SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance Review

SEGA's Shinobi franchise has spent decades waiting for a proper modern revival, and it found an unusually well-suited studio to deliver one. Lizardcube, best known for Streets of Rage 4 and the acclaimed Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap remake, brings the same hand-painted, richly animated art style to Joe Musashi's return, and reviewers overwhelmingly agree the presentation lands. Where opinion splits is on structure: SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance asks players to move fluidly between intense combat arenas and extended platforming stretches, and not everyone finds that combination as seamless as the studio intended.

Combat that rewards learning its rules

The strongest, most consistent praise across reviews centres on the combat system itself. Reviewers describe genuine purpose behind every tool in Joe Musashi's kit, distinct shuriken types, ninpo abilities, combo strings, and meter-building attacks that reward players who study their interactions rather than mash through encounters. One detailed review pushes back directly against the idea that the game is about simply "whittling down enemies until you can execute them," arguing that framing misses what makes the combat work, in much the same way that treating Doom Eternal as a simple shooter misses its design intent. When the game commits fully to a combat encounter, locking players into an arena packed with enemies, reviewers consistently call the results outstanding, with some ranking it among the best 2D action combat in recent years. The visual side backs that up: layered parallax backgrounds create a sense of depth reviewers repeatedly describe as looking three-dimensional despite being hand-drawn 2D art, and the game runs at an uncapped framerate that several players single out as a welcome departure from other recent 2D revivals.

When platforming gets in the way

The friction shows up when combat gives way to traversal. Several reviewers describe extended platforming gauntlets, timed jumps, moving hazards, and exploration-driven stretches, that they found tedious rather than engaging, with one negative review estimating that as much as 90 percent of certain stretches of the game consists of "endless, tedious platforming" rather than the combat the game is otherwise celebrated for. A more measured, detailed review frames this as a structural tension between two different design philosophies coexisting uneasily in one game: a combat-focused half that wants to be a tight arena brawler in the mold of Bayonetta or Doom Eternal, and an exploration-focused half chasing the hoppy, momentum-driven feel of something like Celeste. According to that review, the two halves rarely reinforce each other, and level design sometimes flattens out to accommodate both, producing geometry that's neither satisfying to traverse nor packed with meaningful combat encounters. Not every reviewer experiences this as a serious flaw; many describe the platforming as a pleasant surprise or a welcome nod to the series' Game Gear entries, which similarly required revisiting earlier areas with new abilities. But the split is real, and it's one of the most consistent points of disagreement across the review sample.

A loving tribute with a late-game gut check

Nostalgia runs deep through player reactions, and reviewers familiar with the Genesis-era Shinobi games in particular describe the experience in reverent terms. Iconic sequences get faithful callbacks, including a chase sequence reworked from horseback to a wolf pursuit, a returning underwater stage, and a falling-rocks sequence lifted directly from Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master, all wrapped around the return of Joe Musashi himself as protagonist. Yuzo Koshiro's music draws mostly positive reactions, though a handful of reviewers feel it doesn't quite match the intensity of tracks like the Revenge of Shinobi's Chinatown theme that defined the originals. Difficulty is another point of note: several reviewers describe the game as comparatively forgiving through its early and middle stretches before a sharp spike in its final levels catches them off guard, a swing some found exhilarating and others found jarring. The story itself draws little discussion either way, functional and simple, existing mainly to string action sequences together, though a few reviewers single out the game's villain as more memorable than the plot surrounding him. A handful of reviews also note the total stage count feels on the short side even accounting for DLC content and the game's boss rush mode, suggesting the experience, while polished, doesn't overstay its welcome so much as it ends before some players are ready for it to.

Who this is for, and where it's headed

The review sample skews heavily toward players with a direct history with the Genesis and Game Gear Shinobi games, and that context shapes a lot of the goodwill on display. More than one reviewer frames their enjoyment explicitly through a nostalgia lens, describing the game less as a faithful recreation of 1990s Shinobi specifically and more as a broader tribute to the feel of SEGA's arcade-action output from that era, and several openly hope its reception encourages the publisher to revisit other dormant properties like Altered Beast or Golden Axe with the same treatment. That context matters for setting expectations: players coming in cold, without that specific nostalgia, seem to weigh the platforming-versus-combat tension more heavily in their overall verdict than longtime series fans do. Accessibility options also draw a mention or two, with a selectable hardcore difficulty mode for veterans and a standard mode some reviewers found comparatively undemanding, particularly against the current wave of tough 2D action games like Nine Sols and Hollow Knight: Silksong. On the value side, reviewers note the developers had signalled ongoing post-launch content plans at release, a detail that tempers some of the criticism around the stage count feeling light, since the game's roadmap suggests SEGA and Lizardcube see this as an evolving package rather than a one-and-done release.

Final Verdict

SHINOBI: Art of Vengeance succeeds most emphatically as a combat game, delivering some of the sharpest, most intentional 2D action design of recent years wrapped in genuinely stunning hand-drawn presentation from a studio that clearly understands the assignment. Its platforming half is a harder sell, drawing real and repeated criticism for pacing that interrupts rather than complements the fight, even as plenty of players embrace it as a faithful nod to the series' more exploration-driven entries. For fans of SEGA's classic ninja and the studio's prior work on Streets of Rage 4, it's an easy recommendation with a clear-eyed caveat: expect brilliance in the arenas and a more divisive experience everywhere else.