It's supposed to evoke Ninja Gaiden, but tbh I never really played that so I can't say 100%. What I can say though is that this game is fucking sick. Tight controls, great abilities that mix movement and attacks and INSPIRED level design make the main character incredibly fun to control and you're always acutely aware that if you fuck up. it's not the game that did it, but you. There's great variety in level styles, from a cheerful bamboo forest to a Lovecraftian cosmos hellscape that gets as scary as pixelart can get everything's in there. Bosses are fun, varied and almost all revelant to the story later. Speaking of story: It's really, really good. Not just "competently presented" good, but legit different and interesting. The twists and well-written dialogue always had me wanting to know what comes next and the shopkeeper character is delightful. One thing I saw that others complained about was the backtracking. The thing here is that they misrepresent it. You travel back to older areas to get some "things", only that firstly these "things" are in parts of these areas heretofore unreachable(and in the first traversal one even wonders if one gets to come back to reach them) and on top of that 3 of the 10 """things""" are in COMPLETELY new areas. This backtracking also gives you the chance to uncover EVERY secret you missed the first time so it's an overall good thing. All in all game is good, and if I discovered it when it came out it would've been my GOTY 100% and I say that as someone who has real actual nostalgia for 8-bit(playing Dendy in 90s Russia GANG GANG).
