Game:

The Legend of the Mystical Ninja (1991)

Duration: 0:00

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Originally recorded: November 28, 2021
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With DK64 firmly in the rearview mirror, it's time to play through what became the final game of the year. My original plans were to wrap up with DK64, but due to that hiatus I had to take back in September, I decided to juggle things around and unfortunately, this game ended up getting pushed way back. Still, I am impressed that just like last year, I'll manage to get through all of my bonus games scheduled for this year. I'm just not liking the look of continuing to a three-peat next year already...

Anyway, the final game of the year is The Legend of the Mystical Ninja, which I believe is the very first game in Konami's long-running Goemon series to make it to the West. I've heard good things about it, but KI told me to keep my expectations in check. And damned if I shouldn't have listened to him a little better. Because I kind of hate a lot of things about this game.

The funny thing about this game is that I saw a review online that likened it to River City Ransom... and honestly, that's pretty accurate in some respects. Particularly, the towns... where Goemon -- sorry, Kid Ying -- is constantly beset by hostile villagers for some reason. And these guys are way more agressive than anything I've ever seen in River City Ransom.

However, the main meat of the game take the form of platforming stages. And one of its major issues is the fact that the "isometric" (for want of a better term) and side-scrolling segments effectively share their controls, which makes both feel clunky in some respects. Like, the jumping in this game is absolutely bizarre... I can't even describe it. It's sort of momentum-based, but not in the way you might expect. So, there are times where you think you're moving fast enough to get the full horizontal range of motion, but you end up with a jump that would make Simon Belmont roll his eyes.

And don't get me started with the power-ups in this game. Everything's temporary, but like, in the most obnoxious way possible. You collect cat statues to beef up your main weapon's reach, turning your standard pipe into a larger, golden one and topping out at what is essentially a bladed yo-yo. You can buy extra sandals to run faster and jump higher, buy armor to save you from taking conventional damage, hats to save you from taking damage from objects that fall on you, bombs that can be tossed and even hold onto food items that heal you once you run out of health. But here's the rub: every time you take a hit, pretty much EVERYTHING affected by damage drops by one. Tank some conventional damage with armor, it takes a hit, but you still lose a pair of sandals and one level of your melee weapon's reach. So taking a single hit in this game when you're fully powered up, with its already strange feeling mechanics, is essentially like taking three hits all at one. It's like dying in a shmup, except you don't have the chance to grab any of the power-ups you dropped in the process.

You can also use money as an attack, but it's also kind of necessary to buy armor and sandals and food and everything else to survive. And when you run out of lives and continue, your money's all gone, so you've got to start grinding for it back in the last village... starting off with a melee attack with absolutely puny range. The money does do killer damage though, so at least, they make it a difficult decision to either hoard it or use it to dole out massive damage on enemies.

Then there's stuff that only lasts for the current stage, like learning jutsu attacks (which cost a lot of money and half your default lifebar!) or finding the golden cat power-ups that extend your lifebar. The thing is, I can't even get that mad about stuff like this, because it fits with all of the other weirdly annoying things about this game. I do like getting a password at the "diary center" basically acts as a temporary save for as long as you keep the game on, though.

Unfortunately, Dari's taking all of my criticisms of the game super personally, because not only was the one who nominated it -- both in the first place and as a bonus game this year -- but it was one of the games he had on the SNES back in the day. So he associates some fond memories with the game... despite the fact that he couldn't figure out how to get to the second level.

Oh well, at least I didn't break his heart by one-shotting it like I did with Goof Troop.

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