Before the days of Dark Souls, the Ninja Gaiden franchise was the default for those looking for a challenge.
It’s fast-paced, brutal difficulty pushed gamers to their limits, but the franchise had been dormant for far too long before 2025. Its last mainline release was Ninja Gaiden 3 in 2012.
Things have changed this year with the release of Ninja Gaiden 2 Black and Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, but you can argue that the main event, Ninja Gaiden 4, is still on the way.
While Soulslikes and Ninja Gaiden share difficulty in common, in reality, the two games play nothing alike. The former can be slower and more methodical in combat, while Ninja Gaiden is fast, combo-oriented, and overly violent. As a result, some newcomers to the series may be struggling to get acclimated to the feel of Ninja Gaiden 4, but Team Ninja and PlatinumGames have a plan for that.
Ninja Gaiden 4 Will Help Newcomers Get Better At The Game
Speaking with IGN, Team Ninja producer Masakuza Hirayama emphasized the fact that there will be several difficulty modes in Ninja Gaiden 4 to make sure it’ll cater to people of all experience levels.
“We’ve prepared not only difficulty options, but other features for those new players,” he explains. “In terms of difficulty settings, there is a mode called Hero Mode. So when you choose Hero Mode, it’ll automatically enable a number of assists. So these assists include Auto Guard, Auto Dodge, and another assist that allow you to perform more complicated actions, moves more easily. And these individual assists, once you select Hero Mode, you’re not stuck with the assist. You can actually go into the menu at any time and toggle them on and off individually.”
Hirayama adds that you’ll be able to keep tweaking the difficulty settings as you get more acclimated to how Ninja Gaiden 4 plays. Think of it like training wheels: once you’re mastering the basics on Hero Mode, you can turn off the automatic guard and dodge off and go from there.
After you beat the first chapter, you turn off the assists, and then after you beat the next chapter, you feel like you’ve developed as a player and it’s getting too easy… So you can really curate your combat experience based on your progression as a player.
Multiple difficulty levels are a taboo subject in the Soulslike world, but again, Ninja Gaiden isn’t a Soulslike. It’s a fast-paced action game that has always offered multiple difficulty options, and Team Ninja is looking to make sure the experience is as accessible as possible.
We’ll see how that all plays out when Ninja Gaiden 4 launches on October 21st for Xbox, PS5, and PC.
