"Izuna baby, you want to know why you are unemployed?"

There are games that you play because of its depth, both gameplay-wise and story-wise. And then there are games that you play because you judged the book, or in this case, the game by its cover. Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja is 5% the former and 95% the latter. You can't go wrong with a hot ninja chick with pink hair and red outfit, right? RIGHT?

***** Plot *****

In the time of peace, ninjas have found themselves out of a job as the world no longer requires their service. Izuna belongs to such a group of highly skilled, but unwanted professionals. Her tribe decides to move on. Upon the game's beginning, Izuna and co. found their retirement village.

Not long after, Izuna found a shiny crystal which she thought would be good for her home because you know, it's shiny. As it turned out, it wasn't just any crystal. Its disappearance angered the Gods. Instead of wiping out the entire village in one clean stroke overnight, the Gods opted for a more subtle punishment. They cursed everyone in the village. So now everyone save for Izuna the thief started to act like 5 years old.

Izuna is now charged with fixing the problem she caused by calming the Gods. And by calming, I mean going through each God's lair, fight them, take their orb and use the orb to heal the villagers.

The plot is very straightforward and a simple one. What kept the story entertaining are the witty dialogues, almost to the point of silliness, and almost all coming from Izuna herself. Her charms and persona shines through in the time where everyone talks funny.

There was one scene where Izuna were asked to give up something of her own. She then proceeded to go through her stuff and making comments about how she didn't want to give them up. She finally settled on her loyal servant, because you know, he's only a servant and Izuna has many of them around.

It's these sort of dialogues that make this game somewhat enjoyable and a little bit more bearable.

***** Gameplay *****

I said "bearable" because the gameplay is not. It is extremely unforgiving. One wrong move, and you could be in serious trouble. In its simplest form, you go around a randomly generated map, kill anything and everything that moves, collect your loot, go down to the next level, rinse and repeat until the end of time, or until you defeat the God who guard the dungeon, whichever one comes first.

Every time you perform an action, whether you move, use an item, or setting up traps, it is considered as a turn. Each turn, your enemies also perform an action as well. Your HP recovers as you move around or skip a turn. If you do nothing, neither will your enemies. That gives you time to consider your strategy.

There are traps from the third dungeon onwards. It's more of an annoyance really. None of them are fatal (some of them are even beneficial), and most of them can be removed when you move down a level.

"Till Death do us part"

The biggest complaint and the most annoying aspect of the game will have to be inventory system. First off, you can only hold two screen worth of stuff. A talisman takes as much space as a blade. If you start off a dungeon empty-handed, and get absolutely everything you can get your hands on while inside the dungeon, you will fill up the inventory in merely three levels.

You will have to do a lot of fiddling to get around the problem. For example, sticking talisman onto weapons that you have found. More often than not, you will have to leave a lot of thing that could potentially sell for a millions.

There is one way you can do to fix the space problem, just die. No, I'm serious. If you die (well, you don't actually die, you just faint), everything in your inventory including money will disappear. One saving grace is if your weapon has a certain talisman that sends it back to the storehouse in the village.

And this is the most frustrating aspect of this game that will turn many beginners away. In the early stage of the game, no doubt you would have picked up some good items/weapons only to lose them because you were over powered by the monsters. I have had many instances of that, and it was dissatisfying to see your good stuff disappearing.

Don't even think about saving either. The game auto saves every time you enter a dungeon, just before the boss fight and when you faint. You lost all your items because you passed out? Too fricking bad. You will never see them again.

"Upgrading hell"

Upgrading weapons is easy enough. Grab a talisman and stick it on the weapon. The only thing you need to watch out for is its spirit capacity. If the talisman has a higher spirit point than the capacity on the weapon, you would overload the weapon. Such weapon will break a lot faster than others, and if it breaks, the weapon will disappear forever.

The thing that ticked me off about upgrading is the fact that you can't upgrade your weapons in town. If you want to upgrade, you must bring your weapons and whatever talisman you want and dive into a dungeon and perform the upgrade where, of course, you run the risk of losing it. It is annoying as hell.

"I am not a monster, don't run away from me."

There are also some seemingly minor issues that annoy the hell out of players. For example, talking to villagers. The "you move, I move" system extends beyond dungeons and into the main gameplay. It's all fine when the villagers stay at one spot, but it's a different story if they move around. For one thing, they don't move in a set pattern, so it's hard to predict their path. For another (and it's probably just because they want to piss me off), one step I take getting closer to them is one step they take to get away from me.

The diagonal direction is unresponsive. I need more than a handful of tries before I can get to them.

To put it politely, I don't like the gameplay. I've never played Roguelike or Aruze Dream or any other similar games, and I don't think I want to. The controls are responsive most of the time, but lack precision. Losing everything when you die is a huge drawback.

***** Graphics *****

Graphics are fairly well done. The characters come to life in the form of 2D sprites. Izuna's emotion shows through with the use of multiple well-drawn sprites, from being flattered to crying to her sexy pose, she has it all. Being a game that comes out of Japan, you would expect the characters to be drawn in anime style. As a person who loves anime, that's a big plus.

Probably because the maps are randomly generated, the tiles and walls seem generic at times. There isn't much room for tiles variations. That said, each dungeon has its own 'theme', and so the tiles and colours used are changed accordingly.

***** Sound *****

BGM are nicely rendered and easy on the ears. The tune is a bit short, so you will notice it when the music starts to repeat itself. It's not intrusive, so it's something you can live with.

I am not sure if it was lazy on the developer's part or if it was intentional, players are treated with some voice snippets... in Japanese! I quite like it because it gives off an authentic feel. After all, ninjas don't speak English, right?

***** Replay Value *****

Finishing the game is a big task in itself. If you don't think you have tortured yourself enough after finishing the game, there is a new dungeon 100 levels down. You can also visit a secret village. All the Gods in the other dungeons are more powerful too. However, it's more of the same stuff as the main game.

***** Overall *****

Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja is by no mean perfect, except for being a perfect example of player frustrations. It could have been better, and it should have been. I only kept going because of the hot chick in red.

Despite the shortcomings, the dialogue is hilarious, graphics are pretty and the sound is nice. If you want to play Izuna, you will have to play by its rules, no matter how sucky they are.

I want to give it a higher score, but even with the pretty graphics and good quality sound, the gameplay is difficult enough to drive some players away. Izuna is not an easy game and it's definitely not for everyone. If you can put up with its shortfalls, you might find yourself with a playable game that lasts about 20 hours.

Good:

* Good graphics
* Japanese voice acting
* Funny dialogue

Bad:

* Difficult gameplay
* Cannot upgrade weapon in town
* Dungeon crawler
* Touch screen not used at all

Score (out of 10)

Plot: 8
Gameplay: 5
Graphics: 8
Sound: 8
Replay: 6

Overall: 6

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/16/07