The game-play is very simple and even the story line is not to complex, so it’s perfect for kids. With that in mind I was highly intrigued by this game. Since there isn’t much to absorb story wise you get right into the game play. The training is very quick and the tutorial doesn’t take too long.
The story begins when an old ninja master explains how the force of nature has been disrupted and needs to be investigated. He sends his best ninja to see what is going on; when the ninja does not return he continues sending ninjas to find out what has happened to the previous ones until he is left with only two ninja’s, Hiro and his friend Kuto.
This is where you come in; you play Hiro, a magically talented ninja who is the last option in the temple of ninjas to ever be sent on such a quest. You bring along your cohort Kuto who is a bit rotund and carries a mighty hammer. To switch back and forth from characters is quite easy, with one hot key and selection with the mouse you can quickly switch from one ninja to the other. This will come in handy, because the rest of the game you will be saving your friends and switching from one to the next, depending on what skill set you may need.
Combat is pretty straight forward, you have 3 attacks, a main attack, a secondary attack (block breaker), and if you’re playing as Hiro, you will have magical attacks that can be used. It’s useful to note that Hiro is the only character that can use magic in the game. In order to learn magic you need to locate Kuji shrines throughout levels. These shrines can be activated and grant you a scroll to learn a new spell. You learn the typical fireball, lightning blast, and wind attack, but you also learn cool tricks like how to turn yourself into a shrubbery to avoid detection, or posses the small animals you freed.
I started this game out on the keyboard, because that is my usual preference, but this is not a game that optimizes the keyboard layout. I recommend using an Xbox game controller because it’s as if this game was built specifically for it. Yes, you can get by with the keyboard but it becomes incredibly frustrating later in the game.
As you navigate through multiple levels you end each stage with a boss fight. These boss fights are more quicktime events then actual button mashing fights, but they are also quite funny with tongue-in-cheek humor that is good for an honest laugh. This is a nice break for your carpal tunnel; also the fights are quite creative. As you get in range of the boss or after the boss has performed a certain action, you will be prompted with an icon on the screen indicating which button needs to be pressed to initiate the corresponding action. Hilarity ensues.
If the fighting is not enough for you there’s also the find the item/kuji shrine side game that players can participate in. During your travels you will come across plants, caged animals, idols etc…at the end of each level you will see a scoreboard that tells you how many items you collected and the total items in located in the level. If you decide you want to, you can stay and find, or you can just move on.
The game is beautiful to look at, while the ambient sounds and music make me want to meditate in a field of zen tea.
Overall, this game may look and seem a bit easy, but with so many complex games out there it’s really nice just to take a break and really enjoy a game like this. It’s a kids game, that’s obvious, but we were all that age once. It’s good to see games out there still capturing people’s imagination, and creating something new and fresh at the same time. I highly recommend picking it up and spending some time with it, or even better, get it for that niece/nephew of yours and you can tell everyone your just helping them get to the next level!
