Izuna: The Legend of the Unemployed Ninja is a quirky dungeon-crawler for the DS.
The game puts players in the shoes of Izuna, a Ninja who, because of the lack of any real conflicts, has been fired. She, her sister, Shino, her Grandboss, and her slave Mitsumoto depart and arrive at a small village. Long story short, she ends up angering the gods and having to go through a series of dungeons in order to beat them into submission, thus forcing them to remove a curse they placed upon the village.
The game's storyline is one of its weak points, but it is salvaged by amazing dialogue. The game's localization seems to be very well done, and a lot of the humor manages to remain true to its sources. There hasn't, however, been much dialogue in the game so far.
The gameplay itself is pretty...interesting. Most of the game takes place inside dungeons. The enemies in the dungeons do not move unless Izuna does, so it's necessary to use obstacles and choke points to destroy enemies. The enemies seem fairly overpowered, especially at the beginning of the game, so expect to die often. Izuna can pick items up off of the dungeon floor, but she loses all her possessions if she dies. On top of that, the game also autosaves each and every time a player dies, making it impossible to revert to an earlier save to regain lost possessions. There are a few items that allow players to send items into storage if they die, but these are rather rare and
don't seem to work every time, making a lot of the game's exploration a hassle as players continually die due to lack of any good equipment. But one upside is that dungeons are randomly generated, so they are new each time the player enters.
Overall the presentation is pretty good, but nothing special. The graphics are suitable, but rather dull, especially after seeing some other recent games really push the DS. The music is all right, but nothing great. The sound effects are average, but nothing amazing; they're simply suitable.
So far, Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja seems like a rather bland dungeon crawl with amazing writing and quirky humor, but check back in soon for the final verdict.
