When It's Over

After finishing the 18th and final stage, you will likely feel the way I do right now and wish there were more missions to unlock. With an average completion time of 10 – 15 minutes (tack on another 10 – 30 minutes if you expect to achieve a perfect score in any of the stages), Ninjatown isn’t a short game, but it isn’t a long one either. You will scream at your DS and look for things to throw at the wall whenever a mission goes sour.

But when the adventure comes to a close, you’ll be angry in a whole other way. Ninjatown is an incredible strategy game, one whose unique and addictive gameplay cannot be found every year, and certainly not on every platform. No matter how frustrated you get trying to beat the more difficult stages, this is not a game you’ll want to see end.

There are a few moments of imperfection, like the way ninjas occasionally wait too long to attack or walk out of their way before doing so, preventing an attack altogether. The power-up system – which rewards players with items that can stun, damage or slow down enemies, among other things – is a little annoying. While the power-ups themselves are great, some stages practically require you to use them in order to achieve a perfect score. If your inventory has run dry, the only way to acquire new power-ups is to re-play old missions. That’s not a horrible curse – Ninjatown’s replay value is very high. But it’s still annoying.

And yet, in spite of that, I’m still aching for more. In the long term, the multiplayer mode (offering single and multi-card play) should help ease some of the pain, but only after I can find someone who can keep up with my mad ninja skills.