Ninja or Die: Shadow of the Sun Reviews

Hated this game. It looks great but the controls are incredibly bad and the level design is awful.

The jumping is akin to jump king and simply all you do is jump. I didn't have fun with jump king and I didn't have fun with this. The jumping itself is good. It has a solid foundation that has a lot of bad designs and missteps that will hopefully be fixed with time. The music and art are pretty solid for the most part, though the art is too much at times. On the surface level it works, but so much of the game comes off as annoying and unfun. The map design doesn't seem to lend itself to any interesting platforming with much of it just being spamming A. This leads toward the art being overwhelming as the time slow and screen flash happening over and over and over. On top of that jumping near enemies or bosses with any items leads to the screen becoming a cluttered mess. Speaking of messes, the inventory management is very annoying. You have a max amount of items and are continually having to go to menu to select and throw out an item. On top of that to upgrade item slots it is among the most expensive. ON TOP OF THAT pause doesn't actually pause the game and instead slows it down. Then when there is an item you want and can't pick up you have to move away from the item and back to it. Just more spamming A. Now the shoe horned roguelike mechanics, wouldn't be an indie game without em. You get money for upgrades, and you rescue people for town upgrades. Your town is empty when you start and is filled as you discover individuals. Both of these you lose if you fail the mission, you do retain some sort of amount I'm not sure what, but that can be upgraded. The stickler for me is that rescuing people and town progression people is based on stages with them having a set location. Some of these might easily be overlooked and some might be missed as there are secrets. My playthrough I accidentally started without doing tutorial as there is a skip tutorial option. Well, there is a town progression person in the tutorial. Should just have that always at town and not unlocked. The method for finding these secrets is again, annoying. You have an infinitesimal minimap that provides next to no use. You can make the map bigger which why would I need to when its 4x4 pixels. You are supposed to slowly rotate camera all around you to search for secrets and then know there is an invisible wall/ceiling and find it. So in a game solely around jumping I might need to stop at any moment and search slowly around me to try and find a secret containing a town upgrade person. So annoying. Then then small things just keep adding up. Flavor text adds more clutter to the screen and again doesn't pause the game which can lead to annoying situations. The 2nd boss completely changes the gameplay, however before I can assess what is even going on the event already begins. You have to actually pick up coins which again is just more spamming A. Again there is an upgrade to pick up from afar, and an upgrade to see further. These upgrades are taking up inventory slots just to make the game less annoying. Map design seems linear with stages 1-10 or such. But there are alternate exits for some stages that take you to another stage having to eventually wrap around and get the other. You don't know which is the alternate route, and you don't know what the exit is until you press exit. THEN you can see if it is the exit you want except you must either continue or save and exit. No cancel if you actually want the other exit. It's just a continual lack of polish that strip the game of any fun. And map design that doesn't really lend itself to interesting platforming at all. I don't think it's too hard as others have said, just uninteresting. Granted I didn't play much, but when should it get fun? And again I didn't like Jump King, if you did and the game itself looks fun definitely give it a shot.

Im actually re-doing this review now I've completed the game. GOOD Plays great on steam deck Collecting/rescuing villagers is a great little side quest to rank up the starting village Controls are simple for basic to intermediate level gameplay (great for casual arcade play) Great grinding RPG elements like stockpiling cash by redoing stages to make a ninja of your choice unstoppable. Grinding is easy Story is short and simple. Character design is unique and enjoyable to look at especially the bosses. Hidden characters (which you don't see much in games anymore) You can switch between characters you meet between stages making gameplay a whole lot more interesting and (an IMPORTANT mechanic to explore during more challenging sections). Each character has a gimmick for a contrasting gaming experience Everything in the game works well together to create a very classic Japanese style dungeon crawler. .......................................... BAD (not necessarily bad but should be taken into consideration) There are no checkpoints and about 12-16 stages on average between each boss. Most are short but some like "FIND THE DOOR KEY" can take time. Gameplay is fast but feels restricted because a lot of the initial gameplay is underground. This gets better when you are outside. MASTERing the controls in this game will take more than persistance, you have to think hard about how the mechanics work, especially towards the end. Some of the stage obstacles are built by an absolute schadenfreude, so eat lots of sweets. When that happens switch characters ( i recommend the Samurai) or spend time grinding for health and Attk.damage increases. Your bag fills up quick, so throw away anything you're not using or increase your item limit Summary Great arcade game to get straight into, play like a 2d scroller in the beginning and like an RPG around stage 6 and change characters every now and then.

i love the concept and the pixel art is really beautiful, but the levels are just not designed to be fun, maybe thats the point, i even waited a few weeks just for this game to release, but frustrating levels are just not enjoyable