Thanks to ININ Games for the review code
Title: Shadow of the Ninja -REBORN-
System: Nintendo Switch
Price: $19.99
Release Date: 08/29/2024
Story
In this remake of Natsume’s NES action classic by Tengo Project, you take control of two ninjas set out to overthrow a tyrant who has taken control of America! The plot has stayed the same, what little there was of it at least, and as a whole the game got a nice facelift, so thus, that means the intro was made even more outstanding!
Presentation
Tengo Project strikes again, with another wonderful 16-bit remake, except this time it happens to be of one of their 8-bit titles! Thus, rather than a SNES game getting remade with better detailed sprites and backgrounds, you have a 8-Bit title getting the 32-Bit treatment for the first time ever, with the usual high quality of prior Tengo titles.
Everything with this presentation just looks gorgeous. The sprites are very well animated and way livelier than in Ninja Saviors, and the background details are phenomenal, with lots of cool touches that show fun background details for those with a keen eye. This runs very well on Switch, with not a frame drop in sight during my time with the game, and that just thrilled me. The very few cutscenes this game has (the intro and ending) are also outstanding, taking the already impressive NES scenes and giving them the best possible treatment imaginable. The sprites in this game might just be one of the best I’ve seen from a modern game to date, and it has me now wanting more developers to put this much detail into their sprite work. Seriously, I can’t really think of how this could get much better looking, since it looks stellar in handheld and in docked mode.
The music also continues this success, with a bunch of the NES tunes being some of my favorite songs on the entire platform and well, basically all of them sound perfect here with some god tier remixes. There were a few tracks where I preferred the NES version, but for the majority of the game the remixes rocked, and didn’t even make me lament the lack of an option to play the original score. Even the few new compositions here are outstanding, with one endgame track fitting right alongside those legendary 34 year old BGM tracks. All in all, a near perfect presentation.
Gameplay
Shadow of the Ninja is a side scrolling action game, and back on NES it was mostly known for being like the Ninja Gaiden games, but with a co-op element and less of a focus on subweapons. Here in Reborn, the game is fleshed out with more mechanics to feel way more unique than Ninja Gaiden, though not all of them are for the better. You still have a choice between two characters, and each of them has a sword attack they can do. However, while in the NES version you could get a chain attack as a drop and switch to that for ranged moves, you have both sword and chain from the getgo here, with each of them being their own button.
This change rules, since a big gripe I had with the original game was the Sword feeling pretty much useless unless it was upgraded, while the chain was essentially a gamebreaking weapon even at in a non-upgraded state, and sure enough, the chain is still the superior weapon here, but the Sword still has a lot of uses too, arguably moreso than in the original for me. Both are great for taking out enemies and figuring out boss patterns with, and combat is just super satisfying here.
However, while your platforming techniques were limited to just jumps and grabbing ceilings in the original game, now you have more options for traversing the stages; a spinning, floating jump by holding Down + mashing Jump in midair, a wall run by holding up plus mashing jump, and an evasive dash by pressing a shoulder button. Some of these I find handy, like the dash and floating jump, but the wall run I didn’t use all that much. I will admit, during the game I had a moment where a jump was flat out impossible and I had no idea what to do in order to get around it, until I read the in-game manual and learned that the spinning jump was a mechanic. Still, once I knew what to do, I enjoyed making use of the extra airtime.
The weapon system also got an upgrade. In the NES game, you could pick up the occasional bomb or shuriken, but they didn’t do much to help in combat. Here in Reborn, you have a vast array of items to discover, with a bunch of food items to recover your HP, energy drinks to max out your power, and way more weapons than in the NES game. From spread shot guns, to grenades, to giant swords, to many, many more, these all come in handy if you manage to find them, though the main two weapons are still the most reliable. They do help immensely during boss fights though, if you manage to bring them into the fight.
Unfortunately, despite a lot of these positive changes, Reborn does some other tweaks that really, really annoyed me, while also doing aspects from the NES original that weren’t the best then, and somehow are worse in this version. The biggest gripe for me has to do with the ceilings. You can grab onto a ceiling from time to time, usually to climb to another area, and while climbing you can’t defend yourself at all except for a very wimpy kick. If you hit jump at any point while holding onto a ceiling, you’ll drop down immediately. Considering how many of these are over bottomless pits or groups of enemies, I took far too much damage and died way too many times due to the occasional jump button press, especially if I was mistakenly trying to press up+jump to climb onto a platform. Why it couldn’t be down + jump instead of just jump is beyond me, but this aspect made for some infuriating platforming, especially when it came to the late game difficulty spike, which somehow puts the NES version to shame.
Because whooooooo boy, the last two stages of the game go from a satisfying “try and try again until you memorize everything and nail the stage” process of making it to the next checkpoint, to just full brutality that made the NES version with its limited continues easier. See, these last two stages of the game just crank up all the unfair nonsense that some older titles had; and yeah, the original Shadow had that at points, but even in these final levels, I found them pretty fun to memorize in the NES version. Not here. Whether it manages to be the Long gaps between checkpoints, (a nearly eight minute period of me slowly moving through the first part of Stage 5, only to die at the very end had me almost throw my Switch Lite at the wall) constant ceiling struggles, inconsistent patterns on some hazards, or a flood of enemies requiring you to either go super slow or rush in hoping you can dodge them all, these final two stages just completely sucked a lot of the fun outta the game, and I really do mean a lot.
The final stage is especially annoying with this. The first segment of it is just pure misery, with another long gauntlet before the first checkpoint. The next one isn’t too bad until you get to an autoscroller, which is just how the NES game ended, but here it still manages to maintain the whole “enemies can attack you through the wall” nonsense, and considering this section has the most ceiling grabs you need to do in order to scale the tower, I almost wanted to shut the game off and delete it from the sheer amount of times I died due to a barely offscreen projectile or trying to jump between platforms only to grab the underside of one of them, then accidentally fall and get hurt.
Thankfully, the bosses are the one thing in the game that were consistently fair and very rewarding to memorize and get down, with the final boss more than making up for that miserable last stretch of the game. Still, it really feels like they tried to crank up the difficulty a bit for the sake of padding the game out, and I can’t help but find that annoying since the NES original was more fair in those levels with a bit of patience.
Otherwise besides the main arcade game mode (which has normal and a hard difficulty, along with a co-op mode), there are time attacks for clearing an entire stage with no checkpoints in one life, and I don’t really have the skills to get all the way to the end of the stage perfectly like that. However, the gold you collect during the game can be used to purchase powerups you cleared a stage with, meaning you can at least use gold to make replays or time attack runs a bit easier. The game is also gentle if you continue a bunch of times on Normal mode, as it will give you an energy drink and a health item if you happen to get stuck on the same checkpoint and continue over and over again, so you’ll eventually beat the normal mode with persistence. (Well, if those last two stages don’t drive you nuts with the checkpoint gaps)
Last but not least, is the co-op, which I couldn’t really try proper due to not having the time to have my usual friend over to play 2P with me. Still, I gave it a go with two controllers, and it did confirm my fear about this game’s co-op; it manages to be much, much harder than the original game’s co-op, (though you do have unlimited continues, unlike the NES game) and even harder than the normal difficulty mode, since enemies felt a lot more frequent and tougher to beat. I can still see this being a fun enough time for a duo up to Stage 4, but trying to do those final two stages with tougher enemies unless you’re both masters of the game?!? Good luck. It isn’t as bad as Wild Guns Reloaded forcing the 4P multiplayer onto the hardest difficulty, but I really do wish it was as approachable as the normal mode, if not maybe even having an easier difficulty option for those who bring a friend who isn’t familiar with the game.
Conclusion
Shadow of the Ninja Reborn is the first game to push my scoring system in quite some time. On one hand, you have some of the best pixel art I’ve ever seen in a modern game, period, and outstanding music remixes of a wonderful NES soundtrack. Then you also have solid gameplay that makes a good amount of tweaks to help keep the experience fresh for people who memorized and are familiar with the original title, along with outstanding boss battles, which should make this a super easy recommendation.
On the other hand, Tengo Project’s difficulty mindset strikes again, with a balance that offers a super satisfying challenge to those who can pull off and many, many memorization attempts leading to a successful run, while also having cases of absurd difficulty spikes, and a multiplayer mode that is dead set on only allowing masters of the game to partake in it, being yet another case where the MP mode is more difficult than the single player. I don’t know why they do this in such a way, since even the NES game I found easier with a friend despite the limited continues in that version, but it really dampened the experience for me, since I wanted to just find this the perfect remake.
Sadly, Reborn is not a perfect remake, but manages to be a really darn good one that’ll more than entertain you if you’re any fan of classic Natsume or the original NES title. Just be prepared for a lot of difficulty spikes in the endgame, ceiling frustrations, and tons of memorization. Still, this ride is worth clearing once for that stellar presentation, even if maybe you’ll have to leave a friend behind to do so.
I give Shadow of the Ninja -REBORN- a 7 out of 10.