Ninja War: Stolen Scrolls, is an impressive looking side scrolling brawler, that almost shines in the XBLIG marketplace. The game can and should be played by up to four players locally (the score takes a hit because the lack of an online option). The story is quite simple, a rival ninja steals the sacred scrolls in your dojo, and kills your master, so you go out and avenge his death and retrieve the scrolls. The presentation makes it look and sound good, but its still a very repetitive romp.
The game has crisp animations, and sometimes funny moments where enemy's flail their legs while trying to get up, or a fat enemy whose belly explodes. The Hit Detection is near perfect, every hit feels like it did something, and the damage counter that pops out of an enemy reminded me of Maplestory. You can pick up weapons that the enemy's drop, but they don't last too long, as they break after a few hits. Magic was hard to use at first, but i got used to the controls fairly quickly. You hold the Left Stick either left, up or right and press B to use a power mapped to those buttons. I constantly found myself moving my character off in whatever direction i was pressing, in order to use said powers on a enemy that was standing still. Magic gets used up quite fast, but luckily, you refill your magic meter by pressing RB (you do a Dragonball stance, BTW). The combat was fun, but without a list of powers or combos it quickly becomes repetitive button mashing.
The levels are broken up into a large map with branching paths that you can choose to take. I found the backgrounds to be very bland and in need of some color. The backgrounds and foregrounds seemed unfortunately lifeless and forgettable. Theres also lack of personality from the 4 choosable ninjas. The leveling system is nothing, nothing at all. Theres no upgrades after a "Level-up" or even a way to distribute points to characters. It almost seems like the game was rushed out for release a little to early and slapped with a cheap MSP price. Theres some things that could have been added to aid in the replayabilty factor.
Overall i found this game to be a fun distraction with a few people, especially for its 80MSP asking price. But if you don't have friends, the solo mode can be unforgiving and boring. You really need to play with at least two people in order to juggle the enemy's and truly have a good experience. There could have been alot more depth added to the game to make it a more enjoyable journey, but for 80 MSP its not a bad purchase at all, IF you have people to play with.
NOTE to all XBLIG Devs. Add online multiplayer to multiplayer games. Its that easy.
After all the newbs came to online CC with cheats it was very annoying (yes i know its fixed,) now that this is out i can play with a very fun variety of game.
My only problem is it has a pre-chosen name, just use the gamer tag. like CC
Absolutly nothing. Ninjas scroll is basically a carbon copy of castle crashers. But for 1 dollar its a damn good one. They'res been plenty of games that have taken cuse and made copys of games. This is one of the best games for the indie platform and for the price it shouldn't be mised
