Officially released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990, Shadow of the Ninja (also known as KAGE in Japan and Blue Shadow in Europe) has just been remade by its original team and released by the name of Shadow of the Ninja Reborn for PC, Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4|5 and Xbox Series S|X by Natsume.
In case you’re not familiar with the original game, it was an action side scroller that still gets a fair sum of praise for its local co-op mode, a feature one couldn’t take for granted in the genre back in the day. We have received early access to Reborn, and today we can finally share our thoughts on what it has to offer.
Amongst the novelties the remake brings are a plethora of new moves, new items and a backpack that allows you to store sub-weapons and health items for later and switch between them on the go. The last backpack item you’ve selected can be quickly equipped or unequipped by pressing R1, but the other items will need you to reach out deeper into your pack by holding the button instead, leaving you vulnerable for an instant. As you take damage, your melee power wears down and Kusarigama turns exceptionally useful.
The art style has been changed into a more cartoony version with wonderful pixel art sprites and detail-rich animations. But if you think that means the game’s difficulty has been toned down, you’ll be surprised to find out it’s harder than before, especially as your muscle memory gives you a hard time climbing up platforms and holding on to ledges, actions with slightly uncommon and inconsistent controls.
There are six stages total, each comprised by two common side scrolling (sometimes auto scrolling) scenes and a boss fight. The scrolling parts have been almost completely redesigned, with more dangerous traps and a lot more enemies to stop you on your tracks. Some of the enemies are much bigger in size than they used to be and have a more menacing presence. The result is a gameplay that cuts you no slack and will make you see the Game Over screen many times, even on Multiplayer mode.
Don’t be fooled: some late game stages — especially stage six — feature straight out unfair sections. The boss fights and their mechanics, however, are mostly untouched and haven’t aged very well. Taking advantage from the invincibility frames after being hurt to spam your buffed melee hits is often a good choice, usually safer and more effective than playing carefully. To put it simply, reworked boss fights would better fit the reworked player movement and attacks.
Fortunately, your progress in Shadow of the Ninja Reborn is saved every time you change scenes and there’s no life or credits system, meaning you can fail as much as you need and you’ll always return to the beginning of that scene or boss fight. And as you use Continues, the game aids you by adding gear to your backpack, with a limit of two energy drinks and one health item in our experience.
Every time you beat a stage, your high score (called Pocket Money) is saved so that you can buy items on the Prep Shop, available right before a playthrough starts. The Prep Shop isn’t available on your first playthrough, though. In other words, the more you play, the easier your next playthroughs potentially become, similarly to unlocking special weapons and perks on post-game Resident Evil playthroughs.
The Prep Shop is also sort of where the game’s replayability lies at. As you play a stage, some of the items you’ve found throughout it are made available on the Prep Shop. We couldn’t tell what exactly triggers the Gear Catalog unlocks, but getting all of them seems to take quite the effort, and according to the game, Time Attack Mode is the way to go after the ones you’re missing.
These new features are welcome, but to be blunt, Reborn’s presentation is what makes it worth checking out, all the more if you’re a sucker for pixel graphics. If the boss fights were at least a bit more interesting and memorable, the unforgiving scrolling scenes probably wouldn’t have bothered us as much and we’d have a better impression of the gameplay. But as it is, you put a lot of effort to overcome scrolling scenes just to land on battles that don’t really make up for the struggle.
Final Thoughts
7 (Good) according to the reviewer
It’s hard to tell whether Shadow of the Ninja Reborn is going to be well received or not. Were it not for its delightful audiovisual, we’d be compelled to grade it a Fine game rather than a Good one. Some sections had us pulling our hairs out while we tried to find the best way through, and sometimes the answer was evidence we weren’t given the right tools to work with, almost as if the new level design had been tested solely with a playthrough buffed by the Prep Shop.
Yet, Reborn is doubtlessly a much more fleshed out experience than the original entry, not to mention much more affordable and accessible even if progressing through stages for the first time prove to be excessively challenging.
This game was reviewed with a digital copy provided by the developer.
