Yasai Ninja (PC) Review

It is difficult to not be upfront here. From the moment the premise of the game was stated it was unlikely that the quality of Yasai Ninja would ever be in question. The problem lies in the premise. It's a world in which humanity has been replaced by sentient vegetables. What is the point? Making violence, blood, and gore E-rated by making it vegetables? Food-related puns? A weak attempt to draw attention to a game that almost everyone would look over if it weren't for its premise? There is no way to hide it. The veggies in Yasai Ninja are spoiled and have long-since rotten through. This game is bad!

From the get-go the problems are blatant. The story is pathetic from the start with dialogue that reads less like a legitimate attempt to write character and more of a bad RPG Maker game in which the developer was too lazy to include an actual story. A piece of broccoli has been imprisoned and his onion-samurai guard currently does not approve of the way the shogun is running Japan. So the two team up to bring green justice to him and… well… Why bother describing more? The dialogue is bare-bones at best, barely servicing the basic need of explaining just what the heck needs to be done. It would be so nice to harp on about why this is so bad but, honestly, there isn't enough to be really mad. The characters have no character of their own beyond 'onion' and 'broccoli' and the story is basically non-existent.

The real problem is the gameplay. First off, for being an action game the combat is so amazingly wooden that the trees are more flexible. When the player desires to make an attack the character stops dead in their tracks and makes a slow swing before moving on to the next bit of the combo. There is no motion and the slow attack speed and wooden stance make combat completely incapable. There is no point in trying to dodge or block because, by the time the attack finishes and/or the block animation starts, the attack has already hit. It honestly feels at times like there are turn-based games with faster action than even a single attack in this game. Combos are far more difficult to pull off than they should be as well simply because of this sluggish and wooden pace since it's so easy to end up missing the window to input a command while begging the game to be just a little bit faster.

With this sluggish action one would think combat is difficult, but it's the opposite or, rather so uneven as to be a complete joke. In order to 'lose', both characters must be KO'ed. But it's easy to revive any partner who has fallen to the point where, despite how sluggish and vulnerable the combat is; the battle can be won just by reviving en masse. That is, until the first boss comes and the wooden combat makes dodging attacks far more difficult than it should be. Plus the computer will gladly wail on the partner until an otherwise-unknown timer times out resulting in a loss. Since the computer partner lacks even the most basic of survival skills and is using a combat system too pathetic to do much, a KO and loss is in the future.

The levels are, likewise, boring. Simply put, there is nothing about them that holds interest. They're flat, uninteresting, messes that sometimes bug out and always induce snores. There are minor events in which one of the two characters can do something but it's usually both obvious and underwhelming. It's completely uninteresting. About the only 'positive' is that the cel-shaded graphics achieve the bare minimum of 'not eye-searing'. Even then, they aren't good by any means and are more comparable to a PS2 launch title than anything.