This year is looking delicious for action-starved Ninja Gaiden fans. Not only do we have both 3D and 2D games on the way in Ninja Gaiden 4 and The Game Kitchen’s Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound respectively, but Team Ninja shocked us all with a shadow drop of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, lovingly massaged into the trappings of Unreal Engine 5. It’s good. It’s 3D Ninja Gaiden, and that should be more than enough to excite a lot of people, but hardcore fans looking for the best of the best in Ninja Gaiden 2 might find it falling just a little bit short of absolute peak.
Pick up the Dragon Blade once more
Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is the latest of many remixes in this particular chapter of the series. The game has been released several times since its original Xbox 360 launch and seen a few updates that some find better and others find worse. The biggest update here is the unreal engine. With the engine switch, Ryu Hayabusa looks cleaner and more polished than ever as he slices his way through enemy fighters and monsters on his way to protect the sacred Demon Statue and banish the hellish Fiends from which the statue protected our world.
To that end, players will fight their way through lengthy stages, doing battle with various foes, collecting weapons, gear, and power-ups, and eventually doing battle with surly bosses. The action feels as fluid and crisp as ever. Ryu dismembers foes left and right, leaving geysers of blood that stay on scenery while he annihilates foes with increasingly potent weaponry and stylish combos. It still feels absolutely sick (complimentary) to belt an opponent into the air, slash them, and then grab them for a skull-crushing Izuna Drop… when the attack works.
And that leads us to some of the flaws. It’s not a perfect performer. I found it would sometime lag or do weird visual things when moving directly from cutscenes to action. There also seemed to be some jank where enemies just fall out of combos from weapons like the Falcon’s Talons, effectively making the ground-to-air-to-Izuna-Drop combo hit or miss on most enemies. I also found that the frame rate could suffer a bit in cutscenes or in action when a lot of stuff was happening on the screen at once, but the last one was fairly rare.
Even so, despite these small issues, this game still feels mostly like a visual and mechanical masterpiece of action gameplay. The combos, defense, evasion, and different weaponry all feel satisfying, and even on normal difficulty, the enemies will test your abilities to fight effectively at nearly all times. That said, if the daunting reputation of Ninja Gaiden’s difficulty is frightening, you might also be happy to know there’s a new Hero Mode difficulty that makes it easier for newcomers.
Ninja Gaiden as you remember... Kinda
One of the biggest things that longtime veterans of Ninja Gaiden 2 will notice is that this game has more in common with Ninja Gaiden 2 Sigma than the original, but even then, doesn’t have all of Sigma’s features. What does that mean? Well, in Sigma, Team Ninja brought in quite a few new features, including three new chapters, the ability to play as three additional characters besides Ryu Hayabusa, and even some additional bosses. Ninja Gaiden 2 Black keeps all of that and even gets an additional boss of its own not found in Sigma or the original, as well as mouse and keyboard support for the first time proper in the game’s history.
Unfortunately, we didn’t get everything back. Online co-op multiplayer was in the original and Sigma, but didn’t make its way over to Black. That’s not all. One of the biggest issues players have with Sigma in general is that in order to increase the overall gore and blood of the game, the developers reduced enemy count and buffed the existing foes. That means even in wide open spaces, you’ll usually only have, at most, five enemies on the screen threatening you. Sigma also made enemies harder to dismember as a result, making them damage-spongy and harder to finish off to try to balance things out.
Again, these don’t affect the gameplay enough to keep Ninja Gaiden 2 Black from being a good time, but it’s just a few concessions that may keep longtime fans from enjoying this entry to the fullest. Those coming in fresh probably won’t notice it much.
A taste of things to come
Ultimately, Ninja Gaiden hasn’t had a great 3D entry in years, and the only other reasonable way to play these games on PC was in the Ninja Gaiden: Master Collection. However, the move to Unreal Engine 5 for Ninja Gaiden 2 Black feels like a great steppingstone towards what’s in store for us with Ninja Gaiden 4. Ryu Hayabusa, his friends, enemies, and the lands they fight in are looking more gorgeous than ever, and with just a few caveats, this is still close to as good as fast-paced and brutal action melee gets. Whether you’re new to the series or returning, it feels like a good time to remind yourself of what made Ninja Gaiden great as we prepare for the true renaissance later in 2025.
These impressions are based on a PC version of the game on the Xbox App. Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is out now on PC, Xbox Series X/S, and PlayStation 5.
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replyTJ Denzer posted a new article, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black is a taste of peak action gaming with just a few missing ingredients
