Ryu Hayabusa. The dragon ninja. Master friend killer and off hand, the character I know best out of everyone on this list. But what makes this killer of the shadows so great? We're about to find out.

"Blow me away" by Breaking Benjamin

Backstory: Ryu's clan are direct descendants from the Dragon God, whose fang also happens to be Ryu's single deadliest weapon. As for Ryu himself, he was raised to be a great and powerful ninja by the time he could crawl, far exceeding his clan's expectations and saving the world from supernatural and god-like threats at least 3 times.

Speed: Arguably Ryu's greatest area of physical abilities, Ryu Hayabusa is much faster than any regular human should ever be. He is fast enough run on walls, which requires AT MINIMUM 400 miles per hour. And before any of you say only by jumping to other walls, in the game Warrior's Orochi 3, in which Ryu was a guest character, he ran along a wall for give or take 10 feet to avoid attacks from Kiyomori Taira. He is also capable of dodging missiles and the following explosions. An explosion's detonation can reach up to 2,000 meters per second, translation: 4,470 miles per hour, which is slightly faster than MACH 5. Also, while mostly a gameplay element which isn't NECESSARILY canon, Ryu can use a technique called the Flying Swallow, where he jumps into the air and flies forward in a flash of light and trail of afterimages to decapitate weak enemies and cause serious damage to stronger enemies, meaning in short bursts, Ryu can reach the speed of light.

Agility & reflexes: Ryu also has lightning fast reflexes, capable of dodging air to ground lightning from both Alexei, Greater Fiend with total control over lighting and the statue of liberty after Alexei possessed it. In addition to this, he is also able to dodge laser attacks from the Archfiend, which is basically the dark opposite of god and the goddess in Ninja Gaiden 3 as he was running directly towards her, so in addition to very briefly moving at the speed of light, he can also dodge things moving that fast. He is also incredibly agile, able to dodge and flip out of the way of almost anything, once again, including missiles and anti-aircraft bullets. He can also wield massive and incredibly heavy weapons while still keeping his balance and agility.

Durability: Ryu is incredibly durable, surviving things that no other human (and by extension, most hack and slash characters) never could. He has been sliced in half from shoulder to hip shortly after having been impaled, getting grabbed and crushed by titanic fiends that he barely fit into the hand of, walking through lava, brutal battles with god-level beings that, as shown by cutscenes, he had clearly been injured during, surviving the Archfiend exploding, which destroyed the top of Mt. Fuji while he was gravely injured and completely exhausted, yet came out completely fine with no visible injury, being caught in an explosion and buried under rubble, fighting a number of mutated monsters while the floor was covered in acid and The Grip of Murder, a curse placed upon him in which the thousands of souls he's killed with the Dragon Sword slowly kill him from the inside. If you put "levels" on durability, his best feat, the explosion of Mt. Fuji while he was already badly injured and exhausted puts him on at least island level, meaning it takes something that would destroy an island to kill him.

Skill: Ryu is a master martial artist, trained in the way of combat since infancy and has mastered a number of martial arts, although the only one directly specified is Hayabusa style ninjutsu, a variant of regular ninjutsu passed down in his clan for generations, which he has completely mastered to the point even his teachers were shocked and he has even been given the titles of "Ultimate Ninja" and "Singular Super Ninja" and it has been implied multiple times that he is the best ninja in the world. He is a deadly hand-to-hand combat, but is also a master of weaponry and can use just about anything as a weapon, even with no previous knowledge or use of said weapon, as seen in the first ninja gaiden game reboot if you have him pick up Rachel's War Hammer after returning to the destroyed church. His ruthless, unemotional and battle-hardened demeanor along with a rigorous upbringing also playing a key role in his ability to fight, as he does not hesitate to kill his enemy and won't be stopped by sentiment or show them mercy, almost always ensuring he won't have to deal with them again.

Weapons: As stated before: Ryu is a master of literally any weapon he picks up and has a vast arsenal of death so that he'd never run out of options in a fight, such as the longer and lighter dual katanas, allowing for swift strikes at longer range and twice the attacking speed, his lunar staff, which can harness the power of the moon, giving him extended reach, good speed and decent crowd control abilities, so he can hit enemies anywhere from 0 to 180 degrees (anywhere in front of him), the Vigoorian flail, invented by ancient warriors that are essentially bladed nunchaku, giving him their incredible speed combined with deadly sharp blades that despite their short range, allow him to rip his enemies to shreds in a matter of seconds, the Eclipse Scythes forged by werewolves in hell and hardened with the blood of the humans, giving him great range and power despite a small loss in speed, the kusari-gama, a scythe connected to a heavy iron weight from a chain, giving Ryu great reach and speed with great striking power and with his skill, he can spin it in a full 360 degrees to ensure he is safe on all sides and of course, his claws and greaves, allowing him to get up-close and personal, attacking with great speed and power to make up for the lack of range. In addition, he always carries a large number of shurikens with multiple uses and variations, such as explosive shurikens which stab into the enemy, then explode for great damage, or the windmill shuriken, a really big quadruple bladed shuriken capable of decapitating enemies, then coming back to him like a boomerang. He also normally carries the Fiend's Bane Bow, a weapon passed down in his family for generations and is as accurate as a modern assault rifle, or he can use the Howling Cannon, a MASSIVE flintlock rifle that, as its name implies, is much more like a cannon that, despite the weight and heavy kick of the weapon, can take the upper half of a human sized target and take the limbs off of anything bigger. But all of these pale in comparison to his main weapon: The Dragon Sword, carved from the fang of the dragon god, it is Ryu's strongest weapon, indestructible by normal physical means and when combined with the eye of the dragon jewel, it becomes the True Dragon Sword, a divine blade of ultimate power that just by being connected to the eye of the dragon jewel, stretches and warps the very fabric of reality. Hard to contend with that.

Ninpo: Ryu is a master of manipulating his spiritual energy and can do so in a manner of many offensive and defensive ways, such as creating and throwing multiple fireballs, creating blades of wind to slice his opponents to pieces, using his bio-electrical current to shoot lightning and fry his foes, create a BLACK HOLE that mutilates anything in the direction Ryu threw it in (let's see Strider stop THAT shit), create the Torn Sky Blast, basically his family's kamehameha passed down for generations capable of obliterating attack choppers, healing himself, holding himself together after getting sliced in half and pulling himself back from the brink of death and finally, surrounding himself with a massive serpent dragon of fire, incinerating anyone anywhere near him and allowing him to attack the goddess when she towered over him. He even has the power to, albeit briefly, STOP TIME.

Strength: Much like the rest of his stats, Ryu's strength is far beyond that of a normal human. He can throw around humans and demons with ease, when using his Izuna Drop technique, he throws enemies about 10 feet in the air, before jumping up to them, grabbing them and taking them an extra 5 feet into the air before spinning and pile-driving them into the ground hard enough to splatter their skull, meaning simply by throwing you into the air, spinning a little bit and slamming you into the ground, he generates up to at least 15 pounds per square inch, which is required to shatter the human skull, but that is one of his LEAST impressive feats. As for others, Ryu regularly blocks attacks from superhuman and even god-level beings, creatures the size of dinosaurs, at one point a mechanically enhanced dinosaur and even blocked 2 separate strikes, one being a downward strike, from the goddess, who moments before he blocked her attacks destroyed a skyscraper even taller than her with one shot. Thanks to my friend and numbers expert Insieme Per Lat Vittoria, we can calculate this likely puts Ryu in the million ton range: the goddess probably weighed at least 5000 tons and the sword strike came from above her head in a second and came down at about 50 feet per second. She also leaned into the strike after Ryu blocked it. The sword she used, a massive and purified Dragon Sword that was ripped out of Ryu's body, likely weighed about 1000 tons. The mere act of holding up the sword means Ryu can lift and hold up to 1000 tons. Insieme's rough calculation is as follows: a 1000 ton sword, held by a 1000 ton arm (your arm weighs about %10 of your total weight), dropping at 50 feet per second, which is 50 km/h, that's at least 100,000 to a million tons BEFORE factoring in the goddess' total weight. With the amount of estimating we had to do, we roughly estimated Ryu's strength to be 240 million tons, assuming that the goddess is also made from some form of rock or mineral and her head appears to be metal. Also, the goddess was able to consume the energy of nukes launched at her, yet Ryu was able to cut her down with one attack, meaning his attacks are stronger than NUKES.

In the end, while not being the fastest or most powerful, Ryu Hayabusa is probably the most balanced and skilled of all hack and slash characters, earning him a 10 out of 10.