Shadow of the Ninja - Reborn Review

Shadow of the Ninja - Reborn is a remake of the classic title that was released on the NES back in 1990, where you play as ninjas that have been sent to New York City to defeat Emperor Garuda, a dictator who is using demons to take over the world and plunge it into darkness. If you have ever played Ninja Gaiden Shadow on the Game Boy, you have actually played a version of the original game, just rebranded to fit that franchise.

From playing the original game on the NES, I knew that I was up for a challenge. The original 8-bit title gave you only one life, and five continues before you got a game over and you had to start at the very beginning again. Fortunately, Shadow of the Ninja - Reborn is a bit more forgiving and you can continue playing from the area where you died. The cool part is that you don’t have to complete this mission on your own, you can play with someone else locally taking on the role of legendary ninjas Hayate and Kaede.

Hayate is a male ninja, decked out in blue; he looks like what you picture a traditional ninja to look like. His female counterpart, Kaede, has green hair and pink high-top shoes, not the conventional footwear of a ninja! Both characters are strong and equipped with a katana and a weapon called a Kusarigama that looks like a grappling hook but has a sickle on the end to inflict a large amount of damage. Having the close-up melee weapon with the blade, and the chain sickle that can reach enemies that are further away and can hit targets above you is incredibly helpful!

There are multiple modes to challenge in this title. Arcade mode — which is essentially a story mode where you clear all the stages to get to the ending. You can challenge it single-player on normal difficulty, which is recommended for new players, or hard difficulty if you want to test yourself. Here you will also find the option to play multiplayer, there is no option to change how hard it is. Playing it with my son was actually more challenging than when I played solo, so that makes me think that it defaults to the hard setting. Time Attack mode is where you select a stage and try to complete it as fast as possible. There are online rankings that post not only your best times for the time attack but also the “Earned Pocket Money” that you were able to collect on the stage before you died.

Shadow of the Ninja - Reborn looks amazing. They took the original game and rebuilt it from the ground up. Instead of plain, flat backgrounds we now have animated set pieces and massive enemies to battle against. Like the NES version of the game, the music is catchy, and energetic, fitting the never-ending ninja action of each stage. It’s always nice to find games that pay homage to the original but improve on it at the same time.
I have been playing the game using a controller, as that was how I played the original. I found that some of the controls are a bit tricky especially when you try to use a thumbstick instead of the D-pad, it just wasn’t as precise as I had wanted. Like in instances when you are hanging on a ledge and want to pull yourself on top of it, there were a lot of times that I would accidentally jump or totally drop down to the ground below. The easy solution is to switch to using the directional pad instead in those situations and save yourself a lot of frustration.

Shadow of the Ninja - Reborn requires you to be patient and learn the enemy's attack pattern before charging in. If you aren't careful, it won't take too much to defeat you and send you back to the beginning of the stage. There are health-replenishing items that you can pick up like rice balls and teapots hidden in metal boxes, but you don’t find them very often and there are a lot of enemies that you will need to take out to get to the end of the stage.

Speaking of items that you can pick up, you can collect a variety of extra weapons to use on your mission. These are often limited and have a set number of times that they can be used, like five bombs or 10 throwing stars. To swap between the items you have picked up, you will use the right shoulder button on the controller. Though you can’t just scroll through the full selection of items, you can only select between the last two you picked up. Once they are gone, then you can move down the list.

Shadow of the Ninja - Reborn is a challenging game that is geared towards fans of challenging platformers like Ninja Gaiden, or if you have played the original title. This game has you replaying some of the same sections over and over again, trying to make progress. I will warn you that there is no tutorial here, so be sure to take a look at the manual on the main menu to learn all the controls. This will help you avoid some of the frustration that you will no doubt feel early on, but it is one of those titles where you have a feeling of accomplishment when you get past a section that you were stuck on.