From the sheer amount of gore present in the last Ninja Gaiden outing on the Xbox, Nintendo’s dual screen portable is probably the last place you’d expect to see Ryu Hayabusa jumping around, however Team Ninja has brought everyone’s favorite Ninpo practitioner to Nintendo’s handheld with decidedly mixed results. The game excels on almost every technical level; however the staid gameplay and underwhelming boss battles somewhat lessen the experience. That being said, Ninja Gaiden freaks, as well as fans of action games in general will probably find enough here to keep them tied over until Ryu’s appearance on the next generation consoles.

Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword takes place six months after the events in Ninja Gaiden on the Xbox, and if you’re not familiar with those events, good luck knowing who anyone is or why most of what’s taking place on the screen is happening, as the game provides little to no back story. All you know is that the Spider Clan is getting all up in Hayabusa Village’s business and has teamed up with some fiends to kidnap Ryu’s gal Ninja pal Momiji. Ryu, being the only person in the village who isn’t female, under the age of eight, or over the age of 50 sets off to rescue Momiji as well as collect as many Dark Dragonstones as he can, lest they fall into the hands of the evil fiends.

The story is told via comic book style cut-scenes and in game dialog. The cut scenes are well done with vibrantly painted pictures and interesting character designs, however you’re not in this game to hear a gripping yarn—you’re here to show bad guys the business end of your katana. To do this, the game employs a stylus-only method of movement and attack reminiscent of the control scheme used in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. Ryu’s movements are controlled by dragging the stylus wherever you want him to go. Drawing up above Ryu makes him jump or double jump and drawing horizontal and vertical lines across your opponents causes Ryu to slash at them like the Ninja madman he is. Slashing multiple times or drawing combinations of jumps and slashes unleashes deadly combos such as the Izuna Drop or the Flying Swallow. Tapping an enemy makes Ryu use his ranged weapon, be it his shuriken or bow and arrows. Even Ninpo magic gets in on the hot, touch screen action as activating the magic brings you to a screen where you have to trace the correct symbol before the time runs out. The only activity not done with the touch screen is blocking, which is mapped to any of the face or shoulder buttons.

For the most part, the control scheme works well, with blocking being the only exception. To play the game, you hold the DS like a book thereby making it nearly impossible to hold the DS, draw, and hit a face button at the same time. The only way that seems to work, other than laying the DS on a surface is to hold the bottom of the unit such that the thumb in your non-slashing hand can reach over to the d-pad, or to one of the face buttons for you southpaws. It’s not ideal, but it works.

With the control scheme, it’s easy to send Ryu across the screen slashing and hacking like a whirlwind of destruction. The game does have its moments where you feel like you’re hacking away and Ryu is doing nothing but getting punched, as well as moments where you don’t feel like you’re doing much, but Ryu is single handedly bringing about the extinction of the fiend race, however those moments are few and far between. The only real complaint about the control scheme is that at times, the shift in perspective within a level will confuse the game, such that a jump movement can be misconstrued as a run away movement or vice versa. If you take things slowly, and think of it more like writing, and less like frantic scribbling, things will go a lot more smoothly.

For all of the innovation poured into the control scheme, the gameplay didn’t get the same influx of new ideas. The game follows the usual pattern of action games where you’ll enter an area, the entrance and exit will be blocked with foul majiks and you’ll be forced to fight wave after wave of creature until they all lay defeated and the doors open up. Note to enemies, either seal Ryu up permanently in one of these rooms, or make an enemy so small that Ryu can never find it to defeat it, thereby sealing him up permanently. You’re welcome.

As Ryu takes down his foes he’ll collect various forms of essence. Yellow essence is converted into cold, hard cash; blue essence is used to heal Ryu and red essence refills Ryu’s Ninpo magic meter. The more hits you can string together, or the more Ultimate Techniques, mega moves performed by scribbling diagonally on Ryu, you can pull off, the more essence you’ll get for your actions. Finally, after working your way through the various levels, you’ll come to the ending boss battle, and unfortunately, another let down.

The bosses in this game are all very well designed, and from a technical standpoint, look and act beautifully, however the act of defeating them is repeated so much among the bosses that it becomes an exercise in tedium. Most attacks can be rolled or ran away from and for many of the bosses you can stand at a distance, pelting them with arrows until they put their head down, or kneel, or take a phone call, allowing you to then run up and unleash a flurry of blows upon them. Those that can’t be stuck with arrows can be defeated by spamming the Flying Swallow move until they take a knee and you unload on them. Once you figure out a boss’s pattern, defeating them is fairly easy. It’s a shame there isn’t more variety to these fights, especially given the variety of the bosses themselves.

From a technical perspective, the game really shines. Ryu’s various attack animations are all very well done, and there’s a nice variation to the enemies he’ll be facing. Most importantly, the game never slows down, even when there are half a dozen enemies around at a time and Ryu is zipping from enemy to enemy, doing his ninja thing. On the audio side, all of his attack cries and sword slashes are brought to life with the only complaint being the somewhat annoying expressions uttered during the cut scenes. Someone at Team Ninja must have gotten the Now That’s What I Call Manga Vocal Sound Effects CD for their birthday. Music is similarly well done. The sound is also used to a nice effect in finding wooden amulets, tokens that can be spent upon completing the game to unlock various character profiles and diaries. At times when Ryu enters an area, or after defeating enemies, you’ll hear a bird’s cry. Yelling into the DS’s microphone will then scare the bird, allowing Ryu to kill it and obtain a wooden amulet. John Audubon would be thrilled.