More in depth with Izuna

I'm done with Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja. I didn't actually complete the game, but I went far enough that I feel I can do a fairly comprehensive analysis.

The Good

I enjoyed the character interaction and general "quirky" feel. Things like the smoke trap making you run away to a random location "out of habit" are a nice touch. The game makes no pretense at being a particularly deep story, which is probably a good thing for what is essentially a random dungeon crawl.

The dungeons themselves are fairly short, starting at 5 levels deep and going up to 10, 15, 20, and finally 40 for the last one.

Your base attack power scales with level. This is great, since a lot of the time you may end up bare handed from dying. You're still an offensive force to be reckoned with, sword or no.

The Bad

I get the impression that not a whole lot of thought went into this beyond the standard Mystery Dungeon formula. The weapons you pick up come with some very limiting special abilities (an example is the Cat Claw, which does extra damage to fish enemies...of which there's around 4 types and you might encounter 20 in the whole game). This wouldn't be too bad, except there's only a few monster-type killing weapons like this, so entire classes of enemies have no extra effective weapon. Other weapons come with more general benefits, from just being strong to preventing status effects.

Dying is very harsh. You lose everything you have in your inventory and all of your money on hand if you succumb to your enemies. To add to this, you can't even store items in a safe place until after you beat the first dungeon. There's only two ways to avoid this harsh penalty: you must either beat the dungeon or use a certain talisman. You have to get lucky with the random treasure generator and find that talisman until you beat the second dungeon. It, like all the other talismans, is one-use only, and using it will take back to town, but will reset the dungeon and force you to start over. There's no town portal-style spell in the game, that would allow you to drop off/sell loot and get right back where you were.

Unlocking different shops with each god you defeat is a nice idea in theory, but in practice it sucks. As said before, you have to clear the first dungeon to gain access to a storehouse, your only way to avoid losing everything upon dying. The second unlocks the talisman shop, allowing you to purchase one teleport talisman per dungeon run. The third allows you to repair your equipment, something sorely needed if you managed to get that far with gear from the first. These are all things that are really needed even at the beginning.

Your SP use makes you less effective at attacking. This is a completely brain dead design decision, since using talismans costs SP, getting hit lowers SP, and you do not naturally regain SP while in a dungeon. So now pulling out the big guns with a fire attack talisman or using that teleport to a random spot on the floor talisman to escape the mob pummeling you will also make your normal attacks do less damage. This makes the game unnecessarily harder and discourages you from using any talismans, which are plentiful. The SP recovery items are somewhat rare as it is...all in all, I can't stress enough how bad this decision was.

Your attack power scales with your level, but your defense doesn't seem to. Being able to hold your own offensively without a weapon is great...being pummeled into submission by enemies in dungeons you've outgrown isn't.

Grinding sucks, and they expect way too much of it. The fifth dungeon was a real challenge for me, taking at least a dozen attempts to succeed. Fresh from that victory, I walked into the sixth and promptly got my rear handed to me. Appearently being in the low 30s for level with gear that had around 120 attack and defense was not anywhere near good enough. Grinding out the levels needed would be annoying enough, but the system for upgrading the base stats of your equipment is a nightmare. First you have to stick attribute enhancing talismans to your gear, keeping in mind the point cost for doing so. You're not going to have enough points, so you need to go to a guy to increase their capacity...he charges for this service, of course; more each time you do it to the same piece of gear. Then you have to "burn in" the talismans, which requires either a very rare item or having the same guy do it (assuming you've defeated the 5th god by this point)...for more money, of course. That's not even considering how you're getting the talismans in the first place: the guy at the talisman shop will only sell you one of each type without you doing another dungeon run. And what does all this get you? That talisman that increased the attack power of your sword by 20 point when stuck on now only increases the attack power by around 2 when burned in.

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Yes, there's a lot of bad, but I'd say that most games are about this caliber. I'm not dissatisfied with my purchase, although I will admit that the thought of the grinding I would have to do turned me off from the game completely, so I never made it thought the 6th dungeon. However, if you have the patience, I'd be more than willing to recommend the game. It's quirky humor makes up for a lot of the flaws.

Games I'm playing

My new job has some extended idle times, so I picked up a couple of DS games to keep me from getting too bored.

Trace Memory is a fun little adventure game I picked up used for about $10. Unfortunately, that's about all I think it's worth, since I completed the storyline in four and a half hours...waaay too short for any game that isn't really replayable. The puzzles were pretty much spot on for difficulty for me. Not brain-dead easy while also not being too difficult, although I did get stuck on a couple. The game seems to be designed as a "how many ways can we use the DS" kinda thing, which works well sometimes and not so well on other occasion. As an example, one puzzle involved blowing the dust off an old painting, using the DS's microphone. While it worked, it required a lot more effort than really should have been required, and on a DS Lite I had a hard time seeing the bottom screen to notice what progress I was making. On the other hand, closing the DS to apply a stamp on the bottom screen was rather novel, along with using the top screen to reflect onto the bottom screen. All in all, it's a rather simple game, designed more to explore ways to use the DS than to be entertaining in its own right.

Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja is what I'm currently working on. Unfortunately, I have the feeling this is going to be short as well. The storyline is entertaining, which is to be expected with a title like "Unemployed Ninja". The game follows the Mystery Dungeon formula: you start in town, stock up on supplies, and proceed to a randomly generated dungeon. Once in the dungeon, you must either make it to the bottom floor, use a special scroll, or lose to leave. Losing means you leave all your equipment and money behind, but keep your levels and experience gained. The game is rather unforgiving on this point, since you can't even store anything until after you complete the first dungeon and are very limited in what supplies you can purchase for a long time. I'm up to level 13 or so, having "died" in 3 different dungeons too many times to count. Given the storyline of appeasing 6 gods, I'm expecting only 7 dungeons, which will make this game very light on content. It's an amusing diversion, though, and I am enjoying the character interacion, so we'll see how long it keeps me occupied.