Set in a near future Tokyo, “Ninja Gaiden 4” revolves around the young ninja, Yakumo, who seeks to summon and defeat the Dark Dragon, a malevolent entity that has spread the influence of the underworld over the city.
The game is rated M18 for strong violence and gore.
Played from a third person perspective, the player controls Yakumo to complete missions by exploring locations and fighting enemies which include ninjas, robots and supernatural creatures. Each location contains a stronger boss enemy which must be defeated to continue progress.
Combat is frenetic and fast-paced, with frequent depictions of strong violence as players use different weapons such as a katana, warhammer or claws to attack enemies. These result in characters being dismembered, decapitated and pulped with copious blood and bodily parts splattering on the walls and ground. Bloodstains accumulate on the body of the protagonist in the course of combat, and stylised closeups accentuate the violence when executing certain moves. Such portrayals of violence are appropriate under the M18 rating, where the Classification Guidelines allow “depictions of realistic violence, such as killing, maiming or causing other serious injury to humanoid characters.”
Some of the female characters wear costumes which expose a large amount of their cleavage, without any details of nudity. There is some use of coarse language which includes the expletive “f**k”.