Back at The Game Awards 2023, SEGA would surprise the gaming world with the reveal of not one, not two, not even three, but five sequels in its less-utilised series. Shinobi: Art of Vengeance is the first of the bunch to cross the finish line, and with it comes a lot of pressure, a standard set for the rest to follow. With many years having passed since the last adventure for Musashi, though, was it worth bringing the ninja back at all?
Players take on the role of shinobi Joe Masashi, leader of the Oboro clan and the last line of defence against a powerful paramilitary organisation known as the ENE Corporation. With his village destroyed, students dead, and a pregnant wife to care for, Masashi decides to go up against seemingly impossible odds and take the fight to the ENE and its leader, Ruse. What this then involves is a dozen or so stages of sword slashing, obstacle dodging action as the ninja slowly works his way through each of Ruse’s lieutenants before finally going face to face with the man himself.
Rather than one big sprawling Metroidvania-style world to explore, Shinobi is broken down into a series of smaller stages, each featuring all the trademark elements of a Metroidvania, including branching paths, a slowly revealing map and secret areas only accessible once you’ve unlocked them later in the game. Essentially, it feels like a series of mini Metroidvanias joined together by a world map, and it works really well, especially if you want to power through a stage on your commute or before bed.
As for how the game actually plays, Joe Masashi handles like you’d expect a ninja to – nimble, athletic and sharp with a sword. Every movement of his feels as silky smooth as it is to watch on screen, be that in combat or navigating truly hazardous environments. In fact, your ten- or so-hour adventure can be split into two equally brilliant pieces – the combat and the exploring.
The latter proves to strike the right balance between excitement and challenge, the main route throwing a few platform-heavy sections at the player every now and again, requiring a mix of timing and effective ability management to traverse pits, spikes and plenty more dangerous nasties. Between your double jump, wall jump and dash alone, you’ll wind up pulling off all sorts of gravity-defying manoeuvres to get from A to B. That’s before you even unlock the ability to climb walls and slingshot yourself using grapple points. Venture a little off the beaten path, meanwhile, and you’ll find yourself arguably the game’s meatiest of challenges, nightmarish obstacle courses requiring close to perfect execution with the promise of a nice bonus dangling as a carrot at the end.
Between exploring and platforming, you’ll also be getting yourself into many skirmishes (and when I say many, I really do mean many. There are a lot!), waves of enemies spawning around you which all need to be eliminated before the game will let you continue on your way (not too dissimilar to that of a Streets of Rage game). Enemy variety offers a good mix of tough opponents, from those that throw projectiles and reverse attacks to flying bots and unstoppable chargers. The game does a great job at gradually introducing you to its cast of goons, giving you ample time to polish your fighting skills before you eventually have to face off against huge groups of enemies, mixing types together and forcing you to act quickly and think on your feet.
While Joe Masashi will have his standard sword slashing attacks, he’ll also be able to throw a limited number of kunai at his enemies from afar. As you continue to earn gold and progress through the game, though, your combo lineup will grow, allowing you to pull off bigger and more powerful combos, not to mention carry more kunai. Joe can also summon magical abilities, these eating into a replenishable cell stash but allowing you to unleash everything from fireballs to dragons. Do enough damage meanwhile and you’ll even get to summon an ultimate power, either damaging everyone on screen or replenishing your often dwindling health. Lastly, while enemies have a health bar, they also have a stagger one too, which, if filled, allows Joe to dispatch them with a fatal Shinobi Execution. Managing to stagger multiple enemies at once is hugely satisfying, especially as you watch Joe dart across the screen in the blink of an eye with coins showering you for your efforts.
Despite the game’s longer-than-anticipated runtime, the constant barrage of fights and battles never grew tiresome, the combinations of enemies and my quickly evolving attacks keeping things constantly thrilling. That goes doubly so for boss battles, too, each one presenting the player with new attacks to learn and the best methods to attack.
This being a Metroidvania, there are plenty of collectables and unlockables to find hidden throughout each stage, ranging from coins and outfits to increases in health and kunai count. Finding them was not only worthwhile but would also lead me to some of the game’s bigger highlights.
From a visual standpoint, Shinobi: Art of Vengeance is an absolute stunner. In an industry where it feels like we’ve seen every artistic and visual trick there is, leave it to Lizardcube to find ways to amaze with a paintbrush-style look that only gets more impressive the further your adventure continues. The only downside is that characters tend to look a little blurry and fuzzy, especially as they move, something particularly noticeable given how awesome the background and scenery look. Yes, this is still technically a Switch game, but you’d like to think the system wouldn’t have issues like this for a 2D game.
Having never played any of the original Shinobi games, I didn’t really know what to expect going into Art of Vengeance. Was it a straightforward beat ‘em up? Or more of a Metroidvania? Well, turns out the answer is both, all wrapped in a stunning visual style – that does suffer slightly on the Switch version in particular – and if the quality on offer here is any indication, then I cannot wait to see what lies in store from the remaining four SEGA titles.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch
Review copy provided by SEGA
