Ninja Roquinexu Reviews

Pixel graphics, 8 bit theme, ninjas and swords I love. A throwback to a Simple platformer and hack n slash. The cutscenes are very "ninja gaiden" haha. Attack, Jump, Climb...etc. If it had a few more weapons upgrades it would be better. A retro styled kick to our nostalgia & overall pretty good. i'm happy with it. would reccomend.

This is certainly rough. The game plays out mostly like the classic Ninja Gaiden titles on older systems like NES and Master System. The general gameplay mechanics and the way cutscenes play out reinforces this perception. Story seems to be your run-of-the-mill pseudo-futuristic type of thing with lightweight tone blended in on an occasion. [h1]Problem areas[/h1] The weakest point is prolly the graphics, which while occasionally can have some "ok" looking sprites around is mostly very "microsoft paint" type of deal looking very not-pretty. Another big lacking section are the options. For example, there is no inherit controller support or way to change the controls. You will be using WASD for movement, space for jump, and enter for attacking. You can "pause" the game with the escape key though as far as I can tell this definitely doesn't actually pause the gameplay. A software like JoyToKey is hence recommended. There's some slight floatiness in the movement and the enemies often move pseudo-randomly with turning seemingly at random and have sudden boosts in speed making it easy to get hit by their touch damage. This is compounded with how janky the hit box of the player's melee attack is. The delay on the melee attack feels just a tad off (like 0.1-0.2s too long to go "off") - as well as the delay before you can perform it again feels a tad too long to me - so as to not make using it feel as good as it ought to. Once the melee attack hit box comes out it, it seems to directly manifest at that location. As in, it will not move with the player character - at least from what I can tell. This means, among other things, that if you jump and hit in the air, the attack will manifest in the air and won't follow your character as you descend and finish the attack animation. So it's hard to perform that type of jump attack where you will hit close to the ground. Because of the attack box not following your sprite or what direction you are facing, I found one of the stronger attack techniques (when it came to a group of enemies or multi-hit enemies such as a boss) was to run towards the enemy, press the attack button followed by immediately turning and taking some steps back - then repeating this again and again for some quick output of damage while maintaining good control of the distance between you and the enemy. Taking damage seems to happen on a nigh frame-by-frame basis (seems to differ somewhat depending on what you get hit by - I'm not quite sure) which can cause a lot of your hp being drained very quickly if you get "stuck" on enemies or so which is another point of the gameplay that can feel very janky. I think it would be generally preferable for this type of game to use some sort of a "mercy invincibility" - even if the associated i-frame time would be as little as 0.2 seconds or so. [h1]Gameplay of stages[/h1] The gameplay works so that you have infinite tries when playing a level - even when reaching potential checkpoints. However, when you enter a boss fight, you will have a set amount of tries to take down the boss (2 to 4 depending). If you die too many times in the boss fight, you will have to restart the level from the beginning. This to me felt like a relatively decent compromise between unlimited lives and classic arcade life system. Once you are familiar with a level's layout, it's certainly a lot easier to clear it again, although the various jankiness in the gameplay means that there will remain some annoyance with it which is regrettable. The level design was 'passable' - not too egregious from what I can recall. There's decent enemy variance overall but you will mostly be fighting similarly behaving enemies. For example, there seems to be a crap ton of the usual "runs back and forth" type of enemy with different skins. There are some few additions and changes to gameplay with new hazards and such as you progress through the campaign but it will still mostly be playing out in very same-ish ways. Bosses seemed to mostly ignore you and just do their own routines of patrolling around the boss screen area. Many of them ended up being mostly tests of patience which is ok but also negatively so occasionally due to the aforementioned melee attack hit box jankiness, seeming lack of mercy invincibility, and sudden changes in enemy movement speeds which also extends to bosses but is at least somewhat more predictable once you have seen their full "attack routine". [h1]Later segments[/h1] Toward the end there's one particular level with platforms that rotate around their center point which was pure jank town. Absolutely horrid platforming - I had most of my deaths there and it felt like I had relatively little control. Strangely enough you can stand at the center of those platforms as they will 'phase through' you. However, whenever it rotates in these frame steps, the player character can easily end up "falling" slightly back to the new angle level of the platform. This means your jump inputs can easily get eaten up due to being in the "falling" state momentarily. Speaking of the end, it felt to me like the game was just kinda starting to really get onto its own with the later levels but then ended quite quickly at that point. It would have been much better if the game could have started with 'bravado' more akin to those later levels and then went even further beyond both mechanically and level design wise. [h1]Length, difficulty levels, bonus content[/h1] The game took like 1,5-2 hours for me to beat so it isn't that lengthy. Going through the campaign, you are at times presented with multiple levels to choose from (usually 3) albeit you will need to clear them all so it's really just choosing the order of the few levels presented - beating all the pickable levels allows you to progress through the linear level sequence again. Given that you on your first playthrough don't know anything about the levels, and that you will still need to clear them all, I'm not exactly if this concretely adds anything other than an illusion of choice to the gameplay. I suppose you can quit a level which is atm annoying you and finish it later on so there's that at least. There didn't seem to be much difference on harder difficulties. From the briefs tests I had with level selecting on hard difficulty, it seemed to boil down to bosses having massive amounts of more HP which I found disappointing as well as more tedious than anything else. Just having new enemy placements for the different difficulty levels would have been much appreciated. Additional characters, skins, and such unlockables are available for purchase with the credits (score points) you earn by going through the levels. You will need to grind for them though and I haven't myself bothered to unlock any of them so I can't say if they play much differently. There's also the aforementioned level select feature as well as additional quirky challenges that test out some alternative gameplay styles and level design. I think this type of content is cute and does add some longevity to the game if you want some reason to continue playing. [h1]Ending notes[/h1] All in all, I guess I would give this a lukewarm recommendation if you have a tolerance for some gameplay jank as well as low quality graphics - even then I think I would prolly suggest waiting for it to be on a discount if you have any hesitation about what you heard. If need to waste some hour or two at a game, this isn't the worst thing out there. It sort of plays out like a poor man's ninja gaiden classic with some jank. Keep your expectations low and you can get some enjoyment out of this to sort of satisfy that itch for classic 2d ninja action gameplay. If the price was anything like 5+ bucks, I would hit that "no" on the recommendation choice immediately but at a cost like a dollar, it's like... "ok, whatever".

I know the game looks like retro puke, but I enjoyed playing it from start to finish. The developer did a good job with extra content, such as unlockable characters, skins, and bonus stages. Honestly, the biggest problem here is not the aesthetic or platforming sections, it's the lack of partial controller support. The gameplay is very basic, most of the enemies die from one attack - feels like an early Shinobi game which I do not mind. It takes about 2-3 hours to complete the story on normal difficulty; however, you won't be able to get all of the extra content on the first playthrough. Even though the game is somewhat trashy, suffering from occasional hit-box and platforming issues, it's kinda fun due to cheesy cutscenes and weird enemy design. There are some power-ups that you can get but they really don't add a lot of depth to the game, you just run out of ammo too quickly. It's not too difficult and the settings allow you to adjust some features in order to make it easier, but it's just challenging enough to be entertaining. Lastly, the game had a few different composers, which would explain why soundtrack quality goes up and down. [h1] Pros: [/h1] + kinda funny, many stages, lots of boss fights + many unlock, extra characters & skins + several bonus challenges + achievements [h1] Cons: [/h1] - needs controller support (at least partial) - occasional platforming and hit-box problems - the soundtrack ranges from good to awful [b] Overall Thoughts: 6/10 [/b] Ugly? Yes... Unpolished? Yes... Did I enjoy playing it? Yes... I don't know, just one of those bad games that are kinda entertaining for good and bad reasons. Lots of unlocks though. [code]Review By: http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31294838-Hidden-Gem-Discovery/ [/code]