SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance was provided by SEGA for review. Thank you!
SEGA has been making some amazing decisions with their games. Over the last couple of years, SEGA has put out tons of fantastic titles, like Sonic X Shadow Generations, Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, Demon Slayer The Hinokami Chronicles 2, and Two Point Museum. To expand their portfolio even further, SEGA has started to go through older franchises and reboot them. The first of these games is SHINOBI, and if SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance is how we gauge the level of quality these reboots will have, these will be must-have titles.
In SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance, you play as Joe Musashi, who steps up to fight back against Ruse and take revenge on the attack that obliterated his clan. We will go through many locations, fighting through ENE-Corp troops and mutated creatures, and defeating Ruse and his cronies. It's a solid story, nothing to write home about, but it sets the scene nicely.
However, the visuals definitely are. The beautiful artwork and effects from striking and slashing enemies are vivid and engaging. Going from lantern-filled cities with fireworks to burning villages, futuristic technologically-advanced towns, swampland, and even a moving train. Each place felt unique in its structure, and the artwork helped it stand out to make sure each place stuck out. It was like eye candy everywhere I looked, and I couldn't get enough of it.
At its core, SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance is an action-platformer with some light metroidvania elements. Inside each level, we will run around a decent-sized sprawling map, killing enemies and gathering money. There are some secret areas here and there, with some only accessible with abilities we get later on. I consider this to be lighter metroidvania elements due to backtracking not being necessary to continue the story and beat the game, but going back can help us get new upgrades, abilities, and even some new skins.
The highlight of the gameplay is easily the combat and combo system. The emphasis developer Lizardcube put into this shines and easily makes this experience worth playing through. It’s fairly simple on the surface. We have a weak and heavy attack, as well as being able to throw Kunai and dodge roll. These can be combined with each other to destroy enemies and create some insane attack chains. For example, one of my favorites is using the weak attack to chain into a heavy attack, then jumping and smacking the enemy around until I kick them into the ground, and if they are still alive, I dive kick into them again and do a spinning strike. Or we could use attacks to help crowd control, like smacking some enemies in the air, but dodging to kick them backwards into an explosive barrel and watch them explode, then dodge roll right back and knee them up in the air before jumping up to smack them back down.
It’s an addictive system where the attacks and their power are emphasized with extremely short pauses. These make attacks and combos feel even more epic. It feels like each attack is refined to a tee to make sure the combo system feels easy to utilize, but harder to master for the bigger combos. It’s fulfilling and enjoyable enough for me to want to specifically go into some levels where I know there are large groups of enemies just to practice combos and have a blast watching them fly around and get demolished.
We can also build up a stun bar on the enemies to dash into them for an instant kill. Doing this not only kills them but drops more coins, kunai, or health, so it’s a great idea to focus on stunning when possible. Heavy attacks will build up the stun more, so while they may be slower, there is motivation to find a balance of using weak attacks to whittle down health and heavy attacks to increase the stun bar.
We can also utilize different Ninpo and ultimate attacks to round us out. These are more like special attacks, and can range from throwing bombs to destroy armor to breathing fire on enemies. These, as well as ultimate moves, can be a welcome arsenal in our lineup, especially against bosses. However, I found little use for them for regular enemies, apart from any Ninpo that got rid of armor. It’s a nice extra, and I appreciate having four that can be equipped from the pool of Ninpo we find in levels, but I rarely used them.
As I previously mentioned, Art of Vengeance does have some secrets, and some of those are part of the side content in each level. There are five Oboro Tokens to collect, upgrades for health, Ninpo bars, and how many Kunai are held, new moves, medallions, and more. It was very worthwhile to take time and search for all the secrets that are around. There were also some cool ways to get new upgrades, like fighting through three rounds of elite enemies or finding special portals to complete combat or platforming challenges.
Some chests and enemies will also drop coins, which will be our main way to get more powerful. At shops, we can purchase new attacks to add to our arsenal, as well as medallions and Ninpo. We can unlock new moves to purchase by using those Oboro Tokens, and some of the later moves are extremely helpful and worth getting. The medallions can provide some buffs as well, like increasing attack once a combo has reached 15 and above. These can be helpful as well, but I didn’t feel like they were as necessary to use. Getting extra attacks was my biggest motivator to find Oboro Tokens and collect money.
Even with most of the aspects of progression feeling like extras, it was still so much fun. The levels were well-designed, the bosses were challenging, and the general gameplay loop was so much fun to play around with, to the point where I went into levels primarily just to fight enemies and get 100% of the secrets at each level.
SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance is a fantastic experience on the go. It feels right at home and runs particularly well on the Steam Deck, but I did find a couple of little oddities. For the most part, it will run at 90 FPS with a sub-15W battery drain, but there were some areas that would actually drop the framerate and spike battery drain. The drain never got too high, but it did feel stuttery from going under 90 FPS.
It happened enough times to feel noticeable, and keeping the flow of the game is going to make it much more enjoyable. So, I recommend setting the framerate to 60 FPS. This not only keeps the entire game stable, but it also brings down battery drain to an average of 9W - 10W for around 5 hours of battery life. It may not be 90 FPS, but bringing it down to 60 brings in stability, higher battery life, and still keeps the smoothness.
Otherwise, it's fantastic to play on the Deck, and I can't see myself playing it any other way.
SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance is pretty lacking on settings. Apart from changing language, volume, and some minor video quality settings, there isn't much more to change. It doesn't need anything to make it better to play on the Deck, but there are no accessibility settings like color blind modes or dyslexic font.
The game doesn't support 16:10 resolutions, but it does have cloud saves and good controller support. There are no HDR settings.
SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance is a fantastic first game for SEGA’s reboots. The action platforming sports solid movement mechanics, and very enjoyable combat and combo systems. The medallion and Ninpo can sometimes feel unnecessary, but there’s still some motivation to explore these due to new attacks for your moveset needing to be purchased at the store. The story does a good job setting the stage, and the artwork is just awesome to see.
It also runs wonderfully on the Steam Deck. The best way to play will be at 60 FPS, but nothing else is needed otherwise. It’s a great game through and through, and one worth adding to your portable libraries.
Our review is based on the PC version of this game.
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SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance is a fantastic action-platformer with addictive combat, and it’s wonderful to play on the Steam Deck.
