The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors is a simple but fun return to the basics of the beat-em-up genre. The visuals are fantastic, and while the gameplay isn’t particularly deep or layered, it’s fun enough to satisfy players with a hankering for a classic beat-em-up experience.
The Ninja Saviors – Return of the Warriors
Developer: Taito and Natsume
Price: $30
Platform: Playstation 4 (reviewed), and Nintendo Switch
MonsterVine was supplied with a PS4 code for review.
Beat-em-ups are one of the most fun and easily accessible arcade genres on the planet. Few things can beat the feeling of punching and kicking your way through mobs of vile goons, whether you’re doing it alone or with a pal. Ninja Saviors encapsulates a lot of what makes beat-em-ups so fun, in both its gameplay and its aesthetics. This makes sense since The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors is a remaster of the 1994 SNES game The Ninja Warriors. This means it has all the charm from the era, as well as a bit of the era’s simplicity, for better or for worse.
Like with all beat-em-ups, Ninja Saviors is all about taking on large groups of enemies and big flashy bosses. You can play as one of five unique shinobi: Ninja, Kunoichi, Kamaitachi, Raiden, and Yaksha. Each looks more fierce and straight-out-of-the-90s than the last, which works perfectly for Ninja Saviors. The entire atmosphere feels as though it was pulled from a combination of 90s comics and films, which is fitting for a beat-em-up, as the genre was at its peak in that decade. Like with many other games of that time, Ninja Saviors isn’t particularly long, so the bulk of replayability comes from playing as different characters, going through the eight stages in Time Attack mode, and playing with friends.
Ninja Saviors largely takes place on one horizontal spatial plane. This allows for the up and down buttons to be used alongside the attack button to perform special attacks. These attacks can range from high-flying projectiles to screen-wide carpet bombings, which can make dealing with hordes of foes on your own much easier. While I do like this simplicity, it does feel somewhat limiting to be stuck going one of two directions (not counting upwards while jumping).
“The sprites are expressive and impeccably designed, with the player characters standing out as particularly fun to look at.“
That combined with the serviceable number of combos and special moves make Ninja Saviors feel a bit basic when compared to its contemporaries in the genre. This can be a positive or a negative quality depending on what you’re looking for in a beat-em-up, though I found myself wishing it was just a bit deeper.
Visually, Ninja Saviors is quite impressive. The sprites are expressive and impeccably designed, with the player characters standing out as particularly fun to look at. The environments are detailed and appropriate for the weird world of Ninja Saviors, boasting a harsh industrial feeling with just a bit of shlocky camp to tie it all together.
The Final Word
The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors is a fun, if not a bit basic, return to the glorious beat-em-ups of the ’90s. The visuals are fantastic, and the gameplay is overall quite fun, though a bit on the simpler side. Regardless, anyone who wants a hit of that classic beat-em-up goodness will quite like Ninja Saviors, especially if you’ve got friends who are down to beat up some robots with you.
MonsterVine Review Score: 4 out of 5 – Good
