2025 was the very best yr for ninja video games ever, however all of them simply made it clear that 2008's Ninja Gaiden 2 stays untouchable
Private Choose
Along with our essential Sport of the 12 months Awards 2025, every member of the PC Gamer crew is shining a highlight on a sport they cherished this yr. We’ll put up new private picks every day all through the remainder of the month. Yow will discover all of them right here.
We strive fairly laborious to keep away from lazily dropping cliches into our writing right here at PC Gamer, which places me in an ungainly place as I sit right down to pitch to you why a remaster, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, is without doubt one of the greatest video games of 2025, regardless of largely being a recent Unreal Engine 5 pores and skin for a sport that got here out in 2008. So if I have to sin, I’ll as properly see simply what number of forbidden phrases from the fashion information I can use without delay.
In different phrases: They actually do not make ’em like they used to.
Sorry. Sorry!! That should’ve been fairly gross to learn. For those who threw up, that is on me. I considered jamming a “It is the Darkish Souls of…” line in there one way or the other, however was nervous the paragraph may very well change into so cursed it might be summoned to life as if by some necromantic energy.
I simply wanted you to know that I know the way ridiculous it’s to bust out “they do not make ’em like they used to” towards Ninja Gaiden 4, a sport in a style that is starved for brand new additions and by its very nature feels prefer it belongs extra to the 2000s than the 2020s. And the 2D platformer Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound and Sega’s lovely Shinobi metroidvania-lite are each kinda catching strays right here, as a result of they’re good, and we could not have had the yr of the ninja with out them.
It is simply that relating to slicing a thousand dudes into bloody ribbons whereas driving a wave of pure adrenaline, nothing does it like Ninja Gaiden 2 Black.
To me, the 2008 NG2 is solely the very best character motion sport ever made, buying and selling away the 2004 Ninja Gaiden’s extra measured protection and stage exploration for linear phases of exact hyperviolence. Slicing off a limb permits you to immediately execute an enemy as blood gushes from the wound; absorbing their blood essence after you’ve got dismembered them can both function important restorative well being or as an alternative gasoline an computerized combo that ensures a kill and some seconds of invulnerability.
Ninja Gaiden 2 is mercifully freed from gimmicky setpieces and drip-feed unlocks that you will discover in Ninja Gaiden 4; the place that sport offers you 4 weapons, Ninja Gaiden 2 offers you 11, and nearly each makes you suppose “that is the sickest factor I’ve ever used” till you discover the following one 45 minutes later and guess what?
Yeah, it is sicker.
Even higher, Ninja Gaiden 2 begins you with all of your important fight talents accessible from the primary second of the primary stage. Be taught to make use of them or die: the sport would not care which.
The unique model of the sport can be full of bullshit: ranged enemies that can knock you off ropes as you slowly climb them, a pair horrible bosses, slowdown galore. It seems like they rushed it out the door six months early, and but it nonetheless goes extremely laborious, the fight making up for all of the unhealthy bits should you tune into the sport’s frequency the best way I did in 2008, and nonetheless do in 2025. I deeply admire the dev crew’s dedication to throwing hordes of enemies at you even when it tanked the framerate, as a result of they knew the lethality of the fight system they’d designed totally got here alive when it pushed you to the ragged limits and dared you to change into unstoppable.
A later port, NG2 Sigma, cleaned up numerous the mess, which was in all probability the precise name—however within the course of it in the reduction of on these enemy numbers and made some tweaks to the blood and steadiness that diluted the sport’s essence. It was a much less irritating, extra even-tempered sport, but additionally a much less particular one. And that was the one model you can simply play for, mainly, the final 15 years. Till now. Till Black.
This model of the sport is an earnest try and marry Sigma’s cleaned up port with the extra jagged authentic, and whereas it would not totally return to the unique’s overwhelming enemy numbers and aggressive balancing it will get a hell of so much nearer. A still-in-development mod will get nearer nonetheless. In time I really feel assured that this might be with out compromise the definitive model of the definitive ninja sport.
I attempted (unsuccessfully 😔) to persuade my fellow PC Avid gamers that Ninja Gaiden 2 Black belonged on the High 100 record earlier this yr. This was the guts of my pitch:
Bear in mind the film Tornado? Bear in mind how they made a sequel, TWISTERS, and the best way they made it extra dramatic was: TWO TWISTERS? That is Ninja Gaiden 2 Black, besides YOU are each tornados.
The primary 3D Ninja Gaiden demanded cautious protection, as a result of even some basic-ass foot soldier might rock your shit. Ninja Gaiden 2 stated: F that. You needn’t defend should you merely by no means cease attacking. We will make the enemies EVEN MEANER, however we will provide the energy to obliterate them with continuous offense as a result of you aren’t only a twister: you’re a Sharknado.
It has shiny new Unreal Engine graphics, and it retains the nice modifications from Sigma whereas intentionally reverting to the steadiness and lethality of the unique sport. It’s the greatest fight in a Japanese character motion sport ever made, and sure it is a call-out for Bayonetta and Satan Might Cry. I like these video games, however there is a uncooked aggression and velocity to Ninja Gaiden that’s on one other stage. For those who’re sick of Soulslikes, that is your treatment. There isn’t a stamina bar and you may kill bosses in like 30 seconds.
You even go to hell! Not since you die, like Kratos in God of Struggle; that is weak and embarrassing and as everyone knows Kratos sort of appears like a pirate, and ninjas defeated pirates within the nice meme wars of the late 2000s. You go to hell since you merely run out of demons to kill on earth so it’s a must to go to the underworld to kill the remainder of them. It is like 10-15 hours of uncut adrenaline, which could not be wholesome, however you should have a good time.
Perhaps in hindsight I should not have introduced up the pirate factor. However even with the remastered graphics, it is evident Ninja Gaiden 2 belongs to an older period of video games. Its ranges are largely barren, its digicam finicky, its tolerance for enemies firing rockets at you when you attempt to get inside melee vary larger than you’d see in a sport from this decade.
However Ninja Gaiden 4’s ranges are one way or the other extra boring, sticking you in the identical few environments for hours the place NG2 relentlessly barreled ahead to new locales, with out age as an excuse. Its new ninja hero runs round weightless like he is on everlasting fast-forward. And for all the things cool it provides to the fight, it additionally provides one thing that weighs it down or crufts it up.
I hope the sequence will get one other sequel, as a result of Ninja Gaiden 4 gives the look of a really passionate crew rediscovering the traditional texts and making an attempt to decipher them. Maybe the premature dying of sequence creator Tomonobu Itagaki—whose departure from Staff Ninja after Ninja Gaiden 2 perpetually modified its identification as an motion studio—will function additional gasoline for the following era of designers there to look at how his exacting route led to a pair of really peerless motion video games.
Ninja Gaiden 4 doesn’t fairly seize the outdated magic, however I feel it proves that they’ve the ability to make a sport that does. If there is a subsequent time, possibly they’re going to nail it. For now, Ninja Gaiden 2 nonetheless lays declare to the cowl.
