NINJA GAIDEN Ragebound – Review

Wow, that was a solid return to old form for a side story of the very first title. Ninja Gaiden Ragebound was released at the end of July 2025, developed by Blasphemous’ makers, The Game Kitchen, and published by Dotemu and Joystick for the PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One and Series X/S, the Nintendo Switch, and last but not least on the PC (via Steam).

Its story is set to unfold alongside the original title on the NES, released 37 years ago in 1988. While Ryu was gone to avenge his father, Jo/Ken Hayabusa (depends on which naming you follow), due to his apparent death after the fated duel (which you play through during the first half of the tutorial of the game that explains the basic controls of the game).

You play as Kenji, a trainee under the Hayabusa clan that Ryu leads, one that he oversees personally, which means he’s of rank and age to be an upper-class. Fiends attack the village and set it aflame, one that Kenji wants to see to it that he solves personally. Meanwhile, the Black Spider Ninja Clan had been attacked the night before by the same Fiends and sent out their own agent, Kumori (which has a tutorial stage of her own to introduce you to her playstyle, giving you a fair chance to grasp both sides as you will need to master both as the game proceeds).

Their intertwined fates will lead them to a long battle against the Fiends, warring clans working side by side to defeat them. What twists await their entanglement with the CIA and the Fiends, you ask? That awaits you should you pick this title up and play it through to the end.

The gameplay captures the essence of CLASSIC Ninja Gaiden, a true return to old form: difficult yet fair, the challenges requiring you to have an open and agile mind requiring just-as agile fingers to overcome challenges sent your way through every stage, be it collecting every Crystal Skull or Scarab to purchase every single upgrade or challenge available, including the ones that give you a disadvantage but raise the clear grade ceiling which in turn gives you a greater feeling of accomplishment once you pull off a playstyle deserving of such, no matter how many times you have to replay a stage and keep trying. Enemy AI is nice and understandable with their own tells as expected of a The Game Kitchen work, and every hit or death is on you.

The challenge is fair and never feels too stacked against you, especially in every boss battle, considering their AI and attack patterns are quite easy to understand, keeping every encounter fair yet challenging, but not to the old levels that tend to make you pull your hair out with every single mistake. A bit of the challenging talismans: They deprive you of something you get, like checkpoints or healing per checkpoint, but raise the clear grade ceiling to S++, providing greater replay value for both Normal and Hard Mode. Sometimes, you really need to restart and run stages again and again, but it’s part of the process to clear some challenges on certain stages, where you either have to avoid falling into pits or dying.

The music’s as hype as you would expect of a side-scrolling kill-them-all Ninja Gaiden game. It pumps you up hard and gets you in that furious headspace where every enemy you meet HAS to end up as meat on the ground and its blood sprayed onto the wall and/or spilled onto the ground and yet fitting for every stage they play in, while the hit sounds are just as meaty as you would expect from a The Game Kitchen work, feeling like you’re playing Blasphemous (The Game Kitchen’s flagship title, for me at least) considering how it lands on my ears that at times.

Now, a bit for the game’s potential expansions. It’s an appealing idea if we’d get a full El Penitente DLC which could lack a story and it’s just him speeding around and slashing everyone down or if he has a story could connect to Blasphemous 2’s new ending, pitting him against the Fiends considering he is a free soul at that point and could continue combatting evil forces wherever they appear, kind of like an expanded Neutral + Ending in Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux but instead of inside a single universe, he hops around other universes and just fights silently as before, a silent sentinel against the forces of evil, be it explicit or hiding behind a veil of good.

To sum everything up, Ninja Gaiden Ragebound is a great title that should be a must-play for those wishing to experience the old ways of Ninja Gaiden, whether you are an old fan or one who started from the Sigma series. In the immortal words of Joe Bob Briggs, “Four stars, check it out!”