Ninja Gaiden, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles—it’s been a great year for ninja-based games, and the train keeps rolling with Shinobi: Art of Vengeance. Serving as the first title in 14 years following the last foray with Shinobi 3D on the Nintendo 3DS, Lizardcube, developers of Streets of Rage 4, bring this new fix to fans. Featuring the DNA and pedigree of that studio’s talents while being a fitting and true next step for the series, it’s a 2D action game resurgence that is not to be missed.

You are shinobi hero Joe Musashi. Following your village being burnt to ashes and your community and loved ones being turned to stone, you embark on a quest for revenge across vast lands. Across the ten or so hours you’ll spend with the campaign, you’ll go head-to-head with other ninja warriors, cybernetic soldiers, demons and horrific creatures and beasts that are the results of disastrous science experiments. You’re running the gamut on your quest for revenge, and your adventure will see you doing just about everything shy of heading to space. It’s a ninja-starring title that knows turning the dial up to 11 and meshing that traditional Japanese aesthetic with futurism just works and makes for a memorable experience.

I wish the story were de-emphasised more. Other recent examples of similar games have successfully woven a story in there that’s well-written and means something without getting in the way of the action-heavy fun. You simply need to look no further than Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound. Still, at the end of the day, at least you can zen out to the unbelievable spectacle that Art of Vengeance is offering.

While Shinobi is typically a stock standard level-based affair, Art of Vengeance uses this template, but also translates the experience into a quasi Metroidvania-esque title. What this means is some pretty hefty shakeups for the franchise; though still level-based and not all on one map, secret routes and collectables are gated by whether or not you have the right traversal upgrade or combat ability at a given time. The game is also a lot more combo-focused, and though that may cause alarm bells for some, it firmly fits into the series enough, while admittedly not being necessarily the direction more higher-budget, AAA series entries will take in the future. It’s made for great results here.

With fourteen stages to work through, there are a lot of goodies and exciting adventures awaiting around every corner. Players’ precision platforming skills will need to be at their absolute best, especially when it comes to the ever-demanding platform challenge gauntlet levels you can find through portals found within stages. Juxtaposing this, combat arenas will throw everything they’ve got at you, an almost endless assault of ground and flying enemies with different attack patterns to have you constantly on the move and sweating. Rewards for such sequences will get you valuable currencies to buy quintessential passive and active combat abilities, or even slowly build the pieces together to form a legendary weapon to use in place of your katana.

What this results in is a feeling of self-improvement and bettering yourself as a shinobi. Art of Vengeance facilitates this incredibly well by offering genuinely meaningful upgrades. Grapple Hooks and claws Joe can use to hook onto certain edged surfaces to manually climb up make for crucial traversal, which is later used in levels when it ups the ante and has you in thrilling and intense escape sequences, evading, say, a rising fire. Passive and Active abilities you earn can be swapped around on the fly to best equip you for any given context. Combos can be strengthened by purchasing permanent upgrades that mix up the animation and punchiness. Suddenly, a series of light attacks that perhaps only meekly chip away at a meaty foe’s health now send them into the sky for air juggling and more devastating strikes. Similarly, Ninpo attacks that require charged-up meter attacks get more exciting the more you go on. You graduate from a simple fire-breathing spell into one that lets Joe enter a water-like defensive stance that parries and strongly counters back the next blow he receives.

Shinobi is a delight, spectacle and feast for the eyes. Levels are very varied in their theming to set them apart and never provide a dull moment. One highlight level has you running across the rooftops of a near-future cyber Tokyo, seeing buildings reminiscent of the (now defunct) iconic big red Sega arcade, overt advertisements, billboards and all. Another sees you infiltrating a military facility where you’re climbing up scaffolding and snaking in and out of vents before slamming down and causing chaos and havoc on enemy soldiers that await below. Odd technologies and giant test tubes in the background of these levels house monstrous creations and create an extra foreboding feeling of dreading what can erupt from the corner of your eye and join the assault against you at any moment.

Yes, Shinobi: Art of Vengeance has a bigger focus on combat than before and a lot more moving parts than a stock standard game in the series. When you’re exploring the type of settings you are, though, this was always going to happen. When you’re experiencing retro-futurism in the environments, it’s going to translate to the artistic style and the minute-to-minute gameplay. This blend only lets up in small areas. The Metroidvania of it all works near flawlessly, though the map readability isn’t always the best. Though it aptly depicts areas of interest in a purple hue, indicating awaiting secrets, it doesn’t detail spots off the map where you can fall off its geography or where a void of nothingness awaits. This causes problems and annoyances when it comes to polishing up levels; several times, I noticed a point on a map I hadn’t unblurred, teleporting near that point of interest and taking the leap into that location… only to fall off into the void.

Lizardcube has cited that the inspiration for Art of Vengeance is largely the Mega Drive trilogy of Shinobi games. This devotion to the roots still shines through even with all the new modernities offered. In between ‘regions’ that are home to a set series of stages, you have these transitional stages where you’re speeding left to right, riding on a craft or vehicle, including a dog running across a wide open field of blossoming flowers as helicopter fire and missiles threaten to derail you. Most fittingly, there’s even a surfing level, a ripe throwback to Shinobi III specifically. With tight platforming and demanding combat sequences, longtime series fans are in good hands here and won’t be disappointed.

Last but not least, the game does what Shinobi does best, in offering you some thrillingly tough boss fights to work through. A giant face etched into a wall that was sending out giant rock pillars and other AoEs, a giant squid that thrashes about, fast-moving demon samurai… there’s no shortage of climactic fights. Many are hyper demanding. Many will have you trying multiple, if not dozens of times, until you nail their attack patterns and pull a clutch victory by the skin of your teeth. Almost all have you using every inch of a combat arena, dodging, ducking and zipping around as you feel yourself improving with when to get off potshots and when to play on the defensive. It’s all good, tense and pulse-racing stuff.

Shinobi: Art of Vengeance is another prime example of how games can blossom if you just trust in them. I can’t count on both hands how many beloved and special IPs are sitting by the wayside, as a publisher isn’t really sure what to do with them. I’ve got the answer for you: It’s what Lizardcube are doing here! It’s what The Game Kitchen did with Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound, and what Dotemu and Leikir Studio did with Metal Slug! Exciting advancements, revisitations and new fans await around every corner if more publishers give developers the keys to their kingdom and explore their properties. I say this with my whole chest: games industry, please do more of this.