Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword is the kind of game that can only come out well into in a system’s life cycle. Like many launch titles, early Nintendo DS games were generally ugly, clunky games that featured tacked on stylus support. But, as Dragon Sword demonstrates, the difference between games like the hand-cramping Super Mario 64 DS and latter day titles can be startling.

Dragon Sword is one of the best looking, best sounding Nintendo DS games to date, featuring silky smooth stylus controls that allows players to effortlessly use a variety of visually impressive moves from Ryu’s substantial bag of tricks and Ninja Gaiden’s trademark action.

It’s hard to believe that the precise controls of the Xbox original could be so handily translated to the DS stylus, but it all ends up feeling so natural that I would go so far as to wonder if it could be translated to the PSP half as well.

But that’s not to say that the stylus controls are a direct translation. For example, a great deal of the original game’s combat seemed to be predicated on bouncing off walls in an effort to evade the enemy while pulling off a variety of combos. Put simply, if you stayed still for even half a second, you died. Dragon Sword’s combat remains satisfying, but a great deal of the depth has been stripped away, with rote combos activating by simply slashing a lot at the screen.

There’s a rhyme and reason to the stylus movements that veteran players will quickly master, but most players will probably be able to make it through the entire game with just a few trusty moves. But despite being able to effectively spam just a few moves, Dragon Sword is not a game in which you can just scribble your way to victory. The wall bounces are gone, but you will definitely find yourself hitting that guard button, then leaping and rolling.

Dragon Sword certainly isn’t difficult to the point that you’ll be utterly destroyed by the first boss unless you’ve mastered the controls (something that should ring a few bells for fans of the Xbox version), but the enemies are certainly competent, and newer players in particular will find that they are forced to master the game’s combat system to some extent.

Unfortunately, Dragon Sword’s bosses, while certainly large and impressive on the small DS screen, require little thought to beat. Most players will be able to beat them on the first or second try simply by rolling around a bit and slashing as much as possible.

While higher difficulty levels can be unlocked following the game’s completion, the diamond hardcore of action fanatics who comprise Ninja Gaiden’s most loyal supporters are likely to be disappointed by the combination of the shallower combat system and lower difficulty. But for the rest of us mere mortals who were crushed repeatedly by the NES and Xbox games or just never got around to playing them in the first place, Dragon Sword is a refreshing introduction to the series for a larger segment of the market.

When you’re not killing a variety of supernatural creatures with impressive looking combos and magic, you will spend a great deal of time running around a hub village as you unlock the secrets of the Dark Dragonstones via a variety of lush, 2D cutscenes. Once you set out on whatever task you’ve been given, you’ll find yourself spending a great deal of time in subterranean catacombs, caves and forests solving the odd puzzle that requires the use of magic or blowing into the microphone.

The puzzles and the narrative get the job done, but it’s obvious that Dragon Sword was designed to be based around the combat, and that’s what you will spend most of your time doing. As the combat is generally quite fun, there’s hardly much to complain about there.

But in the end, the graphics are the real selling point for players approaching the series for the first time. If the graphics have any fault though, it’s that Ryu seems to spend a great deal of time fighting in large, open areas, which results in the camera being pulled well back to accommodate it.

The camera doesn’t really diminish the overall presentation, but the enemies do tend to look quite a bit muddier from this perspective, and the smaller characters can strain the eyes a bit. The game is at its very best when the camera switches from the isometric angle to a more traditional third-person view for the impressive-looking boss fights.

Special mention should also be given to the sound, which is understated and yet quite pleasing to the ears, mostly consisting of drums and flutes that sound very nice on even the DS’s limited sound chip.

The voice acting is largely limited to grunts of surprise, but the samples are quite clear, and the sound effects are second to none for a portable system. Ninja Gaiden has a strong audio tradition dating back to the NES, so its nice to see Dragon Sword picking up the gauntlet on the DS.

Dragon Sword’s excellent graphics and sound, nicely balanced difficulty and satisfying combat system ends up culminating in a great six-hour adventure, more than enough for a portable system. While dedicated gamers can whip through it in a couple nights, more casual players will probably spend a week or two on it. This doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider that even quality home console games like Call of Duty 4 and Portal are featuring single-player games that fail to hit the ten-hour mark, Dragon Sword seems perfectly acceptable.

And once the initial adventure is over, players will probably find themselves unable to resist returning for another run through on a higher difficulty level. Because while Dragon Sword is short, sweet and linear, its easily the best game to be released on the DS so far this year, and a must buy for anybody who is even remotely interested in going ninja on a bunch of supernatural thugs (read: everybody).

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