Izuna 2 : The Unemployed Ninja Returns

Rating Teen Genre role-playing Publisher Atlus External Links Official Website

Niche gamers rejoice, for I bring you the return of slacker ninja Izuna, in Atlas USA’s most recent addition Izuna 2: The Unemployed Ninja Returns.  For those of you as of yet unfamiliar to the Izuna series, it hails from a long line of older random dungeon games both graphical and textual.  More recent titles to bare the genre count Wii’s Final Fantasy Chocobo’s Dungeon and the sleeper title Pokemon Mystery Dungeon.  The gameplay for a ‘mystery’ crawler is simple yet time consuming and impressively difficult.  The player enters a randomly generated dungeon filled with traps, monsters, as well as equipment, power-ups, and other rewards.  This random search for the next stairwell down can be completely uneventful or nearly impossible, all depending on the on the spot generation by the game itself.

Perhaps the biggest hang-up about ‘mystery’ dungeons, Izuna included, are their tendency to favor an omni-lose style, one where whether you die on the third level or the three hundred and thirty third level, you will suffer the same fate: complete loss of all money, items, and equipment.  This rather tolling loss normally results in a quick power-down or the occasional power-down via running over your DS with your 1974 Cabriole over and over again.  But, gas prices what they are, its best just walk away.  Yes, for those of you who are sore, or even mildly poor losers, Izuna and its ilk are not for you.  Even the extremely careful, early-and-often savers will find themselves picking up from damn near square one a handful of times.

The top down style of combat means little to no reliance on high-end graphics.  Don’t worry, Izuna makes up for this with colorful extra-dungeonal interactions and extremely entertaining characters.  Unlike the first Izuna of old, the newer and shinier sequel brings additional buddies into the mish-mash of a maze with you in the new Tag System.  Unfortunately simple hack-and-slash monster grinding is only one part of virtual you vs. CPU grudge match that is Izuna 2.  Weapon cycling comes into play as your gear breaks down, so new and better pickups might be considered as ‘Save Unitl Needed’ gear.  Slowly draining gauges keep the player burning items or exiting the village to recharge with a good nights rest.

Perhaps my very favorite / least favorite mechanic of the multi-dungeon world are its traps.  Yes, the wonderful world of traps! Izuna traps are most remarkable for their complete inability to be detected, until triggered of course.  These ninja-worthy traps can cause any number of  either terrible beneficial events.  These range from a simple annoyance like draining half your hard kept HP and SP, to mind-blowingly summoning a small army of demons to undoubtedly kill you and yours.  The only thing that separates the good from the bad is who triggers the trap panel.  Once detected, a trap panel can become an excellent strategic position to hug, allowing the player to cleverly cause the opponents to run directly over ground zero.

If diving to the depths of randomness seems up your ally, be prepared  because this game is long.  It’s not five Blu-rays long, but more than lengthy enough to satisfy even the most hardcore of dungeon crawlers.  In recap; we get to see one of my favorite companies, Atlus, doing what they do best, good gameplay, terribly witty dialog, and a storyline that’s interesting but not railroading.  Take all that and spice it up with an unforgiving level of difficulty.  Izuna 2: The Unemployed Ninja Returns is a delicacy in any system.  Mix and serve…deadly!