Ninja Gaiden II Black Review

Sometimes the dusting off and prettying up of a classic title brings a tear to the eye as you wistfully recall the good old days. Sometimes it serves to remind you that the good old days were perhaps a little different to how you remember them. 2004’s Ninja Gaiden positively blew everyone out of the water when it released, and it’s not hyperbolic to assert that it was one of the finest third-person action games ever crafted when it exploded onto the scene. Ninja Gaiden helped carve out the character action game genre in the early noughties, and somehow made getting my arse kicked over and over again by a bastard with nunchucks in the very first level the most fun I’ve ever had. Ninja Gaiden the series is a cultural phenomenon, but the cruelty of time has only acted to amplify the design aspects of Ninja Gaiden II’s remaster that don’t really stand up to modern scrutiny – for better or worse, Ninja Gaiden II is a product of its time no matter how fresh and slick the new coat of paint may be in its remaster.

Welcome to the future Ryu

In all fairness, the new coat of point is indeed amazingly fresh and slick. There is no better way to experience the absurd lunacy of Ryu Hayabusa’s valiant struggle against the Black Spider Clan and the mythical Archfiend than in this version. Environments, lighting, particle effects, and textures have all been meticulously brought kicking and screaming into 2025, and the flashy animations synonymous with the series accompanied by buckets of blood and viscera raining down like a Slayer concert really shine. I never tired of holding down heavy attack and waiting for it to charge before unleashing a veritable storm of attacks that practically diced the enemy into subatomic particles.

Being effectively rebuilt in Unreal Engine 5, the game certainly looks the part, but it still technically equates to a remaster. This means that despite the visuals mostly keeping pace with modern action titles, the age of the game’s core design is felt keenly from the first slice of the katana to the last. For instance, for the longest time the true enemy in any action title was actually the camera, and Ninja Gaiden is very much steeped in this tradition, with a sluggish camera that more often than not insists on dancing to the beat of its own drum, with no hard enemy lock-on combining to create no small amount of frustration. The visual spectacle of the aforementioned charged heavy attacks is often indiscernible amongst the sheer chaos that the camera is either unable or unwilling to frame, and fights frequently descend into button mashing madness as you try to figure out who out of the 80 ninjas attacking you from off-screen is missing a limb so you can execute them.

Rob Zombie had seen better days

Environments, lighting, particle effects, and textures have all been meticulously brought kicking and screaming into 2025, and the flashy animations synonymous with the series accompanied by buckets of blood and viscera raining down like a Slayer concert really shine.

I mention button mashing, and while I’ll admit my memory of the 2008 release is a little hazy, I don’t remember the controls of the original having the same unresponsive feel that permeates this remaster – there’s a general lack of precision and fluidity to Ryu’s moveset that’s simply difficult to ignore. His dash is short, his jump is shallow (although it is sometimes the perfect height to slice enemy heads clean off so I guess it’s ok), there is no sprint and dodging has a solid degree of jank exacerbated by the capricious camera.

Even with the unwinnable battle against the camera, the difficulty does feel somewhat neutered compared to what I remember. On the second-hardest difficulty I breezed through the aggressively linear kill corridors that are one of the game’s only dance moves, and even boss fights had a bizarre feel to them (either the first time you fight them or the seventh time you fight their eleventh reskinned reincarnation). Most bosses can be stun locked into submission by spamming them with attacks without even bothering to acknowledge their moveset. In fact, it’s almost possible to brute force your way through the game without bothering to learn a single combo, but if you do struggle with the difficulty then there’s the newly added Hero Mode, which essentially removes all semblance of challenge so you are free to save the girl with the large breasts in relative peace and style.

Now where is this damned weak spot?

This is as good a segue as any into the game’s portrayal of women, which is a bit like watching a pre-2000 frat comedy in that it’s more outdated and comical than overtly offensive, as long as you can appreciate it for what it is. I’m a red-blooded cis-male child of the 90s, but even I can see how we’ve progressed as a society since this game dropped. A handful of female characters enter the fray in a few inconsequential story interludes with very little fanfare other than the clapping of their heaving breasts, and while I appreciate the faithful representation from the original, prepare yourself accordingly if this sort of thing isn’t your jam – if females are not heavily-armed eye candy they are damsels in distress, and sometimes both. Fun.

Final Thoughts

As is sometimes the way, after reading my thoughts back I get a sense that perhaps I have been a little harsh. This remaster is undeniably beautiful, and faithfully recreates the experience of the original Ninja Gaiden II and its Sigma version on modern consoles – this much is certain. But despite its gruesome and oft entertaining spectacle, many aspects of its design, be it the one-note linear structure or godawful camera, mark it with a certain quaintness that isn’t entirely becoming. It was fun to replay this moment in time, but I don’t see myself going back for more. I’m watching very keenly to see what the extraordinarily talented people at Team Ninja and PlatinumGames can cook up with Ninja Gaiden 4 – hopefully we’ll see what a true modern reincarnation of this legendary series looks like.

Reviewed on Xbox Series X// Review code supplied by publisher

Click here for more information on WellPlayed’s review policy and ethics