Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound review: finding inner peace

Digital Trends

6 days ago

Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound
Score Details 'When you get into the flow, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is ruthlessly satisfying.'
Pros Unrivaled pixel art and animations
Perfectly tuned and readable bosses
Each stage offers unique challenges
Cons Progression rewards are a bit lacking
Some stages drag on a bit too long Buy Now
If there's one word I would associate with action-platformers during the NES generation, it would be rage. Games like Mega Man, Contra, and Ninja Gaiden felt unbeatable even for a kid with endless amounts of free time to beat my head against them. Home console games were still following the design philosophy of the arcade, where the more a player died, the more quarters they had to pump into the machine to keep going. That, and the stiff difficulty helped hide just how short these games actually were. Rage was part of the experience — the fuel I needed to surmount those games where the deck was so heavily stacked against me.
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With Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, it isn't rage that guided me to victory. It was peace. This is the latest in a long line of retro-inspired games that aim to recreate the feeling of classic titles, but smooths over those sharp corners. I am still pushed to master my toolkit in order to clear stages and topple beautifully animated bosses, but at no moment did I feel I was unfairly punished. I could see how each hit or death could be avoided next time if I were to have played a little more carefully.
This bite-sized 2D action platforming adventure plays by the rule of cool and mostly succeeds. Each stage introduces a new challenge or twist with incentives to revisit, bosses are consistently tough and rewarding to overcome, and the pixel art is breathtaking, but the lack of any additional core moves can make this journey start to feel repetitive by the end.
Flow like water
At first touch, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound looks and feels exactly like what my memory tells me a SNES game looked and felt like. Of course, games from that era couldn't pull off half of what this game does, but it is a perfectly convincing imitation in all the right ways. That includes the core gameplay systems and level of challenge — it feels as hard as games did, but with just a few small but smart tweaks to make it feel fair.
Hitting that perfect line of attacking, bouncing, and platforming to weave through the level is when Ragebound is firing on all cylinders
As Kenji, I can have a limited but encompassing moveset of slashes, a dodge, jump, and ability to scale walls and hang from ceilings. Once Kumori adds her abilities to the mix after the first act, I get access to a ranged kunai, an additional second weapon that can be swapped out with various arcs and effects, and an ultimate attack that functions off of a second meter. It's a deliberately restrained set of attacks that forced me to learn how I should approach enemies and what positions to avoid. Not being able to slash up, for example, makes standing directly below enemies always a bad option, but there's no scenario where I don't have at least one move to respond with.
Dodges have full invincibility while active, but there are always additional ways to approach or avoid enemies. There's no double-jump per se, but a new guillotine boost lets me strike downward while in the air and bounce off of any enemy or (most) projectiles for extra airtime. There's no separation between combat and platforming, even with the bosses. Stages are crafted with a flow in mind that I found myself naturally falling into. When I reach that zen state, hitting that perfect line of attacking, bouncing, and platforming to weave through the level is when Ragebound is firing on all cylinders.
The main new element Ragebound introduces is charge attacks that end up adding far more depth than they appear at first blush. On the surface, these are just ways to dish out far more powerful attacks and can be triggered by either sacrificing some health to gain a charge or attacking glowing enemies. In either case, you only get one attack per charge and if you don't use it, you lose it. Just like levels are designed so enemies appear in such a way that I am able to flow through them in one deadly dance once I find the rhythm, these charged attack opportunities test my ability to recognize the 'puzzle' in front of me, as it were, and target the right enemies in the right order to most efficiently get through.
Things get more complex when these colored enemies appear in blue or purple, each one associated with either a Kenji or Kumori attack to grant me the charge. If I react too fast and hit them with the wrong attack, I miss out on the charge and have to deal with whatever large foe it was meant to dispatch in a single hit far more slowly. It isn't a major punishment, but a slight sting to remind me to keep my cool.
All this coalesces into a game that appears to be your basic retro slash-em-up, but hides a deep well of mechanical depth that is a thrill to master.
Pure '80s
In the early hours, Ragebound hints at presenting a deeper story than its NES-era inspirations, but quickly falls back on campy tropes. That's not a bad thing, but there was a missed opportunity to flesh out the developing relationship between rivals turned reluctant allies Kenji and Kumori. Instead, the two quip at each other a couple of times before fully trusting one another. In a game about ninjas, demons, and magical crystals, it doesn't detract from the '80s action adventure it aims to be, but could have elevated it if it had been given more attention.
Boss fights are the exclamation point punctuating each stage
The various stages cover all the expected environments, from forests to trains and underground labs. Beyond the expected auto-scrollers and elevator sections, each stage introduces at least one new concept that helps keep the tedium at bay. This could be something like having to move between cover as explosions go off in the background or racing upward to avoid a fire. There are also moments where I transition over to Kumori's spirit and the game shifts to a time-based obstacle course focusing on her ranged moveset that serve as fun little shakeups to the regular flow of a stage.
Despite those efforts, many stages drag on for a bit too long with nothing new or interesting happening for long stretches of slashing. That works well for short bursts, but eventually becomes a little fatiguing. And I felt that exhaustion set in quicker over my playtime since the only part of my moveset that can be changed is a subweapon.
The ranking, challenge, and collectible systems are a fun incentive to replay stages, but lack any meaningful rewards if you don't care about getting higher rankings. The gear and subweapons one of the hidden currencies unlocks are quite tame and offer more ways to make the game more difficult (in exchange for higher ranks) than they offer buffs. That's fantastic for those who want to impose extra challenges on themselves, but the only externally enticing reward for me was the scrolls that unlocked new challenge stages.
Ragebound stays exciting because I always win by the skin of my teeth
Boss fights are the exclamation point punctuating each stage, but share the same strengths and weaknesses as the stages. These fights pushed me right to the limit in terms of execution, but don't demand perfection. Perhaps my skill level was just right, but every boss took me a handful of tries and fell with me typically one or two hits away from death, clutching it out at the last moment. Every boss is lavishly animated with moves that are meant to be read and reacted to. Typically, I would see a way to avoid an attack first, then later realize what move I could be using to deal damage while avoiding it. Each one demanded mastery of my entire moveset.
Because my core toolbelt remains unchanged throughout the game, there's never a sense of bosses getting more complex. Yes, each one has its unique moves and phases it goes through, but I'm never asked to incorporate anything to beat the last boss I wasn't using against the first, and yet Ragebound stays exciting because I always win by the skin of my teeth. What it lacks in innovation, it makes up for with pure, stylish, and satisfying action platforming that wants me to feel cool above anything else. By doing away with the nasty tricks that made the older titles so rage-inducing and instead rewarding my mastery of remaining calm under pressure, Ragebound is a wild success.
Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound was tested on PC.