20 Years Later, Ninja Gaiden Black Hasn’t Lost Its Edge
There is a small handful of games that manage to build up a legendary status over the years, as genre experts sing their praises with such consistency that their reputation takes on a life of its own. For instance, it’s somewhat common to hear that Super Mario Bros. 3 is the “best platformer,” Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike is the “best fighting game,” Planescape: Torment is the “best written game of all time” (at least before Disco Elysium came out), and so on. Like any medium, certain games get canonized, often in ways that elide their flaws. At some point, it becomes difficult to untangle the weight of past appraisal from the thing itself, with its reputation causing many, even those who haven’t played it, to unquestioningly adopt this stance, with its missteps brushed aside due to a combination of nostalgia and accepted wisdom.
I bring all this up because in this way, it’s fairly common to hear that Ninja Gaiden Black, Team Ninja’s remix of their 2004 hack-and-slasher, is the “best action game ever made.” Given all the Devil May Crys, Bayonettas, and Soulslikes released since then, you would think these compliments might be at least a little bit overblown, and that Ryu Hayabusa might have lost a step against his younger competition.
The thing is, though, even at 20 years old this Saturday, this game still whips: as someone who has played a good number of action titles, I can’t think of another that makes it this satisfying to slash your way through an army of grunts, as it bombards the player with relentless demons and assassins that can only be bested with deadly efficiency. If returning to many old classics is an exercise in adjusting to gameplay that feels slow and maybe even clunky, then coming back to this one is the exact opposite, a game so quick that I can only pray for the poor saps who played it on the laggy early flat screen TVs that were popular between the CRT era and the onset of modern high-refresh rate monitors. In short, it’s fast, like really fast. Brutal, too.
For those who never played it, Ninja Gaiden Black is an updated version of Team Ninja’s 2004 Ninja Gaiden, which itself was a remake of the long-dormant platforming series known for making players throw their NES controllers in frustration. Coming off the success of the Dead or Alive games, the newly renamed Team Ninja applied their knowledge of mechanically intensive, 3D combat towards their first single-player action game. The result is something that you can very much tell was made by certified Fighting Game Freaks.
If I had to pick a single word to describe this experience (besides one mentioning its eye-watering speed), I’d choose “lethal.” Even small fry can melt your health bar, resulting in a deadly dance of blocks, dodges, and acrobatics where you’re forced to play virtually every fight with precision at risk of getting torn to shreds. The flip side of this is that if you strike at the right times and use the correct attack sequences, you can dismantle a screenful of enemies at an alarming pace.
Basically, this punishing difficulty feels fair because the controls are extremely quick. Moves have very little windup and end lag, with your block coming out instantly as long as you’re not mid-swing. You can use a dodge to reposition and have a large number of cartoonish ninja acrobatics at your disposal, like running up or along walls. You can even cancel the end of a roll with a jump, a technique that can be chained to zoom across the screen and avoid many of the trickier bosses’ attacks (damn, you Alma).
But while you’re given plenty of options to defend yourself, the game truly sets itself apart when you start swinging the Dragon Sword. One problem I have with many other stylish action games is that their huge move lists frequently run together, with combos and strings more or less accomplishing the same thing outside of letting you score more points when you mix things up. That’s the complete opposite here. While there is a scoring system, the tough baseline difficulty meant that I was far more preoccupied with digging into my bag of tricks to counter particular threats than to punk on these minions (although there’s a bit of space for that too).
If you’re surrounded by enemies, maybe you want to do a string with a wide-arcing sweep or one that brings you into the air so you won’t get clipped mid-string. If you have a bit of space, you may opt for a longer sequence that maximizes damage, ending in a powerful slash that lops off a head. There are aerial maneuvers that let you quickly slash flying bugs and other pests, or cheesy wall-run moves that get you out of trouble with damaging AOE blasts.
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