Shadow of the Ninja: Reborn - Full playthrough - Hard Mode 1CC (no special weapons)

As if I'm not already a massive fan of everything Tengo Project are doing, their latest game is an arcade platformer, aka my absolute jam!

Objectively, I don't think everything in this game is great. Even if you accept the clunky controls (which are absolutely deliberate), some of the inputs are weird in a way that just seems poorly thought out, and cause me to occasionally mess up in ways that really shouldn't happen.
The game has a lot of attacks coming from off-screen and a generally really heavy memorization dependency, and while the extended wall-run seems like a cool hidden mechanic, the truth is that it's just really poorly explained in the manual, and the game actually requires you to pull it off on two occasions to avoid taking damage. It took me three full runs before I figured out how to do it :P

However I do not hold any of these things against the game. Plenty of my favourite action platformers share similar issues, and they are perfectly lovable regardless. In fact, Shadow of the Ninja Reborn could very likely be my favourite 2024 game.

The only thing I'm really missing is more RNG driven enemies, and a Hard Mode that changes things up more. This game's Hard Mode is barely different from Normal. Some enemies have additional movesets, or act a little faster, but never in a way that really matters much. The only difference I've noticed on the Hawk Guy boss is that he'll change his elevation during one attack that you'll likely only see once - and the final boss I think is actually easier on Hard Mode, because the slight difference in the platform layout means there are more viable platforms to stand on considering his attack patterns, even though there are fewer in total.