Ninja Gaiden has never had much in the way of “story DLC.” Generally the best you’d get for more story content would be the re-releases with the Sigmas and Razor’s Edge that added new playable characters with their own one to three chapters. As such no one really knew what to expect with the recent Ninja Gaiden 4 The Two Masters DLC, outside of the two weapons advertised in the promo art. How many levels? New/returning characters? What would Yakumo and Ryu’s interactions be like after the events of the main campaign? With all those questions I can answer all of them with the same statement: not much.
We’ll start with the new weapons, since that’s the main draw here in my opinion. Yakumo and Ryu get one weapon each, with Yakumo getting “Solitaire” which in its base form is a double bladed sickle but in Yakumo’s bloodraven form it turns into a scythe that looks quite a lot like Ryu’s iconic weapon from NG2 and 3. Solitaire is great, in a word, with high damage, long combo strings, and a number of very cool obliteration attacks, plus because it’s Platinum they couldn’t resist getting a little goofy so Yakumo can even ride it around in its scythe form. If does have the same drawback as 90% of Yakumo’s kit in that the bloodraven form takes a moment or two to trigger so it’s less of a reliable, rapid-fire reaction to enemy super moves compared to Ryu or Yakumo’s dragon blade, but that’s part of NG4‘s design rather than Solitaire’s fault. It’s a solid weapon and will no doubt become a go-to for anyone who picks up the DLC.
On the other hand Ryu’s weapon “Jakotsumon” is both the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen and a punching weapon that can shoot the spikes out of its tips with a chain. This gives Ryu a gameplay mechanic akin to Nero in Devil May Cry where he can pull himself to enemies or pull smaller enemies to him, which we’ve never really had in mainline Ninja Gaiden before. Ryu’s even has slightly more depth than Nero’s, both because you can choose whether to pull the enemy to you or yourself to the enemy and you can do it as part of combo chains. This means that with proper positioning you can enter combat and literally never stop attacking as you kill one enemy and just pull yourself to another without breaking your combo, and certainly helps Ryu deal with NG4‘s plethora of flying enemies better than he could before.
However, unlike Yakumo’s scythe there are a few issues with Ryu’s new toy. It’s noticeably weaker than the Dragon Sword, Ryu’s only other weapon, which is fine from both a lore and “different weapons do different things” perspective but it made it hard to not just stick with ol’ faithful most of the time. The chain grabs also took some getting used to due to the length of the chain, as many combat arenas seemed to be encouraging you to use the grapple to move around the arena to distant platforms but enemies would always seem to be just out of range. Obviously this is something that you just need to get used to while playing, but it would be a little disheartening to think you’re using the weapon as intended and then not get the results. Fighting flying enemies with it can also be frustrating as the chain isn’t as “if you lock on you can pull it” like Nero’s arm in Devil May Cry and only works within a select angle. If the flying foes are above that angle (and they usually are if you’re near them) the chain will whiff because Ryu isn’t aiming high enough. It really feels like a design misstep.
Additionally the fists highlights what I’ve always considered a bit of a sore spot in Ninja Gaiden weapon design: the heavy attack. This is less of a problem in Ninja Gaiden 4 but in the first two games many weapons (the Dragon Sword especially) had an issue where the heavy attack was just a standalone “power move” that might do something flashy but on its own it was a one or two move attack that left you vulnerable more often than not. Heavy attacks in Ninja Gaiden generally are intended to be the flavor you add into your combo after a couple of light attacks start the onslaught, and the chain on Ryu’s new weapon is no exception. Sure, it’s great for mobility and after a handful of light attacks you can do some cool spinning moves, but if at any point before that in the combo you press heavy attack then Ryu will just shoot out his chain attack and awkwardly break your combo if it doesn’t hit anything while you’re just standing there like a dope.
Then there’s the most obvious flaw of the Jakotsumon: it’s only half a weapon. Ryu still uses his “gleam form” while holding his new weapon and that only works with the Dragon Sword, so when you try to use gleam Ryu will just automatically use the Dragon Sword for those attacks. In some ways this is a lore “win” since the gleam attacks are a big part of the Dragon Sword and rarely seen in other weapons, but so much of NG4‘s combat is built around the gleam and bloodraven forms that this means the Jakotsumon is missing half the kit of other weapons. No special parries, no fancy empowered moves, hell even some of the obliterations look the same as the Dragon Sword, they just stuck the Jakotsumon on your arms to do them. They could have given the weapon some sort of longer range whip move set or something if they didn’t want to specifically have the same sort of gleam attacks as the Dragon Sword, but I guess they were worried about having to change tool tips or something. For me this was the final straw of the Jakotsumon vs the Dragon Sword and about halfway through the DLC I just stuck with the sword full time, if only for the animation consistency.
The story, such as it is, presents the most bare-bones format for a Ninja Gaiden story. A fiend shows up, declares herself ruler of the world, and starts throwing portals with fiends around before splitting herself into two separate versions to fly around laughing evilly. Yakumo and Ryu both encounter this wave of fiends in different areas with their new weapons (which they just have without comment or explanation) and then chase their respective versions of this new threat into the fiend dimension for a final showdown against this evil creature combined into one body again. It’s straightforward and Ninja Gaiden is not known for its quality writing, but what’s missing here is any sort of motivation to get the player, or even our main characters, engaged beyond going through the motions. Every Ninja Gaiden game always had some kind of hook to pull you in no matter how bad the writing got, and while it was frequently just “revenge is a lot of fun” it still gave our characters a drive to do something beyond just “kill fiend because fiend bad.”
Especially because this fiend has come out of nowhere and seems like a usual Tuesday compared to what Ryu has dealt with before. The plot just feels like a Batman game where some new villain with a handful of goons shows up in Gotham promising the kill Batman. We know this weirdo no one has ever heard of won’t kill Batman, but Batman still has to put his cape on and go punch them for three levels. Only in this simile you only play as Batman for one level while Nightwing takes the other two. And Nightwing stole all the cool gadgets from the Batcave so Batman just has to make do with a left over whip of Catwoman’s that he doesn’t have much practice with.
There are also no new or returning hero characters (read: no Ayane) other than Yakumo’s cast of support NPCs whose dialogue consists entirely of “wow this is scary” and “oh look, it’s Ryu again,” and our main “two masters” exchange two sentences in total. On paper that last bit isn’t a big deal if you’re thinking of the “stoic, stares you dead in the eyes on a mountain before turning into a wave of energy and flying away” Ryu, but this is also the same Ryu who in NG4 comforts Seori during their mini-adventure. Hell, he spends more time telling the Black Spider ninjas that he fights in this DLC they don’t need to be enemies any more (which makes very little sense from a lore perspective) than he does talking to Yakumo. So either Ryu just doesn’t like the Raven ninja or the writers can’t decide which personality Ryu is sporting in this game.
The worst part of all of this is the unshakable sensation that Ryu is getting the short end of the stick and at this point it just feels like an intentional slight. The two new weapons are fun but the scythe is clearly the star of the show here with a much more expansive move set, more obliteration animations that aren’t just copies of an existing animation, and Ryu getting less content than Yakumo in the DLC as well. I get that this is Platinum’s game and Yakumo is their OC, but Ryu has very little to show in this DLC, arguably less than he even did in the base game. His “big bad” boss is less interesting as just “guy with hammers who swings hammers” compared to Yakumo’s flying equivalent with telekinetic blade arms, his weapon feels half finished, and he even gets less bosses in general since Yakumo fights three compared to Ryu’s one. It’s the same design decisions from the base game repeated here in a condensed DLC package, but many of us were hoping they might turn the formula on its head a little and give Ryu a chance to shine in what could be the last piece of Ninja Gaiden content we’ll get for a while… but no such luck. It’s not like the game needed Yakumo to prove that he’s a worthy ninja a second time in such short order, so we’re not even getting a heroic/satisfactory achievement out of the guy. He killed a giant evil dragon, what’s one fiend with teleportation powers going to do to him?
Outside of the campaign the DLC includes several new trials (one against each boss and super-hard timed “EX” levels) and something called the “Abyssal Road” challenge mode. Ninja Gaiden has generally lacked a “Bloody Palace” mode like you find in Devil May Cry where you fight through one hundred levels of increasing difficulty because, as I’ve said before, Ninja Gaidenisn’t really the kind of game designed for endless combat without items or respite. Fortunately, or perhaps even “interestingly,” the Abyssal Road appears to have that in mind in two key ways. First it’s intentionally split into ten level sections with breaks in between where you can purchase healing items with middling amounts of currency (enough for four small healing items or two large ones and one small), and second that the split between levels is actually a “checkpoint” of sorts where you can quit and come back later. This immediately grabbed my attention and frankly appreciation, as they show that Ninja Gaiden is a game that really wants you to use items (no matter what their scoring system says) and they’re actually respecting the fact that most people aren’t going to sit for two and a half hours to beat a Bloody Palace. The one drawback to this system is that it’s inherently designed AROUND the idea that you’re going to be pausing in between these checkpoints, so your items or unspent currency don’t carry over between sets of levels. This really bothers me but I guess they have to stop you from cheesing the intended challenge by overloading on items.
While the extra trials are nice and the story content gives you “more Ninja Gaiden,” in my opinion the Two Masters DLC lives and dies on whether you like the look of the new weapons and if Bloody Palace in a Ninja Gaiden game is something that interests you. This is not a DLC that is going to change how you feel about Ninja Gaiden 4 itself, so if you were annoyed by it being “too Platinum” or the enemies being durable or much of the combat focusing on baiting out and abusing enemies doing their super moves, then you should know that none of that has gone away here. If you loved Ninja Gaiden 4 and wanted more weapons and even more things to do then this is a DLC that is meant for you, though I won’t hold it against you if you forget Ryu’s new weapon exists after playing through the DLC once. The scythe is great, the Abyssal Road is daunting, and as an epilogue for NG4 it could be a lot worse, but a personal note I really hope if there is a Ninja Gaiden 5 (I’m not holding out hope for more NG4 DLC) with both of these characters that Ryu gets more time to shine.
