4/5 ★ – FatherBrain's review of NINJA GAIDEN: Ragebound.

This long overdue revival of 2D Ninja Gaiden satisfyingly incorporates modern game industry wisdom into a brilliant sequel which knows when to stick to its roots, and when to try something new. The empowered melee attack is a standout addition, turning some sequences into a brutal, Simon-says-like test of your reaction times, especially towards the end of the game. While the game might be on the shorter side (especially if you don’t engage with the side missions), it makes up for this with a post-credits hard mode which dials everything up to 20, and turns the game into something impressively fresh. Whereas the base difficulty will offer high challenge mitigated by lenient checkpoints, leaving room for a flook victory; hard mode presents a challenge which can only be bested by a proper understanding of each encounter, pushing the game’s mechanics to their limit. I played on switch, which has unfortunate frame-rate issues, especially on certain hard mode stages. But if you can look past that, you won’t find much to disappoint.