"Its understandable that she's unemployed"

To begin, I want to clarify that while I gave this game a low score, I can still see someone having fun playing it. However, there are several issues I believe will have you returning the game back to Game stop when you've realized what you've spent money on.

First off, the game has decent graphics and I actually enjoy the personalities of the characters themselves. The game starts off with Izuna and company heading into town and are about to get a place to stay when Izuna disturbs this crystal in the temple and the gods don't care much for that. Everyone then has their personalities cursed...except Izuna because as one of the gods explains, her personality must be pretty messed up already.

So as you see, there is a bit of humor to the game which makes playing it tolerable. What makes it intolerable are the following game play mechanics:
1. Dieing in a dungeon/cave/whatever makes you lose all your items. There is an item you can pick up that sends your item to the safe house when you die, but then, you don't get the safe house till you beat the first dungeon so its as if all you work for in the first cave is for nigh

2. Its slightly turn-based. You can move freely but no actions are taken until you move into the next grid or do something. This, at least to me, made the game feel it was too robotic. Even in town you could stand still and everyone would act as if time stopped, which is understandable but I feel unnecessary while you're in town.

3. After the first cave you'll realize that sadly, its going to be rinse and repeat. You'll go to the next area, fight another god, cure some people go to the next place and so on.

4. Also, if losing your items isn't bad enough, Weapons deteriorate. A great game mechanic for games that are possibly fast paced or require a lot of thinking but in this game its more of a chore. And as far as I could tell, it seemed random. I'd have an item working fine, then again I'd have the same item later that would break on the 5th hit. Who knows I'm sure someone made a faq about it, I didn't check.

Overall: The game itself could have been better but I really don't recommend it to anyone who doesn't enjoy a dungeon crawler. You'll find yourself constantly dieing if you're not careful but even then, it doesn't even matter because you just run back into the cave with the same stats you had before (Sans items) and have at it. You could theoretically beat the game through completely bruting through every cave and dungeon. I also understand you're not meant to, but try not attempting that technique after being ganged by a bunch of random enemies that seem to spawn from no where.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 02/19/08

Game Release: Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja (US, 02/20/07)