Review by Durffen

Is Team Ninja’s Ninja Gaiden DS effort successful? Find out in our review.

The old Ninja Gaiden games, as everyone should know, started out on the NES with 3 entries, with a couple of games on handhelds such as the Game Boy and Game Gear. Since then, Ninja Gaiden reappeared on consoles with Ninja Gaiden for Xbox. Ninja Gaiden is now going back to a handheld, but with a very different control scheme.

The story for Ninja Gaiden is somewhat simple, but with a little bit of a back story. The story takes place about six months after the Xbox’s Ninja Gaiden, which in this game is referred to as “The Dark Dragon Blade Incident”. Ryu Hayabusa is in the forest sparring with who I would call one of his students, Momiji. After sparring, Ryu heads back to Hayabusa Village, and Momiji is kidnapped by a member of the Black Spider Ninja Clan. The leader of the Black Spider Ninja Clan, Obaba, hopes to obtain the Eye of the Dragon. After desperately searching for Momiji, Ryu transports to an area called Tairon, where he fights a dragon, and finds what is a Dark Dragon Stone. Ryu is informed that there are eight stones, and if all are gathered, they would unleashed an incredible power, far stonger then the Dark Dragon Blade. Each stone leads Ryu to a different area, where another stone is located. Ryu must find all 8 stones to locate the Black Spider Ninja Clan’s hide-out, and save Momiji.

Boss designs are awesome, but they are just way too easy.

The very first thing anyone will notice about Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword is that you must play the game with your DS side-ways like a book. Almost all the controls are done on the touch screen, with the exception of blocking, which is done by pressing any button on the DS. The controls are very unique and work very well. Touch anywhere on the screen to have Ryu run in that direction. Tap anywhere in the screen to throw shurikens, slide the stylus up to jump, and slide the stylus down to attack with your sword. You can perform different combos depending on what scrolls you have. An interesting feature is the Ninpo. There are 7 Ninpo’s, 6 of which can be purchased from Muramasa, the master sword smith. When you tap the Ninpo icon, the outline of a Sanskrit letter must be traced with the stylus. Successfully tracing the letter will activate the appropriate Ninpo magic. These attacks are very fun to use, and very powerful. One Ninpo is a fire ball, in which you use the stylus to guide the fire ball to incinerate enemies. Another is the lighting Ninpo, in which where ever you tap on the screen, a bolt of lighting will come striking down. Once again, very fun and very powerful.

The touch controls work very well, and almost all of the game is straight forward intense action, with enemies constantly coming at you through out the game, which can be repetitive, but is still very fun. Some of the platforming parts of the game aren’t the best, but the non stop action is where the fun is at. During battles, you gain these yellow orbs, which you use to buy things from Muramasa, increase your health bar, power up your sword, get new techniques, and get Ninpo magic. Once again, the touch controls work very well, and slashing through a constant barrage of enemies has never seemed so fun. There are also some little puzzles to solve, but they are relatively easy, and some may not even consider them puzzles, but I have nothing else to call them. But they are nothing anywhere as near as a Zelda puzzle.

Don’t deny it. For a DS game, this looks great.

Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword is also one of the best looking games on DS. Maybe even better then Phantom Hourglass, but that’s very arguable. The character models are very well done, and the backgrounds are 2-D rendered, but it still looks great and fits in with the 3-D characters, and the animation is very smooth. Team Ninja did a great job pushing the DS hardware. It even runs at 60 frames per second.

The game takes a rough 5 - 6 hours to complete. But if you feel like going back, you can play through on the unlockable “insanely hard” difficulty. You can also submit your karma score to the online leader boards through Nintendo WiFi Connection. You can also see other top players’ stats such as their completion time, karma score, and how many defeats (game overs) they have.

There are a couple of flaws in the game though. For a Ninja Gaiden game, it is really short and easy. The constant slash-em-up game play is fun, but can be really repetitive. The bosses look awesome, but are very easy.

I highly recommend this game to any DS owner looking for a new game to play. It’s one of the best DS games to date, and a great third party game.

• Presentation - 9.0
  • To make it short, Team Ninja’s first DS effort is top notch.
• Gameplay -8.5
  • The endless slice-em-up gameplay is great, especially with touch controls. But, it can be repetitive at times.
• Graphics - 9.0
  • One of the best looking DS games to date. Great animation, great character models, and the 2-D backgrounds fit in perfectly.
• Sound - 8.0
  • There isn’t to much to say about the sound track, but there are some great sound effects.
• Replay Value - 6.5
  • Unless you feel like playing through a second time on the harder difficulty, there isn’t really any reason to go back to it.

• Overall - 8.5

Discuss this review and more at the Wii Live Forums

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 at 9:28 pm and is filed under News by Durffen, DS, Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.