Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound Is Exactly What it Says on the Tin…

Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound has just sliced and diced its way onto the market, and reviews and impressions so far have been largely on the positive side. With Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, developer The Game Kitchen delivers a tough-as-nails retro 2-D platformer in one of the most legendarily difficult franchises, at least going back to the early days of the 1989 original.

The original Ninja Gaiden is a certified classic, and having grown up playing it and others in the same vein on the NES, I'm a sucker for retro-style games like Ragebound. Having greatly enjoyed what The Game Kitchen previously delivered with the Blasphemous series, which were 2-D Soulslike experiences, I was very much looking forward to Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, as it seemed a perfect storm of developer and IP. In fact, the studio perhaps did its job a little too well in my opinion, and I was definitely feeling flushed with fury during portions of my time with it.

Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound Review

The Game Kitchen has outdone itself on the Ninja Gaiden series' glorious return to 2D with Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, a near-perfect action-platformer.

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By Matt Karoglou

Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound Indeed Had Me Bound in Rage At Times

Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound Made Me Relive My Gaming Past

I like to think I'm a pretty laid-back person for the most part. I try not to let things bother or stress me out too much, and strive to calmly and reasonably deal with any issues or problems that might arise either in my professional or personal life. But when it comes to games, it's Serious Business. If you ask anyone who knows me well and has seen me play, they'd well attest that I can get more than a little heated if things aren't going my way, or I'm stuck on a particularly frustrating level.

Knowing myself and my tendencies, and the direction and design that Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound was going for, I was of course expecting it to be challenging. What I wasn't ready for was exactly how well it recreated the sensation of playing the originals. At moments, it became nearly overwhelming, and I dropped a bevy of F-bombs composed of equal parts incredulity and anger over the course. I could almost hear my parents' voices saying to my younger self, "It's just a video game, try to relax". But to paraphrase Rick and Morty' s Jerry Smith: "Have you ever tried to relax? It can be a paradox."

Ragebound does feature some accessibility assist options for those who are struggling, allowing for the adjusting of damage received, game speed, and toggling the knockback effect.

Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound Had Me Shouting in Frustration, and That's Not Entirely a Bad Thing

To The Game Kitchen's credit, and luckily for me, Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound doesn't overstay its welcome. In fact, I would argue that it is almost the perfect length. It took me around 15 hours to finish, doing most of the optional challenge stages and replaying a few of the main ones to collect missing items and unlockables. But there were a couple of times I had to set it aside and compose myself before I felt I was able to play again without being so off-kilter.

Granted, some of this can be chalked up to my degrading reaction times, which certainly factored into resulting in more than a few moments when I literally raged at my screen. But I can in no way claim that it isn't a well-crafted title, and nearly perfectly captures the sensation of playing Ninja Gaiden in my youth in a way I wasn't quite prepared for or was expecting. In the end, my overall experience with it ended up a positive one, even if expletives were thrown at it during certain sections.

Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound has gotten a good reception, and it seems it's hitting home with a lot of other fans. For me, it brought back strong memories of intense highs and instances of exasperated fist-clenching. And for that, I can tip my hat to it and count it as an enjoyable title that made me feel like I was an energetic 8-year-old again, which is something that perhaps all of us need to feel sometimes.

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