Review: Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound (Switch)
By Revisiting Ninja Gaiden’s 2-D lineage in 2025 is nothing short of delightful. After Dotemu secured the rights for a franchise revival, the Parisian publisher tapped Barcelona-based indie outfit The Game Kitchen to helm development. Widely praised for its punishing yet gorgeous Blasphemous games, the team worked under the supervision of Team Ninja—the custodians of the brand from 2004 onward. The end product, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, may stray from the exact footprint of those 8-bit classics, yet every pixel radiates the swagger only modern tech can deliver, yielding an eye-searingly beautiful action-platformer.
Veterans remember the original as a teeth-grinding cartridge gauntlet that either shattered youthful spirits or forged lifelong players. Its notoriety for merciless difficulty is well-deserved. Ragebound keeps that spirit alive—the slope gets brutally steep after the first act—but tempers the punishment with contemporary conveniences. No tired game-over screens; instead, generous checkpoints and limitless retries. Navigation is non-linear: pick any cleared vignette off the world map to chase better rankings, knock out side trials, or hunt hidden Golden Scarabs. Still, waltz into the Pirate Fortress unprepared and that giant crab-mate will gladly rearrange your molars.
Where the earliest entries kept exposition lean, Ragebound packs dense storytelling. Frequent animated interludes and bickering among an oversized dramatis personae keep the script thick on the ground. The chronology runs parallel to the 1988 NES adventure. A prologue hands you Jō Hayabusa—Ryu’s father—whose duel concludes in crushing defeat. Ryu, abruptly yanked from training the adolescent Kenji Mozu, jets to the U.S. to avenge the old man, mirroring events in the original cart. Left behind, Kenji must fend off a yōkai siege of the clan village, and off we go.
Aesthetically, the game is jaw-dropping. Locales refuse to sit still: from mist-topped Japanese peaks to neon-drenched cityscapes, graffiti-streaked subterraneous metro lines, and scaffold-laced high-rise construction zones. Palette choices pop, granularity is off the charts, and every frame of animation snaps like a whip. Demons erupt in crimson bursts and, on occasion, lose their heads altogether, severed extremities pirouetting across the screen. Although most sprites remain fairly compact, each drips personality and effortless cool.
The vibe skews more stylized than Sega’s upcoming Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, yet fits the saga like a silk gauntlet. Flames lick the scenery, water plummets in torrents, rain taps patterns on sheet-metal roofs, and sundowns burn orange across the horizon. From start to finish, the game is eye candy, whisking you through forest glades, spike-lined caverns, sinister bio-labs, and sleek corporate glasshouses. Layered on top is a first-rate rock-operatic score that regularly sprinkles in retro-series callbacks.
Mercifully, it handles as good as it looks, thanks to lithe systems and meticulous level architecture. The fighting never feels bloated even as your arsenal expands. Core tools are refreshingly simple: a basic slash and the mid-air “Guillotine Slash,” triggered by tapping the jump button twice. Performed correctly, Kenji corkscrews around himself, dealing harm and propelling further skyward—essentially a weaponized double-jump. You can chain ricochets off practically anything hostile—shuriken, fireballs, thug skulls—flinging yourself toward overhanging ledges. With practice, the whole spectacle becomes a fluid, show-off ballet of death.
Kenji can trigger a temporary power-up at the cost of a modest health sliver, unleashing a super-charged strike that chews through armored opponents. Alternatively, select demons carry this same one-off buff, marked by an ethereal glow and typically flanked by chonkier heavies. This turns fights into tactical dances: jab and bounce to secure the aura spike, then carve through the blocky foe like a hot blade in butter. Add a shoulder-button dash-slash and a low-profile roll for evasion and you’re geared up for most surprises.
Stages are room-by-room sprawls divided into bite-size subsections, each peppered with checkpoints that erase failure in a heartbeat. While roaming, you gather Golden Scarabs—currency at the in-game bazaar—for Talismans, each offering a unique perk. Only two can be slotted at once, so loadouts demand a pinch of strategy yet stay flexible: auto-heal on checkpoint pass, a last-ditch damage booster when your health is in the red, and the like. The extras slot neatly into the core loop.
Big-horror bosses excel in both spectacle and design. Screen-filling monstrosities execute memorizable yet fiendish routines, forcing you to weave rolls, perfectly-time Guillotine arcs, and smart buff usage. Cutting down twin river serpents above a literal torrent of gore ranks among the game’s most cathartic showdowns, and demands full mastery from day-one players.
Expect a first clear to land between three and six hours, but at roughly the 60-minute mark the identity of the playable hero implodes. Perspective shifts to Kumori, Black Spider kunoichi, a ranged fighter who can fling blades in four cardinal directions. Her projectile game is immediately joyous, and she eventually congeals with Kenji in the literal sense—detached spirit intertwined with mortal flesh—leading to Dual-Hero hybrid gameplay. Both kits become available in the same body, prodding you to swap stances to target color-coded aura fiends and introducing an all-screen-wiping Rage Meter. It’s a fresh twist layered atop an already elegant dance of blades.
The creativity keeps building. Segments appear where Kenji must relinquish the wheel, letting Kumori’s ghost sprint against a ticking spirit gauge: she dashes, teleports, and wall-flicks through a minute gauntlet to snag a switch or scrap a lock. The meter bleeds fast; one errant move and control snaps back to Kenji to restart. It isn’t revolutionary groundwork, yet it thickens the pacing. The Game Kitchen further crams on set-pieces—motorcycle runs along electrified subway lines, X-Marks-the-spot cave raids, and rooftop helicopter hijinks—delivering a buffet of distinct beats.
So what gives? The inaugural Switch hardware frustrates by failing to lock 30 fps—docked or portable—occasional hiccups appearing against a trio of enemies on-screen. That the hardware is technically capable only sharpens the sting. It’s not a back-breaking flaw, yet it gnaws. Here’s hoping a day-one patch arrives to smooth the ride.
Conclusion
Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is the breed of title that goads you into self-betterment. Stringing death-dealing pirouettes together feels so liberating that every derailment stings. The seamless knotting of mechanics through escalating, ravishing, and relentlessly tense stages makes for a sustained high, and a pure-arcade DLC chapter would be a godsend. While purchasable Talismans exist to dial the torment upward, the stock difficulty curve already grinds knives. Despite the frame-rate hiccups, this release plants its paws silently, claws extended: Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, you’ve officially been challenged.