Some things are just better together. Wine and cheese. Salt and Pepper. Bass drum and hi-hat. All these are good, but having played through The Game Kitchen’s next bloody action romp, Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, I’m convinced some of that one combination deserves a spot pretty high up the list of all-time best pairings: Ninja Gaiden and 2D. The Game Kitchen proves the combo is just as effective as it was in the NES days.
For those who don’t know, The Game Kitchen was responsible for the excellent Blasphemous and Blasphemous 2, which brought side-scrolling action gameplay, gorgeous art, and rich religious theming together in a wonderful blend I can’t help but recommend. It seems the team, fresh from depicting rampant violence of a Catholic nature, has decided to put down the Mea Culpa and pick up the Ninjato. You couldn’t have picked a better team to make Ragebound, as the gory combat, traversal, and deep-rooted challenge makes the transition seamlessly.
When first discussing Ninja Gaiden Ragebound, there are three main topics of merit: the gameplay itself, the presentation, and the difficulty. The Game Kitchen smash all three, in a way that makes it hard to imagine truly old school Ninja Gaiden fans being upset with. Sure, you can’t beat the classics, but as far as odes to the past go, this seems to me to be a pretty darn good one.
The feel of gameplay in Ragebound is tight, responsive, and drenched in that visceral feedback that’s downright mandatory in good side-scrollers. Hits feel good in Ragebound, which is important, because the game’s bread-and-butter is high octane slicing and dicing. Playing through the tutorial and two missions, every weapon and ability I used felt responsive and cathartic. Even movement – itself key to the overall play experience in side-scrollers – felt fast and punchy. It’s the kind of game that melts away in your hand, along with the hours you spend behind the controller.
As you proceed through the story, you confront various oni (read: demons). These can be, broadly speaking, broken up into two categories of foe: small and large. Small enemies are killable in a single hit, while larger blokes take a few blows (or an enhanced strike) to take down. There’s also a colour-coded mechanic that adjusts the flow of brawls. Occasionally, enemies will radiate a blue or red aura and through killing select softies with that same aura, you are granted a single hit of an enhanced attack in that colour, which you can use to fell a particularly powerful that shares the same hue.
Conseqently, fights in Ragebound are practically mini-puzzles in which you must quickly determine the optimal route through an encounter, making use of what opportunities arise to quickly dispose of the forces of evil. It’s a restriction sure, but not burdensome. DmC: Devil May Cry this is not. I found myself engorged in the process. Seeing what you’re about to face, and figuring out on the fly how best to make my way through in good time and health.
Ninja Gaiden Ragebound is visually stunning. It perfectly captures that retro aesthetic, while also pushing things somewhat given the resources provided with modern hardware. The game loads quickly, and looks great. Each enemy is distinct and recognisable, variants present in different levels. When you kill an enemy with one of those aforementioned enhanced attacks, they fold into themselves in a puddle of blood and gore, collapsing pleasingly like a chocolate lava cake. Delicious.
The most notable part of the game’s presentation are the fantastic stage transitions and boss fights. You leap out a window from the tutorial right into mission one a massive encounter, with no load time whatsoever. The bosses are vast and bombastic affairs, set in vibrant arenas and shooting out massive attacks that capture the attention and summoned from my mouth audible sounds of approval throughout my time playing.
As is gospel for the Ninja Gaiden series, the game is hard. Hard, but not unfair. You’re given all the tools you need to blast through levels fast and clean, and given ample information ahead of fights to determine how exactly to overcome challenges without having your ankles shattered. Still, hits you do take hurt, and you’re lacking something like passive life regeneration, your life being a resource more than an area of constant worry. Checkpoints are present, though scarce, and it feels as though you’re met with a choice in Ragebound: get good, or struggle. This is exactly what you’d want from any Ninja Gaiden game, and that feeling here adds all the more to my claim that this is a brilliant revival of classic Ninja Gaiden.
You see, it’s core to the fun. Enemies attack from awkward angles, perhaps they’re positioned in such a way that forces you to leap over platforms or through a particular ability through a gap in the wall, but nothing is sprung on you without warning. Ragebound, like classic Castlevanias, Mega Man games, or other retro royalty, teaches you what you need to know with a soft and nurturing hand, before using that same hand to throw punches your way. You can dodge them (the game makes sure you know how) but a punch is a punch and the bruise-averse should keep this in mind.
At the end of the tutorial, you fight Ryu Hayabusa. This is a fight you’re meant to lose. Losing most of your health transitions you straight into the first real mission, as Ryu goes off to do Ninja Gaiden 1 stuff as you set off on your own new adventure. However, if you dodge well and strike where you can, you can whittle down his health! At roughly 70%, Ryu starts pulling out some nasty attacks that are incredibly hard to avoid with your starting kit. I confirmed with one of the devs present that this is a fight you can win, but it’s extremely hard. I wasn’t able to do it, the best I got in my short time playing was 60%. But you can do it. I can see your eyes widening, masochists.
The team at The Game Kitchen didn’t need to add that, but they did because they understand what makes a game like Ragebound so appealing. The fight is filled with “oh sh*t” moments as Ryu pulls absurd aerial attacks out and throws them at you. It’s hard, but the game knows you want to win that fight. On top of that, when you lose, he Izuna Drops you. It’s exactly what I wanted from Ragebound, and there’s a good reason I spent the last 30 minutes of my preview time trying to take him down.
Ninja Gaiden Ragebound seems to me to be an absolutely fantastic addition to the Ninja Gaiden series, even if it isn’t mainline. It represents everything I feel is important to the series, and fits nicely into the canon in a way that should be pleasing to old fans too. I would highly recommend keeping an eye on this one, it’s a scorcher.
Ninja Gaiden Ragebound is coming sometime in 2025, to PC.
This game was previewed at the Dotemu offices in Paris, with travel and accommodation handled by Dotemu.
