Not exactly difficult, just slightly time consuming and frustrating at times.
The Bad : No use of the stylus or microphone makes you wonder if this should be for GBA , No side quests or replay value, Dull NPC's.
You should : look up " Rogue ".
Izuna : LOTUN ( are people using that abbrevation ?? ), is typically synonymous with difficult or hard, when typing it on Google or reading game reviews online. I wouldn't necessarily call it that, as I think it's more time consuming than difficult. You play as a single character throughout the whole game, Izuna, who is the typical naive and sexy anime girl, despite being only 16. You fight turn based style through randomly generated dungeons, which range from about 5 to 40 floors, collecting items, as you level up and collect items until you reach a boss fight. If you are defeated, you start back in the village. You keep your EXP, but lose all your weapons and items. This has been a big knock on the game, but with experience, you will find out how to keep your weapons and items, and also how to leave a dungeon with all your items before death. This leads to you keeping your weapons throughout the game, and you can really spend some time beefing the weapons and armor up.
This game is very basic, and designed well. I enjoy the fact that I can't use a FAQ or walkthrough in this game, which is something I find myself doing too often these days. Also, right when you die, the game saves immediately, and there is no soft reset. This adds legitimacy to the game, as you can't use the old save and reload trick to try things over a 2nd or 3rd time. So you might be thinking, " well, I'll just turn the game off right before I die, I'll reload and pick up my progress back on dungeon floor 34 ". Wrong. When you turn the game off, you end up back outside the dungeon. The game is fair, not hard. There are some dungeons that are difficult, but they can be cured by leveling up and using some strategy.
The soundtrack is pretty tight, I particularly like the boss music. I also like how every 5th floor of a dungeon finds you a new track. When you spend over an hour in a dungeon, you don't need repetitive music. If your someone who thinks graphics are an important part of a game, then you may be disappointed with Izuna. The game looks more like a SNES offering, which I personally don't mind. I'm not a huge fan of cliche anime styles, but I think the art form works just fine for this simple game.
The big knocks for me were the lack of sidequests. You can tell this is a low budget game by a small company, which of course is good and bad. I wouldn't of minded something to break the monotony of dungeon crawling, as that's all there is to do in this game. You could go around speaking to the NPC's, which I personally found to be a bit stock, and annoying ( I really can't stand to hear " Irrashaimase ", or read the cheesy dialog by the warehouse girl again ! ).
Nonetheless, if you like dungeons, and you like Japan, you will more than likely enjoy Izuna .