Developer - Team Ninja

Publisher - Tecmo

Available On - Nintendo DS

The Ninja Gaiden games have some diverse roots. To date, our black clad Dragon Ninja Ryu Hayabusa originated on the arcade and has appeared on the NES, SNES, Master System, Game Gear and lots more and now Dragon Sword - our DS title.

Unless you’re a dislocated contortionist, Ninja Gaiden DS plays with the DS flipped up and open like a book as we’ve seen in Hotel Dusk: Room 215. Stylus slashing action is the name of the game, played out very akin to Phantom Hourglass. Hold and drag to make Ryu run, slash to slash, and tap to fire a projectile. Fortunately things diversify a little as Ryu learns multiple “Ninpo” (kick ass ninja powers) performed via a short pause in the action in which the player traces a relevant Sanskrit letter to unleash said power. I deem this fortunate for not only the game but also the DS console, as with so much constant sword slashing action I’m surprised I haven’t formed a small crater in my DS after rubbing the stylus so damn much and so damn fast.

There’s a lot of fast paced multi-target 3rd person action in this to really give a good sense of ninja speed and style. It’s also oddly visually appealing. All active models are of course live rendered in 3D and can look quite poor, though continuous luscious and rapidly changing pre-rendered backdrops more than make up for this.

Outside of the main gameplay, all story-driven videos are presented in a 2D anime style which also looks great, and drives a sufficiently satisfying spin-off plot. Actually, Ryu preventing the gathering of eight “Dark Dragonstones” (these items are quite similar to dragon orientated balls) by an evil entity bent on destruction sounds a little similar, but you can expect a lot of the characters and style that make Ninja Gaiden a great series. It’s also again set in the Hayabusa village, a world introduced to Ryu when Team Ninja of Dead Or Alive fame took over the series.

With a lot of fast paced action, a solid story, and continually pleasing visuals it’s a damn shame that the biggest drawback is most definitely the length of the adventure, personally clocking it at 4 hours and 15 minutes gameplay.

It’s short. It’s damn short, and considering that the entire adventure is a lot of repeated stylus slashing what was a very convincing package has suddenly sprung a drawback significant enough to lose a lot of value. While one play through does open a harder difficulty (not available until completed once), there’s little motivation to play through this game again other than to feel what it really should have been in the first place. Not only is it short, it’s damn easy. I think I died once. After all, the last Ninja Gaiden entry was well known for it’s extreme difficulty but still did well, and people got over it.

Now, we have a really great game, that’s really short, and really easy. If you’ve got spare cash and are looking for a fun game, definitely consider Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword. The best part of this is, there’s no messing around. It’s short, but what it is is constantly entertaining and very consistent throughout.

Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword

79%

The Good -

It’s -

* Quick like a Ninja.
* Pretty like a Ninja.
* Fun like a Ninja.

The Bad -

It’s -

* Short like an Elf.