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By many metrics The Ninja Saviors/Warriors (TNW) is nothing amazing, whether it be in the original arcade game, SNES remake, or remake of the remake. Five characters, the game is maybe an hour long depending on your skill level, two difficulties, and its really not built for coop despite the genre's history of it.
What it does do is god damn near perfect. The graphics are gorgeous, three different soundtracks to use which are all excellent, and an extremely well paced, well designed action game from beginning to end. The game is so neatly tied together its really hard to decide where to start.
I guess for starters: Its fun. It might not have Naughty Dog graphics but tossing a jeep at people, enemies waltzing into a stage hazard, or watching a dozen guys get annihilated in one combo or juggled by an explosive tank doesn't get old to me. There's a mix of unga bunga satisfaction, and "all according to plan" payoffs, all tied together neatly with a constant groove of action where your primal instincts and wrinkly brain are working in tandem.
The five characters in the game are controlled by a measly two buttons: jump and attack. Despite this, they feel the like the most unique characters out of any beat-em-up that I've played. On the surface, each character gets a basic button mash combo, blocking, and a super special move fuelled by a meter that you lose if you get knocked down. Outside of this, the characters have no other shared fundamentals; no blitz attacks, no offensive or defensive specials, even grabbing enemies can differ from character to character. What this means is every character branches in gameplay style almost immediately.
The characters might sound generic; your all rounder, your big body grappler, the fast guy, the weirdly precise and quirky character. They all do things differently from your average brawler though; Kunoichi might be an all-rounder but she can play keep-away like no other, and has enormous jumps that let her safely fly through the air before landing in someones grill to start the attack. Ninja has trouble getting going or closing distance, but everything he can do lets him keep that momentum going. Raiden is a gigantic robot that can turn into a bipedal boss-demolishing gun, and needs a unique button combo to turn around.
The enemies while I hesitate to call them the most unique things ever, they're just well designed. They're that perfect level of annoying as a brawler enemy should be, each requiring you to slightly adjust how you're playing until you kill it. Sliding, throwing, high and low attacks, ranged attacks, air attacks, side switching, teleporting, hell lets mix it in during the boss fights here and there. More or less TNW nails classic brawler enemy design, with each one having consistent strengths and weaknesses, shifting your strategy in the overarching fight as they spawn in, attack or die. Couple that with how unique each character plays, you'll be handling different enemies and by extension the fights in different ways as you play through the roster.
Level design is of course the understated make or break of every action game. If every level of TNW was Nuts.wad it wouldn't be very fun now would it? TNW is a strictly 2D game with no platforming, rarely constricts the play area, and has maybe 1 stage hazard per level. It focuses heavily on good placement of enemies, health pickups, and heavy objects to throw at squishy people. And it does so phenomenally. From simplicity, to constant mid-level action and chaos, it escalates into stiff fights, clever enemy spawns and timings, gauntlets with minimal health, and arrays of enemies creating chaos. TNW perfectly ramps up over its short run, asking for more and more as you fall deeper and deeper into the zone.
Its not without flaws though; As mentioned, TNW is a very small package. The majority of gamers (to my understanding) typically don't buy games under the assumption they'll play it a dozen or so times, getting better each time, and developing an understanding and appreciation for the design. They'll want the game to blow their balls off in one go, enough content to justify the buck, and probably drop it forever. Its reasonable, and to that end TNW is hard to recommend to anyone who knows they're not a fan of short arcade style games.
An odd point is this game feels like it has very erratic AI. Some people want their singleplayer games to be very consistent, and I get it. I really like the SNES version of The Ninja Warriors because its so predictable its like coming back to an old friend and all his old quirks. In this remake, the AI feels like one game it'll hang back constantly and the next will endlessly hound you to the bitter end. Personally I also like this because the unpredictability provides more of that raw first time action game experience I love.
You'll also notice I never mentioned the bosses in any detail. The AI is actually a problem here; In short, the AI doesn't allow the bosses to utilise all of their moves properly or when they should, sometimes resulting in them being a cakewalk and other times an obnoxious wall. Its easily the biggest disruption to the game's pacing. I don't think it ruins the game, but it is a bit of a shame considering how good they could've been. Just look at the SNES game where the bosses are a consistent obstacle every time.
The last real flaw is exclusive to this version of the game: Unless you like using arrow keys to move, the controls are really bad. I had to use Universal Key Remapper to change them to my preferred settings because the movement controls are hard-coded. I guess you're left with the choice of do you wanna suffer setting up an emulator and easily map controls, or just install it on Steam and suffer through remapping controls.
This review is almost more for me than for anyone else, but its for me because this is one of my all time favorites and I wanted to say why I love it. I have no nostalgia either, I played this shit for the first time in 2021. Its not a huge game, its not wildly experimental, it doesn't have an epic story. Its just an extremely solid little game I can boot up, pick a different character each time, and play an hour of engaging brawler goodness that never feels too slow or too fast. Its just immensely satisfying each and every single time, and it remains near and dear to me for being a game that has never, ever failed to entertain me.