Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword is ultimately one of the few great action games for the DS...
When fellow ninja Momiji is kidnapped, it's up to Ryu to go out and save her, and eliminate an ancient demonic force while he's at it. Dragon Sword doesn't feature story-telling at its best, but it gives you reason enough to go from level to level without not knowing what the hell you're doing.
The game only utilizes the DS's touch screen, but surprisingly, it works extremely well. To move you simply hold your stylus down on the direction you want to go, to jump you flick your stylus up, and for basic attacks, you just slide your stylus across an enemy. Of course, Ryu can perform dozens of actions beyond just the basic ones I mentioned. But once you get to more advanced techniques, you'll often end up performing the wrong action, but as the wrong attack still serves to damage your enemy, it's not all that annoying. The irony of it all, though, is the fact that instead of turning into a button masher, Ninja Gaiden turns into a stylus-slider. But, in the end, the stylus controls work very well, and it's a wonder how Team Ninja managed to pull it off.
Though the controls, and combat may feel radically different from the console game, Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword still has the same basic formula. You'll still go from level to level hacking away at enemies, and then top off the level with a boss fight. The merchant, Muramasa, is also there whom you can purchase new abilities from. Though, in a neat little twist, this time around, you'll have a central hub of sorts from which you can access the next level, chat with the villagers, or purchase new stuff from Muramasa.
The game definitely isn't as difficult as the recent Ninja Gaiden games. Most disappointingly is the fact that certain bosses you can take down with ease, while only barely getting hurt. But fear not, the game still has many tough areas that you'll have to play again multiple times in order to master.
Technically, Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword is great. The game uses 3D models on a 2D plane (though boss arenas are fully 3D). The 3D models are all great, and their animations are very fluid. And while I'd normally complain about a game using pre-rendered 2D backgrounds, the ones featured in Dragon Sword are beautiful. The combination of 2D and 3D ultimately ends up making the most sense, as the game doesn't slow down at all, and it looks superb.
The sound department isn't quite as awesome. The voice-overs are very limited (at most you'll only hear the characters utter their names), and the music is sparse, so what you'll be hearing most of the times are the battle-cries of Ryu and his enemies. But, when the music does kick in, it sounds great, and in general it's nice to have the amount of sound bytes the game does.
Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword is only an 8 or so hour adventure. But, seeing how it's one of the only action games on the DS, and at that it's great, those desperate for some white-knuckled action on Nintendo's portable will probably find them coming back to this game again and again to replay old levels, or conquer new difficulties.
All in all, Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword has great gameplay, awesome graphics, and is of a reasonable length. But, the sound department is lacking, and the touch screen controls do suffer some minor problems. In the end, though, DS action games are rare enough as it is, and it's even less often that a good one comes around, so any DS owner who likes action/adventure games should definitely pick up Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword.