES titles and you can now climb along the ceiling as well. While jumping, you can perform a “guillotine boost”, which is an attack that allows your player to bounce off of an enemy or projectile for extra height. The Guillotine Boost adds a new layer to the platforming and helps out for extending jumps to get over bigger gaps. The Guillotine Boost can also help out for battles such as during boss battles – boosting over a boss to get behind the boss. Both characters can deflect projectiles by attacking them as well.

Ragebound has one heck of a prologue stage. If you’re a fan of the original NES Ninja Gaidens, the prologue is like fine wine - from the action and the story to the music, you’ll be thoroughly drawn in. Stages are much more complex when compared to the NES games. Stages are overall longer and have many hidden areas throughout them. You can also gain different items to equip to your character for enhancement. Each stage has scarabs and other collectibles that can be used as currency to buy supplies from shops. All stages have three different objectives to meet – such as killing a certain amount of a certain type of enemy, finishing the stage without dying, etc.

The game has such a nice flow to its gameplay. The majority of enemies can be killed with one attack. You’ll encounter more powerful enemies eventually that require several attacks. Whenever a more powerful enemy presents itself, an enemy with a glow will always appear and you can kill that enemy to enter a hypercharge state where your next attack will be more powerful and kill even powerful enemies with one attack. The hypercharge is a great mechanic. You can enter it either by killing a glowing enemy or by holding down the attack button and sacrificing some of your health to perform a hypercharge attack.

The boss battles in the game are much more upgraded than the NES games. They still have the same feel, but each boss has many more attacks to learn. Boss battles boil down to learning a boss’ attacks and then counterattacking. Hypercharge plays a big role in boss fights. With a hypercharge attack, you can hit the boss to stun the boss and then drain the boss’ health with your attacks while the boss recovers. Ragebound offers an overall good evolution to the classic NES game’s boss fights.

The story unfolds much like the classic NG games. You have still cutscene images with text dialogue. It’s very noticeable that Ryu’s model looks more like he does in the newer (Xbox) NG games rather than the classic NES games. The story is overall decent. If you’re a fan of the story in the NES games, you’ll fall right in line with Ragebound’s overall story. The only nitpick I have with the story is that it would be nice to have fully voiced cutscenes. It’s fine without it, but it would be a good extra.

The only real problem that I have with the game is the ceiling and wall grabbing. Just like the original NES games, you can climb walls by attaching to them. You have to hold toward a wall while jumping to grab onto it. You can also attach to ceilings by holding up while jumping. The overall transition to a ceiling grab can be hard to do under stressful situations since you have to hold up while jumping and sometimes you want to move to the side. I think the ceiling grab could be better set to holding the jump button to grab onto a ceiling or maybe hold a different button...? Transitioning between both the wall, ceiling grab or just plain jumping in between them can be difficult.

Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is a definite pickup if you’re a Ninja Gaiden fan and appreciate the old NES games. It might even appeal to newer fans as well. The game has a great difficulty balance. It is not easy and not too hard. The game has checkpoints that you’ll constantly respawn at, so you never have to repeat much if you die. The game has multiple difficulties (beat the game once to get “Hard”), and just like the old NES titles, it is a great speedrun game. The combat is very satisfying and the game is overall a really good evolution of the NES games. Be sure to try out this game if you’re a Ninja Gaiden fan!

The Good:
+ Very faithful to the original series overall
+ Good balance of difficulty
+ Satisfying combat

The Bad:
- The ceiling grab is sometimes hard to activate
- Overall wall and ceiling grabbing transitions are hard to pull off at times