Genre: Role-Playing
Publisher: Atlus
Developer: Ninja Studio
Release Date: July 22, 2008

It's harsh being a ninja nowadays. Modern military forces are just too team-oriented and loaded with fancy tech like automatic firearms and portable music players to be useful for your everyday stealthy ninja. This, combined with other fictional universes' increasing tendency toward modern mercenary companies, has resulted in a severe lack of demand for the art of ninjutsu in all its forms, Naruto notwithstanding. With this in mind, young Izuna and her family have been trying to find work and a decent place to live. As of the end of the original Izuna, they're still trying, and you're along for a hilarious, yet cosmically frustrating, ride into the world of the Roguelike.

Before we continue, a quote from my review of the original Izuna, which remains relevant to the sequel: "Have you played NetHack? If the answer is no, stop reading this review long enough to start downloading it because your gaming career isn't complete without a good run of the original dungeon exploration game — and it's free. NetHack's one of those games that not everyone has played, but everyone who calls himself a gamer should have played."

With that said, the roguelike subgenre has been quite popular recently, with Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo's Dungeon, three Mystery Dungeon games getting U.S. release, and now a sequel to Izuna. In a more crowded environment, does Izuna still hold up to its console and portable brethren, let alone the great PC classics? Fortunately, the answer is, once again, "Yes." While the sequel doesn't quite hold up as strongly as the original, Izuna 2: The Unemployed Ninja Returns will attract the roguelike faithful as well as the hardcore RPG fans who haven't ever tried the roguelike subgenre. There's too much charm and too many improvements in Izuna 2 to ignore.

The basic rules of Izuna 2 are the same as the original. You go into randomly generated dungeons and get loot, but if you die or turn off the game without saving, you lose your loot. If you defeat the boss, you get a new dungeon (although in the sequel, you'll also return to older dungeons fairly often). At a basic level, the gameplay is the same as before, down to the well-written control scheme and one-to-one turn-based mechanics.

Fortunately, Izuna 2 isn't quite a direct sequel consisting of the same events as before. The new story line centers around Izuna's "sister" (read: teammate), Shino, who is hoping to find her actual sister, from whom she was separated years ago. Unfortunately, neither seems to like the idea of staying put, so they journey from place to place. This results in Izuna returning to the village she used as a base in the last game, where most of the gods have closed their dungeons for a variety of reasons, including one who posts a sign out front that reads, "Oops, I broke it." Things only get odder from there as they go from dungeon to dungeon.

One major comedic difference from the original game is that Izuna seems to have frequented the same bar as Marvel Comics' Deadpool. She's decided she doesn't like the fourth wall anymore, so she interrupts characters to give a summary of the first game, generally overinflating her sense of self-importance and getting very annoyed at being forced onto side-quests for information. I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same, at least when it comes to Atlus' sense of humor — or perhaps the humor is by Ninja Studio, for very few puns are used.

Gameplay has similarly evolved in Izuna 2, mostly through the addition of a more compartmentalized world map, with several towns linking to an increasing number of dungeons. Although the story forces you to go through dungeons — or forests, which Izuna points out very quickly indeed — to travel between areas, you can conveniently jump from town to town after you've been there at least once, so at different points in the game, you can take advantage of the services that are offered in each area.

Most significantly, though, is the new wrinkle to its dungeon-crawling: the Tag system. When you enter a dungeon, you can select two characters out of a slowly increasing cast, and you can switch back and forth between these characters as a turn action. There are limitations on how frequently you can switch, although they are pretty loose. You can also perform various tag-team attacks, but the tag system is most useful for offering you a second chance in dungeons. If you screw up enough to die but you still have your second character to get you through, it makes the game's classically murderous difficulty level a little easier to handle.

The keyword here is "a little," for when it comes to Izuna 2's monstrously difficult dungeons and high penalty for failure, the more things have changed, the more they stay the same. Having more options definitely makes things somewhat easier, but with the limitations on the options, the game's cute cartoon style once again belies a difficulty level far harder than the vast majority of games on the Nintendo DS — including many of the other Mystery Dungeon titles. Ultimately, patience, thinking and manipulation of mechanics will see you through, and it is not nearly as bad as the classic NetHack, but those used to the lower end of the difficulty scale will be extremely frustrated.

Unfortunately, the game's weaknesses come in its presentation because it's too similar to that of the original Izuna. The design remains mostly consistent, but character art has undergone some stylistic shifts. In play, the sprites are of the same style as before, on backgrounds that are the same style as before, and a majority of resources have been reused from the first game. The new art is a tiny bit more detailed, but still doesn't really impress. The overall style still looks quite good, but with no interface changes whatsoever, many of the design elements become annoying far more quickly than before. At least the music is mostly new and sounds a lot better than before.

That's Izuna 2: The Unemployed Ninja Returns in a nutshell: more of the same, several new additions, and more comedy than before. This isn't a bad thing at all, and dungeon-crawling fans will probably love Izuna 2 for its evil difficulty and comic presentation, but those who didn't like the first won't find too much here to change their minds. If nothing else, Ninja Studio knows its niche and follows it through, and the results are enjoyable for those who like the roguelike subgenre.

Score: 7.4/10