Ninja Gaiden 4, a collaborative effort between Team Ninja and PlatinumGames to revive the famous hack-and-slash series with a new mainline entry, finally releases on October 21. The Ninja Gaiden series is known for its “pure, primitive action” and high difficulty level, but as Ninja Gaiden 4 marks the series’ return after a 13-year-long hiatus, the developers also had to consider how the title will resonate with complete newcomers to the series. AUTOMATON recently talked to game directors Masakazu Hirayama and Yuji Nakao about how they handled difficulty settings for the new game.
“Since this will be the first title in our action game series in over 10 years, we want everyone – people who are new to the series, people who are new to action games, but also experienced action game players – to pick it up. That’s why we introduced more flexible difficulty design to the game,” Hirayama comments.
One of these difficulty settings is the “Hero Mode,” which, rather than simply lowering the difficulty of the game, gives you an “assisted” gameplay experience, with toggleable options like auto-guard and auto-dodge. As Hirayama explains, the mode was implemented as a way to allow players to gradually hone their skills. This means that, for example, if you want to practice your guarding, you can turn auto-dodge off but leave all the other assistance settings on, taking a step-by-step approach until you master specific mechanics. “But ultimately, we would be most happy if players experienced the signature feel of the Ninja Gaiden series through advancing their own skills and partaking in battles that are challenging but match the rhythm of their improvement,” Hirayama remarks.
The game also offers “Easy,” “Normal” and “Hard” difficulties that the player can freely choose among, and you don’t have to stick out to just one of them throughout your playthrough. Ninja Gaiden 4 lets you switch the difficulty before each of the chapters, so if you felt like you’ve improved, you could nudge up the difficulty for the following chapter, or tone it down in case you felt like the previous chapter was too hard. As always, after clearing the game, you can play NG+ in the infamous “Master Ninja” mode. However, as it marks your second lap through the game and assumes that you’ve already gained enough experience to give it a go, this mode is the most challenging, and won’t allow you to customize the difficulty in any way.
As Nakao comments, “It’s not like there’s just an easy mode which lets you effortlessly sweep through the game – we tuned it so that everyone gets to experience the signature raw combat of Ninja Gaiden.”
Ninja Gaiden 4 launches on October 21 for PC (Steam), PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
