Reviews// Mini Ninjas

If you run short of Life energy, Super Moves or Kei, you can often recharge them by using potions found around the level in various urns and barrels. These have to be smashed to deliver their prizes. Sometimes these contain money or weapons such as shurikens and caltrops rather than potions. If they do contain money, this can be used to purchase the recipes for many of these same potions from a Temple. Having the recipe is not the end of the story, you'll also need to have the ingredients to make the potion. Plants grow all around each level, and these form the required constituents of the recipes. The less powerful, but still useful, recipes use common plants that you'll quickly build a large store of. More powerful potions will use much more rare plants, and you will struggle to keep a good stock of these.

Finding plants is the second major aspect, after combat, of the game… and it's not easy. The plants are sometimes very difficult to see. Sure, they are often very easy to see, and if you are happy enough to complete a level with some plants left unfound, then just collect the ones you stumble upon. But as you complete each level, you are given the status of your success in terms of collectibles found, and animals released.

Each category that is 100% receives a bright red stamp of (I like to think) approval. Less OCD players will be able to study these figures with mild interest, and carry on - but those of us who are bothered about such matters will find it nigh on impossible to advance without a full set of stamps. Fortunately, unlike many games, Mini Ninjas gives you the choice to advance to the next level, or continue playing the current one at this point.

So, if like me you decide to continue striving for perfection, how do you find things that you have demonstrably already missed? That's easy, you enter a woodland animal. Not in any sort of sick or perverted way, but using Kuju Magic. One of the first spells Hiro learns is to possess an animal (later, when he has powered up, he can use it to possess and control weaker enemies too!). Animals have enhanced perception, particularly to scents, so when you are in animal form, any collectible plant or Jizo Statue will emit a visible cloud of purple smoke. These plumes enable you to see from a distance collectibles that are often almost impossible to see from close up when playing in human ninja form.

There are very good reasons to gather all collectibles, since releasing animals advances your progress through ability levels; cash can be spent on recipes; plants are ingredients in recipes for energy; and lives and shrines deliver new spells which can help you in battle. The least essential collectible is the Jizo Statue, which serves no purpose other than to be a search objective, but getting all of them will give you the "Completist" gold trophy, so even these may be worth collecting.

But all is not perfect in the House of Minja. Certain parts of some levels are "out of bounds" and venturing into them causes instant loss of life. For the most part this is fine, because these areas are pretty obvious, vast, gaping, abysmal chasms; huge drops from high bridges etc. But in at least one place in the game these areas look like they might be accessible using the Hat/Boat method. The resulting death is trivial, because you just reset at the last checkpoint… but it was mildly annoying nonetheless.

Checkpoints are another irk. They are nicely done, scattered around the landscape at strategic points, often before a difficult area loaded with enemies. But they do not activate automatically - you have to press "X" when stood next to them. This gives you the opportunity to use them strategically: don't save, then nip into a combat zone, kill a few opponents, then nip back and save. Then if the battle proves too much, you don't have to fight it all once you regenerate. But once a checkpoint has been used once, it cannot be used again, and this can be frustrating if you backtrack and collect more items after having used a checkpoint. When you come back to it you cannot now re-save your progress, so if you advance and get killed, you have to backtrack and collect the items yet again.

The progress of backtracking to collect items can be tedious. Of course, you don't HAVE to do it, but if you choose to, animals are much slower than humans at walking around the level, and there are areas that they cannot reach - they cannot cross water while possessed, and they cannot reach many elevated areas. As a result, you have to abandon your spirit guide and find another, or search as a human. It would have been nice if animals were faster, or not susceptible to running out of energy while running. These few things stop Mini Ninjas being as great as it could be. But they do not stop it being great.

Finally, I've seen the "post ironic" crowd whinging about this game having stereotypical Japanese accents and music… but these professionally jaded pitas should chill. Mini Ninjas is meant to be a bit of tongue in cheek fun, not an historical treatise on imperial Japan.

SPOnG Score: 89%
Conclusion
Mini Ninjas is aimed at kids, and I'm sure they'll love it. But the subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) humour and overall polish means it appealed to THIS adult. It manages still to be compelling despite not being overly challenging. The control method is wonderfully friendly, and the game introduces a lot of RPG gaming concepts in a unintimidating manner. An additional difficulty level could have made this a truly engaging game for adults.