I have played many 3D platformers in my life, and I-Ninja is one of them.
This one's a disappointment unfortunately, because I-Ninja's core movement really clicked with me at first. It's your classic cartoon mascot 3D platformer cut up into level-based missions, with simple hack and slash combat and plenty of coins to collect. In a way it sort of reminded me of a GameCube Sly Cooper, with similar slick movement and level based structure, just with slightly more complex controls (i.e. use the right trigger to grapple and swing from hoops instead of using the Circle button for everything). But if there's one word I would use to describe I-Ninja, it would be "padding." Here's a taste of the many complaints I had over my several hour run:
- The story is kinda whatever, you're an angsty lil ninja dude who studied the blade (he definitely shopped at Hot Topic prior to this game) who "accidentally" killed his old, wise sensei constantly blurting out non-sequiturs and now has to collect all the "rage" stones as both penance for his deeds and to make sure the big bad does not win. He runs into some mostly inconsequential side characters as well that may or may not have personalities and show up for one cutscene and are never relevant again in the story. This is honestly the smallest complaint here.
- There are animations for everything. Every time you want to go through a mission door, you have to go through the animation of your ghost sensei dropping out of nowhere to give you the ol' mission briefing spiel. There's a brief but noticeable animation every time you finish climbing up a wall as part of parkour where your ninja does a handstand before jumping back to his feet, because I guess he wants to show off. Dying at the beginning before any checkpoints will result in going through the animation of walking through the door and camera panning over the level's highlights again. There's a mission where you have to dart some killer wasps to spawn platforms, and every time you do so, there's a forced animation of the platform spawning. Every time you fight a big robo ninja/samurai, there's the animation of the two locking eyes, jumping into the blurry battle dimension, and once you win, you have to sit through the animation of your enemy meeting their gruesome, untimely demise. Oh, and almost all of these little cutscenes and animations are unskippable.
- As mentioned before, combat is simple but actually somewhat grindy the further in you go. That is because every ninja that is not a grey robo ninja will start blocking your attacks after at most two consecutive hits, and these guys can take a lot of hits. There are several ways around this; start spamming the upper cut + aerial slash instead mashing B (which will leave you vulnerable to other attackers because this only works against one enemy), target switch to another enemy before they start blocking attacks, stagger your own attacks so you don't start attacking again until they're in their own attack animation (again, doesn't work so well if multiple enemies are after you), or resort to classic bait and punish and jump around to dodge attacks first. Either way, the ability to only hit one enemy at a time consistently and having enemies block after a short bit really slows down combat, and shurikens unfortunately don't do enough versus most grounded enemies. And combat is generally not optional, because many energy gates require you to clear an entire spawner of enemies before they will dissipate.
- Coins are kind of meaningless because the only purpose they serve is unlocking "special grade" missions with quick but often tough objectives, and nothing else. They're basically the only collectible besides grades in this game.
- Speaking of which, this game really wants to be Super Monkey Ball at times with how many missions involve you rolling around a ball to the end of the level, but I don't really consider this a strength because of how much it is used compared to the other gameplay styles and because the controls are not amazing; controlling the ball feels very wobbly and imprecise, and you'll often build up so much momentum that changing directions becomes very difficult. There's no jump while on the ball, and you can't control the ball's momentum anytime you're airborne, which made one particular section where I had to roll the ball up onto a lip and stay on the lip very difficult. That, and there are a lot of narrow walkways to navigate on the ball.
- The lives system is also kind of meaningless, because the Ninja gains a quick healing burst ability after accumulating enough hits, and it regenerates pretty quickly so I found myself almost never dying from losing all my health. I had maybe 42 lives or so by the end of the game, and died once.
- The later levels feel much longer and spread out (taking almost 10 minutes or more) compared to the quick burst movement levels of the first couple of worlds, where levels could be completed in under 5 minutes every time. It's more or less the same gameplay too; navigate and walk through some mostly empty areas, hack and slash some enemies to death, fight a big samurai dude, and rinse and repeat.
- I really wish there was a dash/dive ability to aid ground movement with how much walking there is in this game. This isn't a huge issue in the early levels, but becomes much more noticeable as you walk through the long levels of the mid-late game.
- Falling into the abyss at any time will take away just a little health but reset the progress of the current room. So that means going through all the enemy fights, activating all the switches, and sitting through all the animations involved again.
- The final boss felt pretty underwhelming; it's just two phases of dodging attacks, walking up to the boss to do aerial slashes, getting knocked back by an undodgeable attack, and then repeating the process all over again. Now, compare this to the first boss of the game, which is a literal mech fight where you can sway to dodge missiles/punches and immediately retaliate with your own punch combo against the giant colossus. I wonder why they decided to start off with the best boss first and the mediocre boss last.
- Finally, most of the grades come from "optional" missions where you revisit the same level, but just with another objective slapped on top (either collecting 10 red coins hidden throughout the level, passing a time trial, or killing a certain number of enemies in the level before collecting the grade). I found this to be pretty lazy level design just to pad out the length, and the red coin missions were additionally annoying because they're usually hidden in iron barrels with no indication that the red coins are located within.
So that's my longish summary of all the little things here and there that are ultimately a detriment to I-Ninja; if all the levels were the length of those in the first couple of worlds with simple, unrestrained combat and heavy focus on ninja abilities, I think this would have been a great game! Unfortunately, it just stretched on far beyond its welcome, and I definitely got burned out near the end where I just wanted it to be over, to the point where I avoided playing some of the end-game levels and completed earlier optional mission grades instead. I'd love to say that this was a small & shining hidden gem for its time and be more positive, but the payoff was definitely not worth the investment. Maybe I'll have more luck with Mini Ninjas for my 3D blade platforming games, who knows.
This one's a disappointment unfortunately, because I-Ninja's core movement really clicked with me at first. It's your classic cartoon mascot 3D platformer cut up into level-based missions, with simple hack and slash combat and plenty of coins to collect. In a way it sort of reminded me of a GameCube Sly Cooper, with similar slick movement and level based structure, just with slightly more complex controls (i.e. use the right trigger to grapple and swing from hoops instead of using the Circle button for everything). But if there's one word I would use to describe I-Ninja, it would be "padding." Here's a taste of the many complaints I had over my several hour run:
- The story is kinda whatever, you're an angsty lil ninja dude who studied the blade (he definitely shopped at Hot Topic prior to this game) who "accidentally" killed his old, wise sensei constantly blurting out non-sequiturs and now has to collect all the "rage" stones as both penance for his deeds and to make sure the big bad does not win. He runs into some mostly inconsequential side characters as well that may or may not have personalities and show up for one cutscene and are never relevant again in the story. This is honestly the smallest complaint here.
- There are animations for everything. Every time you want to go through a mission door, you have to go through the animation of your ghost sensei dropping out of nowhere to give you the ol' mission briefing spiel. There's a brief but noticeable animation every time you finish climbing up a wall as part of parkour where your ninja does a handstand before jumping back to his feet, because I guess he wants to show off. Dying at the beginning before any checkpoints will result in going through the animation of walking through the door and camera panning over the level's highlights again. There's a mission where you have to dart some killer wasps to spawn platforms, and every time you do so, there's a forced animation of the platform spawning. Every time you fight a big robo ninja/samurai, there's the animation of the two locking eyes, jumping into the blurry battle dimension, and once you win, you have to sit through the animation of your enemy meeting their gruesome, untimely demise. Oh, and almost all of these little cutscenes and animations are unskippable.
- As mentioned before, combat is simple but actually somewhat grindy the further in you go. That is because every ninja that is not a grey robo ninja will start blocking your attacks after at most two consecutive hits, and these guys can take a lot of hits. There are several ways around this; start spamming the upper cut + aerial slash instead mashing B (which will leave you vulnerable to other attackers because this only works against one enemy), target switch to another enemy before they start blocking attacks, stagger your own attacks so you don't start attacking again until they're in their own attack animation (again, doesn't work so well if multiple enemies are after you), or resort to classic bait and punish and jump around to dodge attacks first. Either way, the ability to only hit one enemy at a time consistently and having enemies block after a short bit really slows down combat, and shurikens unfortunately don't do enough versus most grounded enemies. And combat is generally not optional, because many energy gates require you to clear an entire spawner of enemies before they will dissipate.
- Coins are kind of meaningless because the only purpose they serve is unlocking "special grade" missions with quick but often tough objectives, and nothing else. They're basically the only collectible besides grades in this game.
- Speaking of which, this game really wants to be Super Monkey Ball at times with how many missions involve you rolling around a ball to the end of the level, but I don't really consider this a strength because of how much it is used compared to the other gameplay styles and because the controls are not amazing; controlling the ball feels very wobbly and imprecise, and you'll often build up so much momentum that changing directions becomes very difficult. There's no jump while on the ball, and you can't control the ball's momentum anytime you're airborne, which made one particular section where I had to roll the ball up onto a lip and stay on the lip very difficult. That, and there are a lot of narrow walkways to navigate on the ball.
- The lives system is also kind of meaningless, because the Ninja gains a quick healing burst ability after accumulating enough hits, and it regenerates pretty quickly so I found myself almost never dying from losing all my health. I had maybe 42 lives or so by the end of the game, and died once.
- The later levels feel much longer and spread out (taking almost 10 minutes or more) compared to the quick burst movement levels of the first couple of worlds, where levels could be completed in under 5 minutes every time. It's more or less the same gameplay too; navigate and walk through some mostly empty areas, hack and slash some enemies to death, fight a big samurai dude, and rinse and repeat.
- I really wish there was a dash/dive ability to aid ground movement with how much walking there is in this game. This isn't a huge issue in the early levels, but becomes much more noticeable as you walk through the long levels of the mid-late game.
- Falling into the abyss at any time will take away just a little health but reset the progress of the current room. So that means going through all the enemy fights, activating all the switches, and sitting through all the animations involved again.
- The final boss felt pretty underwhelming; it's just two phases of dodging attacks, walking up to the boss to do aerial slashes, getting knocked back by an undodgeable attack, and then repeating the process all over again. Now, compare this to the first boss of the game, which is a literal mech fight where you can sway to dodge missiles/punches and immediately retaliate with your own punch combo against the giant colossus. I wonder why they decided to start off with the best boss first and the mediocre boss last.
- Finally, most of the grades come from "optional" missions where you revisit the same level, but just with another objective slapped on top (either collecting 10 red coins hidden throughout the level, passing a time trial, or killing a certain number of enemies in the level before collecting the grade). I found this to be pretty lazy level design just to pad out the length, and the red coin missions were additionally annoying because they're usually hidden in iron barrels with no indication that the red coins are located within.
So that's my longish summary of all the little things here and there that are ultimately a detriment to I-Ninja; if all the levels were the length of those in the first couple of worlds with simple, unrestrained combat and heavy focus on ninja abilities, I think this would have been a great game! Unfortunately, it just stretched on far beyond its welcome, and I definitely got burned out near the end where I just wanted it to be over, to the point where I avoided playing some of the end-game levels and completed earlier optional mission grades instead. I'd love to say that this was a small & shining hidden gem for its time and be more positive, but the payoff was definitely not worth the investment. Maybe I'll have more luck with Mini Ninjas for my 3D blade platforming games, who knows.