Ninja Gaiden 4 arrives with a new lead character, a returning legend, and a level of combat speed few action games can match. The game asks players to master two very different fighting styles, and it mostly succeeds.
Trailer, via Team NINJA Studio.
Yakumo Takes the Lead
Team Ninja hands the opening hours to Yakumo, a new hero whose moves favor quick, weighted strikes over pure speed. He controls like a fighter still finding his rhythm, which fits the story Team Ninja is telling. His sections lean on timing and patience, a shift from the franchise’s usual pace.
Ryu Hayabusa shows up later, and the change in feel is immediate. Where Yakumo asks for restraint, Hayabusa rewards bold play. Switching between the two never feels like a trick; it feels like two games sharing one skeleton, each testing a different kind of player.
Combat That Punishes Error
The core loop in Ninja Gaiden 4 is still built on precision. Enemies telegraph attacks with small, sharp cues, and the game expects players to read them without hand-holding. Miss a window to avoid a blow and the punishment is steep, with health bars draining at a brutal pace in the worst moments.
That harshness will not suit everyone.
Boss fights are where the design peaks. Several late-game encounters layer multiple attack patterns on top of each other, forcing players to track more than one threat at once. The camera holds up under the chaos, which has not always been true of past entries in the series.
Level Design and Pacing
The middle stretch of Ninja Gaiden 4 sags. A handful of mid-game chapters reuse enemy groups from earlier sections, and the platforming segments between fights feel like filler rather than payoff. The game recovers by its final third, but the dip is noticeable enough to mention.
The campaign runs roughly 15 hours on a first playthrough. Pacing shifts between Yakumo’s deliberate chapters and Hayabusa’s faster bursts, and the final stretch pulls both styles together with more force than the middle chapters manage. Players chasing harder difficulty settings will spend longer, but the base run holds a steady length without wearing out its welcome.
Here is the running order for the main campaign, based on the playthrough for this review:
| Segment | Character | Length | Focus |
|---|---|---|---|
| Opening | Yakumo | 2 hrs | Basic combat, first boss |
| Mid-game | Yakumo | 4 hrs | Platforming, repeated fights |
| Shift | Hayabusa | 3 hrs | Faster combat style |
| Late-game | Both | 4 hrs | Multi-pattern bosses |
| Finale | Both | 2 hrs | Climax, both styles |
Performance on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC
On PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, Ninja Gaiden 4 holds a steady frame rate through even the busiest boss fights, which matters given how much the combat depends on split-second reads. The PC version offers the expected extras, including higher frame rate caps and adjustable resolution, and ran without major issues on the hardware used for this review.
Load times are short across all three platforms. That sounds like a small thing, but in a game built around repeated attempts at tough encounters, it keeps anger from turning into tiredness.
Where It Falls Short
The story leans hard on franchise lore that new players may find hard to follow. Cutscenes move fast, dialogue assumes familiarity with past games, and Yakumo’s past gets thinner explanation than his combat style deserves. Longtime fans will likely fill in gaps themselves; new players may feel lost.
Difficulty settings help, but the default level is punishing even by the series’ own standards. Players new to Ninja Gaiden’s combat rhythm should expect a rough first few hours before things settle.
Ninja Gaiden 4 is a game built for people willing to fail repeatedly in pursuit of mastery. It asks a lot, but the combat system underneath the difficulty is sharp enough to justify the effort. The mid-game dip and the story’s lack of patience for new players keep it from reaching the top tier of the genre, but as an action game built around two distinct fighting styles, it delivers more hits than misses.
