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The year is 2025 and ninjas are once again all the rage. The hype began in March with the release of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, a game whose stealthy action mechanics perfectly fit the historical fantasy of becoming a ninja. This summer, Sega revives one of its classic franchises with Shinobi: Art of Vengeance — the first entry in the series to reach home consoles since 2003.
But perhaps the biggest signal that pop culture’s premier stealth-assassins are back in the zeitgeist was the announcement of not one, but three, Ninja Gaiden games this year. After an 11-year gap, Koei Tecmo’s hardcore action franchise returns in spectacular fashion, covering just about every base for fans of the series’ different eras.
Back in January, the Japanese publisher announced an all-new 3D entry in the franchise, Ninja Gaiden 4, would arrive sometime in 2025; and to whet the audience’s appetite, a remake of 2008’s Ninja Gaiden II (dubbed Ninja Gaiden II Black) shadow dropped on PlayStation, Xbox, and PC immediately following the sequel’s reveal.
But for those who long for a more nostalgic vision of ninja games of yore, there’s one slightly smaller (but no less exciting) option on the way — Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound. Developed by The Game Kitchen, whose Blasphemous series are heavily inspired by retro action and Metroidvania games of the Eighties and Nineties, Ragebound is a brand new 2D entry in the franchise that blends the pixel art aesthetic of the early games with more fluid (and forgiving) combat systems inspired by the later 3D entries in the Ninja Gaiden canon. The game is also being published by Dotemu, the company that specializes in resurrecting classic franchises for modern sensibilities (Streets of Rage 4, TMNT: Shredder’s Revenge).
Back in February, Rolling Stone had access to a PC preview build of Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, and was able to play through its prologue and two early levels. Here’s why Ragebound might just be the best ninja-based game this year.
Gaiden Light
Fans of the series will know that the narrative continuity of Ninja Gaiden is something of a mess. The original arcade game from 1988 was produced in tandem with the 1989 NES iteration, although the two have almost nothing in common. The arcade version follows two nameless shinobi through a Double Dragon-style beat ‘em up game with little in the way of story (in true coin-op fashion). It’s the trilogy of NES games that most people are familiar with.
Those games (as well as the later 3D trilogy released between 2004 and 2012) follow a hero named Ryu Hayabusa, a member of the Hayabusa clan who’s sent to a retro-futuristic version of the U.S. in search of his missing father. The early Ninja Gaiden games were famous for helping popularize cinematic cutscenes in gaming, telling an anime-like story via picture and text in between each level or act. They were also known for their brutal difficulty.
The 2004 reimagining of Ninja Gaiden for Xbox 360 continued (or reworked) the story of Ryu in a pseudo-prequel series that eventually became its own thing — but notoriously ratcheted up the difficulty even further. Well before titles like Dark Souls or Elden Ring became gaming shorthand for hard-to-beat, the Ninja Gaiden series was the high watermark for relentlessly tough experiences that, frankly, most casual gamers likely couldn’t master.
It’s somewhere in between all this where Ragebound fits in. Narratively, the game is a side story that kicks off on the very same night as the original NES title. The game stars two protagonists, Kenji and Kumori, the former being a trainee of Ryu himself. When Ryu takes off to find his missing father, it’s up to Kenji to save their village from a demon attack. Kumori is a member of the Black Spider Clan — a rival to the Hayabusa — whose fate becomes intertwined with Kenji’s in the game’s early hours.
Old-School Cool
Smartly positioned as a spin-off to avoid the colossal mess of continuity, Ragebound offers up an entirely new story and characters to learn about, but its design is firmly centered on marrying the concept of a classic Ninja Gaiden game with quality-of-life elements fans would expect today.
Aesthetically, Ragebound looks closer to the 16-bit build of the arcade game than the simpler 8-bit style of the NES entries. Much like The Game Kitchen’s Blasphemous (2019) and Blasphemous 2 (2023), the pixel art utilized here is highly detailed, rendering backgrounds with depth like the flaming ruins of the Hayabusa clan’s village or cityscapes surrounded by rivers of blood. Each character’s sprite (or model) is densely packed with pixels, moving fluidly through space with each action with precision and minute changes that feel closer to what you’d expect from a hi-res 3D rendering.
The combat is also markedly more intuitive than anything from the original series. Kenji’s movement resembles Ryu’s from previous games as he runs, jumps, and slices his way through enemies — most with just a single strike from his katana. Kunai and other projectiles can be deflected, and most enemies or airborne traps can be parried by jumping into them, then pressing jump again.
Whereas many modern games going for a retro style tend to make enemies into spongey tanks because, the thinking goes, more hits equals tougher difficulty, Ragebound wisely emphasizes that older games were often more about perfectly timing singular hits while an endless parade of baddies swarmed from both sides of the screen.
Bigger enemies can have layers of protection that require correct timing to strike, or by using a single-slice mechanism to wipe everything out that’s collected from killing specially highlighted foes.
The big twist that the game leverages is that both Kenji and Kumori are playable through something called “Ninja Fusion.” In the second of two playable levels in the demo, Kumori becomes available as, essentially, a spectral avatar to control whenever Kenji is docked in a creepy organic egg-like pod. Stepping into the pod switches control to Kumori, who can utilize thrown blades to teleport across gaps.
In the demo, her sections mostly consist of timed platforming puzzles where players must quickly make their way from A to B, collecting more time and killing enemies flawlessly to then trigger a switch so Kenji can progress. It’s unclear if later levels give Kumori more to do or additional freedom beyond the timing limitations, but it’d be nice. Otherwise, she serves more as a secondary toolset for Kenji than a playable character in her own right.
Go, Ninja, Go
From the demo provided by Dotemu, it’s hard to gauge just how Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound will evolve over the course of its runtime. Initially provided as a 90-minute experience to get through the prologue, tutorial and two levels, the developers eventually opened the build for a longer session that could be replayed. Each level or act was a delicate balancing act of surviving combat and precision platforming that — if you’re not skilled or adaptable enough — could’ve easily eaten the 90 minutes alone.
But after getting the hang of the various systems (and memorizing enemy patterns and level layout), it’s easy to see how each act can be speed run, an appeal that many classic games still have. Each level ends with a grading system based on time, kills, and combos — as well as specific challenges and collectibles.
Unlike many popular retro-styled 2D games today that focus on dense, interconnected worlds in the Metroidvania formula, or single-run playthroughs through multiple floors in rougelike games like Hades, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound goes for a classical level-by-level design for players to learn and perfect their performance.
And it mostly works. Ragebound’s controls feel tight and responsive, with most mistakes clearly occurring because of player error and impatience. Once you get the timing down and become familiar with the levels, everything falls into lockstep.
Unlike the 3D-era Gaiden games, whose relentless difficulty demanded split-second perfection for all actions, Ragebound is more forgiving, albeit more fully featured than the old NES games. While it may present its own set of challenges, it feels like it could end up being a great alternative or reprieve for players who ultimately don’t have the patience to master games like Ninja Gaiden II Black or the forthcoming Gaiden 4. Ragebound provides the illusion of conquering an old school game while affording players the comfort of actually being able to do it.
Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound arrives in summer 2025 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4 & 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
