Ninja Town DS Review

Never has any game, in this editor’s humble opinion, so “cutified” anything than what Ninja Town did for Ninjas! Ninjas, historically, are trained assassins that can kill with their bare hands and disappear without a trace. In this new DS game, Ninjas are huggable, colorful, ewok-like creatures who live in villages akin to that of the smurfs. To our surprise, the game is deep and very engaging.

Ninja Town is a game to be played with an open mind. It involves strategy, quick thinking and a lot of patience. The game’s concept is unique in a sense. You need to build huts that contain unique types of ninjas to protect either an artifact or an entrance to another area. Strategy is involved since you have lots of choices in the game for instance, what to put in a particular area a building – that adds damage to ninja hits, or an actually ninja hut. Even then the decisions don’t end, what type of ninja hut will you put there? And to make matters worse, there are flying enemies, tough enemies, fast enemies and even enemies that have “skillz”. So you better know what to put where.

The game is played like a real time strategy game that only involves defense. No attacking ninjas here, which is quite an oxymoron – defensive ninja. Gagawin mo lang, anticipate the enemy, and place your defenses factoring in anything and everything that could go wrong. You get “powers” too. You get to use the DS’s microphone to blow enemies away by aaahhh… blowing on the microphone! Kala nga ng kapatid ko nililinisan ko screen ng DS ko kasi ihip ako ng ihip.

The graphics are cartoony, silly and sooooo adorable! Never have I found killing machines soo cute! The art design of the game is simplistic and yet still conveys the said deep gameplay and fluid game mechanics. At first it may seem that the art design would hinder the strategies involved in the game but it doesnt.

Ninja Town has, as you can expect, cartoony sound effects and a nicely upbeat musical score. Although one enemy type produces a gutural sound that kind of reminds me of the Grudge films.

There is a multiplayer option to the game where you and a friend can share in the mayhem adding to the game’s replay value. There are so many ways to defend a ninja town that you will want to replay the game to try out new techniques.

All in all, Ninja Town is a solid title no DS owner should be without.

Pinoy Gaming Rate
[starreview tpl=16]