Kings of infuriating brutal games now heading Ninja Gaiden 4 say fairness is the secret ingredient to difficulty: "Enemies are on equal footing with the player"

Before everyone used Dark Souls as the descriptor for a game being extremely hard, Ninja Gaiden was undoubtedly the go-to. The original game and its sequel made even the likes of Devil May Cry blush with their uncompromising difficulty, which required the perception of a master ninja to survive. And after a decade-plus in hibernation, Ninja Gaiden 4 is finally happening, and from the looks of it, the Master Ninja difficulty gameplay looks eager to take the difficulty game crown back from FromSoftware.

Speaking to Automaton, Ninja Gaiden 4's directors, Platinum Games' Yuji Nakao and Team Ninja's Masakazu Hirayama, discussed how the series navigates the line between being challenging and not being unfair. According to Nakao, "What really stands out throughout the Ninja Gaiden series is how enemies are on equal footing with the player. They guard, and they even use throws." And while Platinum Games is working on the series for the first time, the studio was eager to live up to its expectations. Nakao added, "We focused not only on making the action feel satisfying, but also on offering the cathartic release of overcoming disadvantageous odds, that was a core part of development."

Hirayama (himself a newcomer to the series aside from programming the in-game camera in Ninja Gaiden 3's Razors Edge re-release), explained, "I think fairness between the player and enemy is crucial. Whether or not a death feels like it was your fault is a huge part of maintaining that sense of fairness."

He adds that when players die in an unreasonable way, "it’s hard for them to reflect and think about what they could’ve done differently." However, "if they die because they made the wrong choice among several options, they’ll think, 'Okay, let’s try this instead.' That kind of trial-and-error cycle requires a fair dynamic between offense and defense to work." Hirayama adds, "That’s something we talk about a lot at Team Ninja, and it’s something we’ve always valued throughout the series."

6 hours in, Ninja Gaiden 4 has pushed me to my limit while giving me the tools to push beyond them – we are so back