Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound – A Pixelated Power Trip That Almost Stuck the Landing
AI Gaming News Author · Rock Paper Shotgun ·
Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is a stunning pixel-art action platformer that starts with a brilliant, fluid 'one-hit kill' philosophy for speedrunners, but gradually loses its magic as later levels and bosses demand more traditional multi-hit combat.
Right, so you reckon you’ve seen every pixel-art throwback known to digital wizardry, eh? Well, buckle up, because ‘Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound’ just dropped, and it’s throwing a shuriken at your expectations – sometimes in a good way, sometimes… well, sometimes it just clips your ear and makes you go, 'Bloody hell, what was *that* all about?'
Developed by The Game Kitchen and published by Dotemu, this latest take on the classic Ninja Gaiden vibe isn’t a direct sequel or a remake. Nope, it’s a whole new beast, a ‘sideways scrolling action wrecker’ as I like to call it, pulling inspiration from those NES/SNES gems of the 90s. And honestly, it’s a stunner in the looks department. We’re talking pixel artistry that makes you wanna frame screenshots, all dither and parallax, looking like a forgotten arcade cabinet in its prime. And the set pieces? Fair dinkum, they’re wild! Forget your standard run ‘n’ chop; we’ve got jetski chases, motorcycle pursuits, cargo train battles, bulldozer escapes, and even gas chamber breakouts. If it wasn't for the constant death screens (and trust me, there are plenty), I'd say this game barely pauses for breath. It’s less a gentle dip in the waters of nostalgia and more like a high-pressure fracking job, flushing you with jets of pseudomemory. And for a while, it’s utterly glorious.
The premise is classic ninja melodrama: a demon lord, some easily manipulated CIA chaps, and a world on the brink. You play a ninja lad (not one you’d recognise, mind you, so don’t go shouting ‘Ryu!’) who's buddied up with a purple-shaded phantom lass. Their clans are ancient enemies, naturally, but demons gotta get stabbed, so off they go. Our ninja boy handles the close-range slicing and dicing, while Purplegal pops in and out of existence to lob ranged kunai attacks over his shoulder. You can bounce off enemies or projectiles, dodge-roll through shielded foes for a cheeky back-shiv – all the good stuff you’d expect. And if you’re feeling particularly spicy, combine their attacks for a superpowered blast. It’s a solid, if not groundbreaking, foundation.
Now, if that was all ‘Ragebound’ had up its sleeve, I'd probably tuck it into the big pile of pixel-peppered nostalgia bait that recreates the past without, well, actually *learning* anything from the decades of game design that have accumulated since. (You know the type, mate. All those PS1 tank-controls horror games with fixed cameras and absolutely nothing interesting to say.) But luckily, there’s one rather clever trick up The Game Kitchen’s sleeve that makes this ninja romp genuinely intriguing.
Certain enemies glow either blue or pink. The idea? Hit the blue buggers with your sword-fella to get supercharged, or cut down the pink pissants with your ghost-lady’s attack for a similar power-up. Mess up the colours, and you miss out on that beefy glow needed for your next extra-powerful slice – an essential move for cutting down those annoying ‘blocker’ enemies. It’s a thin layer of extra challenge, sure, you *could* technically brute-force your way through without it. But the intent is crystal clear: this game is built for speedrunners. It’s screaming for you to figure out that nippy, flowing run that takes down as many foes as possible in the quickest time imaginable.
In early previews, I was proper impressed by the fluidity this colour-coded system granted. It leaned into a ‘kill anything in one hit’ philosophy – *if* you played it perfectly, or had reflexes quick enough to at least fudge it. Those few enemies that needed more than one whack? Sliceable in one bash, as long as you followed the patterns and pre-killed the right-coloured enemy. It felt like a dance, an invitation to mastery.
But having now played the whole bloody game, I’ve seen how this beautiful philosophy starts to falter partway through. More and more enemies start requiring multiple slices, and sometimes even the glowing ‘charger’ fodder (the ones meant to grant you that superslash!) suddenly need more than one shanking. Now, I know what you’re thinking: ‘More challenge, Jeff! That’s what we want!’ And for some, it absolutely will be. But for me, it slapped that wonderful sense of fluidity right out of my hands and onto the floor. It becomes a more ordinary retro dash ‘n’ slash once you’re slowed down by the weight of constant button-bashing. What started as an intricate ballet of precise lethality morphed into a more standard, albeit still solid, affair. It’s not punitive with its restarts, mind you; you’ll rarely lose more than a few seconds from a fall. But why send me five seconds back outside a boss gate if the only way to go is straight back in? Just drop me back into the fight, mate.
And those bosses. Oh, the bosses. They’re beautifully rendered, truly magnificent pixel behemoths, yet they’re also the most typical genre element in the entire game: all pattern recognition and multi-phase wreckage. My feelings on reflex-honing and trial-by-game-over combat really depend on my mood, mate. Facing Genichiro in Sekiro, after countless failed attempts, eventually led to a series of perfectly practiced steps that felt utterly transcendent to perform. Defeating a weird mutant slimeball in ‘Ragebound’? It felt… rewarding, I guess? I got better, sure, but sometimes it was only just enough to make up for the frustration of taking another electrical globule of spit to the face. They’re a mixed bag, to be fair. I quite liked the big bad battleship that had me pinballing around its turrets. And those twin mega eels that required a strange one-person teamwork of blue and pink super-cuts? Brilliant. But the hulking ape-beast that ejected spikey crystals (which were the *charger* enemies you needed three hits to crack)? That was a proper pain. Barely enough time to hit them once or twice before the beast-bastard was on top of me again. Go away, you zoo reject.
Now, before you get into a flame war about assist modes (they’re fine, shut up), you should know ‘Ragebound’ has a rather universal approach to difficulty. There's a comprehensive assist mode that can reduce damage, turn off knockbacks – you name it. I admit, I used it more than once to speed things along for the review, which felt a bit like bodging through a spell rather than mastering it. It’s not really meeting the game on its own terms, but hey, deadlines, right? But for the masochists out there, rejoice! There are golden scarabs to find, which you can spend on special talismans between levels. Some give bonuses, like health cashback for kills, but others are purely for handicapping yourself. One sends you all the way back to the beginning of a stage when you die, another triples any damage you receive. This 'sharpening shuriken along the spectrum of difficulty' is genuinely neat. So, to anyone who might moan about assist modes: ‘Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound’ will cut you as deeply or as shallowly as you please. Knock yourself out, remove all health pickups, crank up the damage. It’s all there.
Even with all the difficulty tweaking, my initial disappointment about the loss of the early levels’ fluency stuck around. In games like this, where a steady flow is gained by practice, I often wonder: what's the *least* amount of practice I need to feel that flow? In the early sequences of ‘Ragebound,’ it asks for very little; you quickly grasp the dashing, dodging, slashing, and boinging needed to blood-stomp through a level with speedrunner abandon. But later, especially in some bosses, the time requirements for practice spike, forcing you into that old arcade rigmarole of repetition. That, I have less desire to indulge. So, while it’s a perfect challenge for some, I’m just remembering a game I never actually played, and that anti-memory isn’t quite enough to goad me into the harder modes once I finished the main story. Still, a solid effort with some genuinely clever ideas, even if it couldn't quite maintain its magical momentum.
Big thanks to Brendan Caldwell and the team over at Rock Paper Shotgun for the original deep dive and insights. You can find their full review at
Tags: Action Platformer, Retro Gaming, Indie Game, Speedrunning, Game Review
Original article: Rock Paper Shotgun