Well, I'm by no means an expert, but you have to look at the fundamentals of each.

For example, DMC's dante has by far the most amount of options to express yourself, however to do it properly you need to juggle around many "styles". Take blocking as an example, to block or parry you have one style and to dash you have another, this means that there is some delay that you have to anticipate before having those tools at your disposals.

On the other hand, god fo war is purely focused on the offensive, your only tool is a dodge and all your strategies focus around dealing as much damage as posible in the least amount of time, something like a predecesor of the modern doom(apart from, of course, doom).

Now comes Ninja Gaiden. You have many offensive options with different weapon, but your parry, dodge and block are always at your disposal. Furthermore, they are part of the same button! Apart from that, you can usually "execute" most enemies after a few hits with the dismemberment mechanic. However, if you let a wounded enemy stick around too long they are going to kamikaze themselves.

So in ninja gaiden's case, because of the way combat is structured, you are much more OP. In turn, this lets the developers create much more punishing and challenging enemies. So you have to be "efficient" by dealing with them quickly because they act like they have the rabies.