Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja

System: Nintendo DS

Publisher: Atlus USA

Developer: Ninja Studio

Players: 1

Genre: Dungeon RPG (Rougelike)

ESRB: E10+ (Mild Fantasy Violence; Mild Language; Mild Suggestive Themes)

What if ninjas became out of work? If these stealthy assassins end up getting the pink slip all of a sudden after years of service, what would they do? Where would they go? How will they pay their inn rent? This odd scenario is pretty much the setting of Atlus USA’s Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja. Is this little cutie bring you a good time, or does she make you feel horrible?!

Story:

Izuna’s journey starts off when she and her other pack of ninjas suddenly become unemployed, because according to her, ninjas are “sooo yesterday!”. They end up finding a quaint little village, and believe they can settle down here. Unfortunately, Izuna carelessly touches the gem of the gods and ends up angering the six gods of the village. They end up corrupting the villagers, talking snipe and whatnot to our little heroine. Now, to set things right, she must find the gods and apologize to them. Of course, she’s not exactly the nicest girl in the world, so she’ll more likely have to defeat them. The story is quite basic, and ultimately, in terms of this type of RPG, it’s not all that important, really.

7/10

Design:

The structure of Izuna is actually quite basic. Traversing to the bottom of the dungeons and defeating the boss at the end is the bulk of the game. Although at first glance, it may look like a real time RPG, it is in fact turn based. Each move you make, including walking, uses up one turn (for each step in terms of walking). The enemies then take their turn of their moving or doing an action. This structure will take some getting used to for those who never played a game like this, but it is essential if you want to get through the exceedingly tough dungeons.

In addition to dungeon crawling, you also find various weapons and armor of which you can use to upgrade Izuna’s abilities. These can break, however, after an extended period of time, so if you don’t want to lose them, switch to other weapons or armor you have in your inventory or repair them using a repair talisman or going to the repair shop to fix them up. Talismans, as well, give you special abilities that you can use if you’re able to or give your weapons and armor stat bonuses and powers by sticking them on. Be sure to watch your weapon’s or armor’s capacity, however, as if you stick a talisman that exceeds the capacity of it, then it’ll break after a few more uses. You can raise their capacity by visiting another shop, but that costs money.

Izuna is a fairly lengthy game, but most of the length comes from how many times you end up retrying a dungeon you end up losing in. So, if you don’t like tough games, you best keep away from this one.

7.5/10

Gameplay:

Those of you usually having a stylus at hand when using your DS pretty much have to put it down for this one. Izuna has NO touch screen functions, even for menus. Much of the structure is a lot like a regular RPG. Gain experience by killing monsters, gain enough to level up, and so forth. Attacks, however, actually consume SP, as well as using talismans, so you have to make sure you have an item that restores your SP in case it starts to get low. Also, try your best NOT to be surrounded by enemies, as Izuna can’t take much punishment if your armor is not at very high stats. Of course, even if you’re surrounded, it is possible to turn the tide in your favor if you strategize at that moment. Remember, this is turn based, so they don’t move if you don’t make a move.

Izuna is very difficult, and if you don’t know how to think on your feet, be prepared to die… a LOT!! The punishment for dying is losing everything you have (except for experience gained). The game also saves automatically when you die, and if you try to reset the game when you’re in the brink of dying, you end up losing everything you gained (including experience) so that it’s like you died anyway. This, however, makes it even more rewarding when you finally manage to beat that dungeon you were stuck on for so long. Also, despite the harsh difficulty, the options it has for you makes it feel like it’s your own fault for not planning ahead. It also uses the top screen as you map and status, of sorts, and when you’re in large corridors, you can see any enemies coming toward you that is not within screen range on the bottom screen, giving you even more of an edge. In short, it enforces preparedness and rational thinking, and those that stick with it will, eventually, be rewarded with great gameplay.

8.0/10

Presentation:

Graphic wise, Izuna isn’t really much of a looker. It looks a lot like a GBA game ported to the DS, with simplistic sprites and animations, as well as backgrounds. During conversations, however, it does display great artwork on the top screen, and because it’s unobstructed by the gameplay at all, you get to see an almost full body artwork, which is quite nice.

The audio front has nice melodies that sound like something from a real ninja flick, and they are orchestrated quite well. The voice of Izuna is also nicely Japanese, even though you’ll only get samples. The sound effects are simplistic but good, though.

It’s biggest strength, however, is the translation Atlus USA has provided. Each character, especially Izuna herself, has character dialogue that is just dripping with personality. They all have their problems and inferiority complexes, and the well translated script makes it feel worth reading, just to see how these guys play out their lines. On the official website, you also get a sample of the writing via little comic strips that they set up.

While the graphics are quite a low point for this game, the music and the translation more than make up for this little oversight.

8.0/10

Izuna was mostly overlooked due to the various games with the Final Fantasy name arriving on the DS, but those that have played it know that this game has a charm that can’t be matched. If it’s a deep storyline and moderate difficulty gameplay you want, Izuna doesn’t have the arsenal for that, but if you are tough enough to take on the dungeons and enjoy extremely witty dialogue, give this girl a shot at your heart. Just make sure that she behaves, all right?!

Overal: 8.0