Game Reviews

Ninja Village

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Ninja Village
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| Ninja Village

There's something about ninjas that makes everything better.

Whether it's the shurikens, the katanas, or simply the general ninja attire, these assassins simply ooze class and sophistication.

This may be why Kairosoft's Ninja Village manages to conjure up a sense of style and fun despite giving you relatively little to do.

Didja?

The shogun forces have fallen, and the only way to build them back up and rid Japan of the baddies is to get your ninja posse into battle.

Ninja Village is split up into two sections - your village, where you build up your cashflow and house your ninjas; and the hectic, glorious battlefield scenes.

Once you've selected a battle from the overmap all that remains it to sit back and watch your army rush into battle. Arrows fly, bullets ricochet, swords clash, and horses topple.

It's hugely entertaining to watch large-scale battles -especially those that occur later into the game - and to keep you occupied between this conflagrations there are also smaller clashes, utilising your own personal army rather than the entire shogun.

Watching your influence build up across the land is also great fun, and there's a real sense of progression throughout, both on the overmap and in your village.

The only ninja in the village

The village action isn't so entertaining, thanks to a strange combination of micromanagement and not a lot to do.

Your village is solely there to make money, and all you really need to do is keep buying more land and placing shops and workplaces all over it. It's not much fun, and so you'll find yourself battling instead.

Because of this, however, you'll spend a good portion of time simply waiting around for money to build up to the point that you can use it to buy more forces and upgrade your troops.

Couple this with the hands-off approach of the battles and Ninja Village is a game in which you spend just as much time not playing it as you do playing.

Ninja Village is fun to watch, and the battles are spectacular, but expect to do a lot more observing than actual management.

Ninja Village

Ninja Village is all about big armies and glorious battles, but the management side of things is lost in the kerfuffle
Score
Mike Rose
Mike Rose
An expert in the indie games scene, Mike comes to Pocket Gamer as our handheld gaming correspondent. He is the author of 250 Indie Games You Must Play.