2025 Was the Yr Ninja Games Made a Comeback

We all suppose ninjas are fairly cool, proper? Despite how widespread they’re in different mediums, it’s felt like they’ve progressively turn out to be much less of a presence as online game protagonists in favor of troopers, adventurers, and common guys. What a shock, then, that 2025 introduced the stealthy warriors again with six main video games: Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed Shadows, Sucker Punch’s Ghost of Yotei, Sega’s Shinobi: Art of Vengeance, the Game Kitchen’s Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, and Team Ninja’s Ninja Gaiden 4 and remaster of 2008’s Ninja Gaiden II.

These all belong to franchises, two ongoing and related, and two made related once more with their first new installments in years. It’s that second class that feels extra particular; as soon as upon a time, Shinobi and Gaiden have been among the most well-known ninja video games round, characterised primarily by their punishing problem and famously related to their respective builders.

Gaiden held out a bit longer than Shinobi, however each went away within the 2010s as Sega and Team Ninja moved on to different franchises. Sega at the least gave followers a heads-up it was resurrecting Shinobi again in 2023 together with a few of its other dormant franchises, however Team Ninja wasn’t actually as declarative with Ninja Gaiden.

So if the Ragebound announcement was a shock, then Gaiden 4‘s was a genuine shock to the system; the modern games fell off after 2013’s Ninja Gaiden 3—the primary of those to not be directed by Tomonobu Itagaki, who departed the studio in 2008 and passed away this previous October—and Team Ninja pivoted to its Dead or Alive sequence (which was additionally finally shelved) and co-developing third-party video games.

But each the Final Fantasy I prequel Stranger of Paradise and its personal Nioh video games confirmed the developer by no means walked away from its model of robust motion, so it made sense to see the studio staff with PlatinumGames to carry Ryu Hayabusa again to the forefront.

If Shinobi and Ninja Gaiden made followers go “They’re finally back!”, Shadows gave the Assassin’s Creed fanbase a cause to say “It’s about damn time.” Ubisoft’s action-stealth sequence famously avoided Japan in its early days, and lots of figured it’d been overwhelmed to the punch in 2020 by Yotei’s predecessor Ghost of Tsushima. On one hand, it’s admittedly humorous how each put revenge-seeking ninja and samurai as their primary characters: Shadows stars Naoe and Yasuke, and Yotei has Atsu and her brother Jubei, together with her being the one playable of the 2. But with an almost seven-month hole between them, each video games opted to play to their particular person strengths and respectfully acknowledge the opposite when the state of affairs referred to as for it.

From high to backside, Shadows is an Assassin’s Creed recreation by way of and thru, and Yotei is a Ghost recreation in all of the ways in which outlined Sucker Punch’s prior title. Gameplay-wise, it’s Shadows that wins out with its means of the ninja, utilizing Naoe to emphasise stealth, which continues to be the weakest aspect of the Ghost video games.

Thematically, although, it means one thing extra to be a ninja on the earth of Yotei: the sport’s best side story reveals Tsushima protagonist Jin Sakai has been remembered as “the First Shinobi,” a legend whose story is outlawed by the shogun to keep away from civil disobedience from the folks. “Dishonorable” techniques he employed within the first recreation, like assassinations and poison weapons, have since been adopted because the “Way of the Shinobi” by an evil clan, with Yotei positioning Atsu, already a sword for rent as the sport opens and proficient in spywork, as the right heir of his work and mantle because the “Ghost.”

But there’s nobody recreation that has the legacy of the ninja recreation; even with their overlap and the generational divide they fall on when it comes to sensibilities, all six really feel necessary to serving to the style make a comeback. We don’t know the way all of those carried out commercially—solely Yotei and Shadows have reported gross sales numbers up to now, and Ninja Gaiden 4 being Xbox-published means we’ll doubtless by no means know the way it bought—nevertheless it bodes nicely that they’ve been individually well-received.

There’s clearly an viewers that want to stealth and slash it up as ninjas, so right here’s hoping we see extra of those once more, and even get some newcomers into the fray. The extra ninjas, the merrier.

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