Shadow of the Ninja – Reborn has everything going for it. This remake of an often overlooked Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) action side-scroller extends levels and boss fights, adds weapons and modes, and changes the visual style to make its key elements stand out on larger screens while paying homage to the original’s eccentric selection of enemies, yet thinking back on my time with, very little of that made an impact. Sometimes, even though you used all the right ingredients and techniques, the result feels bland.
The original Shadow of the Ninja never left the shadow of the more popular action or even ninja titles of its time. Times change, however, and there now exists a sizable audience constantly yearning for shorter games. Through its six stages, each split into multiple areas and concluded with a boss fight, I cannot deny that Shadow of the Ninja – Reborn tries to cram its best parts into every corner.
Total, nonstop action, optional time attack modes for speedrunners, and a hard mode for those seeking something more extra, great enemy variety, a permanent ranged weapon (the kusarigama), unique movement options, expansive levels designed to be mastered, with dozens of optional ninja tools that, should you be able to finish a chapter with them still in your inventory, will be available for purchase for your next run. Fail before that and you will instead respawn with merely a few basics, perhaps extras should you fail too much on one checkpoint.
All are awesome inclusions, but they only come into play when the player decides to run the whole game back. These games feel the best when you know their ins and outs, and if you can perform a perfect run, the tools you pick at the start can cut down the time or add a bit of spice. When I ask myself if I want to go for another run of Shadow of the Ninja – Reborn, however, the answer is unfortunately: not really.
While crafting the recipe for success, it feels like somewhere along the way we forgot to add spice. The game opts for a relatively standard, electric-guitar-heavy rendition of the soundtrack, which ultimately dulls the dynamic pace of the levels, and the new, futuristic, tech-forward visual style where effects get lost in others rounds out the rough edges desired from a game of this style.
As a remake, Shadow of the Ninja – Reborn aims to improve the experience of replays but irons out the bits that make you want to return in favor of a smoother experience—the inherent comedy of a player’s failure which then turns into a determination not to let it happen again. A player does not always need a carefully placed enemy to hit them off a moving platform, they will fall regardless during the learning process and laugh it off unless a game is too conventionalized.
Through adding enemies and obfuscating power-ups, it feels like the push for memorization somehow grows stronger than the original’s, yet its purpose is only to add options for future runs by unlocking the ninja tools in the starting shop. In another example of doing the right thing but not getting the intended results, no matter what I found, it was always less fun than the regular sword with the addition of a beam power-up.
To me, mastering these kinds of games was never about some alternate goal or mode of play. Self-made challenges such as speedrunning, sword-only runs, continue-less runs, or hitless runs cropped up naturally the more I enjoyed the gameplay. I wanted to test its limits to see where my fun lies. Shadow of the Ninja – Reborn incentivizes what I find to be its weakest parts, as opposed to delivering an experience I would truly want to replay as many times as it takes to unlock everything in this game, or earn all of its achievements.
Bemoaning this game as a failure, however, would be drastically unfair. People searching to experience this type of game will be happy to learn that it still feels great to slash and smash enemies and that the difficulty level dropped drastically compared to the original, which allowed for only five continues throughout the run. Here, you can restart each section infinitely, with bonus checkpoints placed directly before bosses. You lose the ninja gear you collected, but the bosses are intuitive to learn and fun to beat without them.
The stages, though you may occasionally get hit without seeing a bullet through the visual clutter, get progressively more interesting, leaning more on the use of the hover ability. The strong pushback after getting hit also works well at not letting an unprepared player blast through challenges. For those who find a way to get swept in it all, there is plenty here to sink your teeth into.
None of it materialized for me, which is why my adventure with Shadow of the Ninja – Reborn ended rather abruptly. The learning process proved unsatisfying, its formula faltering as soon as I got to the seemingly “good” part where I was supposed to spend most of my time unlocking achievements and beating my times. In the best-case scenario, I would already be planning how to approach my next run. Unfortunately, I think the best choice I can make here is letting those passionate enough get on that, while I quit holding the few good memories intact.
Mateusz played Shadow of the Ninja – Reborn on PC with a review code.
