Ninja Gaiden 4 does not ask if you still remember how a Hayabusa fight is supposed to feel. It assumes the bruise is still there, then hands the first blade to someone else and lets the rain finish the introduction.
Team NINJA and PlatinumGames co-developed it. KOEI TECMO sits on the Steam developer line as the parent and the IP. Xbox Game Studios publishes it. The official worldwide day is October 21, 2025, on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC. The U.S. store unlocked at 5:00 PM PT on October 20. This review is dated to that public morning, because that is when the rest of the room is allowed to pick up the sword. I played the PS5 version. The Standard Edition is $69.99. The Deluxe Edition is $89.99. The Deluxe Upgrade is $20.00. Those are the official U.S. list prices. None of them dry the city.
The store styling likes NINJA GAIDEN 4 in all caps. The product is the same either way. After thirteen years without a numbered sequel, you play Yakumo of the Raven Clan. Near-future Tokyo is drowning under an endless rain of miasma. An ancient enemy has come back. Cybernetic ninja soldiers and otherworldly creatures would like a word. Ryu Hayabusa would like you to grow up first.
The Raven Clan Gets the First Word
Ninja Gaiden 4 refuses to let you be Ryu on the first rooftop. Yakumo is a young ninja prodigy from a newly introduced faction, the Raven Clan, not the Dragon Ninja of the Hayabusa line. Official notes call the theme Inheritance and Evolution. In practice the story of Ryu remains the foundation, then the pad is given to someone who still has to become a person in public. Yakumo carries strength and a visible vulnerability. He is not finished enough to skip the argument.
That argument starts in Bloodsoaked Tokyo, the opening chapter, and it is not polite. The city has been remade into a darkrot-ridden climb. The Divine Dragon Order occupies the streets and presents itself as justice, which is a polite way of saying Yakumo has already been cast as the villain. Daemons, the otherworldly half of the roster, do not bother with a press release. Nobody in the official copy is sure where they came from or what they want. The first long stretch is Yakumo walking into that weather with a pair of blades and an operator named Umi in his ear.
Levels are dotted with mechanical shrines, the Raven Clan’s Dark Nest Terminals. They are hubs. You restock. You take optional Missions for Ninja Coin. You talk to Umi the way a person talks to the only calm voice left in a drowned city. A Ninja Gaiden that lets you sit down, then sends you back into the rain, is a design.
Yakumo already knows the old religion. The Technique of Shadowless Footsteps runs him along walls. The Flying Bird Flip sends him up a face of concrete. Assassinate exists for the outlying threat you would rather not introduce to the larger group. I used it, felt clever, then walked into a squad that had not agreed to be a stealth puzzle. The game did not scold me. It just resumed being Ninja Gaiden.
Tyran is the senior ninja who appears like a man who has decided your education is now his problem. He sells Combat Skills for Ninja Coin. Flying Swallow. Izuna Drop. The Technique of Ultimate Guidance. New work too, including Fatal Flash, which asks you to match an attack with an attack and then pays you in Blood Essence even if the enemy is still standing. Each skill can be practiced in a dedicated Ninjutsu Training session. I bought the cheap ones first. Then I bought a move I did not understand and discovered the game had been waiting for me to stop treating the shop like a museum.
Bloodbind, Then the Rest of the Room
Bloodbind Ninjutsu is the sentence the sequel exists to add. Yakumo’s Base Form is the tempered, technical Ninja Gaiden you already knew how to want. Bloodraven Form is the other sword. Activate it and every regular input becomes a different move. The Bloodbind Gauge spends itself quickly. That is not a bug in the copy. That is the point. You do not live in Bloodraven. You visit, you change the geometry of the fight, and you leave before the meter files a complaint.
In Bloodraven, a jump can plant the blade and raise Yakumo above the floor, briefly invincible, so he can look at the room. Hōgeki is the counter that can turn a heavy swing back on a super-armored fool. Stand far away and the deflection is safer, then you have given up the follow-up. Stand close and the reward is real, if you are still standing. I have taken the safe route and felt like a tourist. I have taken the close route and felt like a person who should have written a will.
Bloodraven also pierces guards. Weave it into a Base Form sentence and the difficulty of the room changes. Early chapters will let you limp through on Base Form if you insist. Later chapters notice the insistence.
The Berserk Gauge is the other appetite. It fills when you land hits, when you take them, and when you finish a dying enemy with the Obliteration Technique, the old fatal courtesy that now wants to live inside a combo instead of after it. Fill the gauge and you enter a Berserk state that offers Bloodbath Kills, finishing moves that bisect a problem and make a crowd look like a suggestion. On Takeminakata, the first weapon, a Charge Attack in that state will erase lesser enemies regardless of the health they thought they had. I will not invent a clock. The first clean Bloodbath Kill felt like the game finally agreeing I was invited.
Takeminakata is the twin-blade lesson. In Base Form it is speed and the honest work of a pair of swords. In Bloodraven the blade extends and the same weapon starts arguing from a distance. Yatosen arrives later as the opposite personality: a twisted, drill-like rapier for people who want to stand inside an enemy’s personal space. Bloodraven turns it into a spinning drill. Instant weapon switching in the middle of a combo is the quiet revolution around both of them. You do not open a menu to change your mind. You change it, and the room has to keep up.
Weapon Skills are bound to whatever you pick up on the climb. The game will let you refuse the shop and turn the campaign into a self-imposed dare. I did that for a stretch because I am a romantic. Then I paid Tyran, because romance does not parry a shuriken.
Tokyo Climbs With You
Officially the early campaign inverts the old descent. You start on the ground and climb a reimagined Sky City Tokyo. Chapters 1 through 3 are the syllabus: a first stage that wants you to enjoy the fight, a second that introduces rail action so the space between fights does not become a hallway, and a third that ends on a boss meant to prove the series learned something in thirteen years.
The D.D.O. Commander is the honest exam. The Divine Dragon Order fights in kata, in forms, in the kind of discipline that looks like justice if you squint. His patterns are clean on purpose. The Kitsune Courtesan is the other half of that education. She is the first major Daemon, unpredictable, inhuman, a fox the staff nicknamed in-house because even a studio needs a pet name for the thing that will not stand still. Where the Commander teaches you to read a sentence, she teaches you that some sentences do not want to be read.
Rails sit between those arguments. They are new for a numbered Ninja Gaiden, and they are spice, which is the word the director used, and I will keep it. You leave a fight, catch a rail, swerve a falling piece of the city, and land on the next problem already moving. Caddis Wire is the grappling cousin, a Raven Clan tool that lets Yakumo steal height the old wall-run could not always afford. The Raven Gear locker later grows a glider and a strider. They exist so the vertical city can keep being a city instead of a loading screen with rain.
Adversity is the stated keyword, with brutality and transformation standing next to it. Rain is the visual one. Characters look wet because the team spent the money on wet. Traditional instruments sit under electronic distortion. I will not invent a frame rate. What I saw on a living-room set was a Tokyo that held together while I made a mess of it, with the occasional hitch when too many soldiers decided to have an opinion at once.
The story around all of that is destiny with better weather. An ancient curse, a shared fate with Ryu, a city on its knees. I will not walk you through the briefing. The writing is earnest. It is better when a rooftop finishes the sentence.
Purgatory is the optional dare tucked behind blazing torii off the main path. Wave after wave. You can pay with a slice of maximum health for a better reward. Realm of Hell wants 75 percent of that health and then treats leftover chip damage like a thesis. It is a glimpse of Master Ninja before Master Ninja will let you in the door. I opened one gate, offered a stupid percentage, and remembered why the series never needed a roguelite to feel expensive.
When the Legend Takes the Sword
Ryu Hayabusa is not a cameo. He is playable. He is a narrative problem Yakumo has to survive, a growth milestone with a Dragon Sword. Story chapters lock the body you inhabit because the plot has decided who is standing in which ruined district. Chapter Challenge exists to undo that after the campaign. You can replay stages as either ninja, which is how you learn that a room built for a prodigy becomes a different insult in the hands of a Super Ninja.
Ryu’s addition is Gleam Form, built from the old True Dragon Gleam and the question of what a man who has mastered the True Dragon Sword would do if you gave him one button. Afterimages. Range that does not ask permission. A freely toggled state the way Yakumo toggles Bloodraven, except the fantasy is not a new clan finding a new language. The fantasy is the original language spoken at full volume. Playing him after a long stretch of Yakumo is a little like handing the orchestra back to the person whose name is still on the poster. I grinned. I also understood why the studios started with the prodigy.
The collaboration is audible in that handoff. PlatinumGames wants the flash, the instant change of temperature, the strike that turns a crowd into weather. Team NINJA wants the fairness, the grip, the sense that an enemy is a master of defense and still not cheating. The movement system is where they spent the most stubbornness: faster response without throwing away the tactile weight. Reverse Wind is still in the room. I bounced between a night of stylish greed and a night of old-fashioned spacing. The game accepted both, then charged interest on the greedy one.
Cybernetic D.D.O. soldiers are the orderly half of the enemy list, giant shuriken and rocket positions included. Daemons are the other half, the ones that do not care about your homework. Between them a room is still a conversation with several people who all talk at once. I have lost fights because I treated a crowd like a boss. I have lost bosses because I treated them like a crowd.
Hero Mode Is Not an Apology
The series has a reputation that keeps civilians in the doorway. Ninja Gaiden 4 noticed the doorway and built a porch. At the start you pick Hero, Normal, or Hard. You can move between them whenever the story starts feeling like a personal attack. Hero is the teaching floor: Auto Evade, Auto Block, Auto Assist. Yakumo will dodge, guard, and show you the shape of a combo while you watch the lesson land. Auto Heal knits him after a hit if you would rather think about the next input than the Life Elixir. Auto Movement will take a platforming line if the city is louder than your thumbs. Reduced Gore and Highlight Game Elements exist if the blood or the camouflage is doing too much work.
None of that deletes the game. It rents you a version you can finish, then invites you to turn the assists off one at a time. I started a stretch on Hero to see the syllabus, turned Auto Evade off when the dodge started to feel like a roommate, and dropped back after a Hard room reminded me that humility is also a technique. There is no penalty for the commute.
Veterans can hide the lock-on marker and kill hit lag. Controls can be rebuilt from scratch, including a left-handed invert and a single-hand layout. Training Mode sits on the title screen and inside chapters. You pick an enemy, lock the Bloodbind and Berserk gauges at full if you want a sandbox, and read a combo list that even bothers with approximate delimbing rates. I used it as a mirror and as a toy. Both uses are correct.
Clear the story and Master Ninja unlocks. Enhanced D.D.O. soldiers move into the early chapters. Officers bring giant shuriken to rooms that used to be hallways. Groups get larger. I will not pretend I strolled through it for a score. I sampled it, remembered the official line about a single misstep, and went back to Training Mode.
Death Wish is the extra screw. Growth elements reset. Accessories go away. It can sit on top of any difficulty, including the one that already wanted you dead. Purgatory, Training, difficulty swapping, and Death Wish together are the customizable player experience the store copy promised. The series still wants Master Ninjas. It just stopped pretending the only door was the hardest one.
Deluxe is a different conversation. For $20 more than Standard, or $89.99 if you buy the crate whole, you get future gameplay content called The Two Masters, skins for both ninjas, a Divine Chimera weapon set for Yakumo, 50,000 bonus NinjaCoin, and a pouch of Life Elixirs, Incense of Rebirth, and Kongou Iron Brew. I do not score a rain check. If you want the black Falcon and the extra coin, buy them because you want them. Do not buy them because you think the second story is hiding behind the title screen. Day-one Game Pass is an Xbox and PC fact. PlayStation is a purchase. I am reviewing the purchase.
Final Thoughts
Ninja Gaiden 4 is the numbered sequel the series could not have made alone and did not need to. Team NINJA brought the fairness and the grip. PlatinumGames brought the second temperature. Xbox Game Studios published a $69.99 Standard Edition that is the whole meal: Yakumo’s climb, Ryu’s chapters, Bloodbind, rails, terminals, Purgatory, and a difficulty porch that can teach a civilian without firing the Master Ninja. Deluxe is cosmetics, coin, and a promise of later work. The Two Masters is not in the install I am grading.
The combat is the reason the wait was worth a numbered title. Base Form still speaks the old language. Bloodraven is the new dialect that makes a crowd change its mind. Instant weapon swaps, Fatal Flash, Bloodbath Kills, and a shop that will let you stay ignorant on purpose add up to a system you live in, not a combo list you finish. Tokyo is a climb with weather, not a hallway with cutscenes. The story is destiny, a shared fate, and a city on its knees. That is enough spine for an action game. It is not a novel. I did not need a novel.
The limitations belong to a confident collaboration, not an empty one. Rails are spice, and spice can start tasting like a transition if you came only for the room. Yakumo is designed so a new player can grow beside him, which means Ryu still steals the air when the plot hands him back the sword. Assists can make Hero feel like a demonstration if you never take the training wheels off. None of that deletes the nights that work. A clean Hōgeki in this game is still one of the best things you can do with a Thursday.
I am scoring it 8.5, Great, because the identity is this clear and the blade work is this willing to be both old and new in the same sentence. Bring a willingness to die in public and the humility to treat Standard as the object. Distinctive rain, a gauge that spends itself, and a legend who will not stay in the wings are a lot of product.
The miasma is still falling. The Order is still calling you the problem. The Raven Clan still has a shrine if you need to sit down. After a few Bloodbath Kills you will understand why the prodigy had to go first. After a few Gleam Form rooms you will understand why the poster never took the other name off. Both instincts are this game. Both are why I kept the install.
Score: 8.5. The rain already has a blade for you. The city is still available to be climbed, one unfair room at a time.
We prepared this review with a digital copy of Ninja Gaiden 4 for the PS5 version provided by Assembly Inc.
