Unique approach to what would otherwise be a hack and slash RPG
Mini Ninjas combines your typical hack and slash fighting style with fun and often useful techniques, a simple experience system, regent gathering and potion making dynamics.
In a sentience it has combined the very essence of an RPG and added action.
The presentation is well rounded, with textures, models, sound and dialog combining well to convey the story.
Sound in particular is very well done with sound effects delivering convincing feedback, ambient sounds are easy to relate to and make the game quite immersive, recorded dialog is somewhat cliché but at least the enemies yell their lines out in Japanese.
Everything just seems well rounded, gathering ingredients for a potion, saving the game at a check point, switching characters or active spells; everything is easy and fast to do.
Combat is just as well rounded, execution of attacks and spells is easy; fining a combination of the right character against different enemy types, or a good strategy to use with spells is where the fun begins.
Each level has a different atmosphere, ranging from the light, colorful introduction level to a dark foggy grave yard to a bland yet interesting castle.
This game is in my top 5 for 2009, and I'll quickly recommend it to anyone who enjoys a bit of good fun and isn't too worried that is seems to be targeted at a younger audience.
Also 10/10 because it inspired me to write this review
Update 1
After completing the game there are a couple of glitches that I found, neither are major but just for completeness I'll mention them;
a couple of areas seemed to have sound glitches, I'm not entirely sure if they were the areas themselves, or something else. Restarting the game seemed to fix it anyway.
The other is the character switching mechanic, the switch itself is fine but it drops any keys currently pressed, so in the middle of a fight if you decide to switch out to a different character you have to stop pressing forward and then you can move again. Nothing that would make me lower the score but a couple of times it had me wondering why I wasn't moving.
Update 2
I went ahead and updated my score, simply because after completing the game and having a chance to think about it I realized there were several simple things that eidos could have done to make the game a lot more interesting. Possibly because of wb's involvement in publishing the game is basically too simple.
Its just too easy to run in slashing, I played through on medium difficulty, on hard im sure things would begin to get interesting.
I never used the potion making feature, nor did I buy weapons from the vendor tengu. I maxed out my shiruken at 99 even though i used them frequently. Play time was 11.05 and I was fairly thorough, controlling animals to find plants that i had missed etc.
In short I think with a few tweaks they could have introduced a more strategic element, stealth is always an option throughout the game (and I would hope so, you are a ninja and all) but it is hardly effective as enemies are always in groups so after the first attack you have to start cutting away.
A combination of stealth, spell/technique usage, potions and other various ninja like strategies make the game a lot of fun.