This is one of the most exciting, best looking games on the DS that finally does what the system was built to do
Ninja Gaiden DS takes place six months after the 2004 Xbox game and features everyone's favorite modern day super ninja as he searches for the Dark Dragon stones so that he can save his damsel in distress and once again save the world for an unspeakable evil. I hate to start out with a bad point, but the story is most definitely the weakest part of the game. The Xbox's story wasn't perfect, it had some holes and was kind of hard to follow, but it was at least half-decent. Dragon Sword's feels like it was written for a lame 7 year old Saturday morning cartoon show, and contradicts its Xbox predecessor in several obvious and significant ways.
Luckily the actually gameplay more than makes up for the games terribly clichéd storyline. For most of the game you will once again reprise the role of Ryu Hyabussa. The DS is held on its side like a book. You move by holding the stylus to a point on the screen, you jump by sliding the stylus up, you attack by sliding the stylus any way but straight up, and you throw shuriken or shoot arrows by taping quickly anywhere on the screen. You block by using any button on the DS (most will probably chose the left arrow on the D-pad) and you roll by tapping on the touch screen while blocking in the direction you want to roll. You can also charge up you're ultimate techniques by scribbling wildly on the screen and activate your ninpo(magic attacks) by tapping on a small symbol in the top left corner of the screen.
Overall the controls work well and are very responsive. You can chain together several attacks, and several fan favorites from the consol versions are performed intuitively. (Izuna Drop: Slice down, slice up, slice up.) (Flying Swallow: Slice up, slice across) Understandably Ryu doesn't have nearly as many moves as in the consol versions, and unfortunately the combat is occasionally reduced to button mas… uh, stylus scribbling. Jumping onto a ledge can be a bit tricky and ultimate techniques seem just a little too hard to pull off (Though that may be a good thing since it keeps you from spamming it) But I am making the combat sound worse than it actually is. It usually works out just great. It's exciting, fun, and challenging. And most of the time if you do "stylus scribble" you won't last very long.
Those who played the Xbox or PS3 versions of this game will get an almost overwhelming sense of Déjà vu. That's because almost all of this games locales, enemies, and even boss battles are taken straight from the consol version almost completely intact. They've been tweaked of course to fit with the games combat system, but they're definitely the same enemies. It's kind of fun to fight these things with a different combat system, but a little more creativity would have been appreciated.
Graphically this game is beautiful. True, most of the levels are just 2D backdrops made to 'feel' 3D, but it still looks fantastic. And the production values of the cut-scenes in this game are through the roof. (Unfortunately the story these cut-scenes tell are almost bad enough to make them worth skipping…almost) The Sound is just as good, most of the music and sound effects are taken straight from the Xbox version, which is very impressive. There is very little spoken dialog, and the little that there is, is all in Japanese, but I didn't really mind this small demerit.
In the end this is an amazing game that makes use of the touch screen as no other DS game has before. Unfortunately it's both relatively short and easy. I was able to beat it in six and a half hours, even with deaths. A harder difficulty setting does add some replay value, and this difficulty setting is almost as hard as Black is on normal. But in the end it simply doesn't have as much lasting value as its consol brethren. But what can you realistically expect, this game may not reach the gleaming heights of Black or Sigma, but it does justice to the Ninja Gaiden name, and makes for an exciting and fun adventure game that makes better use of the touch screen for action than any game I have ever played which is an impressive accomplishment.