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Ambition has been the folly of many developers. We all saw the backlash against Peter Molyneux when he was forced to scale back Fable. Many lamented that the Saturn just wasn't beefy enough to pull off Burning Rangers. And we all remember (but wish we could forget) the second half of Xenogears, where seemingly everything but the dialog had to be cut for time constraints. But without ambition, what are we left with? Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja steps up to show us exactly that. It's a title that never falters, but never innovates, feeling little pressure to distinguish itself amidst a sea of clones.
If you're an RPG diehard, you've already played this game. It might have been when Chunsoft first drafted the template with Fushigi no Dungeon. It could have been when it was called Azure Dreams, or Chocobo's Mysterious Dungeon. It might even have been the recent Nintendo licensed version, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. Whatever form it may have been, you know exactly what awaits you.
For the uninitiated, this is a classic dungeon crawler. It isn't your usual RPG epic. There entire game is set in and around a single town, which acts as a hub. You'll traverse randomly generated dungeons, engage in simple turn-based battles, and collect randomly placed items. When you die, you'll be booted back to the town and lose all of your carefully collected stuff (including your weapons and other equipment). So, most of the game involves traversing a lot of similar-looking levels with uninteresting layouts and exchanging blows back and forth with predictable enemies. It's honestly more fun than it sounds. Like its predecessors, it's a good, stupid game to zone out on.
Izuna might be a good alternative, but even the script fails to hit the bull's-eye.
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The problem is that it doesn't really try to do more than clone a 14 year old game without any enhancements to the gameplay, or even the graphics. The biggest let-down is the dungeon generation. It never gets more elaborate than a few square rooms connected by winding paths, realized with repetitive graphics that reek of the early days of Super Nintendo. There's little to indicate this game was designed for the DS at all, with the top screen displaying only a map, and it wouldn't surprise me if were intended for the GBA at some point in its development. The character art during dialog looks nice, at least.
To be honest, it's not as strong as the recent Pokemon-licensed take, nor the DS version of Fushigi no Dungeon, but I'm sure many people would rather their dungeon crawling be wrapped around a lighthearted plot with some likable characters than Nintendo's overexposed critters or an impenetrable Japanese-language script. To that effect, Izuna might be a good alternative, but even the script fails to hit the bull's-eye. The characters are colorful enough, but rarely, if ever, does they elicit any hardy laughs.
If nothing else, Izuna delivers what it advertises, if little else. This kind of game works better for the short-attention span handheld format than it ever has on a console. It's also a good alternative to the deep, involving, epic storylines of traditional RPGs. Izuna isn't frustrating, unbalanced, or otherwise broken. It just isn't great. It doesn't strive to be. Like a disgruntled warehouse worker, Izuna does what it has to in order to get through the day without getting in trouble, but there's no passion to be found.
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