The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors (Switch)

In 1987, a sidescrolling action arcade game called The Ninja Warriors was released in Japan. In 1994, a beat ’em up reimagining of the game would hit the Super Nintendo, and while that was called The Ninja Warriors in the U.S., it had the much funnier name The Ninja Warriors Again in Japan. Then, for it’s 25th anniversary, the formula would once again be tinkered with by adding new things like co-op, and while the U.S. got the long name of The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors, we were once again one-upped by the silly practicality of Japan’s naming conventions for the series, the latest take on the series going for the name The Ninja Warriors Once Again in its country of origin.

 

While the story of its names across the years is rather humorous, the game itself is a pretty serious action game if you look past the fact that all the violence being dished out is perpetrated by ninja androids. In the plot, an unusual man named Banglar has taken control of the world, his huge armies and mechanical servants making the Earth a miserable place to live. A rebel named Mulk seeks to oppose him, but his forces don’t seem strong enough to win the day. The last hope of these rebels is to send in a group of mechanical ninjas to hopefully defeat Mulk’s forces and reach the man himself, these Ninja Saviors being programmed solely for this task and ready to die trying if necessary.

There are five playable ninja androids in The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors, two of which are unlockable, and they all play significantly different from each other. One is simply named Ninja, and while he is the bulkiest of the three main ninjas and suffers for it with limited jumping and speed, he also packs an incredible boost ability that lets him launch across the screen to deliver powerful blows. His nunchaku give him a range option as well, practically being the only way he can hit any flying enemies he comes across. Kamaitachi is named for a mythical creature who rode in whirlwinds and slashed people with the scythes on its arms, and the robot named for it here is quite a good fit for that approach, leaping about and lunging his bladed arms about the battlefield for a fast approach to fighting. Kunoichi settles into the middle, having less specialization but still packing shurikens and a sword so she’s an able and fairly agile fighter. Completing the game on different difficulties can unlock the final two warriors, and they’re even more drastically different. Yaksha is a small little ninja who makes up for normally short range attacks when her arms extend out and hit enemies from afar, Yaksha even able to launch herself about by snagging the ground and slingshotting herself forward. Raiden is glorious though, the final ninja and hardest one to unlock an absolute juggernaut who not only dominates the sidescrolling action with his enormous body, but he packs plenty of highly destructive moves and the ability to transform into a walking turret.

 

While all the characters pack regular attacks useful for the 2D fighting action, there is a battery meter below your health bar that gradually charges up as you play, and it has a few potential uses. Let it get filled the top, and your character can release a screen-covering shockwave sure to damage any foe who is giving you trouble. With some enemies who require special approaches to safely damage such as the enemy robots who either need to be attacked from behind or grabbed and thrown, releasing a burst of energy is a great way to knock them down and give you time to get where you need to be to deal more damage when they’re back up. However, taking damage can rob you of the meter, so it might be better to use small chunks of the charging battery to unleash special attacks. These enhanced versions of things like Ninja’s nunchaku or Kamaitachi’s aerial slashes can be used for similar reasons as the shockwave, just with more limited versatility. In two player co-op this meter is shared, but so long as you are cooperating, holding enemies at bay to build it up can be an excitedly tense bit of battling, and coordinating when to unleash its power adds a layer of strategy to executing your special moves.

 

Funnily enough, two player co-op also has you share a health meter, and after my co-op partner also tried to play Natsume’s other Switch remake Wild Guns: Reloaded with me before we realized how poorly its lives and continues were structured, she had joked that this game made by the same development team would have both players sharing a single life and a single health bar. Surprisingly, despite this sounding like a worst case scenario, the health bar for this singular shared life is large enough that players can make errors without dooming the team and health pick-ups do pop up on occasion. The difficulty is tuned quite well where you still feel the impact of the damage you’re taking but you aren’t going to agonize over it, mainly because it balances out the tough enemy groups you face by having reasonable but not overly forgiving checkpoints in the game’s eight stages. While going for a high score is best saved for replaying levels individually or going alone, The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors is an excellent choice for a co-op beat ’em up because it knows how hard to push to keep things challenging and engaging but gives you the relief of knowing you can get back into those tough battles from a reasonable place.

The excellent checkpointing is especially true for boss battles, the game making sure to put one before the tougher fights or making sure to cap off a string of difficult battles with regular foes with a respawn point so that you don’t have to push your way through it all over again. The adventures of the Ninja Saviors may be only eight levels in total, but the sections in them are often fairly sizeable and action-packed. The total game probably only hits around 2 hours when not counting deaths and continues, but the pacing does well to make sure each level is still providing new challenges throughout. Traveling through military bases, laboratories, and ruined cities with plenty of objects laying around to throw at your attackers, there are interesting backdrops to be found for the action and ones that influence certain battles and hazards like missiles dropping in from the sky and dangerous propellers to avoid. Some levels go for more defined settings like the ruined mall, a high rise with an old-fashioned Japanese aesthetic, and even the White House, these more distinct locations adding even more personality to the places you’re going through in your mission to stop this terrible world leader.

 

The enemies and bosses are an excellent fit for the action as well, encouraging smart battling more than even your typical well-designed beat ’em up. Being locked on a 2D plane might make you want to jump around your enemies often, but they’re often trying to pull the same tricks, meaning you can’t just wildly leap into them to try and get free damage. Little guys with long Wolverine-like claws make use of their small size to slip under attacks and bowl themselves into you. Gunners and knife-throwers pester you from afar but their projectiles can be ducked if you can’t get to them. However, this might mean you can be hit by the more aggressive fighters like the martial artists as you try to be defensive. Large grapplers rely on their staying power to harangue you as you deal with flighty and agile foes like the twin katana wielding ladies or the surprisingly capable businessmen. There are definitely some fairly plain foes to easily deal with, but at other times the tall robots come in and complicate fights with their presence, the player asked to figure out how to work around the foes onscreen as safely as possible so they can deal with the attacks of the tougher foes without being ambushed by a pesky one.

 

Smart battery usage and the right attacks will help you through the tougher battles without there being so many that it gets exhausting, and the bosses at the end also carry on that trend of asking for smart fighting without it being too demanding. The first boss is a hulking titan as large as Raiden, but effectively managing his attention and your positioning means you can avoid his large limbs. The boss with a chainsaw can be intimidating, but combo him at the right time and his blade won’t be so dangerous. Some foes are handled excellently by having two players on either side, but even alone you can work out the strategies for gimmicky bosses like the invisible warrior or the supernaturally strong martial artist. The final boss can’t even be hurt by traditional means, the player tested here the most as they must show an understanding of the fight mechanics, draw on their skill at avoiding danger, and utilize the familiarity of the normal foes being thrown at you en masse to finally claim a very satisfying victory despite the somewhat pessimistic note the game’s plot ends on.

THE VERDICT:  The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors, both in single player and co-op, has a strong understanding of what it takes to make a side-scrolling beat ’em up thrilling. Movement and positioning is vital to success, your attacks have unique range advantages that are balanced well by being tied to battery usage or execution speed, and the checkpointing and health bar are just generous enough to keep players going after a death without neutering the game’s satisfying difficulty and tough enemy design. Each character has unique advantages even though two of the most interesting are relegated to unlocks, but no matter which warrior you end up as, the good mix of strategic battles and crunchy action keeps the game challenging but not overwhelming.

 

And so, I give The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors for Nintendo Switch…

A GREAT rating. It’s rather surprising that Wild Guns: Reloaded and The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors came from the same development house, because one absolutely fails miserably at its co-op play and the other pulls it off marvelously. Rather than the shared health and battery bars being a nuisance, it encourages coordinated teamwork to survive and make the best use of your power boosts. Even on your own, that battery meter is an interesting addition that asks you if you want a short-term gain or if you’d rather hold onto a strong move to get you out of tight spots or give you an edge against a strong enemy. Having each playable character feel quite different also means it’s easy to find one who clicks with your approach to the action. No one feels like they’ve been unjustly limited either, Ninja able to surge across the screen to make up for his otherwise limited mobility and the lithe ninjas able to combo foes quickly to overcome lower general damage outputs. There probably is more room in the space of the game’s eight stages to further explore the ways enemies can be paired up and some foes could be better if they had more involved fights like the final boss, but The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors still provides plenty of exciting battles in its runtime and ones that won’t hold back so that progress feels well-earned rather than achieved through brute force.

 

With its original Japanese title being the seemingly lazy The Ninja Warriors Once Again and its English title a little bloated, it might seem like this remake of a reimagining from 25 years ago might be destined for being a decent beat ’em up at best, but this is definitely a case where constant refinement has lead to the end product being a high quality version of what the series has been trying to accomplish. Not too mindless and not too brutal, this was certainly a glorious return of the Ninja Warriors franchise.