While I love my system of Negatives/Positives, there are just some games it doesn’t work on. Muramasa: The Demon Blade was one such game. Sometimes you have titles that simply work, that there is little to gripe about. Or a game is just so simple that there isn’t much to cover.

Mini Ninjas is a combination of both. In fact, it’s entertainment value is much greater than even the demo may suggest. It is a game built simple enough that children and new gamers can pick it up with ease, yet there’s enough tools to keep experienced players delighted and busy with. This surface of deceitfully deep gameplay is typically Nintendo’s signature of design, which makes it only more surprising to discover such an excellent package was in fact put together by the same team that made Kane & Lynch and the Hitman games.

You play as Hiro, a young ninja talented in the ancient and forgotten art of Kuji magic. Trained by your master and raised amongst Tengu, your master has sent the other older ninja to figure out why the weather has been acting up. None of them return, and thus Hiro and his friend Futo must go investigate and rescue their friends. It turns out an ancient Samurai warlord has started to turn animals into warriors in order to take over the land. This also happens to create an imbalance in the climate.

This is all delivered through exposition, of course. This is perhaps the first issue I have with the game. I know in some ways it’s ridiculous to expect a simple family game to have too much story. At the same time all that exposition at the start of the game is enough to bore and overload a child. It would have been better to slowly establish more information as the game progressed through character interaction of brief cut-scenes. This would have also allowed more time to spend with the characters themselves, something the game needed more of.

As you rescue the different young ninja a video will unlock in the extras menu. This provides a sort of short animation that introduces the characters. I cannot stress enough how amusing these shorts are. While they aren’t going to make you laugh out loud or amaze you in any way, it is cleverly done as to endear the different characters to you. This is particularly why I’m disappointed the story doesn’t really play out beyond short snippets between the major bosses. I would love to see these characters interact more. The fact that none of them really speak (outside of the occasional Japanese phrase here and there) only increases the charm.

This is actually one of the reasons I’d love to see a franchise emerge out of this game. I like these characters. I’d like to see them interact more. Heck, I’d love to see animated shorts on Cartoon Network or Nickelodeon featuring these ninjas. It’s funny that, in an industry where we have trouble creating good stories and heroes with at least two dimensions, let alone three, here are six ninja characters that convey enough personality to warrant an entire franchise. Without speaking.

Yet no matter how adorable or charming the heroes are, a game must be able to stand on its own. Mini-Ninjas has no issue with this.

While Hiro seems the most useful character to use based on his ability to use magic, he’s more of a default character for any situation. He is decently fast and deals a nice amount of damage, but outside of Kuji magic he has no real special characteristics. Many of the spells are great at dealing with large numbers of foes, but the cost in fatigue tends to be greater the more useful the incantation is. In order to save magic, as well as make combat more effective with other characters, items become valuable.

Caltrops slow enemies and make them vulnerable, as does a flash grenade. A smoke grenade allows a quick escape and potentially grants the player an opportunity to enter stealth mode for a quick kill. There are a few explosives that are capable of taking out a number of enemies instantly. In short, nothing is worthless.

Which is why it’s a shame you can only have so few assigned to the radial shortcut menu. Allowing multiple shortcut toggles or giving each character their own radial menu would have made things a lot easier. As it is there are so many useful items and spells but not enough slots to equip them into. If you want to switch to a different weapon or spell, you have to enter the inventory and replace another item with it. This becomes increasingly problematic later on when you may find yourself switching between characters constantly, each having their own different strengths and thus having different requirements as to what items to use.

Each character also has a special combat ability that uses up one of three Ki energy. These abilities range from striking multiple enemies with a one hit kill to shooting an arrow tied to an explosive rocket to enchanting foes to dance so you can kill them in one strike. This is one of the primary reasons to keep switching characters out as each ability can change the tide of battle or quickly eradicate a pesky group of archers or spearmen.

There are also some foes that are easier to deal with when using certain characters. Giants can only be taken down by Futo, the large clumsy ninja with a hammer. Spearmen are best handled by Shun, the archer, or Kunoichi who has a spear of her own. The final and most forgettable ability is stunning foes, which breaks an enemy’s defense and making them vulnerable to attack. One fast moving foe in particular is best taken out by stunning, striking and stunning again repeatedly.

Perhaps one of the best abilities is the stealth. If a player so desires they can go through a majority of most levels without fighting a good number of foes. In fact, at least two levels can be beaten without fighting anyone at all. Yet this isn’t the only limit to its use. The stealth also allows players to take foes out easily with a single strike. The closer together enemies are huddled the more of them you can take down in one thrust of the blade. Unfortunately, any other nearby enemies not in range of the attack will see you and draw you out of stealth.

It is easy to think of Mini Ninjas as being a lot more simple than it actually is. You don’t need to use all of these tricks in order to beat the game, especially on Normal difficulty. You don’t need to find all of the spells or coins to purchase items with. You can merely attack everything that comes after you. Yet the game takes on a very different style when using all of these abilities, and in fact forces players to try them when starting on the Hard difficulty (thus I recommend experienced players try this mode instead). Combat takes on a different, deeper personality as you throw a bomb into one group of patrolmen before arrowing another from the roof, finally to bash the big strong warrior with your hammer. You feel, appropriately, like an elite ninja.

The level design itself is surprisingly clever, allowing multiple paths to be taken to a single destination or offering several possibilities to approach a challenge. Sometimes the expanse of the map can be daunting, leaving a player wondering which direction they should go. First play through will take at least ten or more hours if you are trying to see everything. If you simply cut through to the objective, however, it’s about the standard eight or so hours to complete.

Every once in a while a level may introduce a new gimmick. Early on sailing down rapids is established and repeated. In another you hold on to a fishing pole dragged by a giant fish, making sure you don’t hit any obstacles as he leads you to your destination. Both fun and frustrating is riding down a snowy mountainside on a hat while trying to outrun an avalanche. Perhaps most interesting of all is the final level, where you climb up a moving fortress that is burning and falling apart. Which, unfortunately, can also be staggeringly irritating at certain points.

What is most noteworthy of the final stage is the sort of effect it can have on a new gamer. There are many moments in my mind from the Super Nintendo era that define what gaming can be. For children or casual gamers, this final fortress is one such area. Plenty of experienced gamers have done such areas before, but the idea is still a great one and establishes an epic climax for players young and old.

The boss fights themselves are also appropriately designed, though the bosses of Wind and Air can each be annoying or easy. It varies, but when they work right they are extremely entertaining. The general idea for each foe is not to attack them directly, but to figure out a roundabout method. If the player cannot figure out how then a hint will appear informing them what it is they must do.

Each of these foes requires a Quick Time Event, which boggled my mind that there were any in this game to begin with. However, even for the most die hard nemesis of this pseudo-gameplay the implementation is tolerable. Failure to execute the Quick Time Event does not result in harm, and if you press the wrong button you won’t be forced to try everything a second time. It simply won’t register a button press at all, allowing the player to make a mistake and then correct it. I wouldn’t call this “Quick Time Events done right” as I know some might. It’s still a foolish mechanic and is simply not gameplay. However, it’s a way of implementing them that isn’t annoying, even though it’s not really fun either (which is the key part: it’s not fun).

As a result each boss fight feels interesting and different than a regular fight. The only boss that does not have any QTEs is the final fight with the Samurai Warlord, which feels appropriately challenging on any difficulty.

As is natural of family games, there are also a number of collectibles in each map. These levels can be replayed and you are told how much of each collectible you have found before continuing on, so if you desire you can continue playing the level until everything has been found. Sadly some of these items have no purpose. Plants are ingredients for potions, though you certainly don’t need to find most of them to be bountiful. Coins are also plentiful enough whether you find all their hiding spots or not. The magical shrines are perhaps the most valuable as they grant you new spells.

What provides no real effect outside of achievements are freeing the caged animals and the Jizo statues. The caged animals are typically easy enough to find without much effort, but those Jizo statues can be a serious bitch hidden in the most obscure section of the map. While this allows you to fully explore the world and appreciate the craftsmanship put into it, the fact that you get no substantial reward gives it a worthless feeling and makes it easy to give up on (unless you’re like me and really want that gamerscore). No unlockable content, no experience for leveling up, nothing. In this day and age anything that is going to require that much work ought to grant some form of reward.

If you ever seek to play the game a second time, you will likely want to create a new profile. The game offers a sort of New Game Plus option, where you retain all your items, weapons, characters and level, but after each map you’re brought back to the menu screen instead of moving onto the next level. The game doesn’t even give you an option to proceed on to the next chapter or anything. You either keep playing the current map or go back to the menu. I’m assuming there was a QA Testing department, but apparently they don’t even know some of the basics of usability or human factors as this should have never been allowed out the door.

Aside from the Jizo statues, however, that is my largest gripe against the game. Mini Ninjas was a pure joy to play. It is as simple or complex as you wish it to be, offering a variety of play styles for a large number of players. While the story is simple, the charm of the characters is amusing and even endearing. This is the sort of game that every parent should purchase for their child alongside games like Super Mario Galaxy. It is the sort of game I probably would have loved were I to play it as a kid. In fact, I cannot think of a gamer that wouldn’t enjoy this game.

It’s the sort of title everyone should play, at the very least so we can get a franchise out of it and share another adventure with the Mini Ninjas in the future.

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