Ninjala

Genre: Action

Players: 1-8 Competitive / Team Competitive (Online)

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Review:

WARNING: THIS GAME HEAVILY PUSHES MICROTRANSACTIONS AND LOOTBOXES

Ninjala is a free-to-play Online Multiplayer-focused Action game that has been getting a lot of comparisons to Nintendo’s Splatoon series, a comparison that both is and is not apt. In this game, a Nintendo Switch exclusive, players take the role of bubblegum-blowing ninja kids fighting in an arena.

The presentation is one of the key things that has garnered this attention. Not only does this game feature colorful modern locales and child characters in a similar cartoony style to Splatoon, but the game also has a similarly slick presentation with a lot of personality to it. While not a visually-stunning game, this game is still quite visually good, especially considering that it’s free-to-play. That said, the music and sound here don’t have quite the same level of personality as Splatoon.

While the presentation is similar to Splatoon, the gameplay has some similarities and some distinct differences. The similarities are primarily in the game structure – players are equipped with a primary weapon that comes attached to multiple support abilities, and then tossed into an arena, with the game’s single-player campaign, purchased separately for $10, something of an after-thought (more on that in a bit).

Where it differs is the actual combat itself – where Splatoon was a Third-Person Shooter, Ninjala is a straight-up melee action game, with players performing combo attacks on drones to power up and then unleashing those attacks on enemies. The game doesn’t explain its mechanics very well, but it uses a paper-rock-scissors system in its combat, determined by what direction players are pushing the stick when they press the attack button. And when players perform the same attack, they lock into another paper-rock-scissors struggle, with the winner getting the better of the situation.

It’s not a terrible system in theory – the Dead or Alive fighting game series does a great job making a paper-rock-scissors system both fast and strategic, for example. However, in practice, there’s little to distinguish the attacks from each other in any meaningful way, and as a result much of the combat just feels button-mashy

This is extremely apparent in the game’s single-player campaign. Interspersed with unskippable still frame text-only comic sequences that move at a glacial pace, players will engage in combat with countless mooks, combat that quickly becomes a button-mashy ordeal. When larger enemies enter the picture, they’re not fazed by the attacks, which makes it painfully clear how woefully inadequate the game’s block commands are – they’ll weather a few hits, and then pound you into submission, and since your follow-through on attacks is long, your block weakens over repeated blows, and running or jumping away won’t get you out of range in time, in all likelihood you’ll just end up trading blows back and forth. Perhaps there’s a better way to go about this, I dunno, the game didn’t exactly make this clear.

Even with lesser enemies though, it becomes a frustrating ordeal – your character cannot select who they’re attacking – they’ll apparently go for whoever’s closest, which can often be frustrating when you need to take out one specific character but you’re being swarmed. Often, you’ll be confronted by multiple enemies shooting you from a distance, and with no easy way to dodge, you’ll either have to be overly defensive, or just accept that you’ll have to weather a bunch of free hits.

On top of this, the camera is prone to getting trapped next to walls. The game allows for a few different camera setups, including using motion controls, but nothing I tried seemed to be especially great.

Another point I should mention: normally, when an online-focused game comes out, I’ll give it a bit of time to get its servers in order – I understand it’s not always easy to anticipate web traffic. However, Ninjala had the benefit of two open beta tests prior to release, and was plagued with server problems before, so it’s not like this issue snuck up on them as a surprise. Yeah, the servers are still a mess. They work fine once you manage to get in, but you’ll be plagued with error messages and disconnects repeatedly while in menus, even if all you’re looking to do is check your character or play the single-player campaign – this game requires an online connection even in single-player, so if their servers suffer, you suffer, no matter where in the game you are.

One final thing: For those wondering, the game’s microtransactions all appear to be cosmetic in nature, and since the core game is free, I can’t very well fault them for that too much (although I can tell you now that the “Story Pack: Chapter One” campaign is not worth the $10 price tag).

In the end, I feel like Ninjala’s gameplay simply didn’t live up to its presentation. The game looks fantastic, but it feels like a messy, nonsensical, button-mashy slog to play through, whether you’re playing in single-player or online. There are some promising ideas here, but those ideas weren’t developed into a coherent experience, and the result is a game that is bursting with a promise of fun that it never delivers on.

tl;dr – Ninjala is a Free-to-Play Online-focused Action game, and while it features a slick, polished presentation that has garnered a lot of positive comparisons to the Splatoon series, the gameplay is a messy, repetitive, button-mashy mess.

Grade: C-

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2020 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: Worst Microtransactions

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