Ninja Battle Heroes

Genre: Action-Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Ninja Battle Heroes is an Action-Platformer released on Nintendo 3DS in 2014. This game has players battling a horde of anthropomorphized animal warriors using various ninja skills.

The presentation in this game is cute, but not especially impressive, using simple cartoony 2D characters in simple 3D environments. This is all backed by a soundtrack seemingly inspired by the Feudal Japan era that this game is set in. It all works, but there’s nothing really remarkable going on here.

For the gameplay, players have different attacks for both enemies in the foreground and in the background, with the former being either distance attacks or melee attacks depending on whether enemies are in range. In addition, there are apparently additional skills your character can deploy based on context and control inputs… though it isn’t always made clear to you how to use them. There’s also magic skills you can acquire as you progress through the game, equippable for use via the touchscreen. Suffice it to say that there’s a good variety of attacks and move types available to you.

Having said that, I can’t help but feel like mapping foreground melee and projectile attacks to one button may have been a mistake, as it can often cause you to do one when you intend to do the other. Also, while the combat may have nuance here, it doesn’t feel as good as one might hope for such a combat-focused game. Also, the platforming here isn’t especially great either, with a lot of places where you’ll be making leaps of faith, potentially into an enemy that can attack you before you can strike them.

Despite all these issues, Ninja Battle Heroes is still a decent Action-Platformer, and for $3 it’s hard to find too much fault with it. There are absolutely areas where it could be improved, but its wide array of different attacks and nice foreground/background combat makes it an interesting entry in the genre, and for this low price I would argue that it’s worth getting if you have a 3DS and enjoy Action-Platformers.

tl;dr – Ninja Battle Heroes is an Action-Platformer that has you fighting a horde of anthropomorphic animals in a version of Feudal Japan. There’s some decent depth to the combat here, and an inventive mechanic that has you balancing attacks in the foreground and background. There are issues with both tee combat and Platforming here, but for the low price of $3, this seems worthwhile enough for Action fans on the 3DS to give a try.

Grade: C+

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